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AnBe
2016-11-11, 09:10 PM
Hello All.
I have been working on creating my own tabletop RPGs for quite some time now and as I make them, I have made certain discoveries about skills.
Based on various posts I have read and things I have tried, I have discovered that some skills are nice to have in a game, but are they truly necessary?

Examples:

Crafting: I can't tell you how many times I have made crafting skills an option, and yet, even if people do put points/ranks in them, they generally go unused. Why does a player character need crafting skills if they can just hire an NPC craftsman to do the work for you, usually for a relatively small fee? On the other hand, if a character specializes heavily in crafting skills, if they acquire the right components/materials, he/she can create really badass items that tend to break the game and ruin the fun. I don't know, now when I create systems, I generally don't include crafting skills as an option for player characters because of the above problems.

Social Skills: A lot of situations where social skills come up can usually just be talked out without rolling anything. One problem is that if a player character invests a lot in social skills, it can nearly break the game because even if the player himself/herself is not the most gifted speaker IRL, they can just roll really high on a social skill and bam, all the NPCs are convinced of your point of view and won't attack/disagree with you. Then the game's ruined because haha I am the Diplomancer 5000.

So, what I am trying to say is, when creating a system, what, in your opinion, what skills should be included as an option for a player character and what skills should just not be available? I guess it depends on the game you are trying to run, but a good system should be efficient at simulating more than just one or two types of situations.

Cluedrew
2016-11-11, 10:34 PM
First you have to decide what sort of game you want the system to be used for (you got that part). Then figure what goals the players well have, from there you can start thinking about different paths characters might take towards that goal. That is where I get my most essential skills. Those are the ones people will by because they will use them.

Other side skills might come from people in the gene you are basing the story off of are good at. Although these tend to be more descriptive. So make them useful as well. Hunting for food can give you more health regeneration, singing a song for an inspiration bonus, the list goes on.

Of course balancing and making all of these skills work is no trivial task, but I think the only general advice I can give is keep at it and look for wide sources of inspiration.

Koo Rehtorb
2016-11-11, 10:38 PM
So, what I am trying to say is, when creating a system, what, in your opinion, what skills should be included as an option for a player character and what skills should just not be available? I guess it depends on the game you are trying to run, but a good system should be efficient at simulating more than just one or two types of situations.

It really depends entirely on the sort of game you're trying to play, yes. A pure dungeon crawler probably doesn't need social rules. A courtly intrigue needs a lot of them.

Though yes, when making social systems don't design them like D&D. The most important starting point in social mechanics is that you're saying something that could theoretically work. If they're trying to convince someone that they're the moon then that doesn't even need to be rolled for.

Efrate
2016-11-11, 11:58 PM
I don't know about specific stuff because of game/setting but a few macro skill groups I feel should always be covered.

Perception: Noticing stuff through whatever means. Direct counter to...
Stealth: However you do it, getting in somewhere or sneaking around.
Find stuff out: Knowledge, gather information, etc. A skillset that gives the character a way to find out some kind of in game secret/hint in game. Researching at a library, remembering an old tale, that one book you read in school, or talking to the guy in the street.
Mobility: climing, jumping, acrobatics, or vehicle operating skills. Movement around some way. You might have a bunch of these in a futuristic game where space, underwater, underground, aboveground etc vehicles all exist. Or just climb jump and swim or their analogs if you are in the woods somewhere in fantasyland.
Intrigue: Most social skills. Bluff, diplomacy, intimidate. Things you use to interact in a court-esque setting. This can overlap with find stuff out skills in some cases, such as the ability to know how to successfully navigate a bureaucracy.
Combat: Depending on your system, fighting styles, weapons skill, power armor usage, whatever. Stuff that lets you hit the other guy better. Includes skills that keep you from getting hit by the other guy like dodge, parry, etc.
Special Moves: Spellcraft, concentration, psicraft, truespeak, tech usage. Skills that enable use of special moves/powers. May overlap with knowledge, combat, or other skills but worth mentioning as a distinct possibility.
Survival: Skills that increase self sufficiency. Be is repairing or making gear, hunting dinner, or anything that knowing how to do it will increase your chances of living/surviving in a hostile/rough area, be it space, the wilderness, in a poor slum with no shops, etc. This is practical application of knowledge more than knowing theoretically how do it.
Skullduggery : Or thief, con man whatever. Stealing, forging, conning someone (possibly covered by bluff). Most of these could be rolled into stealth, but its a way of deceiving someone and/or getting something from them through a less than upfront means. This could also be knowing security systems or hacking, but depending system that might be under special moves.
Job/hobby/trivia/games: Profession, crafting all non-important stuff, etc. How you earn a living. These skills can mostly be discarded I think, but in rare cases how good you are at basketweaving or fishing might matter. Not usually. Ever hear a friend tell you about their average day at work? Very boring, no one cares. I mopped floors for 4 hours. Unless you are in some weird olympics hobby competition, how many ranks in profession janitor you have doesn't matter, nor does your in depth intricate knowledge of twister.

This kind of macro skill groups with as much parsing down into distinct things you want, is what I feel is actually needed for most games I play. Several could potentially be combined, depends on how streamlined you want it.

AnBe
2016-11-12, 12:07 AM
That was very helpful, Efrate. Thank you. I have always liked categorizing skills in games. This has got to be the best skill categorization I have ever seen.

Also, another issue that comes with skills: Attributes.

Sometimes it can be a challenge to match certain Attributes to certain skills, you know what I mean?
Like deciding whether I use Strength or Agility to deliver a swift kick to that enemy guy's nutsack.
Or deciding whether I use Charisma or Intelligence to smartly bluff someone so I don't get in trouble.
Some of these may seem obvious on the surface, but when you really sit and think about it, it can make your brain hurt.

Knaight
2016-11-12, 12:18 AM
No skills are necessary - skills are one of many mechanics that work within task-resolution and conflict-resolution focused RPGs, and they're a solid mechanic that gets used a lot for good reason. Still, there are a lot of games that use completely different systems even within the task-resolution and conflict-resolution framework, and it's worth remembering that. Then there's the matter of how central skills are - is it a system like GURPS where skills are the single biggest feature a character has? Is it a system like D&D where skills are there, but they're comparatively incidental? Then there's the matter of what the game focuses on, and how broadly it defined areas of specialty. FATE and GURPS are both generic games that both work over a huge number of settings. FATE has the low tens of skills. GURPS is in the hundreds, easily. This breadth can also reflect focus, where the things a game is more about get put in as narrower skills while more incidental stuff gets lumped together into broader skills. A skill like "lore" or "academics" is fine in the context of a party of adventurers where the general skill breadth is still middling. If it's a game about students at a school* it's suddenly oddly broad unless the entire skill list is about eight skills long.

*Maybe you're basing something off of Harry Potter, maybe it's set in the real world, whatever.

AnBe
2016-11-12, 12:21 AM
I personally have not tried GURPS or FATE yet, but you make a good point, Knaight.

Satinavian
2016-11-12, 02:29 AM
Crafting: I can't tell you how many times I have made crafting skills an option, and yet, even if people do put points/ranks in them, they generally go unused. Why does a player character need crafting skills if they can just hire an NPC craftsman to do the work for you, usually for a relatively small fee? On the other hand, if a character specializes heavily in crafting skills, if they acquire the right components/materials, he/she can create really badass items that tend to break the game and ruin the fun. I don't know, now when I create systems, I generally don't include crafting skills as an option for player characters because of the above problems.

Social Skills: A lot of situations where social skills come up can usually just be talked out without rolling anything. One problem is that if a player character invests a lot in social skills, it can nearly break the game because even if the player himself/herself is not the most gifted speaker IRL, they can just roll really high on a social skill and bam, all the NPCs are convinced of your point of view and won't attack/disagree with you. Then the game's ruined because haha I am the Diplomancer 5000.
That is both basically the same complaint :

The skill is for stuff, that gets handwaived if it is not important anyway. And if the mechanical options to influence anything with it (crafting actually useful gear. solving important negotiations) are missing/lackluster, they feel like wasted points or skills never coming up. But if those options are included, that opens the way for a really specialized PC that might break/solve adventures with it.


Sorry, but this problem exists with every skill ever. Especcially the pretty traditional combat abilities. The smith forging superweapons that make the group more dangerous than anything else around or the diplomancer who can turn in-combat-enemies friendly are not different than the knight with a skill-equipment-combo which makes him actually invulnerable for 99% of potential enemies or the warrior with a skillcombo that lets him kill 20times the numer of enimies he is supposed to in the same time.

For some strange reason, with combat abilities people never think "well, it's broken, so let's take the combat out of the game and narrate it instead." They modify the rules instead until they more or less work. The same should be done for diplomatic or crafting skills or anyhing else, really.






The question which skills to include in a new RPG should be more influenced by "what are important things in the kind of stories/genre wou want to depict". You can skip crafting, if items and gear should be utterly irrelevant. You can skip survival, if you are building a Film-Noir-RPG and should think hard about shrinking it to one cheap skill it in a space-opera-RPG or a political-Intrigue-RPG. And so on.

Knaight
2016-11-12, 03:30 AM
Sorry, but this problem exists with every skill ever. Especcially the pretty traditional combat abilities. The smith forging superweapons that make the group more dangerous than anything else around or the diplomancer who can turn in-combat-enemies friendly are not different than the knight with a skill-equipment-combo which makes him actually invulnerable for 99% of potential enemies or the warrior with a skillcombo that lets him kill 20times the numer of enimies he is supposed to in the same time.

While this can exist for any skill, it's particularly prone to happening in certain cases and in certain games. There's just not that much there that focuses enough on crafting for it to have built up the mechanical library that something like combat has, while simultaneously not fitting within the fairly well established task resolution mechanic that a lot of skills more focused on getting past something than making something have. Social skills tend to have problems more because people tend to expect a certain level of complexity there simply because social interactions are a major portion of most games, but a lot of mechanics are oddly shallow given the focus.

Khedrac
2016-11-12, 03:36 AM
Theres a couple of things I think you need to consider:

How well are people able to use skills they have not "trained" / "put ranks in" / specialized in" etc.?

For me, one of the big problems with the D&D 3.X and BECMI Gazetteer skill system is that they define what the character cannot do not what they can.
Generally speaking, characters are completely useless at any skill they don't train.
This is partially because the native stat modifier alone is usually very small when compared with the modifier of characters wil skill ranks.
This was a complete reversal from the 1st Ed AD&D and BECMI core situation where all "skill" checks were DM's call and usually just based on stat modifiers.

The opposite end of the scale is Chaosium's Basic RolePlaying Percentage system (a.k.a. Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest) and all variants thereof.
Here all skills have a base percentage chance (OK, which for a lot is 1% and for some is 0%) hence all characters can try things, though often they are not very good at them.
One of the main advantages of this system is that common skills (which are setting dependent) can have quite high base chances for untrained characters, for example in CoC Drive Automobile is usually about 20% - and should only be rolled in unusual circumstances - it's assumed that everyone can drive a car.

In my experience other systems usually fit somewhere in the middle. For example, RoleMaster was pretty close to D&D's skill system in balance, but characters had more skills and at low levels, the difference in total modifier between trained and untrained was proprtionally smaller.
Again to me White Wolf's World of Darkness has smaller gulfs between trained and untrained at lower levels of play and fewer actual skills to worry about (though for me the original Vampire system just meant that the more skilled my character was the worse I could mess up - a issue I am told they have fixed).

The second issue has been alluded to above - what campaign setting do you have in mind? It makes a huge difference as to what skills you need and how hard they are to use.
As other have said, this will also affect how detailed you want the skills in a given area to be.

One final question to think about - are you integrating the combat mechanism into the skill system?
D&D does not. WoD, BRP, RM etc. do.

AnBe
2016-11-12, 07:06 AM
I am designing a skill system for a modern earth type setting. Human player characters only, obviously.
Yes there is attributes that do affect skill checks.
Yes there is combat skills. (Martial Arts and Firearms, that's pretty much it unless you want to get particularly creative).

In the setting there is supernatural elements as well as some SciFi stuff, Sanity rolls, etc.

I am not entirely sure what I want to do with it all yet, though.

Stan
2016-11-12, 08:00 AM
I like Efrate's breakdown.
Kedrac's right that you have to decide what untrained means. For example, if you didn't put any points into driving skill, does that mean you can't drive a car? I like 5e's approach where untrained simply means you don't have a bonus when you roll, though it's ok to have cases like magic where the unskilled have no chance.

For me, I strongly prefer a smallish number of skills, 5-15, not 50-100. It might be less realistic but it's easier to play and it doesn't leave characters seeming like they can't do much. Also, with lots of skills, character generally have more points to spin and you have to be careful to engineer the system so that players can put all their points into one skill and break the game.

Grod_The_Giant
2016-11-12, 09:11 AM
For me, I strongly prefer a smallish number of skills, 5-15, not 50-100. It might be less realistic but it's easier to play and it doesn't leave characters seeming like they can't do much. Also, with lots of skills, character generally have more points to spin and you have to be careful to engineer the system so that players can put all their points into one skill and break the game.
More generally, I think it's good to have around three times as many skills available as the average character can meaningfully invest in. Too few and every character starts to look the same; too many and you run into hyper-specialization problems where you can maybe do one thing well (or worse, you can only do one aspect of one thing well).

Within that, you could divide roughly equally into mental, social, and physical skills, but you need to think about what you want the game to focus on. The fewer skills (and other support) you need to fill a role, the more incidental it feels.

Eldan
2016-11-12, 09:40 AM
That was very helpful, Efrate. Thank you. I have always liked categorizing skills in games. This has got to be the best skill categorization I have ever seen.

Also, another issue that comes with skills: Attributes.

Sometimes it can be a challenge to match certain Attributes to certain skills, you know what I mean?
Like deciding whether I use Strength or Agility to deliver a swift kick to that enemy guy's nutsack.
Or deciding whether I use Charisma or Intelligence to smartly bluff someone so I don't get in trouble.
Some of these may seem obvious on the surface, but when you really sit and think about it, it can make your brain hurt.

Do what world of darkness does? You have both skills and attributes, and the GM decides in the situation which combination is appropriate. So, ported to the D&D skills: "Roll climb and strength to scale the wall" or "Roll climb and dexterity to use the rope to swing to the other mast".

It's yoru system. If something makes no sense to you, change it.

As for how many skills, I like the idea of specialization some games have. Basically, you can choose a narrower area of a skill to be good in, to get a higher bonus. Or have it cheaper to buy. Like, you could have athletics as a skill, or swimming as a specialization. Or stealth as a skill and moving silently as a specialization.

Nifft
2016-11-12, 02:03 PM
What do you want to model using "Skills"?

In a class-based system, you can use Skills to represent commonality between classes: "Rogues and Barbarians are both Athletic: they can climb & jump, so they both are given the Athletics skill to represent that."

In a class-based system, you can use Skills to represent diversity between characters of the same class: "Bob and Alice are both Rogues, but Bob is an Athletic Rogue, while Alice is an Acrobatic Rogue, so they have each chosen different skills to represent that."

- - -

In a class-less system, you can use Skills to represent wide swaths of experience & expertise: "Bob has the Salty Sailor skill, and Alice has the Buccaneering Privateer skill, so they are both good at sailing-ship stuff, but Bob is better at fishing & navigation, while Alice has an advantage in acts of piracy."

In a class-less system, you can use Skills to represent discrete applications of expertise, and have wide swaths of experience be represented by collections of distinct skills: "Bob was a hacker, so he has skill in Computers, Signal Warfare, Electrical Repair, and Corporate Trivia. Alice was a corporate recruiter, so she has skill in Business Etiquette, Detect Duplicity, Persuasion, and Corporate Trivia."


What sort of things do you want to allow some people to avoid role-playing?

Alice: "I'm good at jumping. I roll to jump over the obstacle."

Bob: "I'm bad at jumping. I guess I'll have to figure out how to get past the obstacle myself..."

Now consider Diplomacy.


How do you want magic and mundane abilities to interact?

If there's a spell that will give +10 to Jump checks, for example, that says that you should expect +10 to Jump checks to be a big deal.

If there's a spell that will give you the ability to climb walls without a check, that says that the Climb skill is not a big deal.

You can have magical abilities require and/or enhance mundane abilities, or you can have magical abilities flat-out replace mundane abilities. In the latter case, it might be cool to just have different abilities for magical characters:

Bob the Barbarian: "I use my Athletic Prowess skill to climb the wall."

Alice the Alienist: "I use my Vermin Emulation skill to climb the wall."

Cluedrew
2016-11-12, 06:11 PM
What sort of things do you want to allow some people to avoid role-playing?I think I see your point here, but at the same time I think this might be a sign of bad skill design. ... OK I suppose to a degree it is inevitable. But if having a skill consistently makes situations with that skill less interesting I think there are problems.

Ideally both failure and success should be interesting. Interesting in different ways mind you, but interesting none the less. I don't know if there is a good way to make this happen but I guess it is something to keep in mind. I have next to no idea about what I'm talking about right now.

Nifft
2016-11-12, 08:46 PM
I think I see your point here, but at the same time I think this might be a sign of bad skill design. ... OK I suppose to a degree it is inevitable. But if having a skill consistently makes situations with that skill less interesting I think there are problems.

Ideally both failure and success should be interesting. Interesting in different ways mind you, but interesting none the less. I don't know if there is a good way to make this happen but I guess it is something to keep in mind. I have next to no idea about what I'm talking about right now.

It might be good, and it might be bad. But it's a thing that does tend to happen.

Therefore, I want people to be aware of this mechanical implication when designing skill systems, so that when it does happen, at least it happens on purpose.

Frozen_Feet
2016-11-13, 06:32 AM
"Which skills are necessary?" Is a scale based on granularity of the system and the scenario in play. The system I see most modern games gravitate towards is a hierarchical one, where:

1) top of the hierarchy is formed by small set of universal attributes. When you need to know "how good character is at [task]?", you start looking here and often it's the only place you need to look at.
2) second step of hierarchy is formed by open-ended list of abilities which increase success in a specific situation. These are what's commonly called "skills". The core activities of the game are given example skills, but the list can be expanded at will.
3) third step of hierarchy is filled with character customization nuggets (feats/flaws/traits/advantages/whatevs) which increase success in some very specific situations.

So my opinion is that the core gameplay should be resolvable without skills. Once that's true, which skills are necessary can be tailored to character and their situation.

jayem
2016-11-13, 07:45 AM
I guess there's a spectrum, in a sense LARP is purer 'role' play, but the least 'character' play. And at the far side almost could blend into some quantum leap like jump, or perhaps 'catch me as you can'. On the plus side, there's the minimum abstraction, on the negative side theres also minimal player-character separation.

I'm not sure what you'd call games at the other side, but I think they ought to exist as a genre (in the RPG family), I'll call them (person)PG's for the moment. Here at the extreme you have much more flexibility in what you can role-play (including Ego&Id effects), but at the cost of abstraction. At it's extreme it's more like god's playing with pieces (or merging into strategy games).

And then in the middle a massive variety of forms, including DnD where some skills are abstracted (so you can indeed be stronger than you are and beat someone up who doesn't want to be), but others aren't (particularly intelligence& charisma, so you can't be cleverer than you are or persuade someone off the railroad*). And again for the game/story they want it may be possible to get much of the best of both worlds.


And it depends on where you lie on that, and what the game is, what skills are important.
And whichever skills are given in the field shouldn't constrain role-play, sometimes it may merely allow things to progress quicker, sometimes it might open new avenues which are more interesting and advantageous, sometimes working around a failure can be interesting.

(But I don't think that's not just the responsibility of skill design, but also world creation and other DM interactions).
E.g. the DM should be able to cope if the players choices lead to a prisoner in a classic cell being able to escape by:
being able to jump into an air duct, giving time and space to plan a careful assault on the boss.
use other skills to ambush the guard and then use him as a step into the air duct
do nothing and be escorted to the boss fight unarmed.

*well you can, but it's more metagamey at that point.

Floret
2016-11-13, 03:52 PM
Hello All.
I have been working on creating my own tabletop RPGs for quite some time now and as I make them, I have made certain discoveries about skills.
Based on various posts I have read and things I have tried, I have discovered that some skills are nice to have in a game, but are they truly necessary?

So, what I am trying to say is, when creating a system, what, in your opinion, what skills should be included as an option for a player character and what skills should just not be available? I guess it depends on the game you are trying to run, but a good system should be efficient at simulating more than just one or two types of situations.

(What other people have already said, but also:)

Some months ago, I was in a similar situation. What I did was start out looking at other system's skill lists (After deciding that, since I like Dicepool-systems, having skills was necessary). And I looked at the most vague one I had (that could still reasonably be called a skill list; FATE Core), then decided "where do I want more granularity", and then compared that with a list of a rather complex one (Not the most complex out there, but Dark Eye 4.1 has its moments), and looked for the moments that made me thing "huh. Yeah, that aspect is not covered by any of the existing skills yet. I should make a skill for that./I should expand one of the existing ones"
So my advice would be: Try looking at skill systems that exist, and both under and over your desired grade of detail. Identifying what is over/under your desired grade is ofc. to be decided first.
And also: This does depend pretty much exclusively on what games you think your system should be able to run, and what you wanna focus on. If you want it to be able to do more things, try doing those things, and try to have roughly equivalent skills for each area you want to adress equally - if it takes more skills for someone to be good at stealing stuff than at fighting, thieves will have to sacrifice more to be good thieves, while fighters might be able to do lots of other stuff besides their specialty.



Social Skills: A lot of situations where social skills come up can usually just be talked out without rolling anything. One problem is that if a player character invests a lot in social skills, it can nearly break the game because even if the player himself/herself is not the most gifted speaker IRL, they can just roll really high on a social skill and bam, all the NPCs are convinced of your point of view and won't attack/disagree with you. Then the game's ruined because haha I am the Diplomancer 5000.

Is this truly a bad thing, though? Why would you require a player to be a gifted speaker IRL to play a gifted speaker in a TRPG? In LARP, I would be all for saying "yeah, no, if you can't convince people of things with what is coming out of your mouth, tough luck", but in a TRPG your character is a lot more removed from you - they have stats, and you roll on those stats. Now I have seen time and time again that people for a reason I have yet to fully understand draw a hard distinction between "your character's combat/physical/Knowledge skills are in no necessary relation to your IRL skills" and "your character's social skills are in no necessary relation to your IRL skills". But my question would always be: Why? Why would a player's skill at talking matter in a situation where their character is doing the talking?
If you have a satisfying answer to that for yourself, good for you! But don't necessarily think of this as a bad thing. It opens up much more possibilities for players, especially those who might be a bit socially awkward IRL. And Social skills existing and being used for rolls to achieve effects tends to heavily disincentivise certain players just being good at Social stuff and everything else, because the former does not require an investment of resources, thereby unbalancing the game, if social stuff is of any relevance.


For some strange reason, with combat abilities people never think "well, it's broken, so let's take the combat out of the game and narrate it instead." They modify the rules instead until they more or less work. The same should be done for diplomatic or crafting skills or anyhing else, really.

Also, this. Even having social skill rolls exist, the "Diplomancer 5000", should one consider them a problem, is actually more a matter of tuning rather then the existance of social skills. (Otherwise the problem is being outsourced to a player potentially being "Diplomancer 5000" IRL, triggering the same issues.)

SimonMoon6
2016-11-14, 09:46 AM
Crafting: I can't tell you how many times I have made crafting skills an option, and yet, even if people do put points/ranks in them, they generally go unused.

These skills are generally just flavor. "My character is the world's greatest sculptor!" How do you know? Oh, you've got a lot of points in that one skill.


On the other hand, if a character specializes heavily in crafting skills, if they acquire the right components/materials, he/she can create really badass items that tend to break the game and ruin the fun.

This sounds like something different than crafting. Rarely have I seen a scenario where a well designed sculpture or cleverly put together wooden cart would save the day. If this relates to creating magic items or even gadgetry skills, well, that's something completely different.



Social Skills: A lot of situations where social skills come up can usually just be talked out without rolling anything. One problem is that if a player character invests a lot in social skills, it can nearly break the game because even if the player himself/herself is not the most gifted speaker IRL, they can just roll really high on a social skill and bam, all the NPCs are convinced of your point of view and won't attack/disagree with you. Then the game's ruined because haha I am the Diplomancer 5000.


Let me turn this around: we don't need combat skills. After all, if one PC invests a lot in combat skills, it can break the game because even if the player is not the most gifted warrior, they can just roll really high on a good combat roll and bam, all the NPCs are dead and won't attack you. Then the game is ruined because haha I am the Terminator and I'll be back.

Obviously, D&D's social skills do not perform as desired. But other games have decent social skills. Ideally, social skills would have all the love and attention devoted to them as combat skills do. "I try to use my Fast Talk skill to trick the noble into signing this contract." "Sorry, you don't hit his foolishness class, and you suffer an attack of opportunity: he makes a cutting remark!" "No!!!! I try to save against losing face!" Etc.

But even without a detailed social skill system, it is important that the enemies have the defenses against social skills that are necessary, in the same way that D&D monsters have to have defenses against every attack form (high AC, good saves, spell resistance, energy resistance). Just add to the list of things that people need to be able to resist. Of course, low level mooks should be susceptible... that's what they're for.

Jay R
2016-11-14, 10:47 AM
There are situations in which having skills has value, even if the skills are never rolled. The introduction to my 2E game included the following:

I urge the party as a whole to have sewing, leatherwork, and blacksmithing, just to repair clothes and armor. Otherwise, I’ll have to track any damage done. Similarly, if you don’t have a fletcher, I will count arrows.

Similarly, my current Ranger has Craft(Tanning). The DM doesn't make me roll when I preserve the hide of a beast we've slain - because I have the skill.

AnBe
2016-11-15, 09:28 PM
You guys are making a lot of good points here. Giving me a lot to think about. Thank you

veti
2016-11-15, 09:58 PM
An approach I've encountered in the past - it's not a cure-all and it does raise new problems of its own, but it is a different way of looking at things:

Let the players define their own skills. Then modify the bonus they give by how directly applicable the description is to the situation.

Example, player 1 gives their character +10 to Lockpicking, player 2 has +10 to Security, player 3 gets +10 to Thieving, player 4 has +10 to Badassery, player 5 has +10 to Everything.

If these four people are all trying to pick a lock, player 1 gets +10 to the roll, players 2 and 3 get +5 (because their skills are much broader, and therefore shallower), and player 5 will get +2. Player 4 gets no bonus, because the DM feels that lockpicking is for wusses and the "Badass" way would be kicking the door in.

Of course it requires a lot of judgment calls, but there's nothing wrong with that if you have a good relationship with your players.

Grod_The_Giant
2016-11-16, 07:58 AM
An approach I've encountered in the past - it's not a cure-all and it does raise new problems of its own, but it is a different way of looking at things.
If you go down this route, I think I'd have pre-defined categories: Specific (+10) or General (+5), and try to make sure that every "skill" fits into one of those categories (without being too specific or broad) during character creation. That way you save time and arguments during gameplay.

apocryphaGnosis
2016-11-16, 11:07 AM
For me, one of the big problems with the D&D 3.X and BECMI Gazetteer skill system is that they define what the character cannot do not what they can.
This is a huge problem with 3.5 in general. I created a semi-fixed version of 3.5 adapted for a sci-fi campaign, and this was one problem I tried to address. I think the less skills you can get away with having, the better. Id rather have less skill then be constantly saying to my players "oh you can climb that wall. you forgot to put ranks in climb"
For all athletic/acrobatic skills I just have players roll a strength or dexterity check. For social stuff its just a charisma check. As you said, this can be tough to arbitrate, as some players may want to wisdom to say something cleverly, instead, or use their strength to tie a strong knot when dexterity is typically the ability that determines using rope. In these cases, if they can come up with a good reason that they should be able to use a different ability, I usually let them. It promotes creativity and good roleplaying, which I think is more important than a standardized rule.
The only skills that I've found are really necessary are profession/knowledge skills, which i usually combine into one catagory. Computer use, piloting, or in a more traditional fantasy setting, alchemy or smithing, are things which require training and knowledge which can't really be represented in one intelligence check.
tl;dr i think almost all "skills" can be represented by ability checks alone

Martin Greywolf
2016-11-16, 11:31 AM
Honestly, I like the FATE approach here. The breakdown is that all characters have all the skills at level 0. To succeed in an unremarkable task, you have to beat a 0 on your roll (yes, I know, not really, but explaining boosts is a bit beyond this discussion). So, by default, most characters have a slightly better than even chance to say, persuade a bouncer to let them inside a nightclub when they forgot their ID but obviously look over the age of 25.

Another important thing about FATE is that dice are rolled if and only if failing a roll would be interesting - if not, then you automatically succeed. There is nothing inherently engaging about rolling Climb to get up a ladder unopposed - you'll get there eventually. I'd say this is a major weakness of Craft-like skills, their fails are usually not interesting (no, loosing some money is not interesting, not unless you're playing tabletop Civilization).

Obviously, there are skills that should only be used by characters who have trained them - driving a car is a popular example - but those should be either blindingly obvious or specifically noted. No, this is not realistic, but how real skill acquisition works is an immensely complicated thing - if I take a dude who never held a sword, I know for a fact I can teach him to be much, much more useful (he can now win a fight on occasion) with it in 10 minutes, but getting to the next step after that takes months.

As for social skills, definitely have them, and roll them. What the roleplaying part gives you is the difficulty roll: convincing that bouncer to let you in when you're 30 is not that hard, convincing him to do that when you're 15 is much more difficult.

SimonMoon6
2016-11-16, 11:57 AM
This is a huge problem with 3.5 in general.

It was way worse in 1st edition.

"I want to climb this wall."

"Are you a thief?"

"Um, no."

"Sorry, you can't climb that wall. Only thieves can climb walls!"

-----------------------

"I want to climb this wall."

"Are you a thief?"

"Yes, I'm a first level thief."

"Okay, you have (consults table) a 10% chance to climb this wall."

"Ugh. Really? That's all?"

"Well, duh, you have to leave room to become more powerful when you go up levels!"

---------------------

It might not be 10%. I don't remember the actual numbers. But thief skills were practically worthless at low levels (which is really the only time you need them) because they all had low chances of success... but nobody else could even try. At least in 3.x, anybody can *try* to climb a wall; having ranks in Climb make it easier to climb a wall, but anybody can roll their d20 and try.

Garimeth
2016-11-16, 12:20 PM
I actually prefer the way 13th Age does it: no skills, only backgrounds.

I get 8 total points and I put them in backgrounds, no higher than +5. I make up the backgrounds with approval from the DM. For example:

My rogue has Dirty Big City Cop +5 and Master Locksmith +3.

So if I want to gather information the DM says roll CHA and the appropriate background, I say I'm using dirty Cop. If the DM challenges me on it, then I have to give a justification "well I used to have to run down all kinds of investigations so my guy is good at that". The bonus here is they help develop the character more, and if I want to do something more questionable I just have to develop the character even more to justify it.

That said I prefer the game and story to be where the complexity is, not the game system.

Nifft
2016-11-16, 07:48 PM
It was way worse in 1st edition.

"I want to climb this wall."

"Are you a thief?"

"Um, no."

"Sorry, you can't climb that wall. Only thieves can climb walls!" My experience was otherwise -- everyone could do everything in 1e, it's just that a Thief had a chance to do it even in otherwise impossible situations.

2e was when the Thief problem hit my area.

And yeah, the numbers were low at low level -- but that's because you were doing something absurd in spite of all available evidence that doing that thing was impossible.

It worked well under that interpretation.

Martin Greywolf
2016-11-18, 08:58 AM
I actually prefer the way 13th Age does it: no skills, only backgrounds.

I get 8 total points and I put them in backgrounds, no higher than +5. I make up the backgrounds with approval from the DM. For example:

My rogue has Dirty Big City Cop +5 and Master Locksmith +3.

So if I want to gather information the DM says roll CHA and the appropriate background, I say I'm using dirty Cop. If the DM challenges me on it, then I have to give a justification "well I used to have to run down all kinds of investigations so my guy is good at that". The bonus here is they help develop the character more, and if I want to do something more questionable I just have to develop the character even more to justify it.

That said I prefer the game and story to be where the complexity is, not the game system.

This is not a bad approach... if you have mature players who don't mind a bit of nebulousness in their rules. They are about as uncommon as you'd think. Problem with this approach is that some backgrounds will cover way, way more stuff, the bonus is binary (i.e. you have or don't have it) and you can shanghai almost any justification into a remotely related bonus if you want to.

For example's sake, if your background is "Gentleman Adventurer!" (yes, exclamation mark is mandatory), well, that can cover a ton of things. A background of "Water meter inspector" is just as broad, but with, presumably, far fewer relevance to the adventure. Background of "PhD in non-euclidean geometry" is extremely narrow and not all that relevant, "Quickdraw competition champion" is more relevant, but again, very narrow.

Now, a decent group of players will handle this, sure (communication is key), but it can cause problems to starting players and it will drive away people who are into more mechanically solid systems (that said, a game for everyone is a game for no one).

Garimeth
2016-11-18, 09:30 AM
This is not a bad approach... if you have mature players who don't mind a bit of nebulousness in their rules. They are about as uncommon as you'd think. Problem with this approach is that some backgrounds will cover way, way more stuff, the bonus is binary (i.e. you have or don't have it) and you can shanghai almost any justification into a remotely related bonus if you want to.

For example's sake, if your background is "Gentleman Adventurer!" (yes, exclamation mark is mandatory), well, that can cover a ton of things. A background of "Water meter inspector" is just as broad, but with, presumably, far fewer relevance to the adventure. Background of "PhD in non-euclidean geometry" is extremely narrow and not all that relevant, "Quickdraw competition champion" is more relevant, but again, very narrow.

Now, a decent group of players will handle this, sure (communication is key), but it can cause problems to starting players and it will drive away people who are into more mechanically solid systems (that said, a game for everyone is a game for no one).

So this does come up, in particular we have a guy who tries to use "Graduate of Eldren University" for any knowledge based checks, but his area of expertise was military tactics and history, so I rarely let him use it outside of those areas. The system actually addresses the problem of the "Gentelman Adventurer!" background.

The die resolution is d20 based, 1d20+level+ATR+background. Max level is 10, with incremental advances in between the levels. So at best you are getting a +5 to your roll, and the DC scales with the difficulty of your environment. So really even if they get away with some shenanigans its not that big of a deal, because the bonus is not that large. The benefit is that when they have to justify the background to me, if they make a good sale of it sometimes I'll handwave the entire roll. "Of course you studied the Orc Wars at Eldren University". Sometimes the justifications they come up with build on their backstory, or even help cement the ideas about the characcters personality. Other times it let's me exposit more of the setting in a natural way. So while we have that problem occasionally, the benefits, for our group, far outweighs the drawbacks.

I usually have the opposite problem with people taking excessively narrow or limited backgrounds and trying to help them come up with better ones. The system also gives each character a One Unique Thing (OUT). Examples are: I ma descended from the only dwarven dragonrider, I lost my arm when I was younger and the druids gave me a wooden one, or what have you. I reserve the right to veto them, and I was worried about people trying to get away with too much with them, but again, I have the opposite problem. One of my player's chose "I smell lilacs when undead are nearby" which I thought was weird as hell, but has become a useful staple of that character lol.

That said you are right that every system does not appeal to everyone, but for use 13th Age is an almost perfect compromise between D&D and games like FATE. We do have one guy that wants more crunch (the Eldren University guy actually) but for the most part it has become everyone's favorite system.

propheticsteel
2016-11-28, 12:41 AM
Only perception. ;/

Psikerlord
2016-11-30, 01:48 AM
I think skills can be useful as a customization tool/differentiate PCs.

In Low Fantasy Gaming RPG (link in my sig), I went with roll equal or under attribute to do most things.

If you have the skill, you get access to your Reroll pool. Additionally, if you have a relevant "background", and there's no skill for what you're trying to do, your background can grant access to your Reroll pool.

Eg, Merchant jeweller background, can reroll your Int check to appraise gems, as there is no appraise skill to cover it). Or fighter with Athletics can use his Reroll pool when grappling, or trying to break down a door, etc.

Anonymouswizard
2016-11-30, 08:48 AM
I'm not going to talk about skills, skills aren't necessary.

What you do need is some way to resolve problems. Here you've got your classics, such as Attributes and Skills, but you can go weirder.

For example, in the Mistborn Adventure Game you have three Attributes (Physique, Wits, and Charm), and three Standings (Resources, Influence, and Spirit). To resolve actions use one of them and add bonuses for your traits or equipment.

For something very weird? A favourite of mine is Don't Rest Your Head. Your character has three stats, Discipline, Permanent Madness, and Exhaustion (also fight and flight responses central to the game's sanity mechanic). To resolve anything roll white d6s equal to your Discipline, black d6s equal to your current Exhaustion, and red d6s equal to your Permanent Madness, as well as up to 6 more red Madness dice. Count the d6s that come up equal to or under 3, these are successes. If you get more successes than the GM gets on their X coloured Pain dice then you win the roll, but whatever comes up with the highest number dominates (ties are broken by the next highest in the color), which has game effects. Having more Exhaustion and using more Madness dice makes you more powerful (at full strength you can get up to 15, enough to give you a good chance at beating any published nightmare), but increases the chance of gaining more Exhaustion (too much makes you fall asleep, which makes you a beacon to Nightmares and strips away your powers for a while too long), or going mad (permanent madness reduces Discipline, hit zero and you become a Nightmare). The only problem is that you might need those dice to win this contest.

Pugwampy
2016-12-03, 05:13 AM
In my old club Spot and Healing were a must have for all classes .

In my new club Sense motive and Diplomacy were tops .

Anonymouswizard
2016-12-03, 06:45 AM
For the ones I see used most often in games which use skills? Perception, Sense Motive, and Persuade/Diplomacy. The first one without fail, the latter two always turn up when the GM isn't trying to only run combat encounters (although the one time they did that in a game I was in we spent half our time trying to avoid any combat because weapons broke once in every 20 attacks).

In my current group any research skill gets rolled to the point where we've added them into games so there's more variety to investigations (we tend to be very combat light when we aren't playing superheroes).

I am serious about adding them in. In the GM's homebrew system we ended up adding an internet search skill because our first step in any investigation was 'I google it' (we eventually all put points into the skill and googled five different topics at once), and now in Mutants and Masterminds we have Expertise (Research) for internet searches and a substitute for science skills when investigating (because you do experiments), while Investigate has been regulated to strictly searching, forensics, and talking to people. It actually works well given our playstyle.

I will say that it depends entirely on the game. In D&D a computers skill is useless, in an Urban Fantasy game it's useful enough that at least one person should have it, in Eclipse Phase everyone should take some level of Interface (if only so you can actually use Fabbers and CMs). Likewise in a modern day setting Knowledge (Bioengineering) is probably a fluff skill, while in Eclipse Phase it allows you to design and build custom morphs (and in softer sci-fi allows you to make creatures in a short timeframe).

I will say that I've found craft skills or their equivalent to be incredibly useful, especially in systems without an Appraise skill. You want to know how the device works or how well it's constructed? Give me a relevant Engineering roll. With modern technology and a couple of hours/days you can even design some basic gadgets and gizmos to help against whatever problem's occurred (just be prepared for possible bugs), or jury-rig something out of existing devices. Heck, if you've designed it you can build an electrical system in a matter of hours.

Wardog
2016-12-17, 05:36 PM
My thought:

Skills (and classes / abilities / feats / whatever) should represent the tactical role you play in the game. I.e. how you objectively determine whether they can overcome the sorts of challenges the game is about overcoming.

Suppose you have a character who works as a chef, but is also a member of the army reserves.

That doesn't mean the character has to be represented by a dual-classed soldier/chef.

If the game is about "adventuring" / urban combat / etc, then their class should be "soldier". The fact that they are also a chef is almost certainly irrelivant to the game (and certainly shouldn't be critical to the game), and they shouldn't be required to waste levels/skill points/feats/whatever on their chefing ability. If a situation does come up where cooking might be relevent, then it can just be role-played. Given that this will be a rare event that won't be the only solution to a critical problem, it shouldn't cause any "balance" problems that it is handled by role-play and gm fiat.

Conversely, if the game is about being a chef or working in the catering or hospitality industry, then they need to have a class/skills/etc that represents that. But the fact that they are also an army reservist should just be part of the fluff. They shouldn't be required to waste levels/skill points/feats/whatever on representing their soldiering ability, and if a situation comes up where the player thinks it could be relevant, it again can be roleplayed.


IMO, mechanically-relevant options should only exist when:
1) That option is relevant to the sort of game being played, and
2) When having to chose between being able to do that and being able to do something else makes for a more interesting game/story.

Deophaun
2016-12-17, 05:45 PM
One problem is that if a player character invests a lot in social skills, it can nearly break the game because even if the player himself/herself is not the most gifted speaker IRL, they can just roll really high on a social skill and bam, all the NPCs are convinced of your point of view and won't attack/disagree with you. Then the game's ruined because haha I am the Diplomancer 5000.
You think that's bad? I've seen people that couldn't even bench 100 play great-axe wielding superman types. Even though they wouldn't be able to fell a sapling IRL, they can just roll really high on their damage roll and bam, all the NPCs are dead and can't attack/disagree with you.

This is the point of a roleplaying game: to be something you aren't. If you need to be dashing in real life to be dashing in game, something has gone wrong. Social skills are therefore necessary.