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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bill Zebub" data-source="post: 9876276" data-attributes="member: 7031982">I've been playing Dragonbane this weekend, and it reminds me of why I hate skill systems.First, I have to say that I love almost everything else* about Dragonbane, so I'd love to figure out a hack to change how skills work.*ok, I don't love roll-under.Unfortunately, one of the things I do love is the flat progressions, which in Dragonbane is tied to the skill system.  Instead of levels, characters advance in three ways:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Equipment, including magic items</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Heroic Abilities (kind of like Feats)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Skills increasing</li> </ol>When you roll a 1 or a 20 when using a skill, you mark that skill, and at the end of the session you roll a d20 for every marked skill: if you roll above your current skill, it increases by one.  That end-of-session rolling is really fun, but unfortunately (in my opinion) it creates an incentive to roll dice during the session.The adventure we were playing had a lot of things like:"A successful Awareness roll reveals the outlines of the hidden door...""They can find the hidden trap door with a successful Spot Hidden roll...""With a successful Myths & Legends check they recognize the mural as...""The inscription can be read with a successful Languages check..."Because of the advancement system, it makes sense to have lots of these things in an adventure, for as many different skills as the designer can think of.  But I have three issues with these sorts of checks for "noticing" or "knowing" things:First, there's all this "me-tooism" going on, where EVERYBODY wants to roll to see if they can read the inscription.  I know some GMs solve this by saying that only one person gets to roll, calling that the best attempt, and in a lot of games whoever has the highest skill becomes the point person.  But in games where rolling is a chance to advance, everybody wants to be that person.Second, the players aren't doing anything.  Why are they rolling to see if they spot the hidden door?  Because they happened to walk past it.  There's no thoughtfulness, no planning, no risk-taking.  Finding the door isn't a reward for good game-play, unless you count "putting points into Awareness" as good game play.  Which I don't.  Or, at least, if the skill in RPGs comes down to knowing how to build a character, I'm not really interested.Third, if nobody succeeds they know they missed something, so then they start poking around really carefully, even looking in exactly the right spot.  So...I'm supposed to give them their reward, even though they failed the skill roll, because the roll itself signaled they should stay in that spot searching for something until they click the right pixel?I resolved it this weekend by just having everybody roll.  And inevitably somebody in the party of five succeeded in every case, so at least we avoided the "now we know we missed something syndrome."  But I find it incredibly unsatisfying.  My players are learning they don't really have to be very thoughtful; they just blunder around and I tell them what dice to roll.Oh, and then there's lock-picking and trap-disabling.  The dungeon had several instances (at least three) where the key to a lock was hidden in another part of the dungeon.  Which is a pretty standard video game trope, but when you have a sleight-of-hand skill, and an incentive to use skills, eventually all the locks get picked.  Not only was there no problem solving, planning, or other trade-offs, just dice rolling, but the presumed purpose of the locks and keys...getting them to explore the other parts of the dungeon...wasn't actually achieved.That isn't a problem specifically with skills....if we were playing Shadowdark they wouldn't have even had to roll dice to pick the locks...but it's a common design feature (flaw, imo) that is part of the whole skills ecosystem problem: that because there's a skill for picking locks, you put locks in the dungeon.  (I did rule that each attempt takes an entire 15-minute "stretch", which then triggered a random hazard check, but that's still safer than going to look for the key.)In fairness, there was one instance where skills did work the way I think they are supposed to: there was an incentive for a character to dive into a pool, and I explained that the water was frigid and turbulent, and that Swimming checks would be required, with consequences for failure.  They tied a rope around the waist of the swimmer, for which I granted a Boon (i.e. Advantage) on the roll.Other than spellcasting and weapon attacks during combat, which in Dragonbane uses the skill system, the lock picking (because of the hazard checks) and the swimming were literally the only examples I can think of where skill checks were called for in response to action declarations for which there would have been consequences for failing.  And overall we did a LOT of dice rolling.So, yeah....I hate skills.</blockquote>

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