zugschef wrote:Voss wrote:There are four states here which are perfectly fine: untalented and untrained, untrained but talented, talented but untrained and talented and trained.
I guess you meant "trained but untalented", right?
Yep. I was in a rush.
The catch here is the way the skill system evolved over the playtest.
Skills didn't happen at all until packet #5 (of 10), in october of last year.
Training was just a +3 to checks, and the DCs ranged from 7 to 25, in increments of 3. At this point, they decided rogues were the skill guy, and handed over the 'expertise' die, which grew with level.
Packet #6 (december) gave the skill expertise die to everybody, presumably because feedback told them that only one guy being able to really play the skill game was fucking dumb. The DCs changed at this point, and ranged from 5 to 35 in increments of 5, while the expertise die grew with level from 1d4 to 1d12. (For d20+stat mod+die result), which is notably piss-poor odds of making a DC35 check. But rogues were still the skill guy, so got to roll the skill die twice and keep the highest.
Packet #7 left this system intact, including the DCs.
Packet #8 changed it slightly (skill die started at d6 instead of d4, and you could skip the die size increase in favor of learning another skill).
Packet #9 kept this as well.
Packet #10 dropped skills altogether add lores (knowledges, basically) and gave rogues, monks and rangers 'expertise' again, which meant they could roll an additional die to all checks with a specific attribute; dex for rogues, and their pick of dex or wisdom for monks and rangers. Notably here, the DCs were still the same 5 to 35 from the previous playtests when everybody got a skill die.
Packet #11 (current and final) put skills back in (because people apparently said 'fuck you, no' very loudly to the previous system), but dropped skill dice altogether (because they sucked and produced terrible results) and instead the proficiency things happened. And the expertise thing happened on top of it. DC 35 was dropped off the chart, but DC 30 stays, despite the fact that it is unreasonable in a system that caps at d20 +11. And here comes the expert bonus of +5 to just make it hard (40% success rate)
if you have levels in the two classes that gain access to it.
TL:DR- drop the +5 expert bonus for 4 skills, exclusive to rogue and bard
and the DC 30, and the system becomes functional, with hard targets at DC25 that still reward skill mastery, but remain in the realm of possibility for high level characters (though not easy), while still beyond lower level characters who don't master that skill. And for people who don't learn the skill at all, and have no aptitude for it, DC 20 is nigh impossible, which is only right.
shadzar wrote:actually this shouldnt even exist. specialist skills are what keeps Bilbo Baggins in the game, and for all the people that complain how Tolkienesque the game clings to, why do they even need Bilbo emulation in the game?
And you are wrong. A specialist skill doesn't need to be tied into a specific class at all (and notably Bilbo couldn't do anything of the things he listed); but mastery of esoteric disciplines that require actual training or otherwise can't be done should be in the game