Systems without skills?

[xBlackWolfx]

Back when I was on rpgnet, I was quite surprised when i first found out that first edition DnD didn't have skills, I didn't understand how the game could function. It'd be like an rpg without character stats, it just wouldn't be possible!

After reading basic fighting fantasy (a DnD 1 retroclone) I came to realize it wasn't completely necessary, though I dont understand the advantages of it beyond simplicity.

Alot of the people over on rpgnet's development forums seem to like to make games with odd features; they think you're inept if you make anything remotely normal, nothing short of something as odd as mechanical dream would make them accept that you aren't unimaginitive and simple. For instance, they often criticized me in that most of my designs feature a typical system with attributes and skills, though I know of few games that don't differentiate the two.

I have been working on three different rpgs for the past few years, one of a fantasy setting, one for a superhero setting, and one for a high-magic setting (where the characters are all mages). I have contemplated not having skills for two of these. The mage game would make sense without skills since a character's abilities mostly focuses on the spells they know rather than mundane skills. I think it would work fine without skills, but I have also been thinking about doing this with the supers game. I dont know why, but again I think its just because it would make characters a bit too complex. I avoided skills in the mage game to emphasize focus on the spells. In the supers game, attributes+skills+powers is a bit much. And skills seem rather pointless since most supers don't have a wide diversity of skills beyond those that directly contribute to combat, with occasional scientists or occultists. If a character is meant to be a scientist or computer hacker or whatever, I would just treat that as an advantage saying that they can do those things, with their intelligence attribute being used for any necessary checks. Basically, characters would be made up of attributes, powers, and optional advantages.

Anyway, is a system without skills really practical? Does it actually have any advantages, because the only systems I have seen without skills are nostalgic retroclones and games meant to be highly simplistic. Could I do without skills, or am I making a mistake here? And just a note, the characters would have attributes to cover some of the skills (such as how DnD has the charisma attribute, which was made before the various 'social' skills came about). In the case of my supers rpg, characters would have attributes for combat prowess (I may have two, one for offense and the other for defense, but I'm not sure yet).

[Grod_The_Giant]

I played in a game of "SuperSTaRS" once-- an even more stripped down version of my homebrew STaRS system-- that had 10 attributes, powers, and items, basically. It worked OK.

You can certainly make a game that uses attributes in place of many skills, though you'll most likely want attributes for things like "fighting." I can certainly see something like the superhero game working without them. OTOH, there's a reason you see skills in so many games. The basic trade-off is granularity/customization vs simplicity, I suppose.

[xBlackWolfx]

Well my supers game has more to characters than just attributes powers and feats.

For one, there is actually classes. Not the typical classes, like blaster or paragon, but the 'classes' simply determine how your character's powers are tied to them. They are simply innate, transformer, and gadgeteer. Characters with the innate class always have their powers available, though they may lose them under certain circumstances if the player decides to take a weakness. A transformer has to morph into their superhero form (like etrigan for instance), they're similar to innates except that their powers aren't always on, most of the time they're oridnary people. For instance, if your superhero is really tough, a character with the innate class will always be tough (if you drop a save on superman, he wont get hurt even if he's not in costume), but a transformer on the other hand won't be any tougher than a normal human if they're caught off-guard while they're in their human form. Transforming between their two 'modes' takes time (most can't do it instantly) and often they wont be able to do it under certain circumstances, or they may only be able to stay in their supermode for a certain amount of time.

The last class is simply characters who are normal humans with fancy technology, like ironman or batman. With his suit, ironman can't fly, and batman can't glide or grapple or throw battarangs if he doesn't have any of his equipment. They would still have their own innate abilities (tony stark is still a smart guy, suit or no), though it is possible to have powers that enhance certain attributes at a lower point cost than it would normally take to raise them.

Each class also influences the point cost of powers. Someone who has innate powers doesn't have to worry about losing them much (if at all), but their powers automatically cost more than for a gadgeteer, whos powers though far more likely to be lost are also cheaper (if green arrow as to lose his bow, he would be in trouble for instance, or if tony stark wasn't in his suit), also innates may have trouble blending into normal society (they have an abnormal appearance, like green skin, which makes it impossible to hide the fact that they're not normal, or perhaps even making it impossible to have a dual identity). Gadgeteers also have an easier time changing their powers, tony stark can make a different suit with different abilities, but the x-men can't change their powers, they're stuck with whatever they were born with.

Why did I choose this complicated system? Because I find 'supermode' characters in other rpgs are a bit difficult to make, especcially if a character has multiple supermodes. I also see that characters that use gadgets or machines have trouble in rpgs since normally you can't change your character's stats as drastically as gadgeteers often do in the comics.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg really. The primary reason I'm thinking of removing skills is because the rest of the game is complicated enough.