Your combat schtick should be separate from your non-combat

[The_Hanged_Man]

That's not what Frank's talking about. Getting a free simple weapon proficiency, and 3 more class skills, doesn't let a fighter do anything out of combat. It still only has 2 skill points/level to use. Have you tried to play a diplomatic Strong or Tough hero, or a sneaky one? It sucks.

[User3]

You're also still balancing combat abilities against non-combat abilities, K, and that's just inherently lame. If people aren't more or less equal in and out of combat you're gonna have players who are disinterested and detached from half the game (you're probably gonna see this anyway, but at least with Frank's system the potential to be active during more parts of the game is there).

[User3]

This could almost work a Ghestalt Normal class/Expert, Commoner, or Aristocrat. Except Aristocrat is just too good.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

2 Skill-Points per level just sucks, period and needs to be removed, no matter what you do.

-Desdan

[The_Hanged_Man]

Fighters need more skill points. OTOH, I never seem to miss those skill points when I play a cleric. Too busy casting spells and praying to make diplomacy or search checks, I guess.

[User3]

Fighters need a slightly better skill list, thus a reason to put stat points into Int. That's all.

The 8 Int Dwarf is a player choice that says "I don't want to worry about the non-combat stuff." A player can contribute a great deal to the party without making skill checks. While wizards are casting divinations and rogues are Gathering information, the 8 Int dwarf is like "and I go buy fresh horses and rations."

I'm not trying to balance the two against eah other. I'm saying that people should have choices.

[Username17]

You always have the choice to suck, no matter how hard the game tries to make it otherwise.

Consider it like this:

You want to be the guy who pulls magical hellfire out of the sky in combat. You also want to be the guy who comes up with complicated systems of ropes and pulleys to overcome problems out of combat.

So you make a character who is a Wizard/Specialist. They have the skills to back up the gadgetry and hijinx methodology out of combat, and the powers to play the nuker in combat.

Your skill points, as well as your skill list, should be determined exclusively by what your role in the party is out of combat - not by how well you swing a sword.

There are characters who can be interesting and helpful out of combat on very small numbers of skill points - and as THM mentioned - those people are called Clerics. If what you do out of combat is heal people, you only need a couple of skills. If what you do out of combat is come up with complicated solutions to problems and jury rig stuff out of wax paper and bubble gum - you need a lot of skills.

There is no driving rationale behind Fighters getting 2 skill points per level. Or 6 skills, or 8, or 4, or any number at all.

Here's the provisional concept:

If you are a Specialist, you get a very big skill list, and your class features are all skill related - you get 8 skill points a level.

If you are a Diplomat, you get a moderate skill list, and your abilities are geared towards influencing NPCs (I suggest that characters be able to make the swap between having charm and having animal companions right at the beginning) - you get 6 skill points.

If you are a Diviner, you get a restrictive skill list, which is set up to allow you to know stuff (knowledge, Appraise, Survival, etc.). You make up for this by having some outright magical abilities which also let you know stuff. You get 4 skill points.

If you are a Healer, you obviously don't really give a crap about your skill list, so you only get token representation from any class of skills (you wouldn't be able to afford synergy bonuses anyway), so you get Ride and not Handle Animal; Diplomacy and not Bluff - that sort of thing. You have magic powers that allow you to repair things and raise the dead. You get 2 skill points.

People who want to get their arms dirty and direct the action out of combat would gravitate towards Specialist or Diplomat. People who want to ask nosy questions to the DM all the time would gravitate towards Diviner. And finally, people who just want to be shaken at problems can jolly well be a Healer.

You need a healer, and some people don't want to take a majorly active role in non-combat situations. The only reason that this doesn't form a blessed union and immediately solve a lot of problems is that the game is mysteriously often asking you to take a passive combat role every time you accept a passive noncombat role.

And there's just no reason for that.

-Username17

[Desdan_Mervolam]

What about skills such as bluff and tumble, which have uses in combat just as valuable as out of combat?

Also What about spells that only have out of combat uses? Knock and Augury won't kill you any mooks, and you've gone on the record as saying that clerical healing is only viable outside of combat. Magic lends itself a little too much to being useful outside of combat to be relegated to a "Combat" schtick, and it's way too tactical to be considered a "Non-Combat" schtick.

Don't get me wrong, your idea has merit, but requires a total rewrite of the system as written. Of course, you may not find that terribly relevant, in which case, well, via con Dios.

For my money, any character who is too specialized is boring, regardless. Frank is very right when he says that an ugthump who has no use outside of combat is just as boring as the foppish bard who's so socally tweaked that he can bed the king despite the fact that the king is straight and married, but can't swing a pig-sticker literally to save his life, but it goes further. A character centered around the making of mundane, masterworked, and magical gear but useless when put into an investigative adventure is boring. A grim, no nonsense undead hunter is probably going to be a boring character to play in a game about the politics between local tradeguilds in Waterdeep no matter how vivid your backstory is. In the end it comes down to what you expect to run/play most and the amount of raw power you're willing to sacrifice in order to be viable in more situations. For the record, This observation isn't just in reference to the various incarnations of D&D I've played, but every game I've ever played.

-Desdan

[The_Hanged_Man]

That's a good point. You could break those down to combat-based and non-combat based bluff and tumble. Bluff kind of makes sense, actually. Why should the same skill let you get by the guards by saying, "These are not the droids you're looking for," and feint with your rapier?

[Username17]

Magic lends itself a little too much to being useful outside of combat to be relegated to a "Combat" schtick, and it's way too tactical to be considered a "Non-Combat" schtick.

Magic doesn't have to be monolithic. Clerics, for example, are supposedly balanced by the fact that their spells have no offensive combat use. It's not true, but that's the theory behind why they get so many advantages over a Wizard in everything they do.

So you could get magic with combat uses, and magic with non-combat uses. And people who took a Magic Combat Schtick wouldn't get a Magic Non-Combat Schtick unless they also selected that.

What about skills such as bluff and tumble, which have uses in combat just as valuable as out of combat?

I honestly don't have strong opinions about them. The 3.5 Feint mechanic could be dropped out of the game entirely and noone would notice, especially at high levels. The cost of using that ability goes up as your level increases, and its chance of success goes down - it's pretty mysterious.

Tumble is a mechanic which honestly I don't think anyone has ever been happy with. It's the kind of thing which ought to have a failure chance, and it doesn't. There's been various suggestions of how to give it one - but they've all failed (Reflex Saves, for instance, can't even theoretically keep up with Tumble checks, so allowing one is just putting off the inevitable). The mechanic could be folded into Mobility, which in turn could be folded into the Dodger class, and I don't think the game would suffer at all.

Some physical skills (balance, for example), are essentially only used in combat situations. And if they were a class feature instead of a skill, I don't think we'd notice or care.

Why should the same skill let you get by the guards by saying, "These are not the droids you're looking for," and feint with your rapier?

No reason I can think of.

-Username17

[Red_Rob]

Wow, sorry for the gratuitous thread necro, but i was discussing an idea like this just the other week as a way to ensure that characters have something to contribute in all parts of an adventure.

The way i see it, when you get three or four people together to play a roleplaying game, they are all there because they want to contribute something to the session. And being told "Oh sorry, this is a fight and you're the diplomat character so you just better hide or something till its over" is no fun. On the flip side, the standard fighter schtick of "Wake me up when there's someone to hit" means the player can't contribute in any meaningful way to half the game.

By having every character by default have a useful way to contribute both in and out of combat means all the players always have the opportunity, if they want, to add something to the game. This way, if a player wants to play the dumb fighter who only wakes up in combat, he can ignore his other skills, but if he wants to come up with clever ways to help the party out of combat the rules don't actively screw him over.

So, given that Frank came up with this 4 years ago, and i did last week, doubtless plenty of others have given it consideration. Has anyone seen a game that uses this system or something like it? Alternatively does anyone have any idea's for a more defined "non combat roles" selection?

[Judging__Eagle]

Warp Cult had this. The newer stuff here obviously uses this idea.

The necro is preffered over a new thread.

Also, it was 5 years ago now. Welcome to the Den.

[Psychic Robot]

Honestly, 4e's skill system isn't an awful way to do things. Fewer skills + more trained skills = problems solved. In terms of 3.5, I'd give everyone +2 skill points per level as a baseline, and I might even change skill points for all classes to be a minimum of 6 + Int to a maximum of 10 + Int.

[Thymos]

I saw a neat solution for tumble.

Instead of a DC of 15, make it an opposed roll using the enemies attack bonus vs. a tumble check.

[Mask_De_H]

I saw a neat solution for tumble.

Instead of a DC of 15, make it an opposed roll using the enemies attack bonus vs. a tumble check.

My DM did this too.

There's also the 4e combine and consolidate method for skills. On the very far end of the spectrum, a set of tags or aspects like "is good at puzzles" or "charming bastard" with a roll attached could circumvent skills or promote finding ways to use the tools you have to be useful in more situations.

[Psychic Robot]

Isn't that kind of like FUDGE?

I know that Pathfinder changed the DC to 15 + the opponent's BAB.

[MartinHarper]

Hadn't read this before. I see the logic, but I think some choices should combine both combat and non-combat choices. If I'm a shapechanger who kills people by turning into various scary animals in combat, then I should be able to gain information by turning into a rat or raven outside combat. It would be weird to have a character who can turn into a cobra and spit poison, but can't turn into a cobra and infiltrate the castle.

[User]

I'm not sure whether this solves the problem or just moves it around. Even if the players are not in combat it doesn't necessarily mean all their non-combat abilities are going to be equally useful. In a diplomatic situation Bob, who lacks diplomatic skills, is going to be useless. It doesn't matter whether Bob lacks them because he traded them to get fighting ability or because he traded them for trap finding ability. And so we could argue that your social schtick should be separate from your trapfinding schtick, and so on. So rather than trying to prevent tradeoffs in one area of expertise from affecting your ability in another what we should be shooting for are rules that allow a character to make a meaningful contribution to a situation, even when they lack the relevant skills. Then it won't matter if being a fighter means you don't get skill points, because you don't need skill points to play an active role outside of combat.

[mean_liar]

In Street Fighter I generally handled this with separate pools of XP for combat skills and attributes and "everything else".

To do it from scratch, my personal split-up was...

Combat
Social
Action
Intellectual

From there, points would be assigned to each category and they'd either be non-transferable, or transferable at a penalty.

Setting and GM would determine base points (ie, Call of Cthluhu is going to have a different Combat and Intellectual point allowance than Street Fighter).

[Grek]

Hadn't read this before. I see the logic, but I think some choices should combine both combat and non-combat choices. If I'm a shapechanger who kills people by turning into various scary animals in combat, then I should be able to gain information by turning into a rat or raven outside combat. It would be weird to have a character who can turn into a cobra and spit poison, but can't turn into a cobra and infiltrate the castle.

The dude who turns into a cobra during combat but cannot use his combra-form to sneak into the castle actually turns into a giant cobra, a strangely colored cobra or some other sort of cobra which easily draws attention and is not good for sneaking around.

[User]

The dude who turns into a cobra during combat but cannot use his combra-form to sneak into the castle actually turns into a giant cobra, a strangely colored cobra or some other sort of cobra which easily draws attention and is not good for sneaking around.

We seem to be quickly sliding into the 4e realm of wizard's familiars which magically can't interact with the world. In other words, doing everything possible to prevent creative uses of abilities, which I feel goes against the spirit of a roleplaying game.

[Quantumboost]

Hadn't read this before. I see the logic, but I think some choices should combine both combat and non-combat choices. If I'm a shapechanger who kills people by turning into various scary animals in combat, then I should be able to gain information by turning into a rat or raven outside combat. It would be weird to have a character who can turn into a cobra and spit poison, but can't turn into a cobra and infiltrate the castle.

The dude who turns into a cobra during combat but cannot use his combra-form to sneak into the castle actually turns into a giant cobra, a strangely colored cobra or some other sort of cobra which easily draws attention and is not good for sneaking around.

Alternatively, the dude who wants to sneak into the castle using his cobra-form chooses "turning into an animal form for stealthiness" as his non-combat schtick. Then the dude who turns into a giant wolf monster picks something totally different, and the dude who turns into a mouse gets a different combat schtick.

[PhoneLobster]

This sneaky cobra business is about separating character building resources. It doesn't have to be about separating the choices. (though that might be nice).

The cobra option can have both combat AND sneak benefits, as long as it expends resources from both combat and sneak resource pools in a manner appropriate to it's impact on each phase.

As long as you aren't paying combat resources for sneak utility or sneak resources for combat utility you are fine buy a "Combat cost 2 and Sneak cost 1" ability and your great phase separation retains it's integrity.

So, given that Frank came up with this 4 years ago, and i did last week, doubtless plenty of others have given it consideration.

Separation of phases has always been one of my pet preferences.

Frank, apparently, is no longer keen on the idea. Something to do with his eagerness to felate Shadow Run, a game that has historically been a major example of badly done phase separation.