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Message: <blockquote data-quote="slobo777" data-source="post: 6026755" data-attributes="member: 6694877">Actually I am well aware of approach of players driving story by picking abilities (it's generally how I set up adventures), and was aiming for a neutral tone on chicken v egg <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Sorry if it failed . .  .I think my point still stands, even with a floating skill system and player-driven plot lines.That's because a background ability like "Bardic Voice" could come up in different ways, and to different degrees:A) Purely in the fiction - an appointment to entertain the Emperor with a song could be the premise of the start of an adventure. Or a witch steals the voice (a la Little Mermaid) and the PCs must get it back.B) As a mechanic - it's not an appointment to the Emperor, but a competition to tell the deeds of your group and be awarded entry to the Hall of Heroes [skill rolls for whole group including the PC's voice ability to enhance the telling]. The witch is instead an enchantress who has charmed your friends, but the right song will counter her hold on your allies [opposed skill check to get your allies to have Actions against the witch].These both include the PC background, and make it important. You can choose to do both if you want.But the same logic applies - if using Bardic Voice as a skill roll would only come up once or twice ever, it's questionable that it needs to be something that the player has spent some of the PC build on, or that needs strictly-defined rules.In a floating skill system, pretty much all skills that players purchase are talking to scenarios like B . . . and there's nowhere obvious to put "background flavour" skills, where the player simply likes the idea of e.g. their ogre being a great chef, but doesn't want that to cost anything or be relevant mechanically to the otherwise pure-combat character.So, weirdly, a floating skill system designed to enable cool extensive player choice, can in fact kill some of the cool choices by making them cost something. So it would need a patch - e.g. you get one or more free "special talents" that you don't expect to some up in play, or even go direct for the end result and say you can list as many skills as you like, but only the ones mechanically paid for will come up as mechanics, the rest are "fluff".</blockquote>

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