Author Topic: Skills and Skill Tricks  (Read 3196 times)

Offline Sinfire Titan

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Skills and Skill Tricks
« on: September 03, 2012, 02:12:00 AM »
First of all I want to apologize to Prime for putting this subforum up and me not posting in it for a good while. Job hunting is cutting into my development time, so I haven't been making much progress.

Second, I've reconciled my first draft of condensed skills into the following list:

(click to show/hide)

That list is the basic skill list most characters will have. I haven't decided what to do with the more esoteric skills (Iaijutsu Focus and Lucid Dreaming), possibly going to fold Iaijutsu into Perform (Weapon Drill) to give mundanes access to it though I'm not sure.

Now for the biggest change: Skill Tricks. I wanted to expand upon CS' original design, but make it closer to Skyrim's perk system (only less bonuses and more useful abilities). To this end I've brainstormed nearly 100 new tricks (more than that, seeing as I wanted to turn some feats into skill tricks outright). However, I wanted skill tricks to be something of a balancing point between classes: Some get more skill tricks, some get less. In example, the Factotum would get a total of 25 or so skill tricks over his entire career, whereas the Rogue would get a massive 30 or more. Each trick would provide it's player with a new use of that skill (although not all uses of skills are going to become skill tricks).

This was going to be a major point too. Fighters, Barbarians, Rogues, and Scouts (the 4 mundane classes) would have a plethora of skill tricks in order to pull them away from the whole One Trick Pony problem, and several skill tricks would address major issues the noncasters have (Item Creation feats are now Craft Skill Tricks, and there will be a way for the mundanes to craft magic items without relying on a spellcaster).


Regarding Crafting, I was also going to cannibalize the Artificer's Infusions and other abilities in order to make Crafting more useful. Not quite sure how though.
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Offline sirpercival

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Re: Skills and Skill Tricks
« Reply #1 on: September 03, 2012, 06:31:23 AM »
I like the idea of making skills dual-ability score, though I have a question: do you just use whichever ability mod is better, or does it depend on the usage?

I'm also not convinced of your thematic skill groupings in a couple of places.

~Escape Artist feels much more like Acrobatics than Stealth to me. 
~Disable Device seems less about being able to manipulate things than about knowing how things are put together; I ended up grouping DD, Craft, and Knowledge (arch & engineering) as Engineering in Magipunk.
~I also decided to split up the Knowledges and group them with their active-skill counterparts -- having one "Lore" skill doesn't make as much sense, since why would learning about Arcana give you any info on Nobility & Royalty?  So Know:Nature+Survival, Know:Local+Gather Info, Know:Arcan+Spellcraft, Know:Psi+Psicraft, etc.
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Offline Sinfire Titan

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Re: Skills and Skill Tricks
« Reply #2 on: September 03, 2012, 01:34:52 PM »
I like the idea of making skills dual-ability score, though I have a question: do you just use whichever ability mod is better, or does it depend on the usage?

Undecided on that.

Quote
I'm also not convinced of your thematic skill groupings in a couple of places.

~Escape Artist feels much more like Acrobatics than Stealth to me.

I put it in Stealth so someone could escape from bindings without making another roll to do so silently.
 
Quote
~Disable Device seems less about being able to manipulate things than about knowing how things are put together; I ended up grouping DD, Craft, and Knowledge (arch & engineering) as Engineering in Magipunk.

I wanted DD in the same skill as Open Lock, although I see where you  are coming from. The main thing is I don't want to give the Lore-monkeys access to Disable Device. I feel that Wizards have enough toys, they don't need this one too.

Quote
~I also decided to split up the Knowledges and group them with their active-skill counterparts -- having one "Lore" skill doesn't make as much sense, since why would learning about Arcana give you any info on Nobility & Royalty?  So Know:Nature+Survival, Know:Local+Gather Info, Know:Arcan+Spellcraft, Know:Psi+Psicraft, etc.

It isn't one skill, I just listed it as one to save space. It still works the way it used to (although now it has Martial Lore).
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Offline Jackinthegreen

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Re: Skills and Skill Tricks
« Reply #3 on: September 05, 2012, 06:51:29 PM »
If you don't want lore-monkeys having access to disable device, might I recommend having that use of architecture and engineering become a skill trick exclusive to certain classes under your new system?