Draz74
2008-06-07, 05:43 PM
Working on my homebrew system, I started questioning what the default effects (besides skill checks) of the 6 basic ability scores should be.
I've gradually come to agreement, more or less, with the people that say that Will saves would make more sense to be affected by Charisma, rather than Wisdom. (Disbelief against illusions is an exception, but I'll ignore it for simplicity.) "Force of Personality" and "Force of Will" are really pretty similar concepts, after all. At least I can't come up with a meaningful difference between them.
However, I'm very wary of Wisdom becoming the universal dump stat that Charisma once was (and still is, for some classes). So it needs to affect something else, besides skill checks (as important as Spot/Listen are).
I'm not comfortable with the suggestion I've sometimes seen before that Wisdom affect Initiative instead of Dexterity. When I picture combat starting, it makes sense to me that the agile Rogue usually does something important before the wise Cleric. So I need something else.
My current DM had an idea that I want critiqued. He says, "What is 'wisdom' anyway, really? It's the ability to correctly apply what knowledge you have. Perhaps it should make whatever skills you have, more useful.
Now, my system will also be changing the skill system around a lot, and I don't want to get into that in depth necessarily. But "Skill Tricks" -- new ways to use your skills, vaguely like the CScoundrel system -- will be important if characters want to be competent at anything but the basics. So my DM's idea was: make a character's Wisdom grant bonus Skill Tricks.
How is that idea? If it's too hard, not knowing more about the Skill Trick system, to figure out the implications so far, imagine this instead: the number of Skill Points you get per level is modified by your Wisdom instead of your Intelligence. Is that crazy, or does it make a strange amount of sense, as it did to me when my DM presented me with the idea? (Disclaimer: it was rather late at night when we talked, so I don't trust my own sense of judgment.)
Now, the danger here is that Intelligence, instead, will become the Universal Dump Stat. So I'm willing to work more on solving that problem, but here's an idea for that that my DM also tossed out: Make all skill checks modified by your Intelligence modifier, since it represents how good you are at learning in general. This would be in addition to, not in place of, the regular ability modifiers to skill checks, e.g. Charisma for Diplomacy or Dexterity for Stealth. (However, to get rid of cheese potential where you could pump your Intelligence up and get double benefits on Knowledge skills, Intelligence-based skills might still only add your Intelligence modifier once.)
That's an even crazier idea than skill points/tricks being modified by Wisdom. But could it work? Does it lead to characters that make sense?
I've gradually come to agreement, more or less, with the people that say that Will saves would make more sense to be affected by Charisma, rather than Wisdom. (Disbelief against illusions is an exception, but I'll ignore it for simplicity.) "Force of Personality" and "Force of Will" are really pretty similar concepts, after all. At least I can't come up with a meaningful difference between them.
However, I'm very wary of Wisdom becoming the universal dump stat that Charisma once was (and still is, for some classes). So it needs to affect something else, besides skill checks (as important as Spot/Listen are).
I'm not comfortable with the suggestion I've sometimes seen before that Wisdom affect Initiative instead of Dexterity. When I picture combat starting, it makes sense to me that the agile Rogue usually does something important before the wise Cleric. So I need something else.
My current DM had an idea that I want critiqued. He says, "What is 'wisdom' anyway, really? It's the ability to correctly apply what knowledge you have. Perhaps it should make whatever skills you have, more useful.
Now, my system will also be changing the skill system around a lot, and I don't want to get into that in depth necessarily. But "Skill Tricks" -- new ways to use your skills, vaguely like the CScoundrel system -- will be important if characters want to be competent at anything but the basics. So my DM's idea was: make a character's Wisdom grant bonus Skill Tricks.
How is that idea? If it's too hard, not knowing more about the Skill Trick system, to figure out the implications so far, imagine this instead: the number of Skill Points you get per level is modified by your Wisdom instead of your Intelligence. Is that crazy, or does it make a strange amount of sense, as it did to me when my DM presented me with the idea? (Disclaimer: it was rather late at night when we talked, so I don't trust my own sense of judgment.)
Now, the danger here is that Intelligence, instead, will become the Universal Dump Stat. So I'm willing to work more on solving that problem, but here's an idea for that that my DM also tossed out: Make all skill checks modified by your Intelligence modifier, since it represents how good you are at learning in general. This would be in addition to, not in place of, the regular ability modifiers to skill checks, e.g. Charisma for Diplomacy or Dexterity for Stealth. (However, to get rid of cheese potential where you could pump your Intelligence up and get double benefits on Knowledge skills, Intelligence-based skills might still only add your Intelligence modifier once.)
That's an even crazier idea than skill points/tricks being modified by Wisdom. But could it work? Does it lead to characters that make sense?