Erk
2008-07-07, 08:57 PM
I'm penning this under the assumption that "PEACH" means Please Examine And Critique Here or some such; I've never found a definition. If it is actually a statement about fruit preferences, please forget about that and examine and critique my idea.
I've seen a couple ideas for improving skill selection in 4e, and I liked most of them. I feel they didn't quite capture flexibility well enough, though. I am missing a couple major things:
1) "secondary" type skills, those that adventurers rarely take but should be able to
2) synergy! It was borked in 3e to a small degree, but a greatly fun option
3) Cross-class skills. They may not be the best option, but they should be an option
4) Getting rid of Decipher Script. This was always a vastly useful skill in my language-heavy games. I feel it should be a primary skill.
Note that I am only very cursorily experienced in 4e so far, as these are the preparations for my first campaign in it, so I may have made some mistakes interpreting the system. Feel free to inform me.
Skill points
To determine the number of skill points a character gets, multiply the number of trained skills the character gets by 2 and add 1. Every time the character would be able to train a skill, he/she instead gets 2 more skill points.
class skills cost 2 skill points to train.
cross-class skills cost 4 skill points to train.*
secondary skills cost 1 skill point to train.
*Cross-class skill rules only apply at first level.
Primary skill list: The same as RAW except add:
Linguistics (Cha) Cleric, Rogue, Wizard
Linguistics is the art of understanding language through body motion, symbology, intent, etc. It includes spoken, signed, and written languages. Even a very successful linguistics check shouldn't replace actual knowledge of the language: intent can be followed but not actual meaning, and abstractions are always hard. DCs later, when I know the DC system better in 4e.
Secondary Skills I welcome advice on changing primary attributes or reducing # of skills. Don't want to add new ones particularly, unless absolutely necessary.
Agriculture* (Wis) Farming, botany
Animal Husbandry* (Cha) Ranching, husbandry, handling, breeding
Brewing (Int) Alcohol, alchemy
Culture* (Cha) Etiquette, literature, art study
Domestic Arts (Cha) Cooking, cleaning, mending, etc
Engineering (Int) Physical, [al]chemical, civil, mathematics
Metalcrafting (Str) Blacksmithing, smelting
Perform (Cha) Dance, music, storytelling, etc
Rope Use (Dex) knotting, tieing, splicing, making rope
Seamanship (Wis) Rafting, boating, sailing, navigating
Stonecrafting (Str) Masonry, sculpting, pottery, mining
Textiles (Wis) Dyeing, weaving, sewing, tailoring
Visual Art (Cha) Design and drawing: can be coupled with a specific type of crafting skill, eg. stonecrafting to make "sculpture"
Woodcrafting (Dex) Whittling, carpentry, woodworking
* these skills can be covered by related primaries, eg. Nature, Diplomacy, and History. However, in my opinion Nature should not cover "civilian" animal husbandry, ranching, and agriculture, nor should history be used as a blanket "knowledge" skill. thus the secondaries drawing a little away from these already very useful skills. Your mileage may vary, of course.
Synergies
Secondary and Primary skills can synergise. A player trained in a secondary skill gets a +2 synergy bonus to the secondary skill if trained in the synergistic primary. Synergy bonuses cannot stack. (GM option: or it could be a +1 to the primary and secondary but that is probably unnecessary).
Examples of synergies
Agriculture -- Nature
Animal Husbandry -- Nature
Brewing -- Engineering (Alchemy/chemistry uses only)
Culture -- Diplomacy
Metalworking -- Endurance
Perform -- Bluff
Stonecrafting -- Dungeoneering
Visual Art -- any one crafting skill (only one, chosen when the synergy is gained)
Woodcrafting -- Seamanship (boat building only)
Specialisation
I'm not totally pleased with the mechanic for this, but it's mostly intended as a flavourfull tweak anyway, not a major game design thing.
You can declare a specialisation when training a skill, for example: "Envalari History" for history, "Diabolism" for aracana, or "Herbalism" for nature. Your skill bonus from training increases to +6 for checks involving your specialisation, but drops to +4 for all other uses of the skill. You can purchase one new specialisation for a Primary skill at the cost of 1 skill point, or two new specialisations for a Secondary skill at the cost of 1 skill point.
Just what specialisations there are are up to you and the GM. Specialisations should be specific, but not absurdly so. As a rule of thumb, no specialisation should encompass more than about 1/3 of the utility of a secondary skill, or about 1/6 of the utility of a primary skill.
The GM may rule that a very tight-range specialisation or one that may not see much use has a +7 to all related checks rather than +6: an example of this might be "scaling stone walls outdoors at night" for athletics or "deciphering ancient runes carved on rock" for linguistics.
I've seen a couple ideas for improving skill selection in 4e, and I liked most of them. I feel they didn't quite capture flexibility well enough, though. I am missing a couple major things:
1) "secondary" type skills, those that adventurers rarely take but should be able to
2) synergy! It was borked in 3e to a small degree, but a greatly fun option
3) Cross-class skills. They may not be the best option, but they should be an option
4) Getting rid of Decipher Script. This was always a vastly useful skill in my language-heavy games. I feel it should be a primary skill.
Note that I am only very cursorily experienced in 4e so far, as these are the preparations for my first campaign in it, so I may have made some mistakes interpreting the system. Feel free to inform me.
Skill points
To determine the number of skill points a character gets, multiply the number of trained skills the character gets by 2 and add 1. Every time the character would be able to train a skill, he/she instead gets 2 more skill points.
class skills cost 2 skill points to train.
cross-class skills cost 4 skill points to train.*
secondary skills cost 1 skill point to train.
*Cross-class skill rules only apply at first level.
Primary skill list: The same as RAW except add:
Linguistics (Cha) Cleric, Rogue, Wizard
Linguistics is the art of understanding language through body motion, symbology, intent, etc. It includes spoken, signed, and written languages. Even a very successful linguistics check shouldn't replace actual knowledge of the language: intent can be followed but not actual meaning, and abstractions are always hard. DCs later, when I know the DC system better in 4e.
Secondary Skills I welcome advice on changing primary attributes or reducing # of skills. Don't want to add new ones particularly, unless absolutely necessary.
Agriculture* (Wis) Farming, botany
Animal Husbandry* (Cha) Ranching, husbandry, handling, breeding
Brewing (Int) Alcohol, alchemy
Culture* (Cha) Etiquette, literature, art study
Domestic Arts (Cha) Cooking, cleaning, mending, etc
Engineering (Int) Physical, [al]chemical, civil, mathematics
Metalcrafting (Str) Blacksmithing, smelting
Perform (Cha) Dance, music, storytelling, etc
Rope Use (Dex) knotting, tieing, splicing, making rope
Seamanship (Wis) Rafting, boating, sailing, navigating
Stonecrafting (Str) Masonry, sculpting, pottery, mining
Textiles (Wis) Dyeing, weaving, sewing, tailoring
Visual Art (Cha) Design and drawing: can be coupled with a specific type of crafting skill, eg. stonecrafting to make "sculpture"
Woodcrafting (Dex) Whittling, carpentry, woodworking
* these skills can be covered by related primaries, eg. Nature, Diplomacy, and History. However, in my opinion Nature should not cover "civilian" animal husbandry, ranching, and agriculture, nor should history be used as a blanket "knowledge" skill. thus the secondaries drawing a little away from these already very useful skills. Your mileage may vary, of course.
Synergies
Secondary and Primary skills can synergise. A player trained in a secondary skill gets a +2 synergy bonus to the secondary skill if trained in the synergistic primary. Synergy bonuses cannot stack. (GM option: or it could be a +1 to the primary and secondary but that is probably unnecessary).
Examples of synergies
Agriculture -- Nature
Animal Husbandry -- Nature
Brewing -- Engineering (Alchemy/chemistry uses only)
Culture -- Diplomacy
Metalworking -- Endurance
Perform -- Bluff
Stonecrafting -- Dungeoneering
Visual Art -- any one crafting skill (only one, chosen when the synergy is gained)
Woodcrafting -- Seamanship (boat building only)
Specialisation
I'm not totally pleased with the mechanic for this, but it's mostly intended as a flavourfull tweak anyway, not a major game design thing.
You can declare a specialisation when training a skill, for example: "Envalari History" for history, "Diabolism" for aracana, or "Herbalism" for nature. Your skill bonus from training increases to +6 for checks involving your specialisation, but drops to +4 for all other uses of the skill. You can purchase one new specialisation for a Primary skill at the cost of 1 skill point, or two new specialisations for a Secondary skill at the cost of 1 skill point.
Just what specialisations there are are up to you and the GM. Specialisations should be specific, but not absurdly so. As a rule of thumb, no specialisation should encompass more than about 1/3 of the utility of a secondary skill, or about 1/6 of the utility of a primary skill.
The GM may rule that a very tight-range specialisation or one that may not see much use has a +7 to all related checks rather than +6: an example of this might be "scaling stone walls outdoors at night" for athletics or "deciphering ancient runes carved on rock" for linguistics.