d20 Skills don't level or change. And that's ok...

[Dean]

So I've been thinking a lot about 3.5 skills primarily but also about skills in most d20 systems and how fucked they are.

I mean they're just fucked.

It doesn't feel like anything works about them, they're this weird sidebar to the normal resolution method of the system and they just fucking totally stop mattering after a VERY early point except for a few outliers. I mean you GAVE A SHIT about Jump and Balance when you were a 1st-3rd level Cat-thief. But I know 15th level characters who actually do not remember what skills they have because unless it's one of the functional....what....5?...skills in D&D then you just cannot and should not care.

So here's what I'm thinking: What if we made peace with that. Didn't try to make skills viable at all levels of play what if we ACCEPT that they are going to reduce in usefulness and importance as levels increase and reconfigure and rewrite how they even work at basic in order to not only accommodate that but to make the resources that you expend to get skills line up with their usefulness in game.

Here's The Idea

Anyone who's played or seen Star Wars Saga has seen the "Class starting Feats" method they use to just give you a little pile of feats at level 1 based on your class to make it so you actually function. So things like armor and weapon proficiency and some other basic level one attributes that all d20 systems hand out are just treated as feats and given out accordingly. So the Fighter gets "Heavy Armor Profiency" and the Jedi gets "Lightsaber Proficient" and the Noble gets "Persausive" or whatever.......Seriously, whatever.

!Lets make skills work this way!

From now on every skill (that we keep) will be a tactical feat, with a few uses that it grants you for special things it can do. These special uses will often involve checks and these checks will be made using your LEVEL or BAB, because that's how other things work. So "Sneak" will have three options and one of which will be something like "Go Unnoticed" where you roll a check VS Dc to be able to move around without people noticing you unless you interact with them in some way. It will also have two others or so, whatever. So maybe there's 20 of these skill feats and when people take their first level they get to choose from the appropriate ones for their class. So the Rogue gets "Sneak" and "Sleight of Hand" and "Disable Device" and can choose "Persuasion" and "Gymnastics" on top of that if he so chooses those.
Now the thing to recognize is these skills would NOT be meant to carry over things that adventurers should just all be able to do. Jump should just be a thing you can do. The same character jumping twice in a controlled environment should not get a difference of 15 feet between his jumps. He should just jump. Same thing for just trying to convince people of stuff or just trying to move quietly. Those are not special skills, we can all do that. That's what stats are for. That's why they're cool. Your basic interpersonal ability is in your characters Charisma score and there should be some basic writing on basic stuff adventurers are going to do all the time and those checks will be handled, like they already are, with basic D20 plus stat checks. The new Skill Feats will be for things that people can't just do, or at least can't do without considerable training. Certainly someone could still say they want their character to do something covered under a certain skill-feats purview but you could have always asked your DM if you can try to figure out what spell the Wizard is casting without knowing anything about magic. That's either an intelligence check or a no. Simple simple.

Whaddya all think? Second question: Is any of that understandable?

[MGuy]

I don't like the idea that a resource pool of abilities (IE Skills) ends up not being used by the end of the game. I like Tarkhis's solution in giving skills various abilities that pop up at certain levels. I don't know if he completed it yet but I do know I liked the idea.

[RobbyPants]

I like Tarkhis's solution in giving skills various abilities that pop up at certain levels. I don't know if he completed it yet but I do know I liked the idea.

If you're doing that in a 3E-style approach, you just tie effects to ranks rather than DCs.

[Krakatoa]

Alternatively, play a better game than 3.5.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Krakatoa, there's never been a game that has gotten skills right in the long term. Even if the math works out. Why? Two reasons.

1) People say that they want skills to be infinitely extensible in application (you start out climbing trees, you then climb up castles with boiling oil running down the wall, etc.) but they really don't. Almost all games impose a soft or hard limit as to what you can accomplish with a skill. Diplomacy is the obvious example, but almost every skill ends up like this. No one is going to let you use Disable Device to take down a castle in one skill check. No one is going to let you use Ride to make a sailboat take off into space. No one is going to let you use the Swim skill to fly or swim at supersonic speed. So there reaches a point where improving a skill past a certain point is a waste of time. And since skills don't reach a 'useless' cap uniformly (Perception stays fresh a lot longer than Swim for example).

2) People expect skills to be used at all points in the game. This is subtly different from point 1, yet only reinforces it. No one ever wants to be the guy that says 'fuck it, all of you have some way to fly, let's retire the climb skill and those who invested in it get their resources back'. This is one of the many reasons why 4E skill challenges suck at epic levels, they still expect badass epic people to do piddly shit like jump over holes and endure warm weather.

3) Now one and two aren't so bad on their own but the overriding problem is that phlebtonium isn't held to the same standards that skills are. It's very possible that you will have long-range teleportation before you have enough ride skill to commandeer a hippogriff. It's very possible that you will have all-the-time invisibility before your hide skill grows enough to sneak past a guard. Even if the game carefully balances skills versus phlebtonium (like Shadowrun), the skills will reach a soft cap on their effects long before the phlebtonium does.

Long story short, the only reason why skills aren't a problem in some games is because the power level plateaus off or caps before it gets to be an issue. This is why the skill system in 4E isn't as useless as in 3.5E--because 4E phlebtonium sucks a lot more ass across the board which indirectly reduces the power level.

[Lago PARANOIA]

That said, if you want to have a game where skills never grow but you want them not to be a waste of time, you need to either:

1) Have the power level of the game capped.

2) Retire skills after a certain point.

[TOZ]

Alternatively, play a better game than 3.5.

Example?

[Krakatoa]

My point isn't that there's any game that gets skills totally right, but that if 3.5 skills are as broken as deanruel suggested then why play it? I don't mean to be befouling thread, just suggesting a viable alternative to playing a game that the OP seems to find extremely flawed.

Alternatively, play a better game than 3.5.

Example?

Mutants and Masterminds, FATE, 4E, Wushu, Shadowrun, Warhammer, Call of Cthluhu, Gamma World....

If you specifically just mean FRPGs then I can't really say because I don't have any experience outside DnD.

[Kaelik]

My point isn't that there's any game that gets skills totally right, but that if 3.5 skills are as broken as deanruel suggested then why play it? I don't mean to be befouling thread, just suggesting a viable alternative to playing a game that the OP seems to find extremely flawed.

Probably, if I had to guess, because skills are like 1/200th of D&D, so the fact that one tiny part of a game is bad doesn't mean the whole game is bad, so most of your statements are wrong.

Mutants and Masterminds, FATE, 4E, Wushu, Shadowrun, Warhammer, Call of Cthluhu, Gamma World....

So four games that play entirely differently and can be compared to 3.5 just as well as Quake to Age of Empires, two games I haven't played, and a piece of unmitigated shit.

If you have any actual examples get back to us then.

[Krakatoa]

Some games do skills better than others. Unless you're just particularly attached to 3.5, there's no reason not to use one of them. Or at the very least, use their innovations to fix the 3.5 skill system you percieve to be broken.

I didn't say my list of games were neccesarily comparable to 3.5, just that they were better. In the same way that Star Wars is appreciably better than Twilight.

[Kaelik]

Some games do skills better than others. Unless you're just particularly attached to 3.5, there's no reason not to use one of them. Or at the very least, use their innovations to fix the 3.5 skill system you percieve to be broken.

??? Do you smoke crack or something?

A) If you are claiming that should stop playing a game he likes because some other game that is worse in every other way does one thing that isn't important and makes up only a very small part of the game slightly better... well, see ???

B) One of those games has a skill system that is even remotely compatible with 3.5. One. None of the others. It is literally impossible to graft Shadowruns skill system onto 3.5. That makes no sense.

I didn't say my list of games were neccesarily comparable to 3.5, just that they were better. In the same way that Star Wars is appreciably better than Twilight.

And you are wrong. Quake is not better than Age of Empires, or vice versa. Likewise, none of the games you listed are "better" than 3.5. They are merely different.

[Lago PARANOIA]

My point isn't that there's any game that gets skills totally right, but that if 3.5 skills are as broken as deanruel suggested then why play it?

3.5E skills work fairly well, like everything else in that game, at low levels. They only start to really suck if you are able to get a cheese loop at the point in the game when they're relevant (and even then, only iajutsu focus and diplomacy really qualify) or late in the game when they diverge an unacceptable amount and are inferior to spells anyway.

Then again, 3.5E skills suck more than 3.0E by way of making hide and move silently barely usable. Oh, well.

[Krakatoa]

Some games do skills better than others. Unless you're just particularly attached to 3.5, there's no reason not to use one of them. Or at the very least, use their innovations to fix the 3.5 skill system you percieve to be broken.

??? Do you smoke crack or something?

Clearly.

A) If you are claiming that should stop playing a game he likes because some other game that is worse in every other way does one thing that isn't important and makes up only a very small part of the game slightly better... well, see ???

I'm not claiming that. I'm claiming that if a mediocre game like 3.5 is not doing it for him, he should find something else. I don't give a damn what system that is.

B) One of those games has a skill system that is even remotely compatible with 3.5. One. None of the others. It is literally impossible to graft Shadowruns skill system onto 3.5. That makes no sense.

This, however, is a fair point.

And you are wrong. Quake is not better than Age of Empires, or vice versa. Likewise, none of the games you listed are "better" than 3.5. They are merely different.

Yes, but you're missing a crucial detail here: Quake and Age of Empires are both good games. DnD 3.5 is not a very good game. You can make it reasonably fun and playable with house rules, but you could also save yourself the effort and play something else.

[Kaelik]

I'm not claiming that. I'm claiming that if a mediocre game like 3.5 is not doing it for him, he should find something else. I don't give a damn what system that is.

...

Yes, but you're missing a crucial detail here: Quake and Age of Empires are both good games. DnD 3.5 is not a very good game.

The part where you fucked up is in assuming that everyone else in the universe is you.

This is in fact false. So your personal hatred of 3.5 for the time it killed you Mum has no bearing on how anyone else feels about the game.

[Dean]

I don't like the idea that a resource pool of abilities (IE Skills) ends up not being used by the end of the game. I like Tarkhis's solution in giving skills various abilities that pop up at certain levels. I don't know if he completed it yet but I do know I liked the idea.

On some level I agree. I have no problem with the Tome Of Prowess and in fact think it's a cool idea. I support it. Consider my idea a completely alternate solution to a similar problem.
In this system you didn't actually invest resources in something that depreciated in value. You were given the ability to Sneak about unnoticed and that was GREAT for a while and then as levels went up and you started fighting Balor's on the planes of Eternia it just started being less important. It's still good and a thing you are happy you have but it's not of the same caliber of ability that you are getting at higher levels. And that's fine. I am FINE with people being given free "Gymnastics" abilities at level one and at level 10 they take the ability to Fly and make it basically useless. That's actually kind of how this game is meant to go. You get better weapons as you level up, better spells, better feats, and better miscellaneous abilities. The fact that under this system skills are -recognized- as something that really only matters a lot within the mortal levels is totally acceptable and no character has lost out on anything for that fact.

[violence in the media]

Krakatoa, there's never been a game that has gotten skills right in the long term. Even if the math works out. Why? Two reasons.

1) People say that they want skills to be infinitely extensible in application (you start out climbing trees, you then climb up castles with boiling oil running down the wall, etc.) but they really don't. Almost all games impose a soft or hard limit as to what you can accomplish with a skill. Diplomacy is the obvious example, but almost every skill ends up like this. No one is going to let you use Disable Device to take down a castle in one skill check. No one is going to let you use Ride to make a sailboat take off into space. No one is going to let you use the Swim skill to fly or swim at supersonic speed. So there reaches a point where improving a skill past a certain point is a waste of time. And since skills don't reach a 'useless' cap uniformly (Perception stays fresh a lot longer than Swim for example).

Those applications are awesome. I endorse what you're selling, sir.

Though, I contend that the reason such things are not allowed is becuase of the nature of the skill system. I don't think anyone has a problem with a mid-to-high level character sailing into space with his awesome ride or piloting skills, it's that the task gets a static DC and someone figures out how to stack enough bonuses to do such a thing on a decent roll at level 3 or whatever. Even if you reign in the bonuses, you still have the wide variability of the d20, giving you those 15' long jump variances mentioned earlier.

Maybe the system of randomization for skills should be different? Maybe skills should just fall more into "I do X" applications? i.e. "I climb the cliff face. I feint the bugbear. I activate the wand. I ride the Moonbeast." Maybe there should be separate systems for skills which are almost always contested versus skills that are a more of a measure of your ability? Maybe skills should just be rolled on a different die?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Though, I contend that the reason such things are not allowed is becuase of the nature of the skill system. I don't think anyone has a problem with a mid-to-high level character sailing into space with his awesome ride or piloting skills, it's that the task gets a static DC and someone figures out how to stack enough bonuses to do such a thing on a decent roll at level 3 or whatever. Even if you reign in the bonuses, you still have the wide variability of the d20, giving you those 15' long jump variances mentioned earlier.

Those three problems are universal to any skill system that doesn't in of itself lead to superpowers. If you're talking about D&D then you have additional problems you need to take care of before you can ask 'how can I make this FUN?' Just because 3E and 4E D&D are really bad at balancing skill bonuses doesn't mean that every other game is. Champions and Mutants and Masterminds d20 isn't as much of a fuckup in this area.

One you take care of the RNG problem, then level 3 characters being able to collapse mundane dungeons as a standard action stops becoming a problem. I mean, assuming that even is a problem. You could get the same effect just by paying someone who had their own interdimensional sailboat or using a bunch of explosives. Which leads me to believe that even though you want skills to do more, you're not going to take it far enough to prevent their eventual obsolescence anyway.

I don't like the idea that a resource pool of abilities (IE Skills) ends up not being used by the end of the game.

Why?

As long as people get reimbursed for it, what's the big deal? Hirelings and gold pieces, staples of D&D play, get retired in place as resources later on.

[fectin]

Why is it bad to have skill ranks enable abilities? 15 ranks of ride allows you to ride into space (or whatever). Keep checks for some things, sure. But unlocked abilities don't fall off. If appraise 5 gives you identify, you might care about that, even at high level. That also moves away from the "pick X skills where you will be awesome and suck elsewhere" mentality.

[Darth Rabbitt]

Alternatively, play a better game than 3.5.

Example?

Mutants and Masterminds, FATE, 4E, Wushu, Shadowrun, Warhammer, Call of Cthluhu, Gamma World....

I don't know about the others, but 4E is definitely worse than 3.5.

And its skill system is particularly bad (the skill tags are better than skill points, but Skill Challenges, what else needs to be said)?

[Username17]

4e's skill system is a catastrofuck. Mutant's and Masterminds basically has the 3.5 Skill System, so I don't even know what it was doing on that list. Call of Cthulhu is actually kind of famous for having a shitty skill system, seing as how it's based on the BRD.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

Mutant's and Masterminds basically has the 3.5 Skill System, so I don't even know what it was doing on that list.

Mutants and Mastermind d20's skill system is a piece of crap because they do about as much as they do in every other d20 system but they're competing directly with superpowers. Oftentimes superpowers give you a side-order of skill bonuses along with some other relevant power. Or they completely obviate the need for a skill to begin with, like the incorporeal ones.

But it is an example of a game that does strictly control the kind of bonuses players can get, so the moral of the story is that there's a LOT more wrong with skill systems than just math-fail.

[CCarter]

As far as skills being useful at higher levels go - well, not everyone wants skills that can duplicate the effects of super powers. But maybe if your skill synergizes with your super powers...it can remain useful. Maybe there are are things I can do with rusting grasp and 40 ranks of Knowledge (engineering) that I couldn't do with rusting grasp alone...Craft checks + Fabricate (IIRC) or Simulacrum + Disguise would I guess be existing examples of times casters use their skills. More spells like that would be good.

[MGuy]

I actually would rather skills just duplicate superpowers or be necessary to get them. Both of these ideas are what I decided upon after Tarkiss's Tome of Prowess and they are going into my ruleset.