Saga Star Wars' handling of skills

[User3]

Look at this.
While it may not be granular enough for many people's tastes, how's that (half character level + ability + fixed training bonus + Skill Focus) for handling multiclassing and infinite scaling at the same time? If that's the way of future for D&D, it looks like it'd work even better for saving throws than for skills (since granularity wouldn't be missed). Your thoughts, folks?

[Fwib]

Anything that allows a DM to 'do a build instantly in his head' when an NPC's abilities suddenly become relevant is probably a good thing.

[Crissa]

I'd be willing to throw out skill focus, myself.

But we still have the problem of vs skills and static skills... The latter you can stop putting points into at some point in the game, and in a system with scaling skills, people just will avoid taking those skills.

Which is probably not so good.

-Crissa

[User3]

Yay for quick building for sure ...

Crissa: yes, Skill Focus looks more than a bit unneeded, but about static skills, all one needs to do (at least in D&D; probably not so much for Star Wars) is to defenestrate realism and make high modifiers accomplish the awesome, like running up walls, only without having to spend more points on it than most would care - if every skill gets a new use every few levels (of course, one that's actually relevant, which is why realism needs to step out), the problem vanishes.

[Cielingcat]

If you have a game that ends at some definitive point, then you can mix static and scaling skills as long as the static skills remain useful up the point of the game ending. In principle, static skills are bad, but if they only start being bad after you no longer care, it doesn't really matter.

[virgil]

Judging by the fact they likely combined skills into one another (Spot, Listen, Sense Motive, all one skill), and it sounds like there will be the occasional opposed rolls with them too, there are probably very few non-scaling skills.

[User3]

Search was folded into Perception too ... it just makes me wonder why the hell Deception and Persuasion are still separate, since they're basically Bluff and Diplomacy (so different from each other ...).

Also, any - published - game has to have a breakpoint, if nothing else, due to lack of space to print new abilities, so literally infinite scaling only comes up if someone's making things up just for their campaign. So, even a purely static skill could be made to work, and those really are looking rare/nonexistant.

[RandomCasualty]

1176314299[/unixtime]]Anything that allows a DM to 'do a build instantly in his head' when an NPC's abilities suddenly become relevant is probably a good thing.

Yeah, honestly the biggest problem with D&D right now is the complete inability to create characters on the fly, especially an NPC as opposed to a monster.

I generally think the changes to the saga system actually look good. It'd be nice to see that implemented in D&D.

[Crissa]

The problem is... How do I make people want epic swimming enough not to drown in the first ten levels? How do I make a character that can passably scale fences in combat time who's not interested in epic climb?

I can make a case for epic Healing being something someone would want. But the other non-vs skills are tougher, and many concepts only want passably good rather than continual scaling.

-Crissa

[Catharz]

Well, the easy answer is that swimming shouldn't be a skill under a system like this. Either you assume that because they're heroes they can all swim unless they bought 'Incompetant Swimmer,' or you bundle swimming into some athletics-type skill.

[User3]

What you do with those skills is let the characters do cool things. At high levels, swimming is no longer about not drowning, it's about, I dunno, making whirlpool votices that can sink ships or something. Climb could let you just Air Walk if you're sufficiently awesome.

If the skill essentially gives out fixed abilities at various levels of competency, just give it high level abilities to give out to high level characters.

[RandomCasualty]

1176357059[/unixtime]]The problem is... How do I make people want epic swimming enough not to drown in the first ten levels? How do I make a character that can passably scale fences in combat time who's not interested in epic climb?

This is another problem inherent in having skill checks. I've always believed it'd be better to just hand out abilities that people buy that do things pretty much 100% of the time, unless it's something opposed, like stealth versus perception.

But letting people just pay skill points to be able to climb at a fixed speed should just be some ability you buy and shouldn't require a check for.

[bitnine]

1176359261[/unixtime]]But letting people just pay skill points to be able to climb at a fixed speed should just be some ability you buy and shouldn't require a check for.

Yeah, I've sort of been a fan of the one/half/X rank buy-in method. People like it conceptually when characters who shouldn't in their minds be able to swim or climb or what have you don't have that option. So toss in a base level competency cost that is so nominal that it's more or less an opt-out. But do have that minimum competency threshold be fully functional.

Either that or get people not to say, "Wizard can climb a cliff? I'm freaking out!" But that probably ain't going to happen.