How DnD Skill System is Bad

[vagrant]

So have different skill progressions, as I suggested above. Some classes can't advance in some skills above a certain point, while other classes can. The rogue can totally sneak in the middle of a completely empty and lit room, whereas the fighter and the wizard can't. (Not by the sneak skill, at least), but they can all sneak past guards in the dungeon they're about to assault.

[vagrant]

The way to make a skillful class look cool is through good class features. "You have the same skills that every other class has" is not a good class feature.

I really don't think skills should ever be the focus of a class. Skills should be minor background stuff that every character gets, but not something you devote a whole class to.

The rogue is one of the worst concepts in D&D, and one that continually gets perpetuated through all the editions, because they're stuck on having this thief who is a mediocre fighter and somehow solves problems with skills instead of force. 3E/4E partially helped this by turning the rogue into a flanking master of the cheap shot, but that's seldom what people really want to play.

What people really want is batman. You fight well, you can sneak around, pick locks and do investigations.

Wizard with knock, polymorph, divinations, and invisibility. /snark

In reality though, people do in fact want to play rogues. Just look at any game with a 'rogue' or 'rogue-like' class. People play the shit out of rogues. DnD has never done rogues well, but that's not a reason it couldn't be done well ever.

[Cyberzombie]

In reality though, people do in fact want to play rogues. Just look at any game with a 'rogue' or 'rogue-like' class. People play the shit out of rogues. DnD has never done rogues well, but that's not a reason it couldn't be done well ever.

People like stealth characters, but there's a difference between stealth characters and the rogue class. People want to play characters like Batman who can hold their own in combat. The fragile stealthy glass cannon isn't a very popular archetype.

[vagrant]

Look at any standard MMO layout - rogues are one of the most popular classes despite the fact that they're DPS, even for solo instances. I'd argue exact the opposite.

[Cyberzombie]

Look at any standard MMO layout - rogues are one of the most popular classes despite the fact that they're DPS, even for solo instances. I'd argue exact the opposite.

I wouldn't even call an MMO rogue an actual rogue. They're more just a variant on a fighter. They don't really sneak around or do batman stuff. It pretty much means DPS fighter instead of tank fighter.

[TarkisFlux]

The way to make a skillful class look cool is through good class features. "You have the same skills that every other class has" is not a good class feature.

I don't understand why your "class feature" can't be a bonus to a skill though. Everyone can poke someone with a sharp stick, I doubt anyone has a problem with the Paladin having a "class feature" where he's better at it. And I equally doubt that anyone has a problem to the Paladin's poking with a sharp stick using the same "attack roll" that every other character uses. Why then, would you balk at precisely the same reasoning when it's that everyone can sneak across a room, and the Assassin has a "class feature" where is is better at it?

That seems like an oversimplification of Hogarth's point.

Hogarth's point, in so far as he even has one, is wrong due to oversimplification. You don't have the same skills as everyone else does, or at least not the same 'access' to them as everyone else does which is what's actually important. Someone who has Hide as a class skill is at a serious advantage for getting Hide stuff compared to someone who doesn't. It's extremely similar to the spell system, where someone who has Divine spells is at a serious advantage for getting Diving stuff over those who don't. It's explicitly not exclusive access in many cases because your spells are shared across many classes that have similar or equivalent access, but it's preferential access for a lot of stuff compared to other classes. Spells as a class feature is a lot closer to a super powered skill system than he's suggesting, but it's okay for spells because spells I guess .

Long ago Lago (or maybe not so long ago, I can't be fucked to search for the thread) talked about wanting to make skills irrelevant after some point. And that's probably a better formulation of the position than Hogarth's. If you don't want skills to give super powers then you don't want skills to mean a damn outside of low levels, and you may as well be explicit about that. Hogarth gets around to agreeing with that later on, but you really need to start there as a design decision.

Because it is a fucking design decision, not an objectively better one, that only really determines where you put the utility functions of classes that don't get spells (in the DnD 3.x case anyway, where some people get utility functions in their special subsystem and some people don't; it is explicitly not true in 4e or other games). If you want to grant the same super powers to everyone with a high hide rank you write it into the skill to save space and redundancy (and suffer skill feature explosion), and if you want to grant different super powers to different classes as class features independent of skills then you do that instead (and suffer class feature explosion). You make your choice depending on your design goals and willingness to make the game a skill based game for some classes, not throw that down as an afterthought. Else you invite people like vagrant (who I agree with) disagreeing with accepting the class feature position as the solution (though it is undoubtedly a solution).

[hogarth]

So have different skill progressions, as I suggested above. Some classes can't advance in some skills above a certain point, while other classes can. The rogue can totally sneak in the middle of a completely empty and lit room, whereas the fighter and the wizard can't. (Not by the sneak skill, at least), but they can all sneak past guards in the dungeon they're about to assault.

Wait -- so how's that different from one class getting something good as a class feature?

Hogarth's point, in so far as he even has one, is wrong due to oversimplification. You don't have the same skills as everyone else does, or at least not the same 'access' to them as everyone else does which is what's actually important. Someone who has Hide as a class skill is at a serious advantage for getting Hide stuff compared to someone who doesn't.

Are you saying that it's hard for a wizard to get the same number of ranks in Hide as a rogue of the same level in 3.5? Because it's not.

If you don't want skills to give super powers then you don't want skills to mean a damn outside of low levels, and you may as well be explicit about that.

Talking about skills "meaning a damn" is misunderstanding what a skill system is supposed to do in the first place. Skills are first and foremost a way of describing the laws of physics and/or biology in your game world. How far can the average person jump or climb or swim, and how far can an expert jump/climb/swim? How good are people at hearing or seeing? The fact that the average Joe Schmoe can jump 10' (or 5' or 50' or whatever) doesn't have a "meaning".

What skills shouldn't be is a way of saying "if you don't have a +24 bonus in Open Locks, game over". That's just stupid.

[TarkisFlux]

So have different skill progressions, as I suggested above. Some classes can't advance in some skills above a certain point, while other classes can. The rogue can totally sneak in the middle of a completely empty and lit room, whereas the fighter and the wizard can't. (Not by the sneak skill, at least), but they can all sneak past guards in the dungeon they're about to assault.

Wait -- so how's that different from one class getting something good as a class feature?

It's different in that multiple classes can get the same thing without piles of wasted page text. Are you seriously proposing that the assassin and rogue and ranger and monk and whoever else get entirely different boosts to every one of their class feature boosted skills that happen to overlap? You don't seem to want that offloaded to the "class skills list" in favor of the "class abilities list", so why is that fucking better?

Hogarth's point, in so far as he even has one, is wrong due to oversimplification. You don't have the same skills as everyone else does, or at least not the same 'access' to them as everyone else does which is what's actually important. Someone who has Hide as a class skill is at a serious advantage for getting Hide stuff compared to someone who doesn't.

Are you saying that it's hard for a wizard to get the same number of ranks in Hide as a rogue of the same level in 3.5? Because it's not.

Sure, the wizard can set a feat on fire (or maybe find a weird ACF and give something else up). Or the wizard can be a lot higher level than the rogue. Or the rogue could elect to not invest in the skill at his full rate so the wizard can keep up. The second and third options aren't worth responding to, but the first involves a paid cost and is basically fine. If someone wants to buy full access with character resources, I don't fucking care, because opportunity cost and whatnot. Do you think the lack of cost for the class with it as a "class skill" is not an advantage for some reason?

But even with that cost paid, the broader access question (which I suppose I could have been more focused on) remains unresolved. A wizard can't match the ranks in the same class skills as the rogue even if they do want to match them in a few areas, and they pay a reasonable high price for doing that. Yeah, they can use a different subsystem to mimic lots of the effects, but it's a different subsystem with different expectations of uses and durations.

Class skill access is ultimately a shorthand class feature (if you want all classes with the same skill to get the same baseline benefit anyway), it's just not listed with their other class features.

If you don't want skills to give super powers then you don't want skills to mean a damn outside of low levels, and you may as well be explicit about that.

Talking about skills "meaning a damn" is misunderstanding what a skill system is supposed to do in the first place. Skills are first and foremost a way of describing the laws of physics and/or biology in your game world. How far can the average person jump or climb or swim, and how far can an expert jump/climb/swim? How good are people at hearing or seeing? The fact that the average Joe Schmoe can jump 10' (or 5' or 50' or whatever) doesn't have a "meaning".

No, I understand what they were supposed to do. They were supposed to be the utility functions for non-casting classes who wanted to affect their environment in game. That's their whole reason for existence, non-combat things for non-casters. It's in their fucking DNA (or whatever the game equivalent is) in the form of NWPs. They only partially describe physics, since the physics of the world includes energy violating effects from waggling your fingers and spouting gibberish. That skills stopped at mundane real world-esque bullshit by comparison is a serious failing of the game and imagination that should be corrected, but where the correction occurs is largely a question of preference and willingness to generate different things for different classes.

What skills shouldn't be is a way of saying "if you don't have a +24 bonus in Open Locks, game over". That's just stupid.

I don't disagree with this. But if you think walking into that room with a +2 in open lock ends the game, you're a fucking idiot. Your options include:
[*]Open / bypass it with magic.
[*]Cut it down with swords or different magic.
[*]Fucking leave and go on a different adventure (which may lead to a really disempowering deus ex because your MC is crap, but the game goes on at least).
The game ends when the MC of the players leave. Everything else is just creative problem solving or derailment, but not actual game ending.

[K]

The only problem with turning a rank-based skill system into a system where people gain abilities as powerful as spells at some rate of progression is that it begs the question of "why don't you just give people abilities as powerful as spells at some rate of progression and skip the ranks entirely?"

[Username17]

The only problem with turning a rank-based skill system into a system where people gain abilities as powerful as spells at some rate of progression is that it begs the question of "why don't you just give people abilities as powerful as spells at some rate of progression and skip the ranks entirely?"

I would argue that the only problem with rank based skill systems giving people spell effects is that the math is super fucked. There just isn't a way to collect +1 bonuses on a d20 roll to go from "no super effect" to "super effect" without that being dumb. But on a harshly curved roll (like 3d6) or exponential roll (like dicepool), you could do it. Because then you'd be able to transition from results being impossible to them being very likely without breaking the RNG.

The Truenamer didn't work because the d20 system doesn't accommodate skill rolls to activate super powers worth a shit. But that doesn't mean other game systems can't handle it. Shadowrun certainly has problems, but using skill rolls to activate superpowers works fine.

-Username17

[FatR]

The real reasons DnD skill system (and all similar systems) is unsatisfying are not RNG problems. They are related to defaulting almost everything to binary Y/N state. Consider the following:

(1)Whatever you views on game lethality are, the overwhelming majority of people agree that is simply not acceptabe to have life or death, possibly of the entire party, or at least success or failure of a particular adventure, be tied to a single Y/N roll. And yet skills that are related to getting into places, avoiding detection, or getting what you want from people, do exactly that. In actual practice this means that the actual value of your Balance or Survival is largely meaningless, as GM won't let you fail when failure has actual consequences. The stakes on a honest roll are too high for a single roll, particularly in a game where generating characters takes hours.

(2)While 3.X is a step in a right direction here, with take 10/20, the game still does not differentiate strongly enough between skills which you can attempt as many times as you like, and having high values in which only saves time, and skills that you can attempt only once.

(3)Things that might serve as alternative approaches to fighting everyone and everything, like stealth and diplomacy, are simply not interesting to try, because the game solves them by a single roll. Which might be a desirable result for a hack&slash game, but from a lead fantasy game in 2013 I expect a bit more.

Now in 3.X those problems are not so relevant, because magic displaces the majority of skills quickly. I expect them to be very relevant in Next, though.

[K]

The RNG issue has nothing to do with the fact that simply giving people abilities in some progression is easier and less fiddly than trying to use any kind of RNG (functioning or otherwise) and then give them abilities.

RPGs have been trying to make all-inclusive "SKILL at X number" skill system for decades and they have all sucked. You can look at something as MTP as the Rifts version of skills or something as integrated and crunchy as Shadowrun and you still run into the problem that most of those rolls are made up on the spot and most of those systems would do better without rolls and with actual abilities.

It doesn't even matter if those abilities then require checks. Vampire used to hand out abilities that each used a unique check for each one and that worked almost as well as some unified stat. Maybe better in some cases. (Of course, this was tied to another example of a MTP "skill at X" system....).

[Username17]

It doesn't even matter if those abilities then require checks.

You just took your entire argument, wiped your ass with it, and threw it over the fence of a school yard. There is literally no difference at all between giving someone an ability that requires a check to activate and giving someone an ability that activates if the players gets a certain check result. Those are exactly the same thing.

-Username17

[K]

It doesn't even matter if those abilities then require checks.

You just took your entire argument, wiped your ass with it, and threw it over the fence of a school yard. There is literally no difference at all between giving someone an ability that requires a check to activate and giving someone an ability that activates if the players gets a certain check result. Those are exactly the same thing.

-Username17

Running many abilities off of one stat is completely different from giving each ability a different kind of stat check.

The first has led to decades of failure. The second has not.

[Username17]

Running many abilities off of one stat is completely different from giving each ability a different kind of stat check.

The first has led to decades of failure. The second has not.

I am totally mystified as to why you'd think that was a thing you should say. First of all, when you make a test to see if your action activates, that really says nothing about whether the ability to attempt action was unlocked by an arbitrary notation on your character sheet or is a general property of the type of test you're making - a fundamental point that this quote of your does not refute or even address. Secondly, when you make that test, it says absolutely nothing about whether your other level appropriate actions are based on the same attribute or not. Thirdly, if we're talking 3rd edition D&D, the single attribute dependent classes actually do fine, it's the multiple attribute dependency characters who can't pull their weight. Fourthly, since I'm assuming that any D&D type game is going to strive to have more than six abilities total, it's literally impossible to have every ability run off a different kind of stat check - there are simply orders of magnitude more "abilities" than "types of stat" for them to reference, so redundancy is literally inevitable.

Basically, you just served up a plate of nonsequitor, and to the extent that it made any sense at all it was completely wrong.

-Username17

[hogarth]

The only problem with turning a rank-based skill system into a system where people gain abilities as powerful as spells at some rate of progression is that it begs the question of "why don't you just give people abilities as powerful as spells at some rate of progression and skip the ranks entirely?"

That's a reasonable question. The answer: for simulationist purposes. (Oops, I used the "S" word.)

Actually, it's two questions:

* Why have a skill system? Because, as I noted above, in a game where you're simulating a particular genre, you will inevitably get players wanting to perform genre-specific non-combat actions that anyone should be able to attempt (like swimming), and it's a good thing to have a system to resolve those actions. Even if that system is as simple as "everyone succeeds at swimming all the time" or whatever.

* Why have ranks in your skill system? Because having some granularity feels more "realistic" (and I use that term very loosely), so it's appropriate for some genres.

It doesn't even matter if those abilities then require checks.

I'm not sure how you're distinguishing between an "ability" and a "skill", but I agree that a skill system doesn't have to have dice rolling. For instance, I don't think there would be anything particularly wrong with a skill system where a PC with the Lockpicking skill can pick 100% of all locks in the world and a PC without Lockpicking can pick 0% of all locks. (Note that that would be a skill system with two ranks: "untrained" and "expert".)

[shadzar]

D&D skill system is bad because it exists. either have classes, and let them be what the character does trough training, or just have skills.

seriously the big draw to PO in the late 90s was people wanting to build their own class using CPs, or their own subrace....

class+skills, just doesnt work. pick one or the other and you have a better system. had the thief class never came to b, NONE of this would even have been a problem. D&D would have stayed a class-based game, and something else could have come along for a skills-based game.

HELL, i might have even played and like a skills-based fantasy game, sine it is basically tech-trees from an RTS in most parts, but they jsut don't go together. when i order the blue plate special its because i want the options it comes with, which are none. so dont ask me about other things. when i want ala carte, then i will order bits and pieces.

this gives the best of both worlds, and a stronger system when it has focus, rather than not knowing its ass from a hole in the ground such as a class+skills system.

[vagrant]

Damnnit Shadzar, we were having a perfectly good discussion before you showed up.

To answer your question, Hogarth - skills allow a skillful (as opposed to caster) character to have a measure of versatility. Just as the wizard doesn't auto-learn every spell ever, the rogue doesn't auto-magically gain invis-as-sneak or charm person-as-diplomacy.

This entails have a varied, non-redundant, and robust skill system, of course. Ranks represent, as an abstraction, the level of training put into doing a specific thing. (Which is not directly your class feature - your class feature as skillful dude is the boat-load of skill points you get to invest in said skills, plus whatever else - sneak attack or skirmish or w/e.)

That said, I'd like to not have numbered ranks but four to five ranks of proficiency, so you don't have to fiddle with the OVER 9000!!!1one skill points building a high-level character entails.

I personally don't like auto-successes for skills (which I'm taking to mean non-combat actions) any more than I like auto-successes for combat actions. (Save or Lose, I'm looking at you.) I agree that binary results are an issue, but you can simply design the game with subsystems for certain skills that don't fucking do that.

Sneak

Sneak is a common skill, and can be taken by anyone. It allows the character to hide and use stealth to subvert or avoid obstacles, such as guards or monsters.

Ranks:

Untrained - You have no particular training in this skill, and are not allowed to take favourable situational modifiers on your roll. You make a dex check, with all appropriate negative modifiers.

Trained - You have a familiarity with the skill, and make use of basic positive situational modifiers. Basic modifiers are full cover and shadows.

Skilled - You are proficient at with the skill, and can negate negative modifiers due to armour and encumbrance, in addition to receiving any basic positive modifiers.

Journeyman - You are highly competent with the skill, and can negate negative modifiers due to the alertness and unfavourable lighting, in addition to receiving advanced positive modifiers. Advanced positive modifiers consist of camouflage and cover.

Master - Your prowess with the skills is nigh-magical. You can negate all negative modifiers, receive cover modifiers without cover, and can reroll a failed sneak check per scene.

Obviously, that would have be written out with a bit more clarity for a game (tables with a list of positive/negative modifiers, for starters), but ideally, I'd like a skill system to work something like that. Then you could set the balance at something like, 'A Skilled fighter in plate armour can sneak past Skilled guards with perception 50% of the time, and with cover, half-movement, and moving through shadows can sneak past Skilled guards with perception 80% of the time.'

A rogue, of course, can waltz through the guards wearing a birthday suit and a diamond-encrusted cockring at Master and be totally hidden, but at Master you're just badarse like that.

[Sashi]

It doesn't even matter if those abilities then require checks.

You just took your entire argument, wiped your ass with it, and threw it over the fence of a school yard. There is literally no difference at all between giving someone an ability that requires a check to activate and giving someone an ability that activates if the players gets a certain check result. Those are exactly the same thing.

There's a lot of difference. For example, the Climb skill has DC 100 to climb a smooth ceiling. But you could also have a feat that says "You may crawl on walls and ceilings as if you have spider climb, you must still make climb checks to avoid falling if you take damage."

[K]

It doesn't even matter if those abilities then require checks.

You just took your entire argument, wiped your ass with it, and threw it over the fence of a school yard. There is literally no difference at all between giving someone an ability that requires a check to activate and giving someone an ability that activates if the players gets a certain check result. Those are exactly the same thing.

There's a lot of difference. For example, the Climb skill has DC 100 to climb a smooth ceiling. But you could also have a feat that says "You may crawl on walls and ceilings as if you have spider climb, you must still make climb checks to avoid falling if you take damage."

Yes.

More generally, the difference is in something like Vampire Disciplines where you get abilities and then each one might have a unique combination of stat to get that one power to activate. That works at all because it's not trying to slot itself into some reductionist math scheme where Presence 1 is just one die in your Presence pool to activate high end Presence like Majesty AND low-end stuff like Awe.

Math schemes have been with RPGs for decades because people really like to look at a skill and know that it's objective Climb 4 and know that its better than Climb 2, but the qualities of these math schemes means that either your skills cover only token differences in skill (Shadowrun) or they fail completely (Rifts) or they can't conceptually cover the range of abilities they need to because the dice and range will never be big enough (DnD 3e/4e).

It's only adding insult to injury when you realize that you could just give people abilities and save design time and play time. For example, rather than trying to fit all of the various levels of Climbing skill into some dice-rolling mechanic that covers low and high ranges of skill, you could just say "Beginner Climbing lets you scale low-difficulty walls at 10' a turn and Advanced Climbing lets you scale high difficulty walls at 10' a turn, medium at 30, and low at 30'. Make a DC 15 Reflex save to half damage if you fall."

There are a lot of days when I wonder if RPG designers are secret math fetishists who perform deviant sex acts while performing simple math calculations with dice. It's the only excuse for all of the unnecessary dice rolling. (Of course, it might be because of Big Dice lobbying Congress for favorable legislation, but that one sounds weird.)

[Sashi]

And now you're off the rails. Rolling dice and comparing them to numbers is literally the difference between MTP and a functioning conflict resolution mechanic.

Climb, Balance, and Jump can be reduced to abilities because they're just movement modes and it's actually super weird to have a climb speed for one person, and a climb skill for another. In a way that it's not weird to have a fly speed and a jump skill.

Your argument is uselessly reductionist, it's like saying we don't need save DC's, and a wizard can just point at someone and put them to sleep by expending a spell slot.

[hogarth]

It's only adding insult to injury when you realize that you could just give people abilities and save design time and play time. For example, rather than trying to fit all of the various levels of Climbing skill into some dice-rolling mechanic that covers low and high ranges of skill, you could just say "Beginner Climbing lets you scale low-difficulty walls at 10' a turn and Advanced Climbing lets you scale high difficulty walls at 10' a turn, medium at 30, and low at 30'. Make a DC 15 Reflex save to half damage if you fall."

It's a matter of granularity. In your climbing system, two possibilities of success exist for an Advanced climber: either a wall is climbable 100% of the time or it's unclimbable 100% of the time. In 3.5E D&D, a PC is faced with 21 possible gradations of chances for success. Some people like more continuous levels of difficulty and some people couldn't care less.

[Cyberzombie]

And now you're off the rails. Rolling dice and comparing them to numbers is literally the difference between MTP and a functioning conflict resolution mechanic.

No it's not. You can play MTP with dice, check out Dungeon World.

You also don't need dice rolls to have a resolution system either. Chess, Go and Checkers all do fine without dice rolls.

Climb, Balance, and Jump can be reduced to abilities because they're just movement modes and it's actually super weird to have a climb speed for one person, and a climb skill for another. In a way that it's not weird to have a fly speed and a jump skill.

What K was advocating is dumping useless rolling, and that I can get behind. The fly skill in pathfinder is a great example of a bunch of extra rolls that nobody wants to make. Everyone would be happy if that part is just stripped from the system.

I don't see why you couldn't do the same thing for Jumping. Do we really need a resolution mechanic where sometimes you jump 5 feet and another time you jump 15?

Your argument is uselessly reductionist, it's like saying we don't need save DC's, and a wizard can just point at someone and put them to sleep by expending a spell slot.

No, it's nothing like that. It's more like wondering why we don't roll for every spell a wizard casts to see if he casts it successfully or roll for an athletics for every movement action instead of having a 30 ft speed.

Reducing unnecessary rolling is a good thing.

[Sashi]

I just remembered a LARP where one guy was playing a grandmaster chess player, and to represent that he got abilities that let him "cheat" in the game (double move, revive a piece, that kind of thing). So you're right that you don't need to roll a die as part of roleplaying "Guy better at chess than you actually are".

The problem is that's called "getting a handicap" and only works if the person is actually capable and willing to do the action that's being handicapped.

If nothing else, you still need a die roll to objectively and non-deterministically resolve ties. Even if it's just "flip a coin".

[PhoneLobster]

I just remembered a LARP where one guy was playing a grandmaster chess player, and to represent that he got abilities that let him "cheat" in the game (double move, revive a piece, that kind of thing). So you're right that you don't need to roll a die as part of roleplaying "Guy better at chess than you actually are".

The problem is that's called "getting a handicap" and only works if the person is actually capable and willing to do the action that's being handicapped.

Did you actually just try to claim that the only way to simulate granularity/abstraction of say, a Climb Check, without a skill+roll mechanic would be if people were willing to "do the action that is being handicapped" and actually try and climb on the fucking ceiling with variable amounts of handy cap bonus gear?

Really? because as bat shit fucking crazy as that sounds that it the ONLY way that statement of yours parses or appears to have any fucking relevance to what anyone else is saying on this thread.

If nothing else, you still need a die roll to objectively and non-deterministically resolve ties. Even if it's just "flip a coin".

Yes. When you "tie" with climbing on the ceiling. In a binary system of autosuccesses and cancellations of autosuccess. Because THAT is possible...