Why PCs should be competent, or "I got a lot of past in my past"

[GMMichael]

I’ve never found skill checks to be particularly onerous or excessive in skill based systems such as BRP.

Hear, hear! I like how Cypher System says, "hey! You can do routine things with no roll." And then sometimes if it does need a roll (skill check), the PC can say, "well I have this which reduces the difficulty to routine, so no, I don't need a roll."

And of course, games that let the players say (and do) something more interesting than, "welp, I fail," like Dungeon World and Modos RPG, make the low rolls just as fun as the high rolls. No incompetence necessary.

 

[Staffan]

I’ve never found skill checks to be particularly onerous or excessive in skill based systems such as BRP.

It depends. Many BRP-based games have way too many skills and far too few points to spend on them (stares sideways at Call of Cthulhu). The Troubleshooters is about as far as I'd go when it comes to the appropriate number of skills (about 30, some of which replace traditional attributes like Strength or Agility).

One of the better innovations I've seen in a BRP-derived game was in Dragonbane's ancestors Drakar och Demoner Expert and Drakar och Demoner '91 (DoD's version history is somewhat confusing, but most people would consider that version 3 or 4). In Expert, skills were divided into type A and type B. Type A were classic "roll under or equal on d20", and were measured on a scale that was mainly 0-20 but could go higher. Type B were skills you'd pretty much never roll for, you just could do the thing at that particular level, and they were measured on a 0 to 5 level. The main things I recall using type B skills were languages and crafts. In '91, some changes were made to the rules for acquiring skills which meant type B skills couldn't be treated as a wholly separate thing. But they kept it around in the system, with a table for converting type A skill levels to type B – but that meant you could treat any skill as a type B skill. It wasn't very well-supported in the system, but it was a cool idea nonetheless.

 

[bloodtide]

Default human starting age in AD&D 2e was 15+1d4. I think 3e kept the 15 but changed the d4 to d4, d6, or d8 depending on how much training they considered your class to need. I don't recall what 4e did, and 5e has thankfully done away with random starting ages. But there's definitely an expectation that a 1st level character is a teenager, or at least fairly young, without all that much experience.

But it is also more then just the number. Before the 20th century in America people were considered adults at like 13. And sure lots of teens act like immature brats or worse......some others act exactly like young adults.

I don't think the crew of Deep Space 9 are the equivalent of 15th level. They are competent professionals, not legends (well, except Sisko who becomes Space Jesus eventually, but that's a secondary progression track to his actual competence). Same with SG-1. Or the Rocinante crew.

Except they do beyond extraordinary things each week, of course. And Worf and Dax sure are 15th. Oh, and O'Brian as a 15th mechanic....

And SG1? Carter is a beyond expert in all science. And Daniel sure knows a lot...about everything not science. Though sure T'elc does not become a ninja demi god until the 5th season.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

It depends. Many BRP-based games have way too many skills and far too few points to spend on them (stares sideways at Call of Cthulhu). The Troubleshooters is about as far as I'd go when it comes to the appropriate number of skills (about 30, some of which replace traditional attributes like Strength or Agility).

One of the better innovations I've seen in a BRP-derived game was in Dragonbane's ancestors Drakar och Demoner Expert and Drakar och Demoner '91 (DoD's version history is somewhat confusing, but most people would consider that version 3 or 4). In Expert, skills were divided into type A and type B. Type A were classic "roll under or equal on d20", and were measured on a scale that was mainly 0-20 but could go higher. Type B were skills you'd pretty much never roll for, you just could do the thing at that particular level, and they were measured on a 0 to 5 level. The main things I recall using type B skills were languages and crafts. In '91, some changes were made to the rules for acquiring skills which meant type B skills couldn't be treated as a wholly separate thing. But they kept it around in the system, with a table for converting type A skill levels to type B – but that meant you could treat any skill as a type B skill. It wasn't very well-supported in the system, but it was a cool idea nonetheless.

BRP is pretty much a disaster. It varies a bit as to how bad it is depending on flavor and vintage, but CoC's older versions are the worst. The skill list is 100s of entries long, especially if you include various supplements. Who knows what skill is really appropriate and since it's an action adjudication system you really need to know. Worse you have a fairly small limit of skill points.

As a result the game is filled with situations where everyone is incompetent or the vital clues don't get found, etc. Even using 7th ed I found it pretty unplayable by modern standards. I mean, the combat system is OK, but nothing to write home about.

Run ToC or something like that instead, and for the rest of BRP games? Yeah I'll pass. Even RQ is better ported to a better system.

 

[aramis erak]

The original BRP has very few skills - but around half the list are weapons skills. But it also assumes rolls are only for hard things, not for "could be failed" things.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I’d be interested in knowing from those who want competent characters how you view (in general) negative outcomes in combat or skill checks. How do you react if your character is injured or incapacitated? When they don’t succeed in climbing the cliff?

I go "Things can go wrong for even the most competent, especially when dealing with a particularly difficult problem." (It going wrong too easily is another issue, but that's more a problem with how resolution mechanisms work than conceptual--it tends to be much bigger an issue with big-linear-die-roll systems than, say, 3D6 systems or die pool systems because the latter can push down the occurrence of such failures in trivial cases more easily).

 

[Wolfpack48]

BRP is pretty much a disaster. It varies a bit as to how bad it is depending on flavor and vintage, but CoC's older versions are the worst. The skill list is 100s of entries long, especially if you include various supplements. Who knows what skill is really appropriate and since it's an action adjudication system you really need to know. Worse you have a fairly small limit of skill points.

As a result the game is filled with situations where everyone is incompetent or the vital clues don't get found, etc. Even using 7th ed I found it pretty unplayable by modern standards. I mean, the combat system is OK, but nothing to write home about.

Run ToC or something like that instead, and for the rest of BRP games? Yeah I'll pass. Even RQ is better ported to a better system.

Meh, you can keep your “better” system. I can literally teach a new player BRP in 5 minutes and have a character in 10 with no difficulty understanding the rules once we start playing. The big mistake people make is forcing tests when they aren’t really necessary. The skills listed on the sheet are for Normal difficulty tests (when a test is actually needed) and can have significant bonuses or penalties based on difficulty. With a certain amount of skill or for a trivial test, no roll is needed. Sometimes the roll is only needed to determine the level of success with critical successes imparting better results.

 

[Clint_L]

The Goonies are kids. So is Harry Potter, and Harry Potter is very much a "main character + supporting cast" story which lends themselves better to zero-to-hero. Loser's Club is horror, which is different. The X-Men team that actually took off was the one with several experienced characters on it. And I'm not sure where the Breakfast Club comes in, as that movie takes place over a single day and doesn't really have any adventuring-type challenges for the characters – or are you talking about some other Breakfast Club than the John Hughes movie?

The Breakfast Club is a classic adventure. The kids meet in prison, have a sadistic, powerful BBEG to deal with, go on a dangerous quest for a magic item (Bender's weed stash), and come to dramatic realizations about themselves, while subverting the system. Every Monster Hearts game I've played is basically half Breakfast Club.

 

[Reynard]

This is one of those places where I advocate for a separation of Experience and Power Tiers.

That is, the campaign should have a power tier -- a general expectation of how "super heroic" (for lack of a better term) the PCs, their adversaries, and/or the world is going to present. Separate from that, though, is the question of how experienced the PCs are -- small town nobodies versus grizzled veterans, for example.

The latter is just a matter of experience points and is measured mostly in skill (although not necessarily just literal skills, since D&D can be sort of wonky defining what is skill and what is talent and what is mystical nature). The former is about setting baselines like ability score arrays, number of hit dice, baseline check bonuses, etc... The normal progression of cantrips serves as a solid foundation on how to build tier damage output benchmarks, as an example.

It is easy to imagine an adventuring party made up of young, inexperienced characters gifted with strange and wonderous powers a la the X-Men as a campaign set up. They would have a reasonably high starting power tier, but literally no experience and level 0 starting skill.

 

[Maxperson]

I’d be interested in knowing from those who want competent characters how you view (in general) negative outcomes in combat or skill checks. How do you react if your character is injured or incapacitated? When they don’t succeed in climbing the cliff?

I view them as perfectly fine. It's not about perfection or not encountering adversity. It's about not feeling like a complete putz when you first start out playing the game.

My personal preference is to start out the game at 3rd level. That gives enough hit points, class abilities, choice of subclass, spells, etc. for me to feel like my PC is at least competent to be out risking his neck on things. One of my players likes to start at 5th, but that eliminates too much of the game in my opinion as you will quickly leave the lower monsters behind as you level up.