In working on the skills this week, I've decided to make some minor cosmetic changes and a fundamental mechanical change. First, I've decided to make all skill names into verbs for consistency. Secondly, I've eliminated some skills. I made an earlier post about how I thought "Notice" was unnecessary and counterproductive as a skill. I've made the same decision in regards to "Investigation" and "Survival". Investigation should be pursued through the use of other skills that are appropriate to the situation; survival can be replaced by a setting-specific knowledge (the Know skill) or talent.
The big change is that I've decided to cut the association between skills and attributes. I was trying to arrange the skills so that they wouldn't all be concentrated under Cunning and Finesse and I finally decided that there were too many justifications for placing a skill under one attribute or another. Is intimidation a product of projecting a strong personality to socially dominate someone? Or, is it more important to have a powerful physical presence? Could you intimidate someone by simply being clever enough to know which psychological buttons to push in order to manipulate them? Instead of choosing one "right" way to use a skill by tying it to an attribute, I've decided to just cut them all loose.
This loses the effect of some skills being easier to learn for characters that have good attributes in that area, which I liked. However, I think this will cut down on bookkeeping questions like "If I raise an attribute first, the skill will be cheaper. If I raise the skill first then the attribute, can I get the points back?" I don't really want the order to matter that much, because I don't want to encourage "character building" like that. Designing a character should be a matter of choosing what skills and attributes they have and not what order is the most efficient to learn them in. That way lies the madness of D20 arguments about whether your rogue/fighter should take rogue first for the extra skills at first level or take fighter first for the immediate use of the weapon and armor proficiencies (and never mind the fact that either combination is inferior to just playing a spellcaster).
I liked that skill discount but I don't think it would be missed in actual play, so I'm happy to cut it out to options more versatile.
Separating skills and attributs is an interesting change. It would certainly cut down many arguments during character creation.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if it would eliminate any arguments during character creation (because I don't think many people would argue about that), but I do think it would streamline the process. The most important change would be in character advancement. The cost will be based on what you're learning and not what you've already learned. If the order isn't important, there won't be arguments or complaints like "I have to raise this before I raise that or it will cost more". I think the Exploits system for XP will sufficiently cover things like "you can learn Skill Y more easily because you've already got Attribute X", only in this case it will be "You can learn Skill Y because you've already demonstrated proficiency in X-ish things."
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