Why I Hate Skills

[Fenris-77]

Absolutely. Different people; Different priorities; Different tastes; Different tolerances for unwanted ingredients in their soup. No disagreement.


No, probably not, but when they exist you can point out those two types of dissonances I mentioned that pull you out of character or persistently keep you from getting into character and clearly explain why they are one or the other.


Sure. Absolutely. My thresholds for "this is good"; "these bug me but I can put up with it if this is as far as it goes; "these are ruining it for me I better really like these people since I'm clearly not here for the game"; and "I don't want to play this even if I like these people I would rather stay home to avoid it" are not going to be the same as other people's, even if they care about in-character immersion (and I acknowledge that many players don't care about that factor at all).

Yup, I think the conversation about meta is far more useful to determine what games one would play in that it is as a definitional tool for RPGs generally. I think you can use the idea definitionally up to a point, but that's it.

 

[SkidAce]

But even in spite of my gripes: That is probably true for a lot of players. A lot of players seemingly don't actually care about the actual game being played at all, they're just there for the collaborative storytelling social event. It doesn't matter if the game itself is good or bad, they're just showing up for the company; and wouldn't ever consider filtering what campaigns they're interested in joining based on what system the group is using, because they don't have any strong opinions on which systems were fun or not fun and why. I would guess they're probably the largest demographic of players.

I have noticed this also. And in a way its very benificial.

Players are like "Okay, we can try FATE* next week" cause they know they will still have fun.


*now if I could only drum up the same enthusiasm for Champions/Hero System, they bounced off that hard. (I think its day has passed, sadly...it had its strengths)

 

[Bill Zebub]

But that's the type of thinking that lead to 4th Edition!
Note: If memory serves, I could replace "4th Edition" with the SEIGE engine of Tunnels and Trolls

I find that curious (bizarre), because 4th edition is the antithesis of what I look for in a game.

Could you explain more?

 

[pemerton]

So my critique of a system like that is that having skills scattered all over the place from +1 to +11 is unnecessary. The difference between +9 and +11 is also not noticeable. Just have two settings per skill: unskilled, and skilled. "Skilled" gives you +10 (or whatever).

But that's the type of thinking that lead to 4th Edition!
Note: If memory serves, I could replace "4th Edition" with the SEIGE engine of Tunnels and Trolls

I find that curious (bizarre), because 4th edition is the antithesis of what I look for in a game.

Could you explain more?

I assume it's because 4e has basically two settings for skills: skilled or unskilled. There are further adjustments: class abilities, race abilities, feats, etc; but untrained (no adjustment beyond stat) or trained (stat +5) is the basic logic of the 4e skill system.

 

[Andvari]

But that's the type of thinking that lead to 4th Edition!
Note: If memory serves, I could replace "4th Edition" with the SEIGE engine of Tunnels and Trolls

It's Castles & Crusades that has the SIEGE engine. The way it works is that when you make an attribute (ability score) check, you roll 1d20 + attribute bonus + level to beat a base DC of 18. But if the attribute is a prime attribute for you, the base DC is only 12. The GM can modify the DC up and down as needed. It's granular since you can almost always add your level to the result.

I think a simpler way would be to use an advantage/disadvantage system and use the same base DC, but grant advantage if it's a prime attribute. Or with a skill system, gain advantage if you have a skill that applies to the activity you are attempting.

 

[Thomas Shey]

He did say on a curve you'd need to swap from dice to a computer to apply a faux 15% disparity that STAYS at 15%. So, it wouldn't land differently at different points, because he's not talking about adding a flat number, he's talking about calculating the odds from the dice curve digitally, converting it to a % in the computer and then reducing your odds by 15%; and saying if the disparity is only around 15%, people would take a while to notice.

I caught that, but I still maintain its going to be visible at some point more than others because *small discrepencies in roll" have more visible effects at some points than others with a 3D6 roll. If a 15% difference in the weighting doesn't actually change the output, it'll be invisible, but if it makes a 4 point difference in output people are much more likely to notice it.

Unless what he's meaning by 15% difference is different than what I'm assuming here. If he's talking about actual probability what I've said is correct; if he's talking about output, I still think it'd be more visible with most 3D6 systems because it less often is irrelevant (a large amount of big linear die systems are just noise, but that's often not true with 3D6 systems).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I wanted to enlarge a bit on what I mean above.

The two typical 3D6 systems I'm familiar are GURPS and Hero. In principal you have a 16 point range in resolution that means anything there, but in practice parts of that range aren't actually used, usually the bottom end of the range (rolls with less than around 8- less on the roll-low approach aren't normally going to occur, because they require very minimalist skills and/or heavy penalties to come up, as the probability of them is so low they're essentially not something that you want to assume will get you anywhere, so the systems don't do that). The net effect is that the skill ranges are in comparatively large chunks, and the upper range of them have pretty impactful results (usually because they can absorb pretty big penalties and still have a pretty fair chance of success).

So I think it gets a little odd comparing a D20 skill system to a 3D6 one, because the numeric range used is usually quite different, because you need fairly large bonuses to get any consistent result at at least modest difficulties, which you don't see in the 3D6 system because they effectively start higher (there's some other dynamics where the two systems differ significantly; GURPS attributes have a lot more impact on the roll than Hero does).

 

[Bill Zebub]

I assume it's because 4e has basically two settings for skills: skilled or unskilled. There are further adjustments: class abilities, race abilities, feats, etc; but untrained (no adjustment beyond stat) or trained (stat +5) is the basic logic of the 4e skill system.

Oh.

That's curious, because lots of games have only a trained/untrained distinction. Odd to latch on to that one feature and assume that such a game would be "like 4e". That's like assuming that the use of d6's is "like Traveler".

 

[500 Toads]

Yes, no argument that this would be noticeable.

So my critique of a system like that is that having skills scattered all over the place from +1 to +11 is unnecessary. The difference between +9 and +11 is also not noticeable. Just have two settings per skill: unskilled, and skilled. "Skilled" gives you +10 (or whatever).

The difference between those two approaches....and this is the thing I've been trying to argue all along...is that the granular system, adding +5% (or similarly minor) adjustments at a time, mostly just serves to satisfy the craving that some players have to fiddle with character build. "Should I choose +3 and +5, or +5 and +3?" The +5 conveys the idea that you are better at one skill than the other, but it doesn't really matter.

Depends on the system. Lots of systems have degrees of success where a small modifier matters. In PF2e, for instance, even a +2 is important despite it being a d20-based system because it significantly changes the odds of a critical result. There, it's not just natural 1s and 20s that matter, but passing or failing a check by 10 or more shifts the result to a critical success or critical failure -- and not just for Strikes, but for skill actions, saves, etc.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Depends on the system. Lots of systems have degrees of success where a small modifier matters. In PF2e, for instance, even a +2 is important despite it being a d20-based system because it significantly changes the odds of a critical result. There, it's not just natural 1s and 20s that matter, but passing or failing a check by 10 or more shifts the result to a critical success or critical failure -- and not just for Strikes, but for skill actions, saves, etc.

I still don't think most users would notice the difference of rolling below average for long stretches (again, as long as those rolls didn't come in "bursts")