Community

Last week's blog (found here) on "Fixing Skills" proved quite popular, receiving quite a few reads and more than its share of comments. I don't write this blog planning to be read by as many people as possible or purposely inflammatory or for response numbers, and am not going to drop my planned forthcoming blogs just for numbers. But, the comments raised a number of solid points that I felt needed to be addressed.

First, a link to Wrecan's blogs on skills can be found here and here. While I haven't read those blogs in some time, he did it first and credit where credit is due. Oh, and kilpatds also recently did a blog on skills that’s solid, so here’s a link to that too.

Other Options

In the comments there were a few alternatives or revisions to the systems I suggested.

Let's break the ice with some wild hyperbole. Skills in 4e are broken. Skills are the most broken part of the edition. When they're selling 5e in 1-3 years they will be mocking skills like they mocked grappling and THAC0. Skills were only given a half-assed update between editions and not subjected to the same rigorous balancing or "hard math" they subjected on the combat system.

Backblog

Before I start (attempting) to justify that statement, this isn't my first blog on skills. I've mostly focused on Skill Challenges in prior blogs, so those have received the bulk of my attention.

I wrote about Secondary Skills, Non-Combat Skill Systems, new rules for Skill Challenges, Failure in Skill Challenges, and most importantly for this discussion my Problems with Skill Challenges. I'll reiterate