[3.5] Are skill tricks good game design?

[AvatarZero]

I didn't want to derail the other thread.

Skill tricks spell out ways in which a character can get more use from a skill they already have. They cost two skill points per trick, and can only be used once per encounter. Some of them give you a straight numerical boost, such as Collector of Stories (+5 on identifying monsters), or change the existing rules to your advantage, like Nimble Stand (rise from prone without drawing AoOs). The tricks I'm interested in are the ones that let you use a skill in a clever way. For instance, a character with the Leaping Climber trick can jump vertically and then start a climb from their jump height.

Here's the question: couldn't you have done that before? There are a few skill tricks that charge you skill points to do things you could probably have already done if your DM was willing to let you try. Conceal Spellcasting is another; couldn't you have already used Sleight of Hand to distract people while using magic? And if you add these sorts of skill tricks to the game, aren't you encouraging DMs to shoot down their players when they come up with similar clever ideas? "Sorry, but you haven't bought that trick so you can't do that." Don't these skill tricks do the exact opposite of their stated intention and limit you to specific options in game, rather than giving you more freedom?

Any thoughts?

[Aharon]

You might have done it before - if your DM agreed. In a group where rules aren't considered tantamount, that might work. But once there is a rules lawyer, other players tend to adopt parts of that mind set, in my experience. As a result, they complain when things aren't done by the rules. Might be different for other people, but it happened in two groups I know of.

[Snake-Aes]

"Good Game Design" is a tough question. Skill tricks are by definition mini feats. The approach to pulling off stunts linked to them is similar to pulling them off with feats.

If you like to implement them but don't like them to be exclusive, just make the same stunt harder for people without the tricks.

[valadil]

Abilities that cost more than a skill but less than a feat are a perfectly good idea.

The ad-hoc nature in which they are presented is terrible. As far as I know they only appear in one book. There's no precedent for handling them. Many of the abilities are things my players would have previously asked about and I would have allowed with a skill check. Now I shut them down and tell them, no you don't have that ability from that book you don't own.

I think they'd work better in a point based game. If skills were one point, skill tricks two points, and feats four points (on average anyway, some feats are obviously worth more than others) they'd fit right in.

[Kurald Galain]

Skill tricks are conceptually the same design as feats are, so no, having both of them is not good game design.

If characters get not enough feats, the solution is to give them more. Come to think of it, that's precisely what both PF and 4E do.

[Optimystik]

I love them for what they represent - mini-feats that you can use to customize your character beyond what feats provide.

What I don't like, is the 1/encounter limitation. Not only is it arbitrary, it makes you actually not want to use them, because what if you need them later in the fight? 2/encounter (though I would prefer 3) would be much better.

If characters get not enough feats, the solution is to give them more. Come to think of it, that's precisely what both PF and 4E do.

You raise an interesting point, but suppose we set one power level for feats, and a weaker one for skill tricks? Then we could use skill tricks to fill in those blanks while keeping feats suitably impactful.

Though characters with low Int get screwed in the process. Hmm...

[nedz]

I liked them when I first saw them, but then came to see many of them as things PCs would have tried anyway. Some of them are OK though.

The're basically half a feat for 2 skill points.
To turn this around:
Since you can get 5 skill points for a feat, it would be an interesting house rule to allow characters to buy a feat for 5 skill points.
Would that be good game design ?

There are feats like that also.
A new player joined my group recently and took the feat Quick Reconnoitre which allows free spot and listen checks. I had to change the way we were playing these skills or he would have had no benefit from the feat.
With hindsight I should probably have told him to choose another feat, well thinking about it I'll suggest that to the group the next time they level up.

[valadil]

The're basically half a feat for 2 skill points.
To turn this around:
Since you can get 5 skill points for a feat, it would be an interesting house rule to allow characters to buy a feat for 5 skill points.
Would that be good game design ?

No. A rogue could buy a feat every level. He'd get 1 feat and 3 skill points, while the fighter gets 1/2 feat and 2 skill points. It would completely trump the fighter.

[Fax Celestis]

Skill tricks are conceptually the same design as feats are, so no, having both of them is not good game design.

...no, they don't.

Skill tricks let you use a skill in a new way. Feats let you do something you couldn't before. Never mind the fact that the opportunity cost for one is nigh insignificant (2 skill points? oh noes, I only get four hundred of those over my rogue's career), while the other has a high opportunity cost (a feat slot? oh noes I only get eleven of those if I'm lucky). As such, you can make something that is not good enough to be a feat into a trick and have it be something that is actually purchasable without being ridiculously underpowered.

[Eldariel]

I love skill tricks. They allow buying things not worth a feat, but still some repeatable minor trick you want to perform. 1/encounter limitation makes sense on some of them; there's e.g. Acrobatic Backstab. Your opponent will fall for it once. He'll stab you in the face when you try it again. Though I agree, the limitation should be ability-specific, not generic for all of them.

That said, I see them as focusing on a particular aspect of a skill; Back On Your Feet doesn't mean you're any better Tumbler in general but you're extremely proficient at that particular application of Tumble. In other words, you've practiced getting up fast, unscathed.


Really, I think the game would be much better if many of the lesser feats were skill tricks. Trophy Hunter is a completely worthless feat but it could be a nice skill trick for Craft: Taxidermy. Feats should present major milestones in the character; they're gotten horribly rarely which contributes to that. Skill tricks can cover all the stuff too small for feats but still repeatable and distinct enough that you want to actually buy the ability instead of just ad hoccing it every time you do it; far as I'm concerned, skill tricks enable doing the "ad hocs" at higher chances. So sure, you coulda made the leap before but your skill trick means you've practiced that particular use of the skill and thus have better chances of pulling it off.

In other words, you've practiced that particular trick enough to become good at it. Also, they give skill types some extra tricks which is always good. They also cover lots of the kinda stuff you'd want as a non-caster to somehow interact with casters. Lying through your surface thoughts or masking your alignment would make for a great skilltrick; otherwise they're epic checks.

[Kurald Galain]

Skill tricks let you use a skill in a new way.

That means they let you do something you couldn't before.

Feats let you do something you couldn't before.

Same thing.

It's inelegant. D&D already has class features, and race features, and feats, and ACFs, and traits, and flaws, and probably some other similar things that slip my mind. This is all the same design space; rather than having seven lists with different criteria each, the game should have one list of "things" of which you can pick for your character. With prerequisites, where needed.

So yeah, call them all feats, and give each character more feats, and if something is too good for a feat then give it a prerequisite so that it really costs two feats.

[Optimystik]

Really, I think the game would be much better if many of the lesser feats were skill tricks.

Very much agreed. For example, Combat Casting/Manifestation should've been a Concentration skill trick.

[nedz]

No. A rogue could buy a feat every level. He'd get 1 feat and 3 skill points, while the fighter gets 1/2 feat and 2 skill points. It would completely trump the fighter.

Well the Rogue's skill points are generally needed to develop the character, in fact thats why the're there.
A Rogue could just dip one level of Fighter for 1 feat, 2 Skill points (albeit in a poor skill set), Full BAB, MWP(etc) and better HP.

Note: I'm not claiming that this would be a good houserule, I'm just trying to explore the idea that Skill Tricks are roughly half a feat.

[Gnaeus]

Well the Rogue's skill points are generally needed to develop the character, in fact thats why the're there.
A Rogue could just dip one level of Fighter for 1 feat, 2 Skill points (albeit in a poor skill set), Full BAB, MWP(etc) and better HP.

Note: I'm not claiming that this would be a good houserule, I'm just trying to explore the idea that Skill Tricks are roughly half a feat.

What about the human wizard with 20 Int? He could max spellcraft, concentration, and Knowledge Arcana (he doesn't really NEED to max 6 different knowledges, does he?), and still pick up one feat per level. Divide those feats between Metamagic, Extra Spell Slots and Item Crafting, and he rockets ahead of even the other tier 1s.

[Optimystik]

I do agree that minor feats as Skill Tricks unbalances the game in favor of the Int-heavy classes.

A Beguiler, Archivist or Factotum could amass a pretty impressive library of moves. Not to mention, a Wizard or Psion who takes levels in a (4 + Int skills) PrC.

I'm not sure what a solution would be though, that would allow Skill Tricks to still be useful without being overpowered.

[Eldariel]

That means they let you do something you couldn't before.

I see a huge difference there. With skill tricks, you take an aspect of something you could already do and get better at it. You don't learn a completely new ability. Effectively, they the lower DCs of something, or expand an effect of a successful skill check. Both are things feats don't really do since they aren't really tied to the skill system. Skill tricks are. As such, they make more sense.

It's inelegant. D&D already has class features, and race features, and feats, and ACFs, and traits, and flaws, and probably some other similar things that slip my mind. This is all the same design space; rather than having seven lists with different criteria each, the game should have one list of "things" of which you can pick for your character. With prerequisites, where needed.

So yeah, call them all feats, and give each character more feats, and if something is too good for a feat then give it a prerequisite so that it really costs two feats.

But they draw upon a different resource. And it's virtually impossible to make good enough feats outta those to make them worth picking no matter how many feats you get; you'd need to make "lesser feats" and "greater feats" as separate groups and award some number of both to make it work and that's, frankly, just less elegant than skill tricks that specifically fulfill the niché of expanding, you guessed it, skills!

I do agree that minor feats as Skill Tricks unbalances the game in favor of the Int-heavy classes.

A Beguiler, Archivist or Factotum could amass a pretty impressive library of moves. Not to mention, a Wizard or Psion who takes levels in a (4 + Int skills) PrC.

I'm not sure what a solution would be though, that would allow Skill Tricks to still be useful without being overpowered.

My solution is giving everyone lots more skillpoints; something they needed anyways. This makes the comparative difference small enough that things work out. Also, class skills work as a restricting factor here.

Skill tricks aren't powerful enough that having lots of them is going to break things wide open; it'll just make you more versatile. And every skill trick is a point away from another skill so you give up versatility for more ability in one skill. Really, it works out just fine, in my experience.


EDIT: By "a lot", I mean ~6 or more extra per level. So Rogue has 14 sp per level. It works great.

[The Shadowmind]

Remember that you can only have a number of skill tricks equal to half your level rounded up. So they wouldn't get one "mini-feat" every level, just every other level. Martial classes with 2+Int really should increase to 4+Int anyway.
we would have to come up with a list of underpowered/very narrow feats that could be skill tricks. Maybe things like the Mage Slayer line, Weaponry Somatic, Mobility, Blind-Fight, etc.

[nedz]

The obvious feats to look at perhaps are the skill feats ?
e.g.
Stealthy
Half of that would be +2 to Move Silently OR Hide.

So would a skill trick which added +2 to a skill in which you already had 5 (say) ranks in be a good idea ?

[Thespianus]

Really, I think the game would be much better if many of the lesser feats were skill tricks.

This, this, a thousand times this.

However, I can understand that the "currency" for the skill tricks (skill points) is unfairly distributed. If a bunch of the "lesser feats" were turned into skill tricks, skill tricks were all renamed "minor feats" and each character got one "minor feat" every new level, it would be sweeeet.

[Rothen]

So would a skill trick which added +2 to a skill in which you already had 5 (say) ranks in be a good idea ?

Don't skill tricks cost 2 skill points anyway? You might as well change the rules, then.

[Mr.Moron]

They're a decent attempt at patching some problems in a skill system that is almost entirely made of problems. They're nice, but there isn't very much that could be done with what they had to work with.

[Another_Poet]

Abilities that cost more than a skill but less than a feat are a perfectly good idea.

The ad-hoc nature in which they are presented is terrible.

Ditto this; also, I feel they are bad game design as implemented in D&D 3.x because they add a further complicated layer of situational uses/bonuses to what is already among the most complicated and situational parts of the ruleset, i.e. the skills system.

With class-and cross-class caps being different, half-ranks to track, situational bonuses, a long skill list with arguable overlap, and synergy bonuses that sometimes apply to use X of skill A but not use Y of skill A, the skill system in D&D doesn't need any more factors to consider.

It's already hard to use the system. A military saddle gives a +2 bonus to Ride checks made to stay on a mount, but not other ride checks. Most likely the player writes down a +2 and changes their total and that is the total they roll for all Ride checks. Other players might not write down the +2 and forget to include it on any Ride checks. Either way is better than trying to write an extra line under the Ride skill or put a reminder note on your character sheet in a place where you'll actually see it when you are about to roll a Ride check in the heat of combat, yet where it won't crowd out more important information.

The skill system in 3.x is poorly designed and complicated to begin with, adding more complicated considerations is a bad idea.

ap

[PairO'Dice Lost]

As several people have noted, skill tricks often add functionality that a more laid-back DM would let you do anyway, and they aren't all that impressive at 1/encounter frequency. So in many of my games, you can just use those skill tricks as soon as you meet the prereqs, increasing the DC for successive attempts by a given amount based on the trick. You've just leveled up and put your 5th rank in Sleight of Hand, and you already have a rank in Concentration and Spellcraft? Congratulations, you can use Conceal Spellcasting to your heart's content, with the DC going up by +5 every time you're successful. Then the weaker feats are treated like skill tricks in terms of buying them with skill points.

[Susano-wo]

I'm not familiar with the actual skill tricks, so I can only comment theoretically: Theoretically, I think that care should be taken to not include things that would normally fall under reasonable allowance by DM (yeah, I Know YMMV :P), though a nice list of additional DC's for new, codified tricks would be nice.

That being said, tricks that give you abilities that you wouldn't have had otherwise that cost skill points sound cool--and I think that you can balance it to a degree between high and low INT characters by requiring X ranks in the skill before the trick can be purchased.

[Draz74]

Skill tricks that imply "You can't use your skill this way unless you have this trick, even though it's something that anyone should be able to at least try" are bad game design. But the more basic idea of "minor feats for the cost of 2 skill points" is a great thing for the game IMO.

Very much agreed. For example, Combat Casting/Manifestation should've been a Concentration skill trick.

And Track should be a Survival skill trick. For that matter, Trapfinding should be a Search/Disable Device skill trick.

[Knaight]

I would consider them conceptually a good idea, but poorly implemented. An example of how they should have been done is something like stunts from fate 3e, though the actual fate 3e stunts suck, though I've seen them borrowed and put elsewhere very efficiently.

[Doctor D&D]

I like them. The whole "you could've done that before" is really false.

You can't deny a person who is familar with the person you are impersonating a spot check. With assume quick you can do that. Where in disguise does it say you can do that?

You can't delay your melee damage to make your target unaware of an attack no matter how high your sleight of hand is. With misquito bite you can.

Nothing says you can make a spot check to treat your next attack as a touch attack. With spot the weakness you can.

And yes, this implies that you can't do the things that skill tricks can do unless acutally have the skill trick. Mainly because nothing in the skill's description says you can.

One DM could say you can and assign a DC to it. But that would be purely in home brew territory and really should not be part of the argument. The other issue with "homebrew can do it" is that the DCs will not be standardized and no playtesting will establish if said DCs are balanced or not. Saying a reasonable DM would allow it might be true but it doesn't change the fact that it is a homebrew rule.

[Fax Celestis]

It's inelegant. D&D already has class features, and race features, and feats, and ACFs, and traits, and flaws, and probably some other similar things that slip my mind. This is all the same design space; rather than having seven lists with different criteria each, the game should have one list of "things" of which you can pick for your character. With prerequisites, where needed.

So yeah, call them all feats, and give each character more feats, and if something is too good for a feat then give it a prerequisite so that it really costs two feats.

"Elegance" and "function" do not normally go together: when they do, it is to be lauded; when it doesn't, well, you did your best.

Skill tricks do fulfill half of your "design space": "allowance to perform an action". What they don't fulfill is "opportunity cost". Since they're priced lower, they are capable of being weaker while still being a viable option.

To be honest, you sound like you'd rather be playing a classless, point-buy system like nWoD.

[Thinker]

That means they let you do something you couldn't before.
Same thing.

I am astounded by your ignorance of the situation. As a veteran player I would have expected a greater grasp of the rules. By this logic you are saying that every class feature, spell, racial ability, monster special abilities and special qualities should be feats, totally ignoring the economies that they represent.

It's inelegant. D&D already has class features, and race features, and feats, and ACFs, and traits, and flaws, and probably some other similar things that slip my mind. This is all the same design space; rather than having seven lists with different criteria each, the game should have one list of "things" of which you can pick for your character. With prerequisites, where needed.

So yeah, call them all feats, and give each character more feats, and if something is too good for a feat then give it a prerequisite so that it really costs two feats.

Since you seem to be taking an immature approach to the subject, I will try to explain it for you. The game limits characters by employing various economies throughout the system. You have the feat economy, the class economy, the skill economy, the ability economy, equipment economy, and even an XP economy. Not all of them are equal and they provide different resources. The designers act like maintainers of the various economies and figure out what goes where. The feat economy is already bloated and doesn't have a lot of room for growth, much like a fat man who has had too much cake. By contrast, the fat man's skinny friend, the skill economy, hasn't been jammed with a bunch of extra stuff. The designers wondered why Mr. Skill Economy had to go hungry and gave it another portion. Voila! We have another use for the skill economy. That shouldn't be too hard to grasp.

[Curmudgeon]

Skill tricks are mostly good game design. That is, they fill the role of mini-feats ─ something that should have been around for the likes of Dodge and Improved Unarmed Strike. (There are many hundreds of feats available, but most players won't run out of fingers counting the ones on their character sheet. Out of those hundreds of feats, a lot of them just aren't worth that much.) However, the limit of 1 use per encounter isn't a good design. Having that as a default is probably OK, but there ought to be a few exceptions in the more frequent direction (instead of the skill tricks that are only good once per day). Whip Climber could let you swing across a chasm to get to a hostage, for instance ─ but what about getting back? I don't see the reasoning in 1/encounter there.