Skills: Complexity

Questions

 In working on my RPG house-rules, I find myself at a crossroads, especially when it comes to skills.

How Complex?

There are two basic ideas I'm working with currently.  The first is a d20 system, very basic even on its own, where a d20 is rolled and the skill is added to the roll to determine success.

The second system is an idea of automatic success, where if a character has a skill and uses that skill, barring any outstanding issue, the character is successful, although if a character does not have a skill, the character must roll for success or failure.

There is another way that comes to mind as I write this, where, when a character attempts an action and the player points out any relevant skills his character has, the skill is taken into account by the DM instead of being added to the roll as a strict bonus.

In any case, I do not want to implement the full 2e skill (that is to say the non-weapon proficiencies) rules, where each skill comes with a specific effect useful under the written conditions, nor do I want a comprehensive list of all activities that could take place during the game, such as is the intent behind the 3e skills.  Indeed, I do not even want the skills to become secondary character abilities, such as in 5e.

So what do I want?

I want skills which are treated as a background element of a character, but ones which may become useful if the players are clever enough to find a use for them.  But, as well, and counterproductive to the first statement, I want there to be skills which exist to give an indication of what a character is capable of doing.

The obvious answer seems to be the third one of the options, so then what is the conundrum?

Answers

Skills are, although I should they have become, a tangible part of the game.  They exist as a simple idea, one which can add much flavor without much complexity.

Yet, despite being a tangible part of the game, the simplest solution, and very well the solution most fitting to role of skills, is also the solution which provides for the most ephemeral implementation.

For my game, there needs to be a mechanic for skills, or does there?

This idea comes from a video game, West of Loathing, which I play every now and again.

In WoL the skills which exist in the game drastically change how you approach every situation the game presents.  It is now that I realize exactly why I find this so interesting, because they act much in the same way as core class abilities in AD&D.

So, if skills are to have a bigger impact, which would be the natural result of incorporating a more advanced effect of skills, they would have to be tied to specific classes, or at least to the archetypes of Warrior, Priest, Rogue and Magic-User.

The only way to achieve the system I have set out for myself is would be to have a general list of skills, ones which are less impactful but which may gain in usefulness through player ingenuity, and a separate list for each class archetype, each filled with skills unique to each class, skills which are able to change the approach which the players take in the game.

To go on another unrelated-yet-related topic, I recently picked up Lion & Dragon, and one of the most interesting things I found within its pages was that each class had a random table which gives the character an extra benefit.  These benefits range from skills to extra health to additional powers.  

It seems obvious to me that a similar idea could be employed, limited to just skills, but, those skills which act as core class features

Content

And now for the actually interesting bits.

The first type of skills will be called the Class Skills, those which, when used, provide automatic success within the given field (and within reason).

 Starting with a table of skills for the Warrior type classes:

Warriors	D8
Blind Fighting	1
Endurance	2
Intimidation	3
Jousting	4
Torture	5
Armorer	6
Bowyer/Fletcher	7
Weaponsmithing	8

Here is where some explanations are in order, these skills are taken from the lists presented in 2e, mostly following with the ones found in the core books, with some removed and some others from the "complete handbooks" of second edition, as well as some added by myself (to pad the lists out).

As such, the skills presented may be mismatched, that is to say in power level, or perhaps I should say usefulness.  The 'Blind Fighting' skill always stuck out as odd, especially in the original list, as it seems more in the manner of a combat ability rather than a background skill

But, this will simply have to stay for now, as these tables are only able to serve as examples of how such a system would operate.

Priests	D6
Healing	1
Heraldry	2
Herbalism	3
Forensics	4
Religion	5
Sense Motive	6

I am even less satisfied by this list, as the skills listed are more incongruous than the previous list, though this too must do.  As well, it should be mentioned that this list being smaller than that of the Warriors, though simply due to the lack of fitting skills, I feel fits with the idea of the Priest classes.

Rogues	D12
Pick Pockets	1
Open Locks	2
Find/Remove Traps	3
Move Silently	4
Hide in Shadows	5
Detect Noise	6
Climb Walls	7
Disguise	8
Forgery	9
Tightrope Walking	10
Tumbling	11
Rope Use	12

This is perhaps my favorite list, as every skill is fairly well balanced and all are convergent under a singular theme. The most unfortunate part is that this would replace the percentile system of most OSR Rogue (thief/assassin/bard or otherwise) character's skills, which some may be adverse to, and rightly so, as it removes one of the core aspects of the class. Although I would argue not entirely so, as the Rogue classes are still the only ones which have access to these skills, and, moreover, this change is compensated by this table being the largest out of all.

Magic-Users	D6
Alchemy	1
Ancient History	2
Astrology	3
Cryptography	4
Gem Cutting	5
Spellcraft	6

The final list of the four feels strangely mundane in comparison, with generally related skills, though not entirely, and an imbalance within the choices that seems, to me at least, less pressing.

 

Finally are the lesser skills, available to all characters, which have been selected from what I consider the immediately useful skills from 2e.  These skills have less weight to them than the class-specific skills, either being narrowed in scope or in potency.

Animal Handling

Animal Lore

Appraising

Bureaucracy

Cartography

Charioteering

Cooking

Deception

Deduction

Direction Sense

Etiquette

Fire-building

Fishing

Hunting

Investigation

Jumping

Languages, Ancient

Languages, Modern

Local History

Mountaineering

Navigation

Plant Lore

Reading Lips

Reading/Writing

Riding, Airborne

Riding, Land-Based

Running

Seamanship

Set Snares

Survival

Swimming

Tracking

Weather Sense

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Of course, within this list is even more weirdness, in the form of multiple categories of skills.  There are the hyper-practical skills of Jumping and Swimming, which are almost guaranteed to be useful. There are the skills of Ancient and Modern Languages and Reading/Writing, which, depending on the DM, may be very useful as general skills, or less useful if used as intended in this list, that is, as a way of implementing a system by which characters may learn new languages.

Speaking of which, how does a character obtain these skills?

In 2e, all characters start with a certain number of weapon and non-weapon proficiencies, as well gaining more of both as the character gains levels.  These non-weapon proficiencies, for the purposes of the skill system presented here, may be used to gain either the class skills or the general skills, leaving the choice with the player.

It is at this juncture where another problem presents itself: Looking at the class skills, it is entirely possible for a character to learn all of these by the end of the game, but doing so will leave very little room for the general skills.  Conversely, if a character exclusively acquires general skills, then almost none of the most useful skills available to said character would be obtained.

 A more reasonable person might stop here, but I want to explore all possibilities.

In my house rules, besides the training needed to increase in level, characters may also train to gain new weapon and non-weapon proficiencies, at the rate of one week and 100 gold per proficiency.  Using this rule, I think that the system is about complete where it stands.

Notes

Overall, I like the system, but it definitely feels like some piece is missing here. What that is I don't particularly know.  So far.

One thing that is clear is that the first half, that is the class skills, feels much more streamlined than the latter half.

Feel free to use these rules as you wish, as I certainly will.