D&D General When Was it Decided Fighters Should Suck at Everything but Combat?

[Bill Zebub]

You only tend to see that when the risk of making things worse is higher than the chance of making them better really. I.e. fumbles where the fumble will drag the situation down and has a relatively large chance of happening. And if its too high it just discourages wanting to do it at all.

Yes. The trick is getting the balance right, so that it's a non-obvious decision in either direction.

 

[Thomas Shey]

One thing I try to avoid is the idea of "if you don't have a skill you can't even try something". Anyoen can try picking a lock even though their odds of succeeding might be very poor; anyone can try tracking something through the wilderness and who knows, might even pull it off, and so on.

Having the skill or ability, though, makes you markedly better at whatever it is.

There are things your chance of success approaches nil if you're untrained in, though most of them are post-industrial. But someone successfully operating a sailing boat who hasn't even the minimalist experience doing so is going to drop well below the resolution of a D20 at least, and the same would apply to things like, say, alchemy.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Being able to roll gives people an incentive to invest in and get better at that particular talent.

I find that a little tautological: "We need skill systems so that people will have an incentive to invest in skills."

It also also allows the vagueries of chance and fate to change things. Chaos can be good when it leads to interesting outcomes. I love it when someone climbing or jumping or persuading or intimidating rolls a 1 or 2… drama!

I agree, but you don't need a skill system to do that.

Lastly you can learn from failed rolls - how difficult or obscure something is that brings its own weight to the table. If I am asked to make an Arcana check to recall something about runes, roll an 18 and fail and know that lore is really obscure. Failing forward can be a thing.

I always tell players DCs, so they have a choice of whether or not to attempt something. (Of course, that requires consequences for failure, which I find very difficult to define for "do I know?" queries, which is why I don't use knowledge checks, etc. etc. etc.)

In any event, I as GM have no problem telling players how obscure a piece of knowledge is, especially if it's in an area where their character has some amount of expertise.

 

[Thomas Shey]

How is that poor design?

If, say, the roll is to see if someone knows something obscure then sure, the character with the Knowledge skill in that area gets by far the best odds. But everyone else should still be able to roll if they want to, though, even if only on a "If you roll a 20 I'll think about it" basis, because who knows what obscure bits of info a specific character might have tucked away.

The problem with this is it turns into a degenerate case where the roll is almost pointless a lot of time because ot the probabilities of die rolls (and its even worse with linear rolls like a D20).

 

[Bill Zebub]

I'll be upfront here: "combat" and "as exciting as in OD&D" are two phrases that don't go together IME.

Yes, that's why I said I don't think it's a worthwhile objective. I don't know why we keep coming back to it as some kind of benchmark.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Being able to roll gives people an incentive to invest in and get better at that particular talent. Developing ability scores, choosing skills, racial abilities, expertise, Feats, spells etc.

You wouldn't have to do that as a roll, though. You could have "Anyone with Skill Total X in Skill Y knows this particular piece of information." In a lot of knowledge areas that's a lot closer to how that works. It doesn't deal with the "obscure specialized piece of information within a more general area" case, but that can be almost random once you've hit the threshold level; even someone who knows the general subject well isn't particularly likely to know that in many cases.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think 'roll to see if you know something' is itself poor design.

'Everyone has at least a 5% chance to know anything' is also bad design. Every player rolling just in hope of getting a 20 (but probably nothing happens) is bad design. Players not knowing what their characters have knowledge of is bad design. The barbarian randomly knowing a point about the history of magic that neither the wizard or the bard knew is bad design.

I would start by reframing it as "see if you remember this bit of trivia."

But yes, as always, don't be rolling on stuff that characters either can trivially do -- the wizard knows basic spell runes, guys -- or have no real way of knowing -- the fighter doesn't know the languages of a long dead empire -- but only on stuff that is possible, but difficult.

Dice are great, but too many groups are rolling them for too many things.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This is a major thread digression (or will be if y'all take the bait) but I don't believe in gating knowledge/information behind any kind of skill check. I don't think that ever makes the game better in any way.

GUMSHOE has entered the chat

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yes, that's why I said I don't think it's a worthwhile objective. I don't know why we keep coming back to it as some kind of benchmark.

Well, as the most absolutely basic element regarding the question the thread poses, it kind of is the benchmark as far as I can see. Remember my answer to the thread question is "in OD&D". The fact that combat was dull didn't mean the FM of the time weren't relatively-good at combat in it; how good they were at it, and how interesting the combat was are different questions.

 

[Bill Zebub]

You wouldn't have to do that as a roll, though. You could have "Anyone with Skill Total X in Skill Y knows this particular piece of information." In a lot of knowledge areas that's a lot closer to how that works. It doesn't deal with the "obscure specialized piece of information within a more general area" case, but that can be almost random once you've hit the threshold level; even someone who knows the general subject well isn't particularly likely to know that in many cases.

When I'm dealing with a skill system, that's how I resolve "knowledge checks" (or any consequence-free action).