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2 years ago ::
Jun 08, 2011 - 9:27AM
#31
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Date Joined:
Oct 31, 2009
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What I hate is being trained in a skill but then being out-classed by untrained folks who just have a high stat and racial bonus.
My dm has always disliked this as well.
He house ruled skills so that the characters that were untrained in the skill but did well due to stats/race/background would be considered a generalist in that skill as opposed to an expert, one who is trained in the skill.
The untrained character would be considered a 'dabbler' in said skill and not a true 'devotee' if you will. Just a way to address a quirk of the skill system and smooth over ruffled feathers of the irritated peac...I mean players in the group.
Kato
I don't think it is a quirk of the skill system. Sometimes ssomeone with a natural ability can be better at something than someone who is trained with very little natural ability.
True but I think that would be more the exception than the norm.
Personally, I have been an amateur potter for the past 30 years. I'm not bad at it either, rather good for 'dabbling.' I know some stuff but going up against someone trained I might shine once in awhile but mostly it will be the other way. I can, however, by my natural talent/aptitude add to a discussion of pottery & bring relevant insight to the subject but not to the same level as a professional.
That's the distinction we try to bring with this house rule. Just to help skills and their usage make more sense to us.
Kato
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2 years ago ::
Jun 08, 2011 - 10:03AM
#32
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- Forum Guide
- Hero Craftsman Gold Medalist
- Master Dungeon Master
Date Joined:
Jun 23, 2005
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True but I think that would be more the exception than the norm.
The exception to the norm is someone who trains in something in which they have little natural ability.
I can, however, by my natural talent/aptitude add to a discussion of pottery & bring relevant insight to the subject but not to the same level as a professional.
But the professional should have the same Abilities as you do, plus his training.
The notion that some klutz (or even someone of average agility) would train to become a professional acrobat is simply unrealistic. So all these comparisons of the untrained novice with natural talent beating the untalented professional misses the mark. There was not untalented professionals.
The untrained novice with natural talent may have a +4 from Abilities at most (and such people are exceedingly rare). The less-able professional should still have at least a +2 as well as the +5 from training, for a total of +7.
Moreover, there's a difference between "Trained" (the mechanic) and "trained". The PCs are presumed to be better than the average Joe. They are special, imbued with the blessings of destiny and natural ability that few people possess. The fact that my 18-Int wizard untrained in Dungeoneering (+4) can make an educated guess about the abilities of a mind flayer almost as well as the 12-Int NPC spelunker who is Trained in Dungeoneering (+6) should be unsurprising. My wizard is a hero and the spelunker is not. The fact that when my wizard is 4th level, he will know as much about Dungeoneering is also not surprising. By then he's seen more crap than that piddly spelunker will ever see. And when my wizard is 24th level, still not "Trained" but rolling a +17, and thus can beat the spelunker's best Dungeoneering check by taking 10, still not surprising. He's a freaking epic wizard. He's seen crap that would make the spelunker bleed in the brain. He knows stuff the spelunker has no reason to ever want to know.
The spelunker knows enough to spot the tell-tale signs of a cave fisher and then leave. The epic wizard knows the demigod of cave fishers because he's probably dated the demigod's sister at some point.
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2 years ago ::
Jun 08, 2011 - 10:56AM
#33
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I don't think it is a quirk of the skill system. Sometimes ssomeone with a natural ability can be better at something than someone who is trained with very little natural ability.
The system encourages the creation of geniuses.... who do indeed often overshadow those with technically more training.
I always thought Deadlands had a fairly elegant system. Your stat/aptitude was the die type, your skill training was the number of dice you rolled.
Someone might have a d8 for Agility checks, and 3 skill ranks in acrobatics, so they would take the best open ended result of 3d8. Someone with a d12 for Agility and 1 rank would simply roll the d12.
in 4th edition, I normally give the edge towards being trained over simply having a high total. If its time sensitive, I let the trained character complete the task in less time, or give them extra information for the same roll, or count the skill as a penumbra of knowledge that can expand beyond the skill scope and bleed into other skills. Someone trained in athletics knows famous knights, rules of obscure sports, and betting odds. History might let you appraise objects of significance. Healing can tell which cults favor which disease/poison elements. In my game recently, an incredibly well thievery roll not only let the player open a puzzle box, but recognize the maker as well.
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2 years ago ::
Jun 08, 2011 - 11:00AM
#34
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Date Joined:
Nov 15, 2007
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There is nothing in having a skill "trained" to indicate you had formal education in it ("I majored in Perception, minored in Insight.")
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2 years ago ::
Jun 08, 2011 - 11:08AM
#35
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Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2009
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There is nothing in having a skill "trained" to indicate you had formal education in it ("I majored in Perception, minored in Insight.")
That is certainly true - trained != "Trained" it could itself be a form of talent more specific than that governed by attributes
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2 years ago ::
Jun 08, 2011 - 11:26AM
#36
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Date Joined:
Sep 10, 2005
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I see skills as improved in 4th ed, but still having major issues.
The first is the math of skill bonuses. Trained or untrained +1/2 level was supposed to keep skills playable and relevant. It does not work. There are too many bonuses and modifiers to set any sort of meaningful DCs based on character level.
Even at first level the range of bonus from worst to best skill modifier is -1 (for a skill tied to an ability score of 8) to +17(20 ability score, trained, racial bonus, background bonus, skill focus feat). This range increases as characters level.
Skill DCs set by level fall into auto success or auto failure territory, and that is a failure in the system IMO.
The second major issue I see is the blind spots to skill related play for a few classes with only 3 trained skills. A character with only 3 trained skills is hard pressed to participate meaningfully in a variety of types of skill challenges.
The third issue is that a resource (Feats) has to be split between combat and non combat resources, which means competence in one area comes at a cost to the other, which is counter to 4th eds stated desire to allow all players to participate meaningfully in play both in and out of combat.
The cat is out of the bag, and I don't know any quick and easy fix to skills for 4th. I have house rules I use to good effect, but the issues are beyond a simple patch. I just hope that in future editions skill use gets the focus, attention and playtesting it deserves.
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2 years ago ::
Jun 08, 2011 - 1:00PM
#37
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- Forum Guide
- Hero Craftsman Gold Medalist
- Master Dungeon Master
Date Joined:
Jun 23, 2005
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2 years ago ::
Jun 08, 2011 - 2:23PM
#38
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Date Joined:
Aug 15, 2009
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I don't think it is a quirk of the skill system. Sometimes ssomeone with a natural ability can be better at something than someone who is trained with very little natural ability.
Possible, but not likely. Natural ability can only serve you up to a point - to become exceptional requires work and effort in improving on that skill (in 4e's mechanics, "Training"). This is true across a broad spectrum of fields, from sports to academics: those who spend the most time working at improving their skills end up being better than others in their field.
A couple ways to represent that in a game system could be:
- giving the character who's Trained more information/better results from skill checks than one who's not.
- capping the total bonus on a check for a character who is not Trained at 5 + 1/2 level (i.e. they can't be better than someone who's put effort into it).
But really, those are up to individual DMs. I, personally, think 4e's skill system is playable even though it's not a perfect simulation of the real world, since D&D is, after all, a game.
“If the computer or the game designer is having more fun than the player, you have made a terrible mistake.”
-Sid Meier
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2 years ago ::
Jun 08, 2011 - 2:31PM
#39
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Date Joined:
Jan 15, 2009
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I see skills as improved in 4th ed, but still having major issues.
The first is the math of skill bonuses. Trained or untrained +1/2 level was supposed to keep skills playable and relevant. It does not work.
A character with only 3 trained skills is hard pressed to participate meaningfully in a variety of types of skill challenges.
The third issue is that a resource (Feats) has to be split between combat and non combat resources, which means competence in one area comes at a cost to the other, which is counter to 4th eds stated desire to allow all players to participate meaningfully in play both in and out of combat.
I just hope that in future editions skill use gets the focus, attention and playtesting it deserves.
I couldnt think of a fun way to just plain agree... I like yours.
oh except maybe number 2 is the only one reasonably easy to patch.
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2 years ago ::
Jun 08, 2011 - 3:00PM
#40
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Date Joined:
Sep 26, 2001
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Skills were never D&D's strong suit. The system was class-and-level based, so any 'skill' should really have been based on your class and level. Skills outside of general class abilities, or custom skills, if desired, should still have been based heavily on level, to keep them at all relevent as the game progressed.
The early secondary skills and non-weapon proficiencies didn't really do either of those, and were occassionally at odds with existing class abilities. For instance, a 'Forester' might reasonable follow tracks in the woods, but a regular proficiency 'check' was /much/ easier than a Ranger's complex percentile system for tracking.
3e's take on skills was, indeed, more in keeping with many other systems, which made them more 'modern,' and, in vacuum, /better/ - but also somewhat incompatible with the rest of the game. While the d20-vs-DC was still there, of course, they were only partially dependent on level (only so long as you spent ranks on the same skills every level), and they really highlighted one of the major game-design issues with skill systems:
The purpose of skill systems is to help better define what PCs can /do/. But, what most skill systems accomplish, especially detailed, expansive ones, is to create incompetence: to better codify what PCs /can't/ do (because they lack the skill). The bigger the skill list and, /especially/ the more it's added to, the more the system serves to disable PCs and close off dramatic, narrative, and RP options.
One thing 3e nearly got right was to have a static skill list. Nearly, because it included several catchall skills that could be used to define into existence numerous related individual skills. Craft, for instance. You can define 'Craft: Traps,' causing everyone without ranks in Craft: traps to lose any ability to make traps. Of course, good DMs let characters use other skills where apropriate - Nature or Dungeoneering or Disable Device to make traps, for instance.
4e did better, with a static skill list and no catchall definable sub-skills to create incompetence in all who lack them. Trained serves to define characters as particularly good with certain skills. Non-adventuring 'skills' can either be hand-waved or be folded into the closest adventuring skill. It doesn't provide a mechanism for filling in PC backgrounds with a few mechanical choices, but background is just background, there's no great need to define it mechanically, unless it matters to the PC's adventuring challenges in some way. 4e also got tying skill to level 'right,' in that it's more consistent with the core D&D class-and-level system to have every skill (even untrained ones) improve with level. High-level heroes and demi-gods shouldn't be unable to handle minor obstacles for lack of training - not because it doesn't make sense for a heroic scholarly wizard to have no clue how to propperly secure a line for spelunking (Athletics) or pace himself when running from a horde of angry orcs (Endurance), but because it's just not heroic to sweat the small stuff like that.
As a design challenge, skills are a potential pitfall, much like power inflation. Skill proliferation creates incompetence in PCs (and NPCs, if the DM isn't careful or comfortable hand-waving), complicates the system, and ultimately delivers little value to the system. Yet, it's enormously tempting to both designers and players. More and more-detailed skills are systems that can be added to the game fairly easily, they're not tough to design. And, for players, more and more-detailed skills are ways to further define and specialize their characters (and maybe angle for some advantage or another). Tempting as it is, adding skills to a system usually hurt the system more than they help. Having a complete skill set at launch, one that all the relevent tasks of the genre can be divided among, should be the target designers aim for. Skills aren't like supernatural and heroic abilities, they are limitted to a fairly static set of things that people can learn to do within the given genre. A skill shouldn't be added unless there's an obvious, gaping hole in the system's ability to emulate it's genre - and obviously, obvious gaping holes should be avoided in the first place. 'New skills,' then, should really be read as an admission (or accusation, if the game's changed hands) of gross incompetence in the initial design.
Love 4e? Concerned about its future? Join the Old Guard of 4e"You want The Tooth? You can't handle The Tooth!" - Dahlver-Nar. "If magic is unrestrained in the campaign, D&D quickly degenerates into a weird wizard show where players get bored quickly" - E. Gary Gygax
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