What if all of it was skill?

[Nibbens]

Piggybacking off the What if there were no class skills (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?481028-What-if-there-were-no-class-skills) thread, I wondered what would happen if instead of a "combat section of my character sheet" and a "skills section of my character sheet," what if it was just one "Skills List" with melee/ranged/grappling/spells were all separate skills that PCs could put points into? What would happen?

[Flickerdart]

You would have a point-buy game instead of a levels game. Mutants and Masterminds, maybe.

[Cosi]

The game breaks. Like, really hard. You're basically asking "what would happen if every class was a Truenamer", and a basic familiarity with Truenamers will inform you that the answer to that question is "nothing good".

The reason the game breaks does merit some explanation. If you put everything on the skill system, the game breaks because the skill system is (from a balance perspective) completely broken. Stats, racial bonuses, and synergy bonuses are larger than skill ranks at low levels, magic item bonuses shatter the RNG at high levels, spells at every level grant huge bonuses, and the difference between a non-specialist, a specialist, and a tricked-out specialist is massive. You don't notice, because skills don't do anything all that impressive (with a few exceptions like Diplomacy and UMD which are, surprise!, considered broken), but the system is horribly unbalanced on basically every level.

Now, you could write a balanced system that is skill based (for example, Shadowrun). But you aren't going to do it by declaring that everything in 3e now works off skills.

[JeenLeen]

In follow-up to Cosi, I think you would need to rescale the skills and/or AC (or make AC dependent on a skill), so that the points you use into skills aren't overshadowed by bonuses from other sources. It seems like an awful lot of work for something that probably wouldn't work well.

It would also complicate having a skillmonkey class verses a combat-intensive class: would there be any difference? And then class just sorta breaks down into a meaningless thing and you've got something like Mutants & Masterminds or World of Darkness. (Well, not necessarily, but it would lean that way. Also, not necessarily a bad thing -- I prefer both to 3.5, but you'd probably be better off using Mutants & Masterminds at this point for your d20 game.)

But to try for the fun of it
Maybe if you shifted to something like Pathfinder, where all skills cost 1 point and a class skill gives you +3 bonus.
Make all racial bonuses a +1, or just racial bonuses are extra class skills instead of actual bonuses. Most spell buffs work by giving +1 to +3 (effectively making it a class skill or doubling your class bonus.)
I don't think stats would overshadow too horribly, since they already factor in to your accuracy.

Maybe make each category of weapons a class skill (Martial Weapons, Simple Weapons, Spell Attacks--you can choose how to break it down).

AC would need to rescaled and probably based off either a Toughness or Dodge skill. Really not sure how that would work. World of Darkness has AC be half of Dexterity + Dodge, then add your armor bonus. So maybe something like half of (10+Dex mod+whatever skill)+Armor bonus, where an armor bonus is relatively low. I'm not sure if the match would work out or not.

[OldTrees1]

Piggybacking off the What if there were no class skills (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?481028-What-if-there-were-no-class-skills) thread, I wondered what would happen if instead of a "combat section of my character sheet" and a "skills section of my character sheet," what if it was just one "Skills List" with melee/ranged/grappling/spells were all separate skills that PCs could put points into? What would happen?

Well 3 things:
1) The current skill system has flaws. These would become more obvious until you worked on improving the system. (See Cosi post for what flaws would need to be fixed as part of the transition)
2) As a point buy system, you would have to work on balancing many more possible character configurations than less fluid systems. Look into balancing radial vs linear tech trees in understand more.

3) The skill system at its skeleton is about attempting actions with ability+RNG vs difficulty. This can handle a variety of tasks and can handle quantitative variations to a task. However it is ill suited or even unable to properly handle qualitative variations to a task. Consider the Knockback feat, it is a qualitative modifier to an existing action. Under a skill system, how would you write the rules to accommodate many of the various qualitative changes to action without just telling the DM "make the rules up yourself".


Yes, you could do it provided you were suitably proficient in the difficult task of designing such a system. However at some point there are design elements where the skill system is not the right tool for the job.

[Necroticplague]

Then you end up with Mutants and Masterminds. And unless you have caps like that system does, balance goes to heck in a hand basket (not saying MnM is balanced. Just that it would move from broken to hilariously broken without caps).