Non-combat classes

[Kaelik]

And let's also shoot the "Fighter" concept into the sun. Every 20th level character has to do something reasonably fantastical.

I'm fine with the half-dragon duskblade riding her flying hippo to the library of Alexandria to make some knowledge checks while the awakened housecat wizard rides his broomstick on to the River Styx Boatmen's guild for some socializing and the Nezumi shadowdancer shadowwalks to her nest and peers into her crystal ball.

You were just complaining that by making you play a duskblade instead of a fighter, and therefore be meaningfully fantastical I was being a meany bad jerk.

[shadzar]

since i dont buy gamebooks for other games for the sake of reading, how exactly do those classless games handle... ANYTHING? just a synopsis will do.

EDIT: didnt see a next page, so was referring to hogart.

[Grek]

Character points. A starting character has some number of points and can spend those points to get abilities. As a character advances, it gets more points and spends them to get more abilities.

Some systems have different kinds of points. You might have skill points (which you spend to get your skills), attribute points (which you spend to get your attributes) and feat points (which you spend to get feats). Advancement gives you some number of each type.

[shadzar]

how do you decide how many points to start with? is race involved in this decision? does race have meaning in these classes games, which in turn makes the race actually just a class itself?

since the 80s i have been working on a classless D&D, but it just doesnt work out. to use a modern term "balance" doesnt occur. the term i always came up with was, this isn't fair to one type of player.

i still want D&D classes that an have a useful skill system, but not shit like the infamous "fire-building" nonsense, nor mechanics for roleplaying. MTP works if you have a decent group or mature players.

[Grek]

how do you decide how many points to start with?

The GM decides based on what "level" the game starts at. Less points mean that your character is less strong and will be facing low "level" challenges.

is race involved in this decision?

No. Usually, you have a default of Human and you can spend points to play something else. For example, it might cost 35 build points to be an Orc instead of a Human, and for those 35 points you get bonuses to strength and toughness, the ability to speak Orc, green skin and tusks.

[rampaging-poet]

how do you decide how many points to start with? is race involved in this decision? does race have meaning in these classes games, which in turn makes the race actually just a class itself?

The number of points to start with depends on how broad the backgrounds are, how many areas of expertise you think adventurers should have, and whether you can put more points into the same thing and have it scale like 3.0 skills or 2nd Ed non-weapon proficiencies. If your backgrounds are "Expert Woodsman" or "Master Smith," each character probably only has a few.

To tie it in to race, I would give each race a few suggested backgrounds in the description. The entry on Elves would say that a typical Elf is an Expert Woodsman and the entry on Dwarves would say a typical Dwarf is a Master Smith. Players could spend their points however they like, but the suggested background would give them somewhere to start or provide a default when quickly generating NPCs.

i still want D&D classes that an have a useful skill system, but not shit like the infamous "fire-building" nonsense, nor mechanics for roleplaying

That's one way the 3.0 skill system improves over non-weapon proficiencies. The ability to Take 10 means you can put fire-building in a larger skill with a DC of 10 or less and the average person can now make a fire without spending any points on the skill as long as they aren't actively being attacked while they do so. Having a proper skill system also makes sure the players and the DM are on the same page regarding what the characters are capable of doing. If you're already on the same page, Magic Tea Party usually works fine, but that isn't always the case with published games.

[shadzar]

sp 2.5 CPs basically, but just not quite a build your own class, or build your own race fully fleshed concept? you had to buy a race not just components of things.

i still want D&D classes that an have a useful skill system, but not shit like the infamous "fire-building" nonsense, nor mechanics for roleplaying

That's one way the 3.0 skill system improves over non-weapon proficiencies. The ability to Take 10 means you can put fire-building in a larger skill with a DC of 10 or less and the average person can now make a fire without spending any points on the skill as long as they aren't actively being attacked while they do so. Having a proper skill system also makes sure the players and the DM are on the same page regarding what the characters are capable of doing. If you're already on the same page, Magic Tea Party usually works fine, but that isn't always the case with published games.

no, 3.0 took CPs and bred them with NWPs so somethng worse than NWPs. NWPs you could ignor and play without. 3.x you couldn't play without its skill system because it was expected in CL, ECL, WBL, etc...

basically CPs would have been a way to go, but you remove the class packages when you use it. just nobody has broken it down better, and i havent seen any of these true classless systems so to how they work, and how well you can play D&D with them.

if i could stomach 3.x, I would have written D&D classless with the OGL by now.. and if i understood the OGL better.

[Zaranthan]

if i could stomach 3.x, I would have written D&D classless with the OGL by now.. and if i understood the OGL better.

So, you're the cancer that PhoneLobster claims is killing the Den? K, thanks.

[deaddmwalking]

no, 3.0 took CPs and bred them with NWPs so somethng worse than NWPs. NWPs you could ignor and play without. 3.x you couldn't play without its skill system because it was expected in CL, ECL, WBL, etc...

basically CPs would have been a way to go, but you remove the class packages when you use it. just nobody has broken it down better, and i havent seen any of these true classless systems so to how they work, and how well you can play D&D with them.

if i could stomach 3.x, I would have written D&D classless with the OGL by now.. and if i understood the OGL better.

You fail to understand the 3.x rules (no surprise)

Imagine if you were in 2nd edition and you weren't using NWPs. Imagine you wanted to start a fire. Assuming that you considered it something that someone MIGHT fail at (say, after reading Jack London's excellent short story To Start a Fire).

You might ask the PC to roll their Wisdom or under on a d20, right? (Or you can tell me what you would do).

Assume a Wisdom of 10; you would need to roll a 10 or lower to succeed.

In 3.x, the skill would be included under Survival, which is Wisdom based. Say the DC is 10. You would need to roll a 10 or better to succeed. Easy!

But if you spend skill points on it, you can succeed on successively lower rolls. If you spend 10 skill points, you will succeed even on a Natural 1!

Easy!

[sabs]

As usual, everything that Shad complains about 3.X about, is the parts of 3.X that were actually cool, and made the game fun to play.

The skill system defnitely had out of range issues and some of the classes got borked for skills for no good reason. But that being said, it was so much better than NWP.

[shadzar]

unless there is NO chance of success, someone is going to be able to start a fire if they are a group of PCs.

this goes with the tracking. medieval people had to do these things to live. they didn't have a thermostat to turn on a heat pump for them when the temperature got to a set range.

they just had to know this shit. fire-building is a shitty concept for a skill. this is why NWPs should be thrown out, because they are failures for having such stupid shit as some sort of limitation. there might as well be an arbitrary limit on the number of times your character can take a shit, and with dissentary and the cleric tapped out.. you die... no.

stop the arbitrary bullshit for the sake of being arbitrary.

i get what 3.x does, furthers the stupid shit that are NWPs, and adds the stupid progression of them from 2.5, but it does the wrong shit and pads these "skills" with useless shit. just stop.

[deaddmwalking]

unless there is NO chance of success, someone is going to be able to start a fire if they are a group of PCs.

this goes with the tracking. medieval people had to do these things to live. they didn't have a thermostat to turn on a heat pump for them when the temperature got to a set range.

they just had to know this shit.

Usually, the PCs will succeed. Thus, you have a DC less than 10 and the PC can take 10. They succeed without rolling. But sometimes, you want to (or need to) know how long it takes, or whether they can succeed in adverse conditions.

Now, if you're a shitty GM, you just say 'it's too windy' or 'it's too wet' to start a fire. But if you think there is a small but non-zero chance of something, you set a difficulty and let the PCs roll.

fire-building is a shitty concept for a skill. this is why NWPs should be thrown out, because they are failures for having such stupid shit as some sort of limitation. there might as well be an arbitrary limit on the number of times your character can take a shit, and with dissentary and the cleric tapped out.. you die... no.

stop the arbitrary bullshit for the sake of being arbitrary.

Building a fire is pretty shitty. So yeah, 2nd edition Non-Weapon Proficiencies kind of suck. But 3.x includes 'building a fire' with 'Survival', which actually doesn't suck so hard. Trying to gather enough food to survive in a hostile environment (like the Australian Outback) isn't easy. But it can be done. Most people die without the support of 'civilization', but not everyone. Clearly, not every Commoner should be able to walk across the Outback or live there for months at a time without consequence - even most adventurers might not be able to handle it. Levels of skill actually matter. If you don't have a system for determining who is good at something and who is bad at something your game is worse off.

i get what 3.x does, furthers the stupid shit that are NWPs, and adds the stupid progression of them from 2.5, but it does the wrong shit and pads these "skills" with useless shit. just stop.

You apparently DON'T get what it does. I mean, there are issues with it. A +40 on a skill is totally a thing that can happen, and it breaks the RNG. I'm not claiming it is a perfect system by any means - but it is better than not having a system at all.

So, once again, if you don't think the 3.x system is good, but you do want to be able to tell who is objectively better than another character at a task, what system do you recommend?

[shadzar]

Now, if you're a shitty GM, you just say 'it's too windy' or 'it's too wet' to start a fire.

Yeah cause they have been using "underwater breathing" for the past week as some sort of quest they undertook and it would be totally shitty to jsut say it is too wet, or the vortex they are in on the mountain of YOURFUCKED is not at all too windy to start a fire.

don't be stupid.

So, once again, if you don't think the 3.x system is good, but you do want to be able to tell who is objectively better than another character at a task, what system do you recommend?

since replying to the other part, i won't regurgitate the same thing in both threads, and i have said it before and you didn't pay attention then, but i will repeat it this ONE LAST TIME...

there is NO system that works, or it would have been done by now and 4th edition likely would have stolen it from some other game.

no game > a bad game

likewise:

no system > a shitty failure of a system

when it all boils down to ANY system i have tried to create, the on the fly method is always the one chosen. just like when "trying" to use NWPs, it boiled down to whether or not your character had a reason to know how to do this, just to be able to use SOME of the NWPs they wanted access to while not being stuck because stupid shit like "fire-building" exists to confuse people into thinking that is not there for EXTREME circumstances where there is and ONLY is a slim chance of it succeeding.

the main reason i get stuck is the arbitrary limts to the number of skills, as when you look at the numebr of things REAL people can do, how do you limit it like NWPS and still be able to model something that doesn't just scream GAME LIMIT that makes you wonder why you can read, write, build a fire, and swim, but not ride a horse at 1st level with only 4 NWPs available? i know 10 year olds that can do those well and then some off the NWP list.

the skills must be game constructs that work with the game, NOT against it. the system can't present something in a limiting fashion that would be basic survival need for the era/time/world/whatever in which it takes place. you can't put limits to the number of times a character breathes each day.

i am pretty sure, that nobody else has created this system either for D&D, otherwise we would have seen it by now because someone would have been claiming their genius on the WotC website and it would ahve been implemented already.

the system i am striving for does not yet exist. probably not enough of the right heads in the same room long enough to figure it out and finalize it so that this system allows for classes to exist at the same time. or it cannot exist when classes exist, thus where there is classless systems that just have the ability selection thrown onto something else.

i still want to see a system wherein Fighter, Mage, Cleric, can be assassins without needing some subclass shit, by just picking some specialized talent to use when doing that, and other times just being whatever they are. as well as things giving to 2e thieves in their "skillbox".

then you can merge parts of a fighter and cleric and get the basic paladin with some added abilities that even a straight mage could choose, IF that is the flavor you want your character to have, or not chose those "paladin-y" things if you just want to be a part fighter part cleric.

so a proper multi-classing system that doesn't just add one class to another, would probably be needed to be defined before some skill system in order to add those things these special snowflake classes all have that are just forms of fighter, mage, and cleric in various combinations.

[deaddmwalking]

the main reason i get stuck is the arbitrary limts to the number of skills, as when you look at the numebr of things REAL people can do, how do you limit it like NWPS and still be able to model something that doesn't just scream GAME LIMIT that makes you wonder why you can read, write, build a fire, and swim, but not ride a horse at 1st level with only 4 NWPs available? i know 10 year olds that can do those well and then some off the NWP list.

Sounds like you're talking about 3.x

i still want to see a system wherein Fighter, Mage, Cleric, can be assassins without needing some subclass shit, by just picking some specialized talent to use when doing that, and other times just being whatever they are. as well as things giving to 2e thieves in their "skillbox".

Sounds like 3.x (with relaxed class skill lists).

[shadzar]

except it isnt in any way shape or form 3.x i have read it and 2.5 CP system comes closer than anything 3.x had. it just had weird combat functions in the form of feats. the skill system was a joke, as i just said, built nt he idea of NWPs. Non-weapon proficiencies. Noncombat abilities.

skills like Profession(basket-weaving) were more about character background flavor that you dont need any sort of rule for.

this is why i default to "fire-building" as the skill of choice in all its forms including "survival", which was also an NWP in 2nd, that cause problems because they don't work and don't make any sense and in the end arent useful.

take a look at and compare secondary skills and NWPs. i bet if someone looked at the "backgrounds" of DDN, they would be able to easily see the same thing form "secondary skills" as that is what they are. but it still doesnt make a skill system it just goes to the default most often used "if you have a reason why your character would know how to swim then you can swim, if you don't then you cant, if you have a reason why he can't swim, then you may choose to not be able to swim" kind of thing.

thee have been numerous threads on here talking about why the 3.x skill and feats system is a failure because it doesnt really do anything.

i will just say, looking at the "feats" which is just bonus class abilities, they like NWPs hve stupid limitations. Sustain for a monk, why only a monk? Why a special one for a monk if available to other classes? why have them grouped by and for specific classes at all?

a monk learns and trains his body to go without food and such through meditation or whatever and gets that to use later, while endurance might let a fighter do the same thing, and perseverance thought the nights might give it to a wizard. wow. everyone can train their body in different ways to keep going without food for a few days. why the arbitrary limit? cleric,...his god grants him the ability or some shit... who knows! the point remains that there are too many things only given to one class, that are not race specific based on biology, that other classes should be able to do too.

i mean just having a literate society in D&D destroys NWPs, because it assume reading/writing msut be bought by PCs, and just how many of these can NPCs have? do they have them because they don't have adventuring skills, and thus have more of them?

too many questions, too little time.

why all the arbitrary numbers? in the case of 2nd and NWPs, when people want to sue it. i jsut say fuck it and try to put it out of my mind. they want to sue limits. their choice. i wil keep things fair across the board, but remind them when the time comes they chose to use the limits and forced them onto themselves, i am jsut complying with their wishes. any changes going forward happens to both side of the screen.

does a fighter between adventures need a skill called bartending in order to be an expert bar tender? does he need skill ranks in order to serve grog? what is it going to add to the adenvure when he is back on one? a talking point? the PCs are going to talk about the meta-10 in bartending he has? he can't jsut say "i have impressed many with my skills and can show you the next time i get a chance." then when the time comes it can be said "wow that was impressive.", or "that wasnt very good at all". you don't need to cpmare a number because you arent going to have very many bartending competitions during the adventure. is you do have one, or pie eating contest or even basket-weacing contest, then you can make special rules for those things, when they are created. they don't need to be in the entire game if they only serve a purpose 1 or even jsut 0.5% of the time.

wasted space in books, wasted pace on a character sheet, extra clutter and information overload for the important information needed to play the game.

not sure where it is right now or what it is called, but might be a Mystara product Player's Survival Guide, that comes with an adventure log book so the player can right down all these things to look back on later. sure a piece of paper would do the job, so that product has more in it than that, like random family generators and such, but that is the place those things belong, in memories AFTER the event, not to plan for your character to get into a basket-weaving contest. i mean that is more narrow-minded concept that Fuchs and his rapier only pet character that belongs in a novel, not a game.

maybe you cold start a thread talking about skills and or feats, and figure out which were useful to the game as a whole in 3.x and which were a total waste of space, not for power, but just for stupidity; and i will rad people weigh in on it and learn what all is there while i don't have access to any of the books to look at?

what i am looking for though would be more along the lines of S&P CPs to build your own class and your own race, but without the bad math on the predefined packages for existing races and classes.

as in the other thread, where you can take parts of fighter and parts of cleric, and make your OWN paladin variant and call him a paladin internally in the game world, but he is a fighter/cleric mix. not a multi-class system, but a true build-a-class system. races obviously wold be harder. but this build-a-class concept belogns in my thread, not crowidng this of of someone else that is asking for classes for those things outside of combat, or not primarily combat focused.

[deaddmwalking]

except it isnt in any way shape or form 3.x

I tell you, it sounds like 3.x

take a look at and compare secondary skills and NWPs. i bet if someone looked at the "backgrounds" of DDN, they would be able to easily see the same thing form "secondary skills" as that is what they are. but it still doesnt make a skill system it just goes to the default most often used "if you have a reason why your character would know how to swim then you can swim, if you don't then you cant, if you have a reason why he can't swim, then you may choose to not be able to swim" kind of thing.

In 3.x D&D, everyone can swim. Absolutely everyone. But not everyone can swim well. Strong characters can swim decently, and trained characters can swim decently. Trained characters that are strong can swim well. It is a system and it can determine who swims well in a particular instance, and who is a capable swimmer and who is not.

Maybe it never comes up in your game (well, assuming you were playing a game anymore - you've already covered how you live in Texas and the only people within 300 miles are people you'd never deign to play with), but lots of adventure games care about how well people can swim. It can be for the PCs or for Team Monster. If the PCs are defending a castle with a moat, you can damn well bet that they care whether the attackers drown in it.

thee have been numerous threads on here talking about why the 3.x skill and feats system is a failure because it doesnt really do anything.

There are a lot of threads about why 4th edition skills are bad because they don't do anything. There are people on these boards that point out that skills cease to matter when you have magic. Fly is better than Jump. Invisibility is better than Hide. Knock is better than Open Locks. At high levels, PCs don't rely on their skills. But as far as low-level play is concerned, skills matter, and they do something. Most importantly, they help determine who does a particular task better than another, which is an important part of a skill resolution mechanic.

i will just say, looking at the "feats" which is just bonus class abilities, they like NWPs hve stupid limitations. Sustain for a monk, why only a monk? Why a special one for a monk if available to other classes? why have them grouped by and for specific classes at all?

a monk learns and trains his body to go without food and such through meditation or whatever and gets that to use later, while endurance might let a fighter do the same thing, and perseverance thought the nights might give it to a wizard. wow. everyone can train their body in different ways to keep going without food for a few days. why the arbitrary limit? cleric,...his god grants him the ability or some shit... who knows! the point remains that there are too many things only given to one class, that are not race specific based on biology, that other classes should be able to do too.

Yes - the difference between class skills and cross-class skills is pretty stupid. Making everything a class skill is such a ridiculously easy fix that skills suddenly work very well, again. So it sounds like 3.x if you remove the cross-class skill penalties.

[shadzar]

In 3.x D&D, everyone can swim. Absolutely everyone.

well al the more reason 3.x is a fucking waste of space in the universe then. it forces play choices on the player.

have you only read 3.x and 4/E? i am talking about 2nd edition and 15 where the NWPs came from. maybe you should read them, and you will see why i keep saying these stupid things became the backbone of 3.x and the d20 system because they were developed into skills and feats.

there might be a reason why "it sounds like 3.x" keeps coming from you.

i mean how many times do i have to repeat that 3.x took the worst parts of 2.5 and went forward with them?

you really need to get 1E Unearthed Arcana and rad it if you can (DSG and WSG might be harder to find), or just get a 2e PHB and read chapter 5. then maybe you will be able to stop saying "it sounds like 3.x". also get the PO books and you will see 3.x saves there in the form of subabilities "reflex", "willpower", "fortitude". well i think one of them has a different name, but its the same thing.

none of this though works as a skill system to make classes have something other than jsut a bunch of combat bonuses.

[deaddmwalking]

In 3.x D&D, everyone can swim. Absolutely everyone.

well al the more reason 3.x is a fucking waste of space in the universe then. it forces play choices on the player.

Forces Play Choices? If I'm not misunderstanding than you're from some kind of mirror universe (which I have not rejected). Most people like making play choices. Otherwise it's a railroad. But to clarify, while everyone can swim in 3.x, not everyone can swim well. There are certainly difficult situations where some individuals cannot swim well enough to save themselves from drowning. For example, a weak swimmer wearing heavy armor in deep water during a storm will drown; a strong swimmer might survive. But the same weak swimmer in calm water with minimal clothing may survive without difficulty. So players without swim skill don't drown everytime they step into a pool (nor do commoners), but the system still distinguishes between who can succeed in non-trivial tasks and who cannot - or who is likely to succeed and who suffers some chance of failure.

have you only read 3.x and 4/E?

I've never played 4th edition. I have played 1st, 2nd, and 3rd edition. I've read 1st, 2nd, and 3rd edition. I have every 1st edition book. I don't have the green softback 2nd edition setting books, but I have all the brown soft-cover class and race specific books, along with most of the rest (I haven't picked up all the Players Options Books, but am not familiar enough to know what I'm missing).

i am talking about 2nd edition and 15 where the NWPs came from. maybe you should read them, and you will see why i keep saying these stupid things became the backbone of 3.x and the d20 system because they were developed into skills and feats.

And maybe you'll realize that you're wrong. In 2nd edition, you're right - sometimes DMs would say 'you don't have that Non-Weapon Proficiency, so you can't fish'. But that doesn't happen in 3.x. Training in skills gives you a bonus on those skills. Some skills require training in order to attempt at all, but anything you'd expect a commoner to be able to do can be attempted untrained.

If there is a problem with skills in 3.x, it is that some skills don't work the way we'd expect (hide/move silently versus spot/listen - I'm looking at you), and some go way off the RNG, but by and large, 3.x gives a pretty good system for figuring out not only 'can I do this thing', but 'how well can I do this thing'. And since sometimes it matters whether you can do a particular task well enough to succeed, this is much better than the 2nd edition system.

there might be a reason why "it sounds like 3.x" keeps coming from you.

i mean how many times do i have to repeat that 3.x took the worst parts of 2.5 and went forward with them?

I keep saying that because you seem to like what 3.x does (but keep failing to understand that it does what you say you want). Saying 'it takes the worst parts of 2.5 and went forward with them' is wrong in a couple of different ways.

First off, even if the statement were true, taking something that's bad and then developing it actually might make something good. Taking rubber (mostly useless) and vulcanizing it turns it into something that our society relies on. A PDA from 1996 might have been a piece of crap, but you take it far enough and then you have smart phones. Sometimes you get great things by continuing to advance something that started out pretty bad.

Secondly, the statement wasn't even true to begin with. In 2nd edition, to succeed at a task, you'd often have to roll under your attribute. If you assume that you can no longer roll if you use NWPs, that takes away the ability to attempt skills from EVERYONE. 3.x doesn't do that. Everyone can attempt to succeed at basic tasks - people with specialized training are more likely to succeed. That is almost definitionally what you want from a skill system.

none of this though works as a skill system to make classes have something other than jsut a bunch of combat bonuses.

Again, I think your (lack of) familiarity with the rules is telling. A skill like 'Forgery' has applications outside of combat. I don't think it has ANY in-combat applications. These types of skills make classes have something other than just a bunch of combat bonuses. Stop being an idiot.

[Archmage]

deaddmwalking, why in the nine hells are you talking to shadzar? He has already made the most bizarre argument from incredulity regarding game design I've ever seen:

there is NO system that works, or it would have been done by now and 4th edition likely would have stolen it from some other game.

You hear that? No one has ever designed any skill system that shadzar likes, so no one is able to do so, because he can't imagine a skill system that he will like except for the "system" of "you can do whatever your DM thinks is appropriate for your character to know how to do, which is at least partly determined by your character class."

Unless you are getting some kind of masochistic charge out of trying to drag shadzar kicking and screaming into the 21st century I have no idea why you are wasting keystrokes on the Den's village idiot slash troll.

[shadzar]

In 3.x D&D, everyone can swim. Absolutely everyone.

well al the more reason 3.x is a fucking waste of space in the universe then. it forces play choices on the player.

Forces Play Choices? If I'm not misunderstanding than you're from some kind of mirror universe (which I have not rejected). Most people like making play choices. Otherwise it's a railroad. But to clarify, while everyone can swim in 3.x, not everyone can swim well.

there is the problem. in a game like D&D it shouldn't be everyone can, everyone can't some can and some can't, etc...

it should be player chooses, and everyone can TRY to do it, IF they want to.

i see you as Mearls in this example....

Mearls: We will make it so that evreyone has certain chacnes to do things.
Playtesters: GREAT! no more thinking you can't climb a wall because it is a thief skill.
Mearls: so everyone can swim!
Playtester Y: but i don;t want all my character to swim.
Mearls

this is why many RPG players still don't understand the root concept of RPGs, they are trying to assign roles too specifically, or assign this they would do to be the same as everyone else.

so yes, you are forcing character design on the premise of balance. it is still building miniature for a wargame.

how many ranks in "swim" does it take to make you the best at swimming? fish.

yup, fish will always be better than land creatures at swimming, no matter how many "ranks" you place in some silly skill.

swimming is like fire-building, either you can or can't, you really don't need degrees of it in most cases. just whether you can or can't is 90% of the time enough to play the game. these aren't really "skills" that the game needs rules for, just like all the NWPs. as to your feats question, whether it was this thrad or the other. i really don't know what they are? just a special name for class features? a mutated form of W/NWPs?

it goes to tracking too and all those other things. they aren't something that needs to be as developed as you think. if a lsit of ALL he "skills" used in RPGs was made, and people look at the type of RPG and asked, what is the point of this skill in this game, you would find the ones that need a developed system, and ones that are have/have-nits.

you already started the list of have/have-nots in your example of "take 10". if you have it you can do it. there isnt that many times that you wouldnt be able to and it doesnt need some super developed system to emulate real world simulations of the intricacies of all aspects of building a fire.

the whole idea of skill is things you do outside of combat. in combat if you can swim you can have water combat, if not, you're fucked! so if you can swim you use the water combat rules, if you cant, you drown.

[deaddmwalking]

deaddmwalking, why in the nine hells are you talking to shadzar? .... Unless you are getting some kind of masochistic charge out of trying to drag shadzar kicking and screaming into the 21st century I have no idea why you are wasting keystrokes on the Den's village idiot slash troll.

You've got me. You know the theory that the Earth is really just a giant turtle. And someone asks what that turtle is standing on? And they answer another turtle... It's turtles all the way down. Well, I can't believe that the craziness goes on infinitely. There must be a foundational level where we can agree.

well al the more reason 3.x is a fucking waste of space in the universe then. it forces play choices on the player.

Forces Play Choices? If I'm not misunderstanding than you're from some kind of mirror universe (which I have not rejected). Most people like making play choices. Otherwise it's a railroad. But to clarify, while everyone can swim in 3.x, not everyone can swim well.

there is the problem. in a game like D&D it shouldn't be everyone can, everyone can't some can and some can't, etc...

it should be player chooses, and everyone can TRY to do it, IF they want to.

That's pretty much how it works. You don't have to assign any ranks to Swim. If you're strong, you probably won't drown in calm waters. If you've ever gone swimming in a lake or creek, you're aware that most people don't drown under those circumstances. But if you get tired, or try to carry a weight, or the water turns rough, people that aren't strong swimmers start drowning. Every commoner can go into the pool and only rarely will they ever have a situation where they risk drowning. Of course, adventurers tend to end up in those kinds of dangerous situations more often.

i see you as Mearls in this example....

Mearls: We will make it so that evreyone has certain chacnes to do things.
Playtesters: GREAT! no more thinking you can't climb a wall because it is a thief skill.
Mearls: so everyone can swim!
Playtester Y: but i don;t want all my character to swim.
Mearls

First off, you don't have to even TRY to swim if you don't want to. If you want to take a long walk off a short pier and drown, nobody MAKES you swim. But if you happen to change your mind, you're entitled to attempt a skill check to see if you can keep yourself from drowning.

So far, that sounds a lot like real life.

this is why many RPG players still don't understand the root concept of RPGs, they are trying to assign roles too specifically, or assign this they would do to be the same as everyone else.

so yes, you are forcing character design on the premise of balance. it is still building miniature for a wargame.

Again - you can choose to become a better swimmer. Most people will drown in heavy seas. But if you want to become such a strong swimmer that you can become a Professional Life Guard, the rules support that. If your D&D rules can't even handle 'became a life guard', your rules suck.

how many ranks in "swim" does it take to make you the best at swimming? fish.

yup, fish will always be better than land creatures at swimming, no matter how many "ranks" you place in some silly skill.

shadzar, did you know that I'm a better swimmer than goldfish? I mean, I can swim faster then them, anyways. And I'm not even a strong swimmer.

Not every fish is the best swimmer ever. But in D&D rules, any creature with a swim speed gets a +8 bonus on Swim checks. So if you had a dolphin with the same strength as a human, the human would have to be at least level 5 (with max ranks) to be able to swim as well (as far as avoiding obstacles, and avoiding being pulled under by a strong current). The human still couldn't swim as fast as the dolphin, and probably couldn't hold his breath as long. But give him gills and/or allow him to transform his body, and suddenly he's just as good as a dolphin.

And of course, since this is a fantasy game, it actually matters whether a Mermaid can swim faster or better than a shark. Since we don't have real-world examples to extrapolate from, we need a system that creates acceptable results.

If your game can't even handle Ariel and Flounder avoiding a shark in a shipwreck, your game sucks.

swimming is like fire-building, either you can or can't, you really don't need degrees of it in most cases.

This is pants on head retarded. You absolutely need to know whether you can succeed in a difficult situation. Can you swim in calm water? Probably. So that's not likely to be when we start making checks. It's when things no longer seem 'reasonable'. Can a dwarf in full plate armor swim in calm water? What if he's stronger than an ogre? There are no real-world examples to build from. But our system needs to be able to model it. The swim skill lets us do that. If the penalties are -16, but the Strength is +8, he needs at least a +8 skill to 'take 10' and be able to survive in calm water. It gets any worse and he'll likely drown.

just whether you can or can't is 90% of the time enough to play the game.

Not in my games. Knowing you theoretically COULD succeed isn't as important as knowing, whether at this particular instance, you did or did not succeed.

the whole idea of skill is things you do outside of combat. in combat if you can swim you can have water combat, if not, you're fucked! so if you can swim you use the water combat rules, if you cant, you drown.

Skills can be used in combat and out of combat. Some more easily than others. Jumping, Climbing, and Swimming definitely can apply both in combat and out of combat. If you know how to do something, it makes sense that you can try to do it even when you're being assaulted. I could make spreadsheets while you're hitting me with a nerf bat. That's not a skill I'm likely to use in combat, but I could. But that's the nice thing about not being held at gun point by Mearls in his 'ivory tower made of glass' - I can allow my players to try to use skills in combat if they think it will give them an advantage...

[shadzar]

so all you want is simulation. i suggest you not play RPGs and go play video games.

you really don't need to know "how good you swim". more times than not it will be binary in an RPG. either you can swim or you can't swim. this is the stupid shit caused by many people anting to write stories and throwing it into D&D about adventures.

when you write your story about the game you played, you can quantify, and qualify the "swim" parts however the fuck you want to, but again, 90% of the time if you can swim, or not is all that matters.

to your goldfish shit. i want to see you underwater without air support for longer than a fish, including goldfish. no you can't swim BETTER, because the ability to stay underwater a fish will always win over a mammal. (see whales)

[rampaging-poet]

Simulation is actually something video games do very, very poorly. In a video game, there are a finite number of actions your can even try, let alone succeed at. Many games do not allow you to even try swimming and treat water as a bottomless pit. You often can't leap from balconies or jump over waist-high fences, you can't climb up the back of the wizard's tower to avoid the traps inside, and you can't light anything except enemies and specially-placed piles of dry leaves on fire. Every thing your character is capable of doing in a video game had to be anticipated by the game developers ahead of time, and even if they thought of it you still can't do it unless they took the time to put it in the game.

Tabletop RPGs do not have that problem. The problem they do have is arguments with the DM about whether or not a character can and did succeed at an action. It's reasonable for anyone to swim in calm water, but what about rough seas? Swimming in a storm? Swimming in armour? Swimming with their hands tied? Can someone who can swim in armour also swim naked during a storm? If someone can sometimes swim in rough water without drowning, did they manage to do so this particular time? These are all questions that could occur at the gaming table because in a tabletop game, people can try anything. Even if it's all up to magic teaparty, that is still simulation, because you thought about what might happen under the circumstances and chose a reasonable outcome. A skill system moves some of the burden of the simulation from the DM to the dice, provides a fair random element in cases where the outcome is uncertain, and provides example difficulties for various tasks that allow the DM to resolve similar situations by comparing the listed tasks to what the character actually tried.

Swimming is something that people can do, and some people are better at it than others. We have real-world examples of how swimming works for most people. We do not have real-world examples of how swimming works for mermaids, water dragons, and heroes like Beowulf who swam across an ocean in a few days and would have gotten there faster if he hadn't stopped to kill every sea serpent in that entire ocean. Beowulf provides an example of a fantasy character that can swim far better than anyone in real life, especially if you include bullshit like "can live in the ocean for days at a time" in your definition of swimming. If skills are completely magic tea party, players may not know when their character is as good at swimming as Beowulf, and again there could be arguments as to whether someone who can swim as well as Beowulf can succeed under different circumstances.

Finally, just because a player doesn't think their character can swim doesn't mean they won't end up in the water. Off the top of my head, they could be thrown off a boat, fall into a water-filled covered pit, or have a flying spell dispelled while they're over a lake. At that point it is helpful to know whether or not water is considered a bottomless pit. If more than one character falls into the water, it is important to know which if any of them can survive. These aren't stories occurring in a vacuum, these are things that could plausibly happen during an adventure where knowing how well a character can swim is important to how the adventure continues.

TL;DR: Tabletops are better at simulation than videogames, so if you aren't simulating something you are doing it wrong.

[Whipstitch]

Yeah, that was a pitiful cop out on Shadzar's part and if he was honest with you morons instead of trolling he'd admit that he damn well knew it too.

[shadzar]

Simulation is actually something video games do very, very poorly. In a video game, there are a finite number of actions your can even try, let alone succeed at.

1. "video games" did not single out any game you have played, but includes them all. this is ANY simulation environment created and run by a computer, including NASA launch simulators, airline piloting simulators, etc.

sure the game you buy to play on your laptop from steam as a flight simulator doesn't do everything the $2 billion computer at American Airlines does, but that is because your PS4 or XBox one, is basically a Fisher PRice toy in comparison and power.

the video games you are thinking about have limits based ont he parameters set when it was created., just like the flight simulator, it cannot simulate someone swimming the english channel, it has limits. but the video games you play have a lot more computing power that can be brought to bare without distraction than a DM at a table of 6 people waiting for a resolution. you don't have enough swimming skill in EQ, then you try swimming out of zone from Freeport and see what happens to you. got enough ranks in it and you can make it out of zone long enough to turn around and go back before you drown, otherwise you drown before you even make it to the next zone, or jsut cant make it back to shore at all!

the fact your video game doesnt let you climb walls or trees as a D&D thief has the ability for use, is not the computers fault, but the designer who was lazy and just didnt have a way or time to add that to the game. it isnt because the computer cant do it because (Assassin's Creed), but because the physics engine and mobility engines designed into your video game doesnt have those things. likewise you cant set fire to every wooden door you see in a video game, because that is how the physics of the game is made so that the door will always be there as it simulates nothing but a blocked path, the immovable object if you will or a wall of force that cannor be dismissed. this is by design so it can NOT be simulated to be burnt down jsut as walls cannot be broken down anywhere as they must always be there unless some plot event calls for them not to be there. video games will always follow the plot, not the player wishes. that is all you are discussing, not actual computing ability or ability to simulate, just designer choice in what IS simulated. what does this video game need for you to be able to paly it, is all that is asked when those things are designed.