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Discussion: Design Notes for Skill conversion
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Xagyg |
Design Notes for Skill conversion
Jun 22 2008, 7:22 PM EDT
I've been asked to give some Design Notes for my conversions, so here goes.Skills The first thing I mention in the text is simplification. The sheer number of skills present in 3.x means that it's not possible to cover them all with an average party, or really to even cover a broad enough range to be able to meet all the challenges an adventure might throw at them. I'm not saying a party should necessarily be good at everything, but adventure writers used skills that only 1 party in 5 might have access to, like Knowledge (the planes). The problem is that most classes didn't get a lot of skill points, and they generally had to spend them on "class-mandatory" skills or risk falling behind the DC-curve adventures took into account. After all, why have 4-6 ranks in a skill when you're trying to hit DC 30? Rogues were even worse even though they had more skill points than everyone else, because they were *expected* to be the Open Lock/Disable Device/Spot/Listen/Hide/Move Silently/Appraise/etc. etc. experts. Skill System as a Group Resource Lots of people have house-ruled things like Notice (Listen, Spot) and Stealth (Hide, Move Silently), but that didn't go far enough in my opinion. The D&D skill system is not attempting to model the real world, it needs to model fantasy adventuring, research/knowledge, and NPC interactions. A D&D party should have a reasonable chance to be skilled at almost anything involved in one of those three pursuits. Sure, some parties will be too heavy in some areas and light in others, but a skill system needs to provide enough flexibility that the party has a chance to do the highest amount of cool things possible in each adventure. Therefore, even though skills are selected individually and help define a character, the system should actually be worried about the entire group's efficacy rather than a single character. More in the next post... Do you find this valuable?
Keyword tags:
3e
4e
d&d
dungeons & dragons
fantasy
roleplaying
skills
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Xagyg |
1. RE: Design Notes for Skill conversion
Jun 22 2008, 8:09 PM EDT
Even though I view skills as a group resource, I also see them as a way to personalize your character outside of his combat training (which is mostly what classes represent, if you remove skills). That's why I eradicated the concept of class and cross-class skills. It makes more sense to me to use Skills as an alternative to combat-related achievements. For the most part, the 4e designers agreed with me, I can intuit from their change to "powers." So I conclude that they may not have thought skills were important enough to completely shift paradigm, or they just didn't come up with a complementary system.Removing Skills from Class I didn't completely remove it, because part of some classes' schtick is to be really skillful. What I wanted was for it to feel that way right out of the gate, but then to allow Int to have a noticeable impact on things. So the only thing your class does is tell you how many heritage skills you gain. Very skillful classes gain more heritage skills, which are supposed to represent either your natural talents or things you've studied all your life until you started down the path of an <insert class here>. I admit, there's a bit of "setting" going on here. I imagine that a rogue grows up fairly undisciplined, and so has time to pick up a bunch of skills here and there, whereas a wizard or cleric or fighter has been in deep training and therefore hasn't picked up as much "extraneous" information. A barbarian needs diversity to survive in his environment, as does a ranger, whereas a monk is so disciplined that he's learned fighting techniques as well as knowledge of the natural world. More... Do you find this valuable? |
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Xagyg |
2. RE: Design Notes for Skill conversion
Jun 22 2008, 8:25 PM EDT
Once you're on the path to glory, though, everyone's working on their abilities at the same pace theoretically, with more intelligent characters able to better multitask. Some might see class skills as a way to balance characters, but they're really not. I mean, how many extra skill ranks balances the ability to cast fireball or turn into a dire bear? Tough to say. So we see another way in which 4e got things right. For the most part, 4e is all about equal advancement of combat-related abilities. The fact that they still limit skills by class again makes me think they weren't thinking about skills in relation to their new assumptions as hard as they might have. Removing the class skill concept adds flexibility to characters that doesn't exist in either edition currently. Why can't a cleric have a keen eye or a wizard dabbled in athletics as a side interest? I say, give characters the ability to choose any skills they want, and watch the concepts flow. This is where the variance in heritage skills comes into play. Heritage skills really allow for two things in my mind: they give a character the ability to tack on a side-interest while still maxing out the skills core to his concept, or they allow a character to really excel at a few things. That's why it's important that skill-related classes have more heritage skills. Since the number of skill points is stuck at 4 per level for all classes, then four becomes a key number in determining the number of heritage skills a class will get. A class that has four can use all his heritage skills to max things out. A class that gets only two, regardless of # of skill points, can only be really keen at two skills. Next post I'll do a bit of analysis on the 18 Int wizard vs. 10 Int rogue and see how they pan out and whether or not the system needs adjusting. More next post... Do you find this valuable? |
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Xagyg |
3. RE: Design Notes for Skill conversion
Jun 23 2008, 12:52 AM EDT
18 Int Wiz = 32 skill points at 1st level +4 heritage bonus10 Int Rog = 16 skill points at 1st level +12 heritage bonus Wiz = 36 Rog = 28 4th level Wiz = 64+8 heritage bonus = 72 Rog = 32+24 heritage bonus = 56 8th level Wiz = 96+12 heritage = 108 Rog = 48+36 heritage = 84 So, the 18 Int Wiz is outpacing the 10 Int rogue by 8 skill points per 4 levels. Not sure I care for that too much. The Rogue needs at least a 14 Int to keep pace with the Wizard. If we take out the Int bonus on skills, then the rogue outpaces the wizard by 2 points per level (he gets 6 skill points per 2 levels, to the 2 of the wizard). But, is that really necessary, or desirable? Should Int increase skill points? If it doesn't, then the number of heritage skills determines which class has the most skill proficiency. Of course, we also take player choice away...if a player wanted to drop a 12 in Int just for that extra skill point, he can't. I'd like to keep that player choice alive without giving inadvertant skill benefit to classes who raise their Int for other reasons, like Warlord and Wizard. Time to examine that next. Do you find this valuable? |
