How should skills be done in D&D?

[fectin]

Like archivists?

[TarkisFlux]

One of the problems with knowledge is that it is inconsistently broad within itself. While it's probably acceptable for knowledge (arcana) to let you ID arcane effects or arcane based creatures anywhere in the multiverse, it's doing something very different than using knowledge (nobility) to tell who the 3rd cousin of the kings brother is in any kingdom anywhere in the multiverse. The arcana case is using core gameworld metaphysics to make inferences about things while the nobility case is recalling specific facts. The implied body of knowledge and training between those two cases is vastly different, and also causes player spasms IME. Knowledge arcana and similar could be a non shit skill (assuming it was built around inferences and not recall, so it would be useful for IDing things fresh from the vat or whatever), but nobility and similar are much more bizarre. That they're all competing with fucking visiting a local library and looking shit up is just extra shit on the salad, though the arcana case at least has an answer for those who like to pull out medieval bestiaries to argue that people who looked up creatures in books got as much crap as truth (despite those being of dubious comparison value for a world where the creatures actually exist).

The knowledge broadness gets even weirder when you compare it to the other bullshit skills - profession / perform / craft. All of those require you to specialize to some degree, and that specialization is generally portable to other places or situations (though profession barrister is a shitty example of "specialization" in this case). Investing skill points in those things is of dubious value, but they at least (mostly) avoid the overly broad problem.

Which is a whole fuckload of problems with those skills, but they're all manageable. The really easy solution is to 'not fucking do them' and handwave the whole thing. Just let people have or acquire relevant backgrounds and use them in appropriate ways. MTP is a solution here, but its one that will also make a bunch of players froth at the mouth and may cause you consistency problems across games.

The other solution is to write rules for the acquisition of these things that avoids the problems with other systems. You avoid the value problem by not spending points on craft / perform / profession / knowledge from the same pool as character power stuff. Whether it comes from a different character level limited pool or is time limited or just passing them out because is not really that important. You avoid the broadness problem by making people specialize in appropriate ways - craft by what you make, perform by what you play/act, profession by distinct field, knowledge of religion by pantheon, knowledge of nobility by region, that sort of thing. If knowledge of religion is separate from knowledge of divine magic then you can absolutely have characters who can ID spells or whatever cast by clerics from different cultures even if they have no fucking idea who they worship or what their traditions are.

Either solution still leaves space for characters to visit a library or sage or contact other plane or whatever, get some info, and go on about their lives without devaluing their investments in other skills. At best spending secondary resources on knowledge saves them a library trip later on, and at worst it allows people to play pretty pretty dress up with their non-critical skill sets a bit for characterization purposes.

[OgreBattle]

Which is a whole fuckload of problems with those skills, but they're all manageable. The really easy solution is to 'not fucking do them' and handwave the whole thing. Just let people have or acquire relevant backgrounds and use them in appropriate ways. MTP is a solution here, but its one that will also make a bunch of players froth at the mouth and may cause you consistency problems across games.

The other solution is to write rules for the acquisition of these things that avoids the problems with other systems. You avoid the value problem by not spending points on craft / perform / profession / knowledge from the same pool as character power stuff. Whether it comes from a different character level limited pool or is time limited or just passing them out because is not really that important. You avoid the broadness problem by making people specialize in appropriate ways - craft by what you make, perform by what you play/act, profession by distinct field, knowledge of religion by pantheon, knowledge of nobility by region, that sort of thing. If knowledge of religion is separate from knowledge of divine magic then you can absolutely have characters who can ID spells or whatever cast by clerics from different cultures even if they have no fucking idea who they worship or what their traditions are.

Either solution still leaves space for characters to visit a library or sage or contact other plane or whatever, get some info, and go on about their lives without devaluing their investments in other skills. At best spending secondary resources on knowledge saves them a library trip later on, and at worst it allows people to play pretty pretty dress up with their non-critical skill sets a bit for characterization purposes.

Going down the Shadowrun route of getting a bunch of knowledge points to distribute seems like it'd satisfy all parties. You get to write down character background on your sheet, and it doesn't get in the way of mechanically useful abilities.

So what kind of skill list do you think is thorough enough for D&D?

[shadzar]

So what kind of skill list do you think is thorough enough for D&D?

apparently that depends on playstyle. can you design a skill list that is useful to ALL playstyles without stiffing another?

that is the problem with skill lists, you just don't know the playstyle you are designing a lsit for, so you in the end only make a list and skill system for ONE playstyle which makes your game really not suited for ANY other playstyle if the skill system is a requirement for "balance" or something like that. (see 4th edition).

there are 3 main types of skills:
1. combat/action/physical
2. social
3. knowledge/puzzle solving/etc

if you have the same number of skills for each, then does one section feel weak in the skills? if you give one more than another, have you designed your skill list around ONE specific playstyle?

you basically asked the unanswerable question unless you are defining D&D as ONE THING, and ONE THING ONLY.

that is best left for board games like HeroQuest, where the game defines and confines so many things for the sake of the game's one premise to work.

[TarkisFlux]

Going down the Shadowrun route of getting a bunch of knowledge points to distribute seems like it'd satisfy all parties. You get to write down character background on your sheet, and it doesn't get in the way of mechanically useful abilities.

As I'm guessing is evidenced by whatever Shad wrote (and if you also have them on ignore, I guess we'll never know), nothing is going to satisfy all parties. I don't know enough about SR backgrounds to make an educated call, but it's probably functional so long as you have rules for acquiring new stuff.

Note that this also ties into Lago's earlier point about skills not scaling at the same rate. I don't think there's any reason to keep these sorts of background things restricted by level, even if you might want to restrict them from PCs in some fashion. Decoupling abilities that don't need to be tied to character combat power from character level opens up a lot of potential stories and character options, like unclassed NPC grand master weapon smiths in addition to the previous level 15 whatever grand master weapon smiths.

So what kind of skill list do you think is thorough enough for D&D?

That depends on what you want to do with skills, and there's plenty of argument on that subject here. See relatively recent thread 1 or relatively recent thread 2 if you care. Granting deadDM's definition of skill as a thing that can get better with specialized training, and appending on the premise that said training needs to be limited directly by character level (else it can just be a background, because fuck level limits in backgrounds), there's about 3 major positions by my count.
[*]Some people, like me, want skills to enable super powers directly. That requires that you have a skill list where each skill actually scales to super power levels, or it gets cut / folded in elsewhere / demoted to background skill. This requires a relatively narrow skill list to avoid the investment value problem. Ride is not included in a skill list of this style (though it might be a background thing), while diplomacy that scaled to include at-will mass charm and suggestion style abilities probably would be.
[*]Some people want skills to be a prereq for purchasing super powers (presumably along with class level). Depending on how you purchase your skills and your super powers, this can have a broader skill set. The whole thing works reasonably well with a untrained/trained/expert setup, where you buying skill access costs about the same as buying a super power you qualify for. It's a potential 'pay now, win later' setup if you have shitty skills as prereqs for awesome stuff, but that can be avoided it you're looking for it and don't suck at base skill use writing. Tome skill feats arguably use this model, but more explicit power purchase schemes have also been proposed. Ride may or may not be a skill in such a setup if you could come up with super powers for it to be a prereq for, and you'd have to pay for charm and suggestion style diplomacy abilities even after hitting the prereqs.
[*]Some people want skills to be things that are entirely mundane so that they can be things that anyone can do and restrict super power granting to class features only. Since super powers require phlebotinum (even if it's just specialized training by class X), the other positions often mean that skills or super powers get at least partially restricted to some classes. This position doesn't have that problem, and can also support the widest list of skills because they all cap at mundane levels and so you just go invest in something else. Ride is almost certainly a skill in this setup. So is diplomacy, but the mass charm and suggestion powers are available as class features or not at all.
Your list will depend on which of those options you pick, and you will anger people with any choice (but choice 3 is probably the safest if you care).

But once you pick a skill role, you get to decide how much bookkeeping you want to do with them, because that determines the granularity you want for your skills and how many points you should expect people to fuck around with at level ups. And there is no right answer here either, though most people on internet boards seem to like the consolidation angle and fewer skills. You probably want 20-25 actual investment skills to allow for some variation between classes for options 1 and maybe 2, though skill number barely matters in 3 because people can just pick whatever shit they want. And you want to add on however much background stuff you want to write up.

All that out of the way, you probably need a minimum of 3 talky abilities (I like lying, charming, and scaring), 2+ infiltration abilities (I like stealth and disguise, maybe adding in devices and contortion/escape artist), some defense abilities maybe (I like concentration, sense motive, and perception, but they can all be saves or whatever instead), magic abilities for each magic type (arcane, divine, psionic if that's a thing; this skill might also do UMD stuff for the indicated types), and then some other bits to round it out like healing or movement stuff like athletics. Whether those are skills or class features or whatever depends on other choices that you make.

[Scrivener]

there are 3 main types of skills:
1. combat/action/physical
2. social
3. knowledge/puzzle solving/etc

Oddly I agree with Shadzar here, only I would venture that there should be a fourth category "threat" or "challenge".

I think the breaking point on most skills is when they try to fill more than one of these categories. What exactly is the difference between spellcraft and knowledge arcana? Why is bluff used in combat? How does my ability to do cartwheels allow me to avoid attacks of opportunity? Also skills that have notoriously bad systems, like stealth, straddle two categories.

If we have combat skills:
Avoidance - basically tumble
Feint
Stealth - in combat stealth, likely not being completely hidden but granting concealment
Battle awareness - countering combat stealth
Spellcraft - casting in combat
And possibly tie disarm and such to skills

Threat skills (I don't like the name, but non combat encounters):
Acrobatics
Athletics
Infiltration - sneaking past guards, not getting lost in a fight
Alertness/perception - the counter to infiltration
Track
Survival - if you like tedium and tracking rations

Social skills- and these could all be removed with ease for MTP fans
Diplomacy
Bluff
Innuendo
Barter
Because they aren't competing with important skills you can get very esoteric

And lastly talents/knowledges- all of the crafts, knowledge and professions, that may come up occasionally but on a whole are just fluff with numbers and encourage encounter to be designed are out having knowledge (BS type the DM loves) so you know to throw water at them.

This could also allow the skill problem to be solved, fighters could get 4 combat skill points, 1 of all others. Rogues could get 4 of all, wizard 1 of everything but knowledge, and so on. You could tie different stats to bonus skill points, like charisma to social skills, heck you could make it so each skill type is tied exclusively to one stat.

It would result in more space on the character sheet, but it would make it very clear where and when each skill could be used.