The Gaming Den

So, as the title may suggest I've been reading the Tome of Prowess lately, fun stuff!... Well I like it anyway. But Somethings been nagging at me. Why are Climb and Swim, two feats that both use str as their base stat, combined into a still (Athletics) which uses con as its base stat? I get that the good people of the den want to make con less of a survival tax, which I get, if you have to have at least a passable score in something it should probably do something for you other than allow you to live, though if a stat had to specialize in something that's definitely not a bad aspiration. I just don't see the thematic link between being tough, and being able to climb and swim. Being able to climb and swim for long periods yeah, but that's the endurance skill.

It's probably for the same reason that bards have charisma casting--the designers thought that it was in the best interest of the game for it to be that way.

To quote AMiB (abridged), "The point is, fuck [thematic linkage], fuck it in the ear."

Well even then, there are now no strength based skills, so they've turned strength into a survival tax, in more of a "I take less damage because my enemies don't stand up very long" way, but it's the same idea. I suppose there's carrying capacity, but what has carrying capacity every done for anyone? Especially people with mounts or bags of holding, or both.

So it's something of a case of six of one half dozen of another.

Scratch that. Jump is strength based. So you kill things better, carry more, and jump better with high strength. Which is better than not being able to jump better.

Er... no, Strength is not a survival tax. Like, at all. If it were a survival tax, then everyone would use it. Now see how not everyone is using it?

Strength is good for characters who deal damage, sort of like how Charisma is good for characters who cast Cha-based spells.

Hm, suppose I under thought that. It still seems fairly niche though. Damage dealing characters deal damage, Cha-based spell casters... well they're casters, who happen to become more powerful based on Cha instead of Int or Wis. So I can't really say that the comparison is completely apt.

Is it odd that I pronounce the abbreviations of ability scores phonically in my head instead using the score's name?

There's three things going on there. The first is that Con has always gotten a bit of a shaft and other changes did not help that much, and there was an active desire to mitigate that somewhat. Str was pretty much the only place to pull from, given its thematic similarity with Con, so it took one for the team. The second is that you can largely fluff athletics either way and get away with it. None of those activities benefit greatly from being exceptionally strong, so strength in general is not strongly correlated with that sort of thing. As noted, there is already an endurance skill that deals with long term activity, and that sort of pushes it back towards strength, but yeah. It can go either way, and the previously mentioned thing mattered more than worrying about the fluff. The third thing is related to a desire to balance the skills between the attributes as much as possible, and at one time there was going to be an additional Str skill which would have balanced things out a bit more. But since that's not happening, we're back to falling back on the first thing for continuing reasons to keep it where it is.

Alright, thanks.

I've read said tome in the past, and I really, really, really like the Jump rules it has. As it seems to work decently well, and awesome for giving the "Jump Good" effect I've wanted from higher level fighters. So hell yeah for Jump induced flight, and I also liked the touches to fusing sense motive with Appraise.

So I take it, as said about could use Str/Con either way, is that, they're pretty much non-caster attributes anyway, and thus constant depressing state of imbalance already exists for it, so relegating to it either way won't hurt/help things currently anyway? Although, don't clerics who melee use Strength, since their buffing spells up that particularly, as well that the feat that uses wisdom, was only for ranged attacks? Although given Tome exposure, obvious insightful strike feat do that well enough for a cleric.

Another thing, how would people suggest determining what skills a character should have? I was going to go with taking their skill list and then giving them the new skills based on they have a majority of the skills that went into the new one. Thoughts?

Honestly, everyone being able to take every skill would probably work just fine. It allows for greater flexibility; but the class system itself still ensures differentiated characters.

Yeah, but the skills all afford quite a bit of flexibility, which might be problematic if everyone can take all of them.

darkmaster wrote:Yeah, but the skills all afford quite a bit of flexibility, which might be problematic if everyone can take all of them.

...Not really. If most or all of a party is skilled in Stealth or jumping or whatever, then that actually expands the adventures the group as a whole can participate in. And beyond the really good skills (Diplomacy and UMD, basically), there are enough knowledges and socials that everyone can still basically have a schtick of some sort.

No, no, no, I'm talking about Tome of Prowess, and the skills presented there, are decidedly more powerful than the basic ones. With a bunch of other changes too. For instance Use magic device, gone, or rather, moved into a bunch of different skills. Balance, now lets you walk on air, and balance on rays at later levels.

You'd be right about the Stealth thing, Blicero, if ToP didn't let Stealth characters share their Stealth checks with their allies.

Thing is, even if you let any class take any skill ever, you're probably don't have too much to worry about. If anything, just expand the options, so everyone can have united stealth, for example, or just added versatality. Most classes probably won't diverge too much from what skills they'd get normally, Wizards with Spellcraft, Fighters their Athletics, Clerics the Religion, and so forth. Course now, might people taking Perception more, which whole ability to "see/hear" since any character concept can make use of that, or feel somewhat lacking without.

Oh, my bad. I assumed that ToP was just another collection of semihouserules layered on top of the Tomes. I didn't realize it presented such a comprehensive paradigmshift.

darkmaster wrote:Another thing, how would people suggest determining what skills a character should have? I was going to go with taking their skill list and then giving them the new skills based on they have a majority of the skills that went into the new one. Thoughts?

There's advice for converting classes over here. So your initial plan is fine, but you will probably want to do a bit of fine tuning as well.

As for just letting people get whatever class skill they want, I've never liked the idea. It's purely a preference thing though, because I want class packages and ToP skill sets to inform the classes a bit, to set their tone. I guess the best analogy to giving everyone all of the class skills would be just letting druids and clerics and wizards take whatever spells they want (interpretations where wizards can do this anyway not withstanding). It's a substantial increase in the overlap of classes, and I'm not even a little bit convinced that characters won't step on each others toes when given that sort of overlap potential.

So how bad is the Tome's rules for Affability?

The DC starts at the target's CR + 13, so it falls firmly on the side of Super Dickery, despite the text's attempt to wiggle out with "rapport" vs behavior or any argument that Clark's default rapport with random strangers is Helpful rather than Indifferent.

How does ToProwess stealth/detection rules interact with sound, scent tracking?

Zaranthan wrote:The DC starts at the target's CR + 13, so it falls firmly on the side of Super Dickery, despite the text's attempt to wiggle out with "rapport" vs behavior or any argument that Clark's default rapport with random strangers is Helpful rather than Indifferent.

That's not quite right. The skill does not determine default attitudes toward you. It has a bunch of uses, and you're probably referring to the ones that let you get people to agree to something or improve their attitude toward you. If you are a peasant without levels and try to use those skills against superman, he is likely to refuse or like you less instead of more. Not to the point of dickishness, but still a setback.

And that may be weird in this case, but so is the idea of rolling them against superman in the first place. The hedges are intended to prevent people from setting encounters that can't be interacted with socially without at least minor justification. They don't say anything about setting positive default rapport. There isn't anything stopping you from just declaring superman helpful to everyone unless reasons otherwise and letting him agree appropriately. There's even the clause that you only get to make the agreement check if they don't just agree when you present it, and a separate clause to improve rapport without checks (that is admittedly somewhat dm may i), so these checks probably don't come up when used as intended. If that's not clear there's probably some edits I should make when I next care.

Additionally, the dc 13 thing means that you're about 50% successful against equal cr, similar modifier opponents. And the presence of soft fail states mean that you can often get them to agree anyway add long as it was a solid offer and you are unlikely to suffer for trying to make people like you quickly. There are downsides to using it if you're untrained, so you don't do that. Just like you don't attempt lots of other things without training.

I've been using Tome of Prowess in a Tome-heavy game. As a DM, I've found the Tome of Prowess revisions to be a positive contribution to our game. The revised movement skill rules are a particularly good improvement over the SRD. Here are some questions that came up as I ingested its contents into an internal wiki. Most of these are pretty minor and can be handwaved away, but I'd be happy hearing if there has been any thought put into them.

• Checks involving a background ability consist of rolling 1d20 + an attribute bonus, but it isn't clear what this attribute bonus should be. Crafts and Studies might work fine off a single attribute, but Occupations are so broad that it would make sense to allow their key attribute to be determined by the task at hand.
• The revised spellcasting interruption rules refer to the Arcana, Geomancy, and Thaumaturgy skills, but these skills do not mention casting defensively.
• Some of the SRD rules about interacting with the environment have weird edge cases when you're using the Tome of Prowess skills. For example, hazards like cold and heat are resisted using the Survival skill. There isn't a clear analogue in the revised Survival skill. (The Rough It or Live Off the Land uses could be pressed into service.) Ditto for spotting ranges in various biomes and rules for getting lost. The SRD rules for dealing with wildernesses could really use a revision under the "Playing the Skills Game" chapter, or at least a note explaining why DMs shouldn't worry about reconciling with them too much. (The environments that the SRD goes into are more suited towards low-level play, and they stop being really relevant around the time that the ToP revisions really start kicking in.)

I see that a couple of things on my list were addressed since I last checked (like background ability training times). Thanks for adding them.

In addition to the above issues, I've seen player confusion in a couple of other places:

• There is a bit of an explosion in the number of options that characters have in combat, and that can lead to decision paralysis for players. (This problem is compounded by Tome feats.)
• My players also seem to have had some trouble figuring out how to deal with background abilities. For something that sees as little use as it does, this subsystem has a surprisingly large amount of bookkeeping at character creation time (given multiple stacking sources of background ability slots). And the need to make ability checks when acquiring abilities above Grade I at character creation time seems out of place (and better relegated to an optional rule, for players who like Burning Wheel lifepaths or Traveler or whatever). But this is eminently houseruleable.

OgreBattle wrote:How does ToProwess stealth/detection rules interact with sound, scent tracking?

Stealth is supposed to only make it hard to notice you with sight or audio stuff, but I think it's more broadly written right now. Stealth basically adds to the dc to notice you.

Notice is a single check to notice things with all five of your senses. The dc to notice a person is a complicated thing based on distance and size of them / what they're doing, etc, and might actually be composed of different dcs. Normally you can tell which the easier would be, so you just figure that one out. Since light carries farther than sound, the dc to see someone is normally lower than the dc to hear their footsteps at the same distance. So if you made a notice check you might see them, you might see and hear them, but you probably wouldn't hear them without seeing them. Unless it was dark, or there were visual obstructions, or you were blind or something.

So stealth interacts with sound by making it harder to hear you, but that only really matters when it's harder to see you than to hear you.

It shouldn't interact with scent tracking, at least not until levels where it's also blocking tremorsense and the like. Maybe not even then. Kind of an oversight, I admit. There are (or should be) plenty of low level alchemical solutions to that though, like pepper or stink bombs.

czernebog wrote:

• Checks involving a background ability consist of rolling 1d20 + an attribute bonus, but it isn't clear what this attribute bonus should be. Crafts and Studies might work fine off a single attribute, but Occupations are so broad that it would make sense to allow their key attribute to be determined by the task at hand.
• The revised spellcasting interruption rules refer to the Arcana, Geomancy, and Thaumaturgy skills, but these skills do not mention casting defensively.
• Some of the SRD rules about interacting with the environment have weird edge cases when you're using the Tome of Prowess skills. For example, hazards like cold and heat are resisted using the Survival skill. There isn't a clear analogue in the revised Survival skill. (The Rough It or Live Off the Land uses could be pressed into service.) Ditto for spotting ranges in various biomes and rules for getting lost. The SRD rules for dealing with wildernesses could really use a revision under the "Playing the Skills Game" chapter, or at least a note explaining why DMs shouldn't worry about reconciling with them too much. (The environments that the SRD goes into are more suited towards low-level play, and they stop being really relevant around the time that the ToP revisions really start kicking in.)

I see that a couple of things on my list were addressed since I last checked (like background ability training times). Thanks for adding them.

In addition to the above issues, I've seen player confusion in a couple of other places:

• There is a bit of an explosion in the number of options that characters have in combat, and that can lead to decision paralysis for players. (This problem is compounded by Tome feats.)
• My players also seem to have had some trouble figuring out how to deal with background abilities. For something that sees as little use as it does, this subsystem has a surprisingly large amount of bookkeeping at character creation time (given multiple stacking sources of background ability slots). And the need to make ability checks when acquiring abilities above Grade I at character creation time seems out of place (and better relegated to an optional rule, for players who like Burning Wheel lifepaths or Traveler or whatever). But this is eminently houseruleable.

For context, let me start with saying that the background skills are my olive branch to people who read the skills, liked them, and then were upset that I hadn't included rules for knowledge or profession. They were never really part of the original plan, and you can find rants by me here about why I don't care about those skills and told people to just hand wave the whole set. But when my solution was shown to not work for a few people, I inferred that it was closer to the 4e gnome debacle and was cutting off a sufficiently large portion of the player base, so i wrote something I didn't hate to fill it in. And I'm rather happy with it now, but I still don't worry about it like I do the other stuff.

Ok? Ok.

Attribute checks. You can pick whatever one you want for day to day checks, it's fine. It probably won't matter because of the ways the bonuses and the checks are setup, but the results are more fluff than function for adventuers so I'm not worried about it. You should probably pick one for advancement and stick with it though, or at least make it consistent for your game world. It might be ok if blacksmithing took con to advance first and then strength to advance next, for example, as long as everyone played the same game. It makes grades harder to get because you need more good scores, but I'm not worried about it.

Casting defensively was removed from the skills and placed solely in a feat. It also just pervents you from triggering AoOs on casting (tumble movement result parity), and does not cause you to lose the spell by default if you fail. Successful AoOs botch your spell unless resisted by concentration. See the feat for more.

I'll add looking through the environment section and giving it a conversion update to my someday list, but until then I'd recommend just using the srd rules and your survival ranks if it comes up. The encounter distance rules should update themselves more easily by falling out of the updated perception stuff as modified by cover and take 0 / stand guard rules, but I understand not wanting to put the work in as a dm. It should be done on the design side. Consider it also on the list.

Option paralysis... is definitely a problem, and I've said as much in other places. My games use a stronger limit on tome scaling feats than the feat limit I set in the work (treat as kits, get 1 at 1, 1 at 3, and 1 at 6 that has to be earned or granted by a sponsor sitting on a power node; yes, you can conquer nodes and be those sponsors), and it's still a problem. I haven't found a real solution, and I'm not sure there is one other than expreience. Which is kind of a shit answer, even though it's what we tell all of the wizard players all of the time.

Level one characters could well skip backgrounds at chargen and roll in game when it comes up. I don't think I've made a character at the game table instead of before hand in a decade, but I can see how it would be a problem. I'll add that option to my revision pool.

TarkisFlux wrote:The encounter distance rules should update themselves more easily by falling out of the updated perception stuff as modified by cover and take 0 / stand guard rules

Were the standard ranges and range increments for sight and hearing DCs based on encounter distances, or real-world values for human sight and hearing ranges, or whatever numbers were patterned nicely, or something else?

My games use a stronger limit on tome scaling feats than the feat limit I set in the work (treat as kits, get 1 at 1, 1 at 3, and 1 at 6 that has to be earned or granted by a sponsor sitting on a power node; yes, you can conquer nodes and be those sponsors), and it's still a problem.

I don't recall any mention of power nodes in the Tomes, so I'm assuming they're your own thing, and they sound interesting. Could you give a brief overview of how they work and why you implemented them?

Emerald wrote:

TarkisFlux wrote:The encounter distance rules should update themselves more easily by falling out of the updated perception stuff as modified by cover and take 0 / stand guard rules

Were the standard ranges and range increments for sight and hearing DCs based on encounter distances, or real-world values for human sight and hearing ranges, or whatever numbers were patterned nicely, or something else?

Some combination of values that seemed to match up with real world values and nice patterns based on real world ideal physics dropoffs and the logarithmic function of our sense organs. Which is they need the encounter distances remapped; I didn't look at those at all.

My games use a stronger limit on tome scaling feats than the feat limit I set in the work (treat as kits, get 1 at 1, 1 at 3, and 1 at 6 that has to be earned or granted by a sponsor sitting on a power node; yes, you can conquer nodes and be those sponsors), and it's still a problem.

I don't recall any mention of power nodes in the Tomes, so I'm assuming they're your own thing, and they sound interesting. Could you give a brief overview of how they work and why you implemented them?

It's basically Frank's points of darkness thing from forever ago - you conquer a place and get some control over the power coming out of it. I let people generate creatures or grant power sets or spawn prestige classes or whatever with it. Some guy who conquered a fire source sets himself up as the sun king and has a bunch of thematic servants kind of thing. It's very not written down though, and I don't particularly recommend limiting scaling feats like that to solve the options problem since it doesn't work for that. I just happen to like other things it does and having fewer scaling feats on characters.