D&D General Vote Up A 5e-alike, Part 3.1 - What do the stats do?

[Tonguez]

I think Skills should decoupled from Attributes and left floating - let the player determined their Athletics roll is using Power (Str), Acrobatics(Dex), Endurance (Con), Accuracy (Wis), Tactics (Int) or Performance (Cha).
(the other option is to use FATES approaches)

Do the same for other skills or let skills be freeform as the Player wants them to be (subject to DM agreement).

I would also love Attack to be different Weapon Group Skills (I use my Bow skill with Strenght to shoot a heavy arrow that punches a hole through the giants armour - I use Dex to Finese my Pole Arm (Glaive))

I also want there to be an active defense skill (Dex of Parry, Str for Block and Wis for Dodge) to avoid attacks

I want Perception to be passive only too

 

[Faolyn]

"Do you get drunk enough to be sick?" comes up regularly, if infrequently, in my games. About equally often, a similar question will arise when entering a stinking room, or when someone's eaten some slightly-off food.

Far more common is the question of whether anyone gets seasick on an ocean voyage; and unusually strong or unusually weak stomach are each included in a random table of "attributes and quirks" that a player can (optionally) roll on during char-gen.

I mean, sure (although rolling to avoid seasickness is also something that's come up maybe a handful of times in all my years), but that's still a save, not a skill. Or at the least, just a Con ability check. IMO, the skills should be limited to things that come up frequently, not niche occurrences. Con saves are frequently used to avoid disease or poison. Seasickness isn't a disease, but it is the body acting funky so I'd count it. And alcohol is a poison. It's just one that generally won't immediately kill you.

 

[Faolyn]

I also want there to be an active defense skill (Dex of Parry, Str for Block and Wis for Dodge) to avoid attacks

On other threads, I've seen plenty of people talk about how annoying it is to have to roll more than two dice (to-hit, damage) to resolve an attack, and as a former GURPS player, I definitely agree, so I would like to keep the number of dice low.

In Level Up, certain weapons (those with the Parrying trait) give you a 1/turn expertise die to your AC. To avoid having to roll more dice--whether to block or to add a d4 to your AC--I could see certain weapons giving you a flat +1 across the board.

Shields already let you block, although I could potentially see shields actually letting you use some or all of your Strength mod to add to your AC in the way that some armors let you use all or some (or none) of your Dex mod. Maybe bucklers let you add up to +1 to your AC (meaning they're useless if you don't have a Strength of at least 13); regular shields let you add up to +2; large shields, up to +3; and tower shields, up to +4.

I could see a very high Wis (say, 16+) letting you add a +1 to AC.

I want Perception to be passive only too

I like this. We already have Investigation; we'd just need to expand that to include general looking-around.

 

[Faolyn]

The poll is going in a few minutes (and Poll 3 closed yesterday), so I'm going to tally things up now:

Stats
Almost everyone wanted the traditional six stats.

Slightly more people wanted ASIs to be partly based on ancestry and partly floating, but nearly as many people in the comments said they wanted to give a +1 from ancestry, +1 from class, and +1 from background (no more than +2 in a stat). Should we do that? And if so, should we also have a floating +1? That would give a +4 in total, which is a lot... but...

In the comments, a couple of people wanted to bring back stat penalties. If we combine giving a total of +4 as above and require that people give themselves a -2, it would balance out. Sure, it might mean that people are penalizing their dump stat even more, but we could also say things like "Elves get +1 Dexterity. Most are relatively frail, however, and it's suggested you put your stat penalty in Constitution."

46% of people wanted the stat mods as they are now: 12-13, +1; 14-15, +2; 16-17, +3; 18-19, +4; 20, +5, instead of using lower stat mods.

Saves
Fortitude, Reflexes, and Willpower just edged out having six saves, 39% to 35%.

Skills
Slightly more people wanted to keep tool/game/musical instrument separate from the skills.

54% of people wanted Intelligence to grant bonus skills and languages.

35% of people wanted Wisdom to affect Initiative.

100% of people who are me realized I am not all that great at making polls, because I keep forgetting to give alternatives. Do 65% of people not want Wis to affect Initiative?

Combat
Lots of people (27%) wanted Strength to affect all damage rolls, well over the 12% of people who wanted Dex to affect some damage rolls.

The Next Poll
I don't have it up yet. Should we go for skills, go straight into classes (starting with Fighter), or something else?

 

[CreamCloud0]

The Next Poll
I don't have it up yet. Should we go for skills, go straight into classes (starting with Fighter), or something else?

skills, if only for the fact that it seems like it won't be half as long a chain to get sorted out as classes

 

[Scribe]

I still think that Intimidate could be outright stated to work with either Strength or Cha.

Without a doubt.

 

[CreamCloud0]

I still think that Intimidate could be outright stated to work with either Strength or Cha.

while i recognise offering alternate stats for skills is good for providing options i think i'd prefer a flat out strength based 'strongarm' skill to replace intimidation.

 

[Lanefan]

I mean, sure (although rolling to avoid seasickness is also something that's come up maybe a handful of times in all my years), but that's still a save, not a skill. Or at the least, just a Con ability check.

I just have them roll under their Con, sometimes with a modifier depending on various.

IMO, the skills should be limited to things that come up frequently, not niche occurrences. Con saves are frequently used to avoid disease or poison. Seasickness isn't a disease, but it is the body acting funky so I'd count it. And alcohol is a poison. It's just one that generally won't immediately kill you.

If I had my way most of the skills would >>poof!<< disappear. I didn't like either their concept or implementation in 3e and WotC are still using pretty much the same system now.

Instead, they'd be replaced with:

"Life skills" - these are the things you may or may not have happened to learn while growing up, or in some cases represent talents you were simply born with. Random roll for how good you are at each, no modifiers for class, occasional modifiers for species. Everyone has to roll for the first three, any others are purely at the player's option unless it somehow becomes relevant during play.

Swimming
Boating
Riding
Singing (optional)
Drawing (optional)
Etc. (optional)

Class-specific skills - skills certain classes need in order to do their jobs. This covers Thieving skills, Rangering skills, and so on, and would be bespoke to each class that needs them.

Most of the rest would be replaced with simple roll-under-ability-score, modified to suit the in-game situation at the time.

 

[Faolyn]

Poll 4: Skills is up!