Untrained/trained Skills....Noooo!

[Primitive Screwhead]

SAGA-style skills remove player choice. Players are literally unable to play characters that are lacking proficiency in even a single area. They MUST play characters that are jacks-of-all-skills.

See my point 'A' above....

I think a major drive behind the change of the skill system is to ease the design of adventures. As Nifft points out, the current system tends to result in higher level characters using magic as a crutch to avoid problems with the short supply of skill points.

I want to get away from the 'Inn to Dungeon and Back again' hand-waving that, IMHO, minimizes the actual setting. I want to challenge high level groups with combat on the side of cliffs. THe current system discourages this.

Also, it seems that there is continual hue and cry that 'oh no! high level characters will be able to do *everything*'...
Remathilis wrote alot of stuff up there, but littered inside of his post you will see things that an untrained high-level character *cannot* do while a lower level trained character can. High level characters will be generally more competant in the things that the assumed generic adventurer encounter regularly {in the assumed generic world}.
Your world may vary, but thats no reason to cry foul on the RAW.

Perhaps the 4E version will include a way to properly represent the desert warrior who gets dropped into a lake. Can't really tell yet... but I might get back to you in, oh.. about April next year?


{wow, this thread is getting alot of attention... 10 post between my deciding to post and getting the form open.. wonder how many more have flown by and how outdated my comments are }

 

[Remathilis]

Why should it be changed in a way that removes player choice? That's idiotic.

I don't think I've ever heard a player say "boy, I'm glad I didn't put any ranks in swim. Sure, my character wouldn't have drown, but at least he died keeping to the spirit of the character!"

 

[Daebryn]

Right. So how do you re-flavor the desert nomad fighter who's never seen more than a wellful of water in his life taking to water like a fish the first time he sees the ocean?

True Story Time: My cousin, who was born and raised in Nevada and never set foot in more water then could be found in a kiddy pool and had never learned to swim, moved up here to the Pacific Northwest when she was about 9.

We have a lake.

Normally, while the rest of the family was swimming, she stayed on the beach. Finally one day, her father got fed up with her constant whining about how everyone was having fun but her, picked her up, carried her out onto the dock and threw her into the lake (granted he threw her towards me so if there was any problems I could help).

After only a minute or two of panicked flailing about, that girl who had never been in water before, swam like a fish.

 

[Nifft]

After only a minute or two of panicked flailing about, that girl who had never been in water before, swam like a fish.

She sounds like a munchkin.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Mad Mac]

After only a minute or two of panicked flailing about, that girl who had never been in water before, swam like a fish.

Like a fish, eh? Suuuuure. Next you're going to tell me humans are naturally bouyant in water and even small children know how to climb.

To be honest, I don't think I've ever had a character put ranks in swim. If your average party is in an aquatic adventure situation without having time to prepare magically, they're all boned anyway.

Personally, I find it a much smaller hit to my sense of versimiludization for the 1 in 1000 Aquaphobic Desert Hero to make it to shore alive than the fact that your entire typical adventuring party of mighty heroes in 3.5 are easily wiped out by the sort of swimming challenge earth humans consider summer vacation.

 

[A'koss]

In all seriousness, swimming isn't that hard, even a baby knows instinctively to hold its breath underwater. The reason people have a hard time of it is that they panic, they are afraid of the water for obvious reasons. High level heroes don't just panic, they are cool under pressure, they work through problems instead of running kicking and screaming.

I was just about to chime in with this very line of reasoning.

 

[med stud]

I never once made that claim. My claim, for the people who cannot be bothered to read it and instead insist on assigning me motivations:

SAGA-style skills remove player choice. Players are literally unable to play characters that are lacking proficiency in even a single area. They MUST play characters that are jacks-of-all-skills.

If they play the game like a computer game, you are right. Otherwise they can limit themselves by just declaring that they will never use the skill no matter what, or the player imposes situational penalties on himself, I can think up a whole lot of -2 modifiers you can apply to yourself in very short time for any skill in the book (except Use Magic Device and the like )

The rules accomodate that style of play just fine in 3.5 - especially since planar travel and clerics don't assume any skill useage whatsoever. Why should it be changed in a way that removes player choice? That's idiotic.

It doesn't remove player choice, it makes player choice into something different. The players can chose their ***es off, just not by the same standards as before.

---

General point on topic: There seem to be a lot of hyperbole going on from some people who don't like these changes. They say that everyone will be great at everything. At lvl 20 is the first time an untrained character will have the same skill check that a trained and focused character has at lvl 1, but at lvl 20 you are almost Hercules, I can't see the problems of having "high" general skill bonuses by then.

 

[pemerton]

Personally, I find it a much smaller hit to my sense of versimiludization for the 1 in 1000 Aquaphobic Desert Hero to make it to shore alive than the fact that your entire typical adventuring party of mighty heroes in 3.5 are easily wiped out by the sort of swimming challenge earth humans consider summer vacation.

Quoted for laughter (and also truth).

 

[FireLance]

And all I have seen in SWSE defense is justification for dumbing down the system to make it more patty-cake for the DM and/or for hand-holding the player's hands for fear that they might actually need to find a creative solution to a problem.

Actually, I see it more as another safety net. The current safety net is combat - if the PCs still have not succeeded after exhausting all their other options, they can usually fight their way through. The PCs could run a high risk of individual death and/or collective failure, but at least they went out pro-actively trying to do something instead of standing around scratching their heads trying to find a solution that the DM will find acceptable (a little scratching of the head is okay, but too much of it doesn't make a good game for most people).

If the character has a 75% chance of failing a skill check and suffering some penalty (maybe even death, if failure means that he falls into lava), it's basically the player's way of saying that even a 25% chance of moving the game forward is better than racking his brains for another minute.

 

[FireLance]

SAGA-style skills remove player choice. Players are literally unable to play characters that are lacking proficiency in even a single area. They MUST play characters that are jacks-of-all-skills.

Actually, jacks-of-all-things-that-even-a-normal-person-can-do-untrained. If it requires special training to do it, being a high-level character in itself isn't going to help.