An open discussion about skill and ranks

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Look, I'm mostly bringing example out of my own experience. And during my years DMing - most groups have this one player that is going to be on top of the numbers trying to maximize his abilities, aka min/max, aka optimizer, aka yougetit. (side note, the DMGII is fantastic regarding those. See player's incentive right at the start). Just this one guy is enough.

Suddenly I'm confronted with this gap between the optimizer and his teammates. I get complains from the others that they can't do anything (and failing to realize the mathematical reasoning about why this is the case). One of them tries to act a skill he has no rank in (Swim), fails, and get frustrated. Another, wants to do this cool act, which he of course have no ranks in, and then goes back to begrudgingly perform as a bard, muttering that his class suck and he can only do this one thing.

Meanwhile, this optimizer guy, sticks to what are his biggest numbers. Need to take the target hostage? Sorry, no go, he didn't build grapple build. He'll just quadruple crit the guy with chi-shadow-damage and drag his dead buddy. Need to pass bluff check against a routine guard patrol? Doesn't even bother. Smilbidrillion damage to the guard, to his companion, to his superior, to his underlings, to his nana, and another one just for good luck. Because that's where he invested his points. Need to go talk to the barkeep of ANY AVAILABLE BAR to hear the gossip? Won't even bother. Catch the nearest urchin. Smack him around. Continue the plot.

Now, putting aside the subjects of bettering myself as a master, bettering the participators as players and generally communicating better while gaming, put all this to the side; this is a thing that happens. I experience this situation. So with all due respect, to you and others, trying to tell me that "that is rare", "this is an extreme case", "that most of the time I'm going to have something else", "skills aren't used that way" etc.' - this is the starting point. This is what I have at the table. There's this one guy (sometimes it's the other guy) that's going to stretch the skills because he's able to (and also because it makes sense numerically). Two points that exist at wider gap then the dice rendering one of them useless/infallible.

And this is what I'm trying to respond to. I observe the skill ranks functions as flawed and I wish to address them. Now stop telling me that it's not the case and work with me.
Thank you.
Sorry.
Thanks

Ah, see, now this is a hippogriff of a very different color. The thread was originally framed in terms of theory and mathing things out, when you said "I think that this is mostly due to wrong mathematical implementation. Or at least wrong attempt of presentation of different cases." and started talking about progressions and functions. That's why you're getting discussion and feedback about the math side of things, and expectations and general system performance and such.

But it turns out that the actual problem you're trying to address is that you tend to run games for a lot of people who don't know the rules and who try to do fun/inventive/off-the-wall stuff all the time and get frustrated when things don't turn out as expected, and a lot of other people who powergame and don't care about the plot and just want to kill all the NPCs to show off how ub3r l33t they are, and these two types of people end up in the same group and have totally incompatible expectations and playstyles.

Basically, it's like if you had a group where every single arcane spellcaster only ever casts basic blasting spells with low save DCs and is getting frustrated that they can't kill anything, so you post a thread wondering how you can improve the sorcerer and wizard to be on par with the warmage, and everyone is talking about the tier system and good school specialization and battlefield control tactics and such, and you're getting frustrated that they aren't talking about wizards throwing fireballs and they're getting frustrated that you're claiming warmages are more powerful when they're factually weaker and both sides are talking past each other.


So, some observations:

1) Someone who tries to do one cool thing, fails, and then complains that their class is a sucky one-trick-pony doesn't understand the rules and their outcomes, and instituting houserules to help them out isn't going to make them understand the rules better; it's still likely that they'll try something else the rules don't support and get upset about that not working. Powergamers try to abuse the rules by definition (not to be confused with optimizers or min/maxers, but that's a whole 'nother topic), and instituting houserules to limit them isn't going to make them play nice with the rest of the party; no matter what kinds of houserules you implement, a powergamer is going to try to abuse those houserules.

You cannot fix playstyle incompatibilities with rules, unfortunately, so understand that changing up the skill system isn't going to magically fix the group dynamic problems, and this is something that would best be addressed out-of-game in conjunction with whatever houserules you decide to implement.

2) The issue of untrained/low-modifier characters seems to be less "I want them to still be somewhere on the d20 compared to an optimized build to avoid auto-success and auto-failure" and more "I want people to have fairly good chances of success for untrained tasks at all levels so PCs with 0 ranks can try cool stuff and succeed at it a reasonable portion of the time." That part can't be fixed with different progressions or long-term skill investment, because the issue crops up at low levels long before the high-level progression divergences.

Three good ways to address this come to mind, which can be used together or separately:

• Have skill "progressions" start with (or consist entirely of) big up-front bonuses that outweigh skill ranks for a few levels, something in the +3 to +5 range like PF and SWSE do, and then encourage players to scatter skill points around instead of maxing out a handful of skills. This won't solve the problem entirely, but it certainly helps when you can put a single rank in something and suddenly be moderately good at it.
• Implement a good "stunting" mechanic, that is, giving out hefty bonuses when players try something that (A) is fun and cool, (B) they describe well/flavorfully in-game, and (C) the character isn't already good at. That gives Mr. Frustrated an incentive and a reward for trying cool things and helps ensure that they succeed, without allowing Mr. Powergamer to stack that bonus on top of an already-high modifier.
• Let PCs save skill ranks and invest them as needed instead of investing everything at level-up, within whatever limits you feel are fair. If a PC can say "I wanna swim over to that underwater statue and do a thing! *invests 5 of his 30 saved skill points into Swim* Er, I totally took swimming lessons last summer, why do you ask?" then Mr. Powergamer can meticulously invest his ranks as desired and Mr. Frustrated can throw a bunch of skill points at a daunting task and they both come out happy.

3) The issue of optimized/high-modifier characters seems to be less "I want to institute diminishing returns and higher DCs because I think it's logical" and more "My players are powergaming one or two modifiers and using it on everything, which is boring and frustrating." This is a bit trickier to address, because the example you gave was optimizing combat stats, not skills, and the skills that can actually break games--Bluff, Diplomacy, Hide, and UMD, mostly; no one's breaking games with Decipher Script and Use Rope--break things even without automatic success because the things they do are powerful whether you can do them 100% of the time or just 20% of the time. To give specific advice here, I'd have to see some examples of the kinds of skill-related breakage you're seeing

But one thing to keep in mind in the meantime is that not all skills have to scale indefinitely. It's entirely within your rights to rule that you can only ever have 8 ranks in a skill because skills replicate real-world capabilities and "real-world" tops out at 5th, or declare that regardless of how you stack bonuses your modifier is hard-capped at +10, or something like that; it's like doing E6, but just for skills.


Does that all help address the actual underlying issues?