Skills Chapter - Githubissues

Consensus seems to be to keep existing skills and do mergers. Since Lokathor already has them formatted for LaTeX, we can probably start on the merging and errataing... just as soon as we know what those merges and errata bits are. So let's hash those out here.

Here's some things that have been tossed around the boards for a while that are pretty close to simple skill updates:

Diplomacy tweaks (Iameki's or someone else's)
Hide not requiring concealment
Sleight of hand quickdraw removal
Perform reverted to 3.0 version
Open lock merged with disable device
Listen and Spot merged into new Perception (that does not include Search, because it does different things)
Hide and Move Silent merged into new Stealth
Profession collapsed into language style binary skill
Craft collapsed into language style binary skill
Craft that scales into magic item creation (not compatible with above)
Fix DC scaling on concentration, UMD, knowledge checks to ID monsters, etc.

And on the subject of binary skills, should we turn binary skills into 3-phase (non-proficient/proficient/master) or 4-phase (non-proficient/proficient/master/grand master) skills instead? Sort of a half-USE setup for skills that don't really scale well.

I'll save my own preferences for a bit on this one.

I missed that it was half the score and not full score (boo reading fail). It could go back to that if we wanted. And I wasn't really aiming towards the ToP list, that was just an aside directed at your number of skills preference comment. I think it's a good list though and it's basically your above 18 list with tactics cut; search removed/split among perception and devices/mechanics; and escape artist, jump, disguise, and heal restored. The other two skills in the 22 ToP list are new(ish) and probably not worth bringing in at this time.

Anyway, if that's an acceptable list of 20 then we can just use it (I can talk about design decisions behind keeping those if you want). If you want to do something else, we just need to figure out where the 4 skills that aren't being restored are going. The other 16 or 17 skills seem pretty solid already though, and not really under discussion except for specific mechanics or names or monster ID types or whatever.

There were some other things I wanted to respond to, but they can wait. Going to take the rest of tonight off I think.

I think I'll put up the talent things in the talent issue, and try to keep this a bit more focused on getting the skills sorted.

Skills we're mostly agreed on:

Acrobatics: Balance + Tumble
Arcana: Knowledge(Arcana) + Spellcraft (Arcane only) + Disable Device (Arcane 'traps') + UMD (Arcane Only).
Athletics: Climb + Swim
Bluff
Concentration: No change, make more things require it.
Diplomacy
Intimidate: No change.
Linguistics: Speak Language + Decipher Script. Each rank gives you a new language.
Mechanics: Knowledge(Engineering) + Open Lock + Disable Device (traditional mechanical 'traps').
- Possible alternate name: Devices.
Nature: Knowledge(Inner Planar) + Spellcraft (Wild only) + Disable Device (Wild 'traps') + UMD (Wild only)
Notice: Listen + Spot.
- Possible alternate name: Perception.
Sense Motive: No change. Maybe change name to Insight if we add talents that expand the theme?
Sleight of Hand: Sleight of Hand rename, makes it easier to fit talents thematically under it.
Stealth: Hide + Move Silently
Survival: Knowledge(Nature) + Survival stuff.
- Possible alternate names: Nature, Outdoorsmanship.
Theurgy: Knowledge(Religion/Outer Planar) + Spellcraft (Divine only) + Disable Device (Divine 'traps') + UMD (Divine only)

_Skills we need to sort: _

Disguise: Prefer to keep, pending awesome in next iteration
Escape Artist: Prefer to keep, pending awesome in next iteration
Heal: Prefer to keep, pending awesome in next iteration
Jump: Prefer to keep, pending awesome in next iteration
Search: Not sure... hard to make this awesome in the next iteration, could merge into notice/mechanics already or leave as is.

Mechanics we need to sort:

Max Ranks: I don't think we're doing awesome skills yet, but we might as well sort the max ranks progression for them now so that we can just use it already. Changing this later seems unnecessary.

If skills get awesome on their own, I have a strong preference for scaling the max ranks of different classes at different rates (i.e. class and cross class, or primary, secondary, and tertiary skills). It directly mirrors the BAB scaling between classes and sort of mirrors the spell progression scaling between full and partial casters when done that way, while also making class skill access a thing you probably care about at higher levels. If there are concerns about the current investment procedure, it can be replaced with a "buy scaling, lookup value based on level" setup that hides the massive piles of skill points.

Example - You get double the previously planned number of skill points with a class (6/12/18 or whatever). You can put 2 skill points in a class skill to buy the class progression, or 1 point in any skill to buy the cross-class progression. You look up your investment and level on a table to determine your "ranks" if you don't want to do math. Talents are paid for with temporary -1s to a skill, that go away when you've put in the missing 'training time' or get a new level. Multiclassing means you do this once for each class and add up the individual ranks.

Alternately, the previous plan of "you can take talents in class skills" works here as well if it's updated to "you get awesome things for free in class skills". It opens the door for charging for awesome things that are outside of class skills, but that's a lot like putting everyone on the same spell progression and just charging more for spells outside of your class list. I'm less a fan of this plan aesthetically unless the spellcasting system is also tweaked along similar "buy outside utility effects" lines, because the two subsystems serve basically the same purpose in terms of utility effects in an awesome skill system.

I think that's about it for skills proper. More thoughts in talents later tonight.

I'd prefer the "You get these awesome things for free... if it's a class skill" method. This brings up other difficulties though, difficulties associated with how we hand out class skills. We'd want to award the same number of class skills to every class, and to prevent characters that multiclass from gaining new class skills. Or to grant class skills based on something other than class.

Before I get into skill assignments and rank stuff, I'd like to try to wrap up the general skill list so that we have something else to work on.

Thoughts on the base list? Thoughts on what to do with the other 5?

You've been quiet for a bit @SqueeG, you good with the direction this is heading?

Ok, let's work with the "max ranks == level; +3 (and eventually awesome things) if it's a class skill" model.

I'm not sure why we'd want to offer up the same number of skills to every class. Skills fill in the utility gaps for non-casters, so giving the same number of options to casters as non-casters (even with fewer skill points to invest in them) just lets them pick and choose where they want to rely on spells and where they don't. I'm not sure it's a bad call, but not sure why we'd 'want' to do it either. Offering class skills up based on other things seems to divorce the utility options of a class from a class in ways that I really don't like.

It does bring up the difficulty of if/how you can buy awesome abilities from cross-class skills. Awesome skills push specialization, just like spellcasting levels do, which means they strongly push maximum investment to unlock the next thing. I have seen people try to spread their skills around in ToP games before, and they universally regretted it (except in a few edge cases where they really needed/wanted a cross-class thing or were doing PrC qualification). In this model, investing in non-class skills comes at the expense of upgrading class skills to the next awesome. If you can't buy awesome stuff in non-class skills, people probably aren't going to invest much (if any) in them because they're such a worse value (after a few ranks anyway) compared to class skills. If you can buy awesome things in non-class skills they're a potential option, depending on what the cost is. I'm not sure a skill point cost is a good plan, but a tweaked skill feat cost might work if the base bonus is a "you get to treat the skill as a class skill for awesome stuff purposes, and if it's already a class skill you get X instead" sort of thing.

The multiclassing thing could be resolved by actually fixing multiclassing, which seems likely in 2e anyway. In a dungeon crusade short class/mandatory advanced class/no other multiclassing model, you probably don't get new class skills when you get your advanced classes. Any exceptions are likely hand coded and result in someone giving something up anyway. In a gestalt buy in model, you're paying for the broader power of more class skills and spells and whatever by trailing slightly in level appropriateness.

So this concern is likely to be moot, but even if it's not tackled because we punt again or only do minor adjustments you could just do something like this:

You get the +3 if any of your classes have it as a class skill. You unlock awesome stuff based on the total number of levels you have where the skill is a class skill. So if Rogue and Wizard have arcana as a class skill, their levels stack for unlocking awesome stuff. If Ranger doesn't have arcana as a class skill, its levels do not stack with Wizard levels if they multiclass for unlocking awesome arcana stuff.

It's slightly more complicated, but I think it's better than not letting people get new skills for multiclassing and closer to the "you start over" mess that is spellcaster multiclassing. So, precedent :-).

Note that I'm not aiming for an actual specific solutions for some of these, just a general "yeah, these are solvable problems and there are solution shapes that we don't hate" or whatever. They aren't actually problems for the current scope of the project, just things I don't want to revisit again for the next iteration. So if we're happy with the shape of these solutions, we can start working on writing the skills chapter in this way and worry more about them later on. Class skill assignment will need a solution sooner than the rest of them, but it's still not a blocker to doing actual skill work if we're ready there.

I've started to wonder if it'd be easier to bake "class skills" into classes. Sort of like the 3.X Rangers specializations.

So you automatically unlock talents, or get ranks stacked on top of things your class thematically represents. Tie the advancement to "type" levels or something. So there'd be a brute type, stealth type, arcane type, divine type, natural type. Sort of like super-class, but just for tracking out your special skill advancements.

It's something I just started thinking on. I'm wary of allowing things to become convoluted.

SqueeG / awesomeTome

Skills Chapter #8