Very high skill checks

[deaddmwalking]

People are pretty accepting of the fact that a 3rd level wizard can become invisible. If your 20th-level power is that you can do something without magic that someone was doing at 3rd level with magic, you're still not playing the same game.

[merxa]

good as time as any to discuss the best skill of all, perception.

plenty to consider, interacting with the stealth mini game, determining initiative conditions, finding traps, disguises, noticing unusual details and so on.

I guess in this framework, high perception checks would confer the ability to detect magic, see invisibility, x-ray vision, blindsight, perhaps even divination. which seems silly to me.

Instead of making perception a super skill, it should probably get broken up so it doesn't so directly impact so much of the game, ie, losing the stealth mini game doesn't necessarily doom you in the initiative count.

[MGuy]

I don't think people would be keen on further diluting perception such that you have to use multiple skills to use it. Isn't that why even Paizo and WotC reduced move silently/listen and spot/hide into one skill? I don't think there's any evidence that's what people want. Most broadening of the stealth skill I've seen people homebrew are 'more' ways to stealth past alternative senses. People who write up higher order perception abilities tend to add. more senses. I don't see who you would be appealing to by going in reverse.

Perception is more akin to a defense and you probably just want everyone to have it considering that. If you want to talk about improving design around perception I'd start with at least that assumption. Ambushes should probably also just give a certain side an early advantage but not one that's insurmountable. That's more of a broader failing of the combat system and not so much an indictment on having ambushes happening occasionally.

[jt]

In specific of course you have the issue that jt's list is chocolate covered bullshit. Like, Sense Motive having scaling DCs based on sense motiving level appropriate threats is obviously not a meaningful upgrade is the sense that teleporting or raising the dead is. I mean, fucking obviously, right? It's just doing the same thing you were doing in the first episode at level 1, not doing anything remotely cool.

Like all specific criticisms, this is way more useful than "this concept in general will never work." If you see any other specific holes in that skill list (other than opposed checks, since I'm already looking into scrapping all of them), I'd be interested to hear.

Yeah, I think this is entirely valid. I didn't really notice that opposed skill checks are treadmill bullshit when I first wrote this, since I just kind of took them for granted, but once you point it out, it's pretty obvious. Especially after the stealth discussion.

Some options would be:
[*]Somehow opposed stuff doesn't scale the same as everything else. Lower rate? Just doesn't scale?
[*]Somehow just don't use opposed checks as a way to solve things in the first place?
[*]Have the "aggressor" skill change effects at different DCs, and have the defender skill be resisting those effects. Like, bluff scales from "lie about something basically plausible" to "convince them you're invisible" and then "don't believe lies" is a lower sense motive DC than "avoid having your senses hacked."

That last one is the most concrete at the moment, but also implies that the defender skill increasingly becomes a must-have at high levels, which is iffy.

Anyway, the natural end to this line of thought is the following:

• Define the challenge space at different levels of play.
• Have a better skill system than any edition of D&D has had.
• Define a set series of phlebtonium abilities that allow stronger characters to meaningfully interact with the challenges that are defined as being beyond starting characters.
• Tie those abilities to skills such that characters who have different starting skills would have the ability to activate different phlebtonium abilities and thus each character has a different set of power growth options.

This is the premise of what I was asking, yes. The question is: given the sorts of things that D&D wizards are traditionally expected to do at high levels, what are some fun ways to achieve those same effects by being mythically bullshit-good at a mundane skill?

And defining the challenge space at different levels of play is needed to write the finished product, but it's okay to start with "the jump DC for jumping so high you can fly is whatever DC a skilled jumper can hit at whatever level wizards can cast Fly." Listing it out in this way lets you move the level-challenge mapping around as you find out that you had more or less stuff between milestones than you expected.

I guess in this framework, high perception checks would confer the ability to detect magic, see invisibility, x-ray vision, blindsight, perhaps even divination. which seems silly to me.

The only one of these that seems a bit implausible to me is divination.

The way you set that up is: it's just a fact of the world you live in that you can see a remote place you're familiar with through a scrying pool by taking a -40 penalty on your perception check. Your ranger has such a massive perception skill that he can do it by staring at a calm lake. Your wizard casts a spell on the lake that gets rid of the penalty for a while so anyone can see it.

plenty to consider, interacting with the stealth mini game, determining initiative conditions, finding traps, disguises, noticing unusual details and so on.

Instead of making perception a super skill, it should probably get broken up so it doesn't so directly impact so much of the game, ie, losing the stealth mini game doesn't necessarily doom you in the initiative count.

This isn't a fully concrete thought yet, but:
The non-opposed portions of perception (notice details, spot traps, see far away) doesn't have the same "best skill" status as the opposed portions (initiative, anti-stealth, anti-disguise). So if those are somehow separate, that might fix it.

[Chamomile]

Like all specific criticisms, this is way more useful than "this concept in general will never work."

A broad criticism is not the same thing as a vague criticism. Do you have an actual reason for building non-combat superpowers into skills instead of classes?

[merxa]

The silly part to me is when a high enough roll spontaneous manifests into x-ray vision. So if someone just sits around and stares long enough (takes 20) they'll start to see through wallls.

Re: perception, I'm not advocating to cut it back up into spot search listen, instead I'm suggesting the roll determining if the velioraptor notices the kids should probably be different then whether those kids get an effective ambush on the critter, or at least hiding/escaping should be significantly easier then getting the drop on it.

[deaddmwalking]

I think it's fair to recognize that skills are important abilities for low-level characters. High level abilities supplant skills (and that's fine). Nobody bats an eye when invisibility makes Stealth meaningless; there's no reason you can't give class abilities that do the same thing - and in fact, a lot of reasons you might want to.

As far as opposed skills, you might want to instead set it up more along the lines of spells/saving throws. It seems strange that high level warriors (low Wisdom, few skills) are extremely easy to bluff in combat; setting bluff against a Reflex save at a DC of 10+ 1/2 level + Int automatically scales with level as opposed to setting it opposed to Sense Motive.

Edit for clarity - I am not suggesting that the Saving Throw is based on the skill check - ie, if a Rogue has a +24 Bluff and rolls a 15 for a 39, the check to avoid is based off a fixed formula; it is okay to set a static DC for making a convincing bluff (like Tumble has a static DC) that the opponent saves against.

[OgreBattle]

In the storytelling traditions with ki powers, Ki is a part of the ‘natural’ world so high high skills are doing ki power stuff like ‘suppressing presence to be invisible’ ‘sensing life in this area’

Like in Naruto Rock Lee is considered ‘munane’ Because he can’t breath fire, but he can still uproot a tree and has super senses

—-

70’s DnD didn’t have any playtest game design reasons to make invisibility a low level spell, and there’s really no popular fiction resembling lvl20 casters. So another question is if balancing to DnD spell levels is something anyone actually ‘wants’

So how does Shadowrun balance magic invisibility with ‘mundane’ sneaks?

[Iduno]

Shadowrun balances stealth so the expected outcome is success, not failure. On top of that, you have a minor penalty for sustaining the spell if you don't have a focus item for it.

On the other hand, people can't take a perception test against an invisible person without beating the spell first (and the assumption there is that you will fail any attempt to resist a spell), and you take a fairly massive penalty to attack an invisible person you are aware of.

Overall it's not the best, but there has been an effort to make mages more powerful in Shadowrun, because that's what the lead designer plays.