How DnD Skill System is Bad

[codeGlaze]

I've enjoyed the conversation, and so far, I'm inclined to think that my current solution (trained +5/expert +10) is the way to go, with keeping a tight leash on DCs. I also give everyone a bonus on skill checks equal to half level - so a 10th level character is better than a 1st level character on untrained skills... On the outside with assistance and such, a DC 40 is conceivably possible, but is fair to consider 'near impossible'.

If you consider a skill list roughly the same number of skills as 3.x, how would you award increases in skills? Currently we allow players to choose a number of trained skills at 1st level equal to Int modifier +1, and then +1 skill each level. So a +4 Int character could have 5 trained skills at 1st level, or 2 skills with Expert and 1 skill with Trained.

On the one hand, I'm concerned that it is somewhat limiting to have only a single skill selection as you advance, but since there are only two states for each skill (trained/untrained), large number of skills each level would quickly allow every character to be an expert in every skill.

Shatner posted a working system that already does what you want. It's called USE, I'll try and remember to drop the link later.

[spongeknight]

spongeknight, that sounds really fucking dumb. If not making the jump is so terrible, then when someone rolls a failure how is that not every bit as bad if not worse than someone not being able to make the jump in the first place?

It's the difference between "The wizard casts finger of death, make a save" and "the wizard casts Fuck You, you die automatically." It's literally the exact same thing. If you don't even get a chance to interact with something and you die, that's bullshit. But even if the enemy wizard targets your lowest save and you've only got a 30% chance or whatever to live through the effect you still get to try. That's the difference between a binary result making your death a certainty and a granular result making your death more likely than not.

[spongeknight]

Player: I try to jump over the chasm to catch Grognard the Two-Fisted as he flees
GM: You can't, you have 5' Jump and the chasm is 10'
Player: Well, what if I took a running start?
GM: No, your jump is 5', that's as far as you can go
Player: I've got these two axes that I looted earlier. Can I try using them to hook the edge of the chasm when I jump? Will that at least let me make it across, even if I have to climb up afterward?
GM: Nope, you can only go 5'
Player: If I use my quarterstaff as a makeshift pole vault can I get, say, a +2 circumstance bonus to some kind of roll to determine if I can exceed my normal jump distance?
GM: nope
Gary Oak: I've got 10' jump, so I just jump across and continue the adventure. Smell ya later!
GM: Okay, Gary took the ability that lets him automatically continue the adventure, so Player go play some Smash Bros while your character runs around the long way and fails to contribute.

Or you could... I don't know... attach a rope to the other side and have the other guy climb across? Is lateral thinking dead in this game to the point that your entire game falls apart because the DM says no. If an obstacle is insurmountable with one tool, try a different one. That's what D&D is all about.

I'm also not certain why you seem to think you can't just have something like a pole vault add feet to your jump directly instead of granting a bonus to your roll. Just because you've got a fixed number instead of a die roll doesn't mean you can't have modifiers to that fixed number.

And one last question: how is it better for the game if someone falls to their death botching a jump check? Even if just falling means you have to run around the long way, you're still in the same scenario. A smart player is not going to attempt that jump at all if his odds are low. He will instead use lateral thinking, because it's a hell of a lot better than taking a d20 and playing Fifteen Sides of Fuck You.

The first point is reasonable, if time isn't an issue. But the example I presented was chasing down a fleeing enemy. If you've got time to turn around, hammer a piton into the chasm face, throw a rope to your buddy and have him swing down and climb up it again, you've lost the chase. Whereas you both might have been able to simply jump across the chasm in the first place if both of you had the ability to try, as opposed to one person succeeding and the other failing automatically. And being able to try but failing due to the dice will make a player feel much less shit-on than just being told "that doesn't work" by the DM.

Putting variables on how far you cam jump due to circumstances is totally reasonable. I don't have a hard-on for jump being a skill, I'm just trying to present a case that completely binary results can, instead of speeding up play by ignoring pointless things, actual slow or stop someone's ability to play the game because they fail something without an option to try. Taking jump from a skill to a movement mode that had options like you can run/charge/double move or whatever is completely valid.

I agree that falling to your death is rather lame, but sometimes characters are going to want to try something that might not have a guaranteed success. Yes, most of the time a player will say "fuck that, I don't want to risk dying over something trivial." But if your character has been chasing Grognard the Two-Fisted for three levels and you know he's out of bullshit contingency teleports and besides you hit him with a dimensional anchor that will wear off in six rounds, you might just want to try jumping that chasm if the alternative is letting him escape again. And if your rules literally prevent you from trying, that's bad and will make players feel bad.

I actually don't care if you take out skills as a means to interact with the world at low level, I just think replacing the function of skills with binary effects will cause more problems than it solves. If Gary Oak has to choose between actually succeeding in chasing down the enemy or stopping to help Ash across the chasm, chances are he's going to try to achieve his objective and Ash doesn't get to play for a while. That's what is likely going to happen in a number of circumstances- people without the "social" attributes don't get to talk to people because they automatically fail at doing so, fighters auto-fail sneak rolls so they literally can't walk past sleeping blind and deaf hobos, wizards automatically fail climb checks so the ravenous horde of spiders devour him as his companions make it up the trees, ect.

You can't have challenges if you know beforehand if you will succeed or fail. And not all challenges are monsters- even in shitty premade Wizards of the Coast adventures they put stuff in like getting dragged into the water by sahuagin (where you can drown) and timed adventures where it really matters how quickly you can do things like climb or traverse a rope bridge in the wind with balance checks.

If anything I would advocate a minimum to your abilities but not maximum. Meaning that a dude who is totally sneaky and has trained extensively in sneakiness is just not going to get detected by normal guard dogs. There's a threshold of "you're just good enough, you don't have to roll for this anymore" that people can meet in all the various ways you can interact with the world with- the charming guy can just convince any random farmer to put him and his friends up for the night, no check required. That's fine. It's just telling the wizard that he can't even try to jump out of the way of certain death because he arbitrarily can never jump more than 5' that makes things dumb.

[Foxwarrior]

But even if the enemy wizard targets your lowest save and you've only got a 30% chance or whatever to live through the effect you still get to try.

Do you regard cheating at dice as a skill everyone should try to master?

[Username17]

spongeknight is totally right. Dying with no save is much much worse than dying because you failed a save. One is the DM being an asshole, the other is a twenty sided die being an asshole. I don't mind if someone is mad at a piece of plastic, the game shouldn't be making people mad at each other.

-Username17

[Cyberzombie]

The first point is reasonable, if time isn't an issue. But the example I presented was chasing down a fleeing enemy. If you've got time to turn around, hammer a piton into the chasm face, throw a rope to your buddy and have him swing down and climb up it again, you've lost the chase. Whereas you both might have been able to simply jump across the chasm in the first place if both of you had the ability to try, as opposed to one person succeeding and the other failing automatically. And being able to try but failing due to the dice will make a player feel much less shit-on than just being told "that doesn't work" by the DM.

Having a jump check doesn't solve any problems here though. In fact, it's very likely that in your average group of 3-5 characters, that at least one of them is going to fail the jump check and get left out.

If that's how the DM expected things to go down, then it's a poorly designed scenario. You really don't want to encourage the party to take an action that's going to take one or more of them out of play for a long time.

Putting variables on how far you cam jump due to circumstances is totally reasonable. I don't have a hard-on for jump being a skill, I'm just trying to present a case that completely binary results can, instead of speeding up play by ignoring pointless things, actual slow or stop someone's ability to play the game because they fail something without an option to try.

The game doesn't slow down because fighters can't cast wizard spells. If you outright can't do something, then it's simply not considered at all, and people don't waste time thinking about it. It's not good design to give people the option to try to do anything. Limits are good.

And even with a jump check there are limits. Your maximum jump range is whatever you can do on a natural 20. So the unjumpable pit is still something the DM can make if he wants.

An important design principle is that you only ever want to have a die roll if you're prepared for both failure and success. The idea of jumping some giant chasm and sometimes a PC falls to his death is probably not something you even want in your game. The unavoidable chasm of save-or-die is stupid.

And if your rules literally prevent you from trying, that's bad and will make players feel bad.

I've never had a wizard PC feel bad because he couldn't perform a sneak attack. I've never had a PC feel bad that he couldn't make his character try to run faster and exceed his normal speed. People accept these things are part of the rules and that's just the way things work.

You can't have challenges if you know beforehand if you will succeed or fail. And not all challenges are monsters- even in shitty premade Wizards of the Coast adventures they put stuff in like getting dragged into the water by sahuagin (where you can drown) and timed adventures where it really matters how quickly you can do things like climb or traverse a rope bridge in the wind with balance checks.

As I see it, skill challenges are generally a steaming pile of crap anyway. They're not interesting, since it involves just throwing d20s until the problem is either solved or you fail. That's not engaging.

What we should be aspiring for is eliminating some of those rolls for people who are trained. The underwater adventure doesn't require a single swim check from the trained swimmer. He straight up has a swim speed, and also suffers fewer or no combat penalties for underwater combat. When you're fighting on an ice floor the guy with balance skill trained is able to move at normal speed and not worry about slipping. So the PC with the right tool for the job feels like a bad ass.

Nothing is more disappointing to a PC than having the right skill trained for the job, like Tracking, and then rolling poorly so that your ranks end up being totally useless. And there's no need for it. That doesn't improve the game at all.

[zugschef]

spongeknight is totally right. Dying with no save is much much worse than dying because you failed a save. One is the DM being an asshole, the other is a twenty sided die being an asshole. I don't mind if someone is mad at a piece of plastic, the game shouldn't be making people mad at each other.

-Username17

Isn't it actually the DM's fault if you fall to death because of a botched jump roll because he is the one who set up the scenario? I mean, doesn't iterative probability lead to either the character unavoidably falling to death at some point or not falling to death because the DM either didn't create botched-jump-you-die scenarios or set the numbers to you can't botch your roll?

[hogarth]

The problem with your valid point is that DnD is not a genre that needs variable jumps.

Maybe not jumping, but D&D is totally a game full of people falling into 10' deep pits. If my character can never, ever try to escape from a 10' deep pit because he didn't take Climb for Beginners, that kind of sucks.

Now you could argue that a game full of 10' pits is stupid, but that's the genre of D&D.

I agree with the rest of the stuff you said.

[PhoneLobster]

Well, I got to say, I've seen some stupid things on this forum lately from the "ooh we like risk and believe our leet skillz will save us from itterative probability!" crowd.

But it LOOKS an awful lot like a few people are actually defending the idea of actually using "Jump check or you die!" in a D&D game like that's a good thing.

That is utterly unreasonable. If you buy into "Jump check or you die!" you are buying into some of the worst game design imaginable.

[MGuy]

spongeknight is totally right. Dying with no save is much much worse than dying because you failed a save. One is the DM being an asshole, the other is a twenty sided die being an asshole. I don't mind if someone is mad at a piece of plastic, the game shouldn't be making people mad at each other.

-Username17

Isn't it actually the DM's fault if you fall to death because of a botched jump roll because he is the one who set up the scenario? I mean, doesn't iterative probability lead to either the character unavoidably falling to death at some point or not falling to death because the DM either didn't create botched-jump-you-die scenarios or set the numbers to you can't botch your roll?

No. This is why. If you fail a roll you just lose out because of random chance on the spot. To have a binary system where you can't make "the attempt" at all means that you fail to do something at character creation instead of just once in a while or even most of the time. So if a DM has a scenario where jumping is a solution then a person rolling too low isn't the DM's fault. If we have a binary system where a person literally can't ever do something ever THEN the DM is at fault for even presenting it. Nor does it prevent the low roller from trying again (where applicable). Sure there could be a nonzero chance that a group given a task might ahve members fail that is not the same as saying X number of people will always fail because they chose to at character Gen.

[Cyberzombie]

No. This is why. If you fail a roll you just lose out because of random chance on the spot. To have a binary system where you can't make "the attempt" at all means that you fail to do something at character creation instead of just once in a while or even most of the time. So if a DM has a scenario where jumping is a solution then a person rolling too low isn't the DM's fault. If we have a binary system where a person literally can't ever do something ever THEN the DM is at fault for even presenting it. Nor does it prevent the low roller from trying again (where applicable). Sure there could be a nonzero chance that a group given a task might ahve members fail that is not the same as saying X number of people will always fail because they chose to at character Gen.

Blaming the DM because he made a pit wider than you can jump over? ... Seriously?

So much for any kind of creative thought.

Is your DM also forbidden from using locked doors unless someone takes Open Locks?

[deaddmwalking]

That is utterly unreasonable. If you buy into "Jump check or you die!" you are buying into some of the worst game design imaginable.

It doesn't have to be 'you die' to have negative consequences. 'You die' in this case is short for 'you fail'. Rarely are you going to combine a chasm with a fall so far that the PC is likely to die with a failed check. But even in a scenario where the chasm doesn't pose a risk of death, in a chase scenario, PCs will want to make the attempt. If they fail, they'll have to take a longer, slower route and/or possibly recover their damage.

The substance of good adventure design is meaningful choice. The choice between attempting a jump with a non-zero chance of failure and attaining a goal (high risk high reward) and carefully climbing down one side and up the other (low risk low reward) is meaningful. Obviously, smart players would choose a low risk high reward option if available (mass fly, anyone?).

I'm not sure that Jump needs to be a trained skill that involves resource investment. It could be replaced by a simple attribute check and I'd be pretty satisfied - but there does need to be some variable amount of distance you can jump.

[hogarth]

Isn't it actually the DM's fault if you fall to death because of a botched jump roll because he is the one who set up the scenario?

Bingo. "Fail a skill check = game over" is possible in a system with or without random rolls; it's a failure of encounter design, not the skill system.

I discussed this at some length in another thread, in the context of how computer RPGs avoid the "skill or game over" issue.

[Kaelik]

spongeknight, that sounds really fucking dumb. If not making the jump is so terrible, then when someone rolls a failure how is that not every bit as bad if not worse than someone not being able to make the jump in the first place?

It's the difference between "The wizard casts finger of death, make a save" and "the wizard casts Fuck You, you die automatically." It's literally the exact same thing. If you don't even get a chance to interact with something and you die, that's bullshit. But even if the enemy wizard targets your lowest save and you've only got a 30% chance or whatever to live through the effect you still get to try. That's the difference between a binary result making your death a certainty and a granular result making your death more likely than not.

No, it is the difference between "The Wizard casts Finger of Death, make a save" and "The Wizard casts Ray of Stun you are stunned."

Not jumping the chasm is not killing your character. Setbacks without rolls happen all the time and they are not the end of the fucking world.

[sabs]

The way to do a jump check like that for a chase scene is actually pretty simple.

Bad guy jumps the chasm..
PC's follow. they make jump checks:
On a success, they make it to the otherside, and have to take a round to get up.
On a Crit success, or if they make the DC by say more than 5... they just keep running.
On a fail, they get to the edge and stop.. their fail is that they don't have the crazy to jump it when they feel they won't make it.
On a crit fail, they jump and don't reach the otherside, dealing with what ever that means. But it could be that they're hanging onto a tree root and need someone to pull them up.

You don't have to kill the players on failed jump check. In a party, I can totally see someone faiing. It also gives uses for things like boots of jumping, or the jump spell (or a potion). Anything that encourages the players to carry potions, wands, activatable items is good.

[PhoneLobster]

It doesn't have to be 'you die' to have negative consequences.

Doesn't seem to be what people are saying, there are a lot of people buying into calling it a "Save or Die" and claiming it's better than "no-save or die".

And if you are going to scale it back to minor inconvenience you undermine the need for a "I demand a check because this is bullshit!" argument.

If it really is just a minor inconvenience then so what. No roll. No one cares.

[zugschef]

spongeknight is totally right. Dying with no save is much much worse than dying because you failed a save. One is the DM being an asshole, the other is a twenty sided die being an asshole. I don't mind if someone is mad at a piece of plastic, the game shouldn't be making people mad at each other.

-Username17

Isn't it actually the DM's fault if you fall to death because of a botched jump roll because he is the one who set up the scenario? I mean, doesn't iterative probability lead to either the character unavoidably falling to death at some point or not falling to death because the DM either didn't create botched-jump-you-die scenarios or set the numbers to you can't botch your roll?

No. This is why. If you fail a roll you just lose out because of random chance on the spot. To have a binary system where you can't make "the attempt" at all means that you fail to do something at character creation instead of just once in a while or even most of the time. So if a DM has a scenario where jumping is a solution then a person rolling too low isn't the DM's fault. If we have a binary system where a person literally can't ever do something ever THEN the DM is at fault for even presenting it. Nor does it prevent the low roller from trying again (where applicable). Sure there could be a nonzero chance that a group given a task might ahve members fail that is not the same as saying X number of people will always fail because they chose to at character Gen.

Ehm... but the DM does influence that because he sets the DC which determines your chances. If you have a jump modifier of 9 you can't botch a DC 10 jump check. If he sets the DC to 30 you flat out can't succeed on the check. What's the fuckin difference to just saying, "You can't make that jump."

And K did specifically point out that he thinks anybody should have basic skill sets. Every character can climb an apple tree. Every character can jump on a table. Unless you specifically don't want your character to be able to do that.

[MGuy]

No. This is why. If you fail a roll you just lose out because of random chance on the spot. To have a binary system where you can't make "the attempt" at all means that you fail to do something at character creation instead of just once in a while or even most of the time. So if a DM has a scenario where jumping is a solution then a person rolling too low isn't the DM's fault. If we have a binary system where a person literally can't ever do something ever THEN the DM is at fault for even presenting it. Nor does it prevent the low roller from trying again (where applicable). Sure there could be a nonzero chance that a group given a task might ahve members fail that is not the same as saying X number of people will always fail because they chose to at character Gen.

Blaming the DM because he made a pit wider than you can jump over? ... Seriously?

So much for any kind of creative thought.

Is your DM also forbidden from using locked doors unless someone takes Open Locks?

If you have a binary system where putting a single extra foot on a jump makes it impossible to ever jump that distance then placing it in the PCs way then yes you are being a D-Bag, however that's not the point I was making.

The point I made is that in a binary system it is decided that you cannot jump over a pit that's even one single foot wider than your allotted amount, ever. In a system that allows you to roll you can at least try. You might fail that roll but that just means you failed that one time 'cause luck and not because the DM made the chasm a single extra foot.

[MGuy]

Isn't it actually the DM's fault if you fall to death because of a botched jump roll because he is the one who set up the scenario? I mean, doesn't iterative probability lead to either the character unavoidably falling to death at some point or not falling to death because the DM either didn't create botched-jump-you-die scenarios or set the numbers to you can't botch your roll?

No. This is why. If you fail a roll you just lose out because of random chance on the spot. To have a binary system where you can't make "the attempt" at all means that you fail to do something at character creation instead of just once in a while or even most of the time. So if a DM has a scenario where jumping is a solution then a person rolling too low isn't the DM's fault. If we have a binary system where a person literally can't ever do something ever THEN the DM is at fault for even presenting it. Nor does it prevent the low roller from trying again (where applicable). Sure there could be a nonzero chance that a group given a task might ahve members fail that is not the same as saying X number of people will always fail because they chose to at character Gen.

Ehm... but the DM does influence that because he sets the DC which determines your chances. If you have a jump modifier of 9 you can't botch a DC 10 jump check. If he sets the DC to 30 you flat out can't succeed on the check. What's the fuckin difference to just saying, "You can't make that jump."

And K did specifically point out that he thinks anybody should have basic skill sets. Every character can climb an apple tree. Every character can jump on a table. Unless you specifically don't want your character to be able to do that.

Hopefully we're talking about a system close to like DnD where while the DM can influence checks there are rules for how far you can jump with what check. So yes while the GM can create a situation with a DC too high or too low that requires changing the entirety of the situation in order to get those resultant DCs. If the character can roll to sometimes jump 15ft instead of standard 10ft it feels freer instead of being prohibited from jumping anything beyond the basic 10ft.

[schpeelah]

Isn't it actually the DM's fault if you fall to death because of a botched jump roll because he is the one who set up the scenario? I mean, doesn't iterative probability lead to either the character unavoidably falling to death at some point or not falling to death because the DM either didn't create botched-jump-you-die scenarios or set the numbers to you can't botch your roll?

The difference here is with a roll, the characters have a chance of making it, and a chance of not making it, and the players accept that. Without the element of chance, the DM is forced to make a decision ahead of time whether they will make it.

[zugschef]

Isn't it actually the DM's fault if you fall to death because of a botched jump roll because he is the one who set up the scenario? I mean, doesn't iterative probability lead to either the character unavoidably falling to death at some point or not falling to death because the DM either didn't create botched-jump-you-die scenarios or set the numbers to you can't botch your roll?

The difference here is with a roll, the characters have a chance of making it, and a chance of not making it, and the players accept that. Without the element of chance, the DM is forced to make a decision ahead of time whether they will make it.

Every player accepts that his character dies because he failed one roll? I guess you haven't played with a lot of people...

[MGuy]

Isn't it actually the DM's fault if you fall to death because of a botched jump roll because he is the one who set up the scenario? I mean, doesn't iterative probability lead to either the character unavoidably falling to death at some point or not falling to death because the DM either didn't create botched-jump-you-die scenarios or set the numbers to you can't botch your roll?

The difference here is with a roll, the characters have a chance of making it, and a chance of not making it, and the players accept that. Without the element of chance, the DM is forced to make a decision ahead of time whether they will make it.

Every player accepts that his character dies because he failed one roll? I guess you haven't played with a lot of people...

zugs the alternative is you get to die without making a roll at all.

[zugschef]

The difference here is with a roll, the characters have a chance of making it, and a chance of not making it, and the players accept that. Without the element of chance, the DM is forced to make a decision ahead of time whether they will make it.

Every player accepts that his character dies because he failed one roll? I guess you haven't played with a lot of people...

zugs the alternative is you get to die without making a roll at all.

First off, some people will always complain when their character dies, no matter what. Others won't accept that a single botched roll kills their character. That's the reality.

And as for the last part:

spongeknight, that sounds really fucking dumb. If not making the jump is so terrible, then when someone rolls a failure how is that not every bit as bad if not worse than someone not being able to make the jump in the first place?

It's the difference between "The wizard casts finger of death, make a save" and "the wizard casts Fuck You, you die automatically." It's literally the exact same thing. If you don't even get a chance to interact with something and you die, that's bullshit. But even if the enemy wizard targets your lowest save and you've only got a 30% chance or whatever to live through the effect you still get to try. That's the difference between a binary result making your death a certainty and a granular result making your death more likely than not.

No, it is the difference between "The Wizard casts Finger of Death, make a save" and "The Wizard casts Ray of Stun you are stunned."

Not jumping the chasm is not killing your character. Setbacks without rolls happen all the time and they are not the end of the fucking world.

[MGuy]

Every player accepts that his character dies because he failed one roll? I guess you haven't played with a lot of people...

zugs the alternative is you get to die without making a roll at all.

First off, some people will always complain when their character dies, no matter what. Others won't accept that a single botched roll kills their character. That's the reality.

And as for the last part:

It's the difference between "The wizard casts finger of death, make a save" and "the wizard casts Fuck You, you die automatically." It's literally the exact same thing. If you don't even get a chance to interact with something and you die, that's bullshit. But even if the enemy wizard targets your lowest save and you've only got a 30% chance or whatever to live through the effect you still get to try. That's the difference between a binary result making your death a certainty and a granular result making your death more likely than not.

No, it is the difference between "The Wizard casts Finger of Death, make a save" and "The Wizard casts Ray of Stun you are stunned."

Not jumping the chasm is not killing your character. Setbacks without rolls happen all the time and they are not the end of the fucking world.

If you're going to say people bitch about characters dying no matter what then don't present it as an issue. You can't in the same breath bring up that people are going to bitch and that they're going to bitch no matter what. Dying without a save (IE rocks fall everyone dies) is WORSE than at least getting a roll for it. And as for Kaeliks statement that does not apply to this. You presuppose a situation where a character dies because of not making a jump. Then I in turn present the same situation except with a binary system where a character CAN'T EVER make the roll. We're not talking about a jump they decide not to take because they can do so for both, we're talking about a jump that's happened where one person only might fail and the other person can't ever.

[PhoneLobster]

zugs the alternative is you get to die without making a roll at all.

Yeah... like that isn't a gigantic flamboyant case of a false choice.

The actual alternative is they just don't attempt the jump they can't make and are in fact totally fine.

So if falling down the chasm can kill you, as is being fervently argued in favor, the real choice is A) System that might let you jump it, and potentially generates "Jump Check Or Die" or B)System that might let you jump it, and never generated 'Jump Check Or Die".

Hell an actual realistic assessment of Jump Skill systems doesn't even have option A ruling out situations of "Always can jump" and "Never Can Jump". If this "if you can't jump your head explodes!" bullshit were valid option A kinda falls down on it too, AND still generated "Jump Check Or Die".