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Wolf Boy,

In the Saga system they give bonuses to specific functions of a skill by offering a free re-roll on failure. So, for example, an especially keen-eared elf might get a re-roll for hearing but not for other uses of Perception. This works out to be a +2 to +4 bonus, I'm told, depending on the situation.

This is generally how racial skill bonuses are handled in Saga, rather than with a flat bonus. So Halflings might get a free re-roll to Stealth rolls (or perhaps just the hide function of the Stealth skill), etc. Half-Orcs might have a free re-roll on Intimidate checks, etc.

I don't think it's terribly important to represent the good at seeing/bad at hearing character (a sort of uncommon one), but it probably will be doable.

You know, if you don't like combined skills, you can always just not convert to 4E because it looks like the skills are going to change, whether you like it or not.

AaronDireBear wrote:

Oh, bBOO HOO and WAAH WAAH and QQ! OH its so HORRIBLE that I have to roll more than one d20! Oh its so OUTRAGEOUS that I have 2 chances to detect the thief instead of one! Oh WOE IS ME! WAAAAH! WAAAH!

And they are NOT the same thing!

Actually, spot could be divided too. 1 skill to see far distant things in the horizon, 1 skill to see things in the inmediate surroundings. Some people is shortsighted, for example. A detective might be good spoting things in a room, but a sailor might be better spoting a ship in the horizon. We might even divide the thing in colors, for those that are color blind.

We could go Rolemaster way and have picking locks, lock lore and locksmithing.
Jump could be split in vertical jump and horizontal jump (Javier Sotomayor would not beat Mike Powell in his specialty, nor the other way around)


You (and other) react as if you have never played a game where perception is a single skill. In some, it is even an ability.

Skills are an abstract measure, it's ok to make the game simpler by putting the skill together. Also help to balance the game, if some one has to spend just X skill points to learn to... say... heal, he should not need twice that amount to learn to, say, sneak.

Disciple_of_Salsa wrote:

Fly+Invisibility= Ultimate Stealth

No.

Circle of invisibility + zone of silence = ultimate Stealth for the whole party.

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Wow.
People here seem to want just 10 or less skills. And while this might make the “telling of stories” go somewhat faster, it doesn’t necessarily make things better.
I see lots of people wanting Appraise rolled into the craft skills. However, they seem to forget that when you do this the only people who can tell you how much something is worth with any regularity is someone who actually makes that item. This is ridiculous! It totally ignores the role of the fence, or any other person who just might have some knowledge due to their occupation. It ignores that occupations might not actually make things. I should not have to be able to make something to know how much I can sell it for, whether at the local trading post or the local underground black/grey market.

Personally, I would like to see the return of the Alchemy skill outside of Craft. Alchemy can let you do many more things than just make things. It can allow you to identify substances – like potions and oils, or that the powdery substance you are about to put in your mouth is actually a deadly poison or the spores of a dangerous fungus because I use it to make this particular antidote.

Lots of people seem to want to group any type of physical skill together. In fact, it seems that lots of people here want to take any skills that have even a vague similarity or can be connected somehow and merge them.  It’s rather frustrating to read.

Unfortunately, the only way I can see such a system working smoothly is to add lots of situational modifiers. (this race has really good sight, so they have a +2 bonus to their perception when making a check to spot things. This other race has really good hearing, so they get a +2 to their Perception to hear things. This third race has claws, so they are good at climbing, but only trees or things they can sink their claws into.) And we know how well those work – hardly anybody remembers to use them. Situational modifiers tend to put the burden on the DM – the one person at the table who has the most on his plate on any given night. Another option would be to introduce advantages and disadvantages. (My character doesn’t have a very good concentration, so he can’t find things well when he Searches. This other character is kinda clumsy, so he has a penalty to his jumping and tumbling, but he can swim like all get-out. Ad nauseaum.) This makes characters customizable like people seem to like, and puts the burden of remembering the situational modifier on the individual player. Also not a terribly good thing, but more dependant on good players than having DMs remember everything.

Unfortunately, if we compress the skills so much, but add so many modifiers as to be believable and customizable, we end up with a slightly different sort of the same thing we have now. Lots of numbers to remember, slowing down to add modifiers to a roll, etc… Personally, I prefer having a number on a sheet that I can refer to.

One thing I hope we on the forums remember – and I really hope that WotC remembers – is that this little section of the forums represents only perhaps 1% of their player base. Not every player comes here. Far, far from it. There are millions of players and DMs out there. I would be surprised if the forums had 50,000 users. Most likely only a fifth of that. So while we here might like or dislike what we think might be changing in the system come next June, we are but a tiny part of the playerbase. A very, very  loud, tiny part, but  still a tiny part.
We also know next to nothing about what the system will turn out like. Many people here seem to think that it will be exactly like SWSe. That, however, is not what was said. They said it would be based on SWSe, not that it would be the same thing, slightly modified for setting.  So, while these talks are good to figure out what this tiny percentage of the player-base kinda sorta wants, we know almost nothing about the system.[/FONT]