I have an idea for a use based progression, but it needs a little help

[valadil]

Hi. I've always been intrigued by systems that have your character improve in the abilities he uses. They make a lot more sense to me than "I killed 50 boars and suddenly learned elven." But these systems are usually use based and require tracking each time a skill is used. I don't like the overheard and I don't think it's worth the trouble.

So I had another idea. For my homebrew, I'm thinking of doing skill upgrades as point buy. Stat upgrades can't be bought though. Instead a stat levels up after 8 (or whatever value works out best) of its skills have been upgraded. You don't have to track each use, or even each skill. Just keep a running tally of how many skill upgrades have happened for each stat.

Skip ahead if you just want to hear about the problem. I like this because it models a couple things I'd like to see. First off is something lifters call noob gainz. It's really easy to gain strength when you're just starting out. Once you get an exercise down, you add 5 or 10 lbs each time you do it. The game will model this by letting you buy a bunch of cheap skills. As skills get more expensive, stat increases will slow down.

I also like that this represents a transference of skills. To stick with the lifting example, if you go lifting every day eventually you'll punch harder.

Here's where I'm stuck. I have a very different number of skills in each stat. I think I have 4 strength skills and 10 brains skills. That means there are a lot more brains points to rack up through skill increases. It also means the brains ones are cheaper to get (assuming the cost of each skill rank increase. e.g. you spend points equal to the value of the skill you'll be gaining. Going from 0 to 1 costs 1 point, 1 to 2 costs 2, etc. Gaining a point of brains could be done for 10 points by upgrading everything from 0 to 1. Upgrading 2 strength skills to 3 and 2 to 2 is going to cost 18. Therefore strength is more expensive to upgrade.)

I'm wondering what the options are for getting out of this problem. The obvious one is to give strength more skills. I'm reluctant to do this. Strength typically doesn't have a lot of skills associated with it. I'm also trying to keep my skills abstract - I'd rather have athletics skill than climb, swim, jump, and throws skills. Characters who want to be good at specific skills can specialize.

Currently strength has one handed weapon, two handed weapon, brawl, and lift (which is also going to be used in encumbrance). I could probably move athletics from agility to strength. Agility and social each of 7 or 8 skills and intelligence has 10. If I have to split up the strength skills I probably could, but I'd like to see what other options are out there.

[erikun]

I'm thinking that your intelligence skills are unnecessarily narrow and your strength skills unnecessarily broad if you have this situation. What intelligence skills do you have that would warrant 10 different skills?

As for the current list of strength skills, you could sensibly split "lift" into something meaning upper-body strength and lower-body strength. Jumping and sprinting is going to involve different talents than climbing and swimming and weight lifting, but your Lift skill seems to just revolve around the latter (partially). What about the noticable difference between swinging a weapon and thrusting it - you could say that swinging a club is like swinging a sword, but thrusting a spear is completely different.

What about throwing things?

[valadil]

I'm thinking that your intelligence skills are unnecessarily narrow and your strength skills unnecessarily broad if you have this situation. What intelligence skills do you have that would warrant 10 different skills?


You are correct. I have a lot of knowledge skills that ended up in intelligence. I don't think it makes sense to treat academia as profession as hobby, but those are really easy to merge if I have one skill too many.

For intelligence I have:

Academia
Knowledge
Hobby
Profession
Machinery
Willpower
Perception
Initiative
Linguistics


The knowledge ones merge easily and initiative can move to agility no problem. Anyway, I wasn't so much worried about the glut of intelligence as the lack of strength.



As for the current list of strength skills, you could sensibly split "lift" into something meaning upper-body strength and lower-body strength. Jumping and sprinting is going to involve different talents than climbing and swimming and weight lifting, but your Lift skill seems to just revolve around the latter (partially).


I could, but I don't want to GM a weight lifting simulation :-P The lift skill serves a few purposes. It does your total encumbrance. It helps you avoid being hindered by armor. It's also the forced entry or chest smashing skill. I might rename it muscle.



What about the noticable difference between swinging a weapon and thrusting it - you could say that swinging a club is like swinging a sword, but thrusting a spear is completely different.

What about throwing things?

I put throwing under ranged weapons in agility. I feel like they're usually the weakest of the ranged weapons, but if using them is a freebie for anyone who does ranged skills they might actually get used.

I agree that a club is different than a sword is different than a spear. I think having separate thrust and swing skills is going too far. Breaking down the weapon skills would work for me, but I'm not really sure what weapon groups to make out of that. One disadvantage of that is that I'd then have another thing to balance. If crushing and stabbing weapons use different skills, I'm going to be responsible for keeping crushing and stabbing even and distinct.

One other thing I should note is that I'm currently treating shield as a 1 handed weapon. It could probably be its own thing, but I didn't want to punish the sword and board users by making them pick up a separate skill. And I want all skills to have specialties. I can't think of a lot of specialty techniques for shields, unless I'm going to differentiate bucklers, shields, tower shields, etc.

[Grinner]

Perhaps something like this?


Character Growth
Characters in Simple 20 grow, not by virtue of arbitrary experience awards, but by virtue of the deeds that they actually perform during a given game. Specif ically, whenever a character either botches an action attempt or succeeds brilliantly, they learn something.

Any time that a player rolls a ‘natural’ (i.e., unmodified) result of either 1 or 20 when making an attribute check, they need to place a checkmark next to the attribute involved. Similarly, should a player roll a natural result of 1 or 20 when making an aptitude check, they need to place a checkmark next to the aptitude that was being tested.

At the end of a game session, a player needs to roll 1d20 for each checkmark on their record sheet, one at a time. If they roll a result that either equals or exceeds the rating of the attribute or aptitude that the checkmark is next to, then the player may raise the rating of that attribute or aptitude by 1 point.

Finally, new aptitudes are earned via actual play, a character actually studying them in-character. New aptitudes pursued in this manner always begin with a default rating of 1, with this rating being raised in the manner discussed above.

[valadil]

Perhaps something like this?

Looks reasonable. One thing I neglected to mention about my game is that it's dice less. I could probably think of something comparable but it won't be quite as clean.

[DMMike]

1) What are the skill points good for if they're not applied to die rolls?
2) Here's a good minimal skillset:
Cast Spell – Metaphysical
Concentration – Mental (defense)
Deceive – Metaphysical
Detect – Mental
Fight-Melee – Physical
Fight-Missile – Physical
Fight-Unarmed – Physical
Handle Animal – Metaphysical
Knowledge-Nature – Mental
Knowledge-Scholarship – Mental
Larceny – Physical
Movement – Physical
Parry – Physical (defense)
Persuade – Metaphysical
Profession-Alchemist – Mental
Profession-Healer – Mental
Profession-Musician – Mental
Profession-Smith – Mental
Repel Undead – Metaphysical
Sneak – Physical
Willpower – Metaphysical (defense)

3) The Simple 20 skill progression system looks good, but I think you should be rolling 2d10 instead of d20. You get +1 to your roll for every point your score is above 18.

[valadil]

1) What are the skill points good for if they're not applied to die rolls?

Like I said, no dice. The whole game is an experiment in an alternative resolution mechanic.

I'm using a bidding mechanic for conflict resolution. Each character has an amount of willpower points. When a conflict comes up they secretly choose some of those points and simultaneously reveal them. That amount is added to the skill to determine the winner.

[erikun]

You are correct. I have a lot of knowledge skills that ended up in intelligence. I don't think it makes sense to treat academia as profession as hobby, but those are really easy to merge if I have one skill too many.

For intelligence I have:

Academia
Knowledge
Hobby
Profession
Machinery
Willpower
Perception
Initiative
Linguistics


The knowledge ones merge easily and initiative can move to agility no problem. Anyway, I wasn't so much worried about the glut of intelligence as the lack of strength.
What's the difference between hobbies and professions in a certain topic, beyond depth of knowledge and focus? For that matter, what's the difference between, say, the Hobby of foreign languange, the Profession of foreign languages, and taking foreign languages with Linguistics?

Both Hobby and Profession seem extraneous to me, essentially a generic catch-all skill. Knowledge seems to be the same thing, and I'm not clear on the difference between Knowledge-Intelligence and Intelligence-Intelligence. Do you really need a "Memory" skill, and would it make sense for it to improve like other skills?

Academia and Machinery seem considerably out of place, especially next to stuff like Perception and Initiative. Just saying that it looks odd in comparison.


I could, but I don't want to GM a weight lifting simulation :-P The lift skill serves a few purposes. It does your total encumbrance. It helps you avoid being hindered by armor. It's also the forced entry or chest smashing skill. I might rename it muscle.
But you're fine with playing a Jeopardy simulation with Knowledge and Hobby skills? :smalltongue: I'm just saying that there's a lot more to strength than just carrying stuff and hitting stuff.

And separating the weapon skills into different categories was just an idea. You don't have to use it, just pointing out that there is a difference if you did want to.

[Philemonite]

You can split weapons in Blunt, Slashing and Piercing.
You could also add combat styles (Two-Handed, Dual Wield, Sword and Shield, and maybe Single Weapon).

[valadil]

What's the difference between hobbies and professions in a certain topic, beyond depth of knowledge and focus? For that matter, what's the difference between, say, the Hobby of foreign languange, the Profession of foreign languages, and taking foreign languages with Linguistics?


Still working that part out. My skill list is still in the phase of naming all the things I'd like characters to do and sorting those according to their stats.

I don't want a single knowledge check. I think that makes the smart character's life too easy and I don't think it makes a lot of sense.

Academia is book smarts. A character who knows physics or programming would have academia.

Hobby is more like a craft skill. Painting, fishing, basket weaving etc.

Profession is for things you learn on the job. I expect players to want a first aid skill, but that's too vague. I figured profession: medic would cover that. I was briefly considering separating this in white and blue collar profession, but I never figured out what stat would be blue and I have enough skills anyway.

Linguistics is specifically language related. It could probably be part of academia though. I was already going to treat language learning as a specialization of linguistics, so maybe academia: spanish works instead.

The knowledge catch all is for those things that should not be learnable by ordinary means. Any sort of arcane lore would end up in here. That said I'm struggling to come up with other examples, just synonyms for arcane lore.

FWIW, I wasn't expecting to keep five knowledge skills. Probably three would be the way to go for keeping them distinct enough.



But you're fine with playing a Jeopardy simulation with Knowledge and Hobby skills? :smalltongue: I'm just saying that there's a lot more to strength than just carrying stuff and hitting stuff.

And separating the weapon skills into different categories was just an idea. You don't have to use it, just pointing out that there is a difference if you did want to.

Touché.

Yes actually. I've played and I've seen other people play knowledge heavy characters. I like it when different characters have different niche areas of knowledge. What I don't like is when the character with the highest intelligence is the sole brain of the party. I haven't seen too many games where the physical characters need their own niches.

Weapon categories is looking like the best option so far. I made the thread because I was curious what else might come up, but if this is the most popular option maybe it's the right one.

The weapons categories I've got penciled in right now are polearms, one handed edged, one handed bludgeon, two handed, and brawling. I'm keeping a muscle skill and moving athletics in from agility. That gives me seven which is happy. Conceptually I'm okay with treating polearms differently than other weapons.

I'm not really okay with keeping edged and bludgeoning weapons distinct. I hadn't worked out damage yet and was hoping to avoid damage types. Other than that though I'm not sure how to differentiate mace use from sword use.


You can split weapons in Blunt, Slashing and Piercing.
You could also add combat styles (Two-Handed, Dual Wield, Sword and Shield, and maybe Single Weapon).

I was already planning on doing combat styles. I just wasn't going to do them as skills. But if you count single weapon (which I'm calling einhander), I do get four weapon skills.

I guess the thing I get stuck on with this is, to use a coding term, graceful degradation. If I'm dual wielding and my left arm gets cut off, I would like to keep using my right arm with my good skill. It's bad enough to lose the left hand, but having to switch to a skill I haven't trained in is going to take me out of the fight entirely. By keeping the same weapon skill, but losing access to style feats I don't think the characters will be as screwed for playing a style outside of their comfort zone.

Blunt, slash, and pierce make sense, but I'm still not sold on having to make them distinct.

[valadil]

Alright, I think I'm good on strength skills. I added Manual Labor. I feel like that'll help represent all those characters who were raised by farmers, blacksmiths, or pirates. Maybe this will help convince me to ditch profession from the intelligence list...

Currently looking at polearms, one handed, two handed, brawling, lift, athletics, and manual labor. I could easily swap out polearms and one handed for two weapon fighting/sword and board though, if I decide to use fighting styles instead of weapons for my skills.

Any thoughts on the original idea I posted about? Every N skill points purchased upgrades the attached stat. N is probably going to be higher than 5 and less than 10, but I'm not sure where yet since I'm still not sure where skills and stats will be capped. (Actually it occurs to me that I may not need an explicit stat cap. If stats can only be bought with skill upgrades, it's implicitly capped by the number of points available in a skill.)

[DMMike]

Any thoughts on the original idea I posted about? Every N skill points purchased upgrades the attached stat. N is probably going to be higher than 5 and less than 10, but I'm not sure where yet since I'm still not sure where skills and stats will be capped. (Actually it occurs to me that I may not need an explicit stat cap. If stats can only be bought with skill upgrades, it's implicitly capped by the number of points available in a skill.)

Sounds like a cool idea. Of course, that depends on how stats interact with skill points.

Consider though - normal people don't have a lot of opportunity to increase mental ability scores. Strength, sure. Dex, takes practice. Constitution, do some swimming, and eat better.

But your Intelligence gets pretty well set in stone before what, age 10?

Also keep in mind that there might not be a point in having stats if they're solely defined by skills.

[Just to Browse]

I like the way you plan, sir. However I don't think your solution lies in increasing the number of skills--your system will feel bloaty.

My recommendations would be thus:
You could combine stats. Say if you have Strength and Con, you could put them both into one stat called Body, and now all Str skills and Con skills have the same stat. This could cause too much to be put into one skill, though.
Instead of having advancement based on how high your skill ranks are, you could partition it like other leveling systems (as in "I killed 50 boars and now learn [X]"), but you would have requirements on what you advance, so that players feel like they're supposed to advance the stat that makes them good at the skills they're maxing. For example you could rule that PCs can only increase attributes tied to a skill they have max ranks in, so now anyone who trains Concentration, Vitality, Endurance, or Meldshaping can improve their Con score, and that way not all people who advance Con are identical.

The latter is my favored suggestion, as you can see by the fact that I wrote twice as much on it.

[valadil]

Sounds like a cool idea. Of course, that depends on how stats interact with skill points.

Consider though - normal people don't have a lot of opportunity to increase mental ability scores. Strength, sure. Dex, takes practice. Constitution, do some swimming, and eat better.

But your Intelligence gets pretty well set in stone before what, age 10?

Also keep in mind that there might not be a point in having stats if they're solely defined by skills.

Resolution adds stat to skill. You can also spend a number of willpower points to get a bonus. The number of points you can spend per day is determined by the stat. The number that can be spent on any one role is determined by the skill. I think having both keeps them mechanically distinct.

Interesting point re: intelligence. I've played a lot of games that let you up your intelligence and I've never even considered that.

My gut instinct is to go gamist and say screw realism in favor of simple rules. The explanation would be that this stat isn't just your maximum capacity for intellect, but it also includes what you know. Someone well read would pick up random tidbits that could apply elsewhere, even if those tidbits don't fall into one of the skills I've defined.

At any rate, I'm going to think about this and see what develops. I have a fondness for quirky little exceptions. I think they're what make games interesting.


I like the way you plan, sir. However I don't think your solution lies in increasing the number of skills--your system will feel bloaty.


I agree with the bloat. Keeping my skills pruned and at roughly the same abstraction level has been a huge challenge. Way harder than inventing mechanics.

What is a good number of skills to have? Right now I'm looking at 4 main stats with 7 or 8 skills a piece. I also have a health stat that has no skills. I tentatively have a magic stat with 4 elements (each of which relates to a main stat), but that is going to be kept separate because I want magic to be treated as an exception instead of just another skill. At any rate, that's 28 or 32 skills. I count 41 on the D&D 3.0 sheet (and that's with knowledge and profession each treated as one skill). I'm also treating combat mechanics as skills, not as a subsystem. I don't think I've got any bloat here (aside from the dearth of knowledge skills) but I'm obviously biased.



My recommendations would be thus:
Instead of having advancement based on how high your skill ranks are, you could partition it like other leveling systems (as in "I killed 50 boars and now learn [X]"), but you would have requirements on what you advance, so that players feel like they're supposed to advance the stat that makes them good at the skills they're maxing. For example you could rule that PCs can only increase attributes tied to a skill they have max ranks in, so now anyone who trains Concentration, Vitality, Endurance, or Meldshaping can improve their Con score, and that way not all people who advance Con are identical.[/list]

The latter is my favored suggestion, as you can see by the fact that I wrote twice as much on it.
[/QUOTE]

I think I prefer the latter too. I'm having a little trouble visualizing it long term though. Here's how I see it playing out:

Low level characters have nothing maxed out, so their stats can't increase. Their favorite skill will eventually hit cap and then its stat can increase. They'll max a few more skills and then reach a point where any stat can increase. That's endgame and while it's not free to increase stats the only restriction is XP.

Is that interpretation accurate?

[Dethklok]

Hi valadil. After mulling the matter over I wanted to let you know that I think I have a straightforward resolution to your problem, although I don't know if it will mesh with your style.

The solution comes from the fact that, as DMMike pointed out, intelligence is set at early on. (In real life it appears to max out at around age 16, although vocabulary scores continue to rise throughout adulthood.) Meanwhile, strength and health are strongly amenable to change through diet and exercise. Other attributes, such as coordination or social savvy, are probably somewhere in between.

So I suggest that you tie the attribute increases to the number of skills governed by each attribute. This means that if Strength has 4 skills, every 4 skill improvements translates to an extra point in Strength. I don't know your skill list, or enough details to know whether this could unbalance the game by giving warriors the ability to quickly ramp up their attributes. But see what you think.

(Also I'll add that the rest of your system looks solid; the skill progression is nice, and the bidding mechanic you're using works quite well as a substitution for dice. If you have a minute maybe you'll fill us in on your mechanics for combat?)

[Just to Browse]

Yessir! That's what I was thinking. And if you wanted to model "noob gainz" (as you say) you can just have skill advancement be faster than attribute advancement, so the fast gains occur up until you hit your skill cap, and then you need to spend more XP/levels/time/faerie dust on upping your Constitution.

[valadil]

So I suggest that you tie the attribute increases to the number of skills governed by each attribute. This means that if Strength has 4 skills, every 4 skill improvements translates to an extra point in Strength. I don't know your skill list, or enough details to know whether this could unbalance the game by giving warriors the ability to quickly ramp up their attributes. But see what you think.

(Also I'll add that the rest of your system looks solid; the skill progression is nice, and the bidding mechanic you're using works quite well as a substitution for dice. If you have a minute maybe you'll fill us in on your mechanics for combat?)

I don't know how it'll balance either. I'm hoping to work up to a playtest soon, but I've got more rules to fill out first. If I learned anything from D&D first edition, it's that I can live with warriors having a faster progression that mages eventually overshadow.

I'm not sure that charging based on number of skills will work out the way you expect though. For the sake of discussion, let's say I have 4 strength skills and 10 intelligence ones. Skills cap at 10. If we say it costs N skill upgrades to increase a stat, where N is the number of skills, strength upgrades after 4 skills and intelligence upgrades after 10. Each of them will have stat upgrades if all skills are purchased. But the strength character will have purchased 40 skill upgrades and the intelligence one will have 100 upgrades before their stats max out. The effect of that is that the strength character will reach maturity more than twice as quickly (not to mention having better concentrated skills), which I think goes against what we're trying to model.

I'd love to discuss combat, but the details there aren't as solid yet. Everything is a called shot. Instead of HP damage I'm trying to have status effects for each type of wound.

I'm including a maneuver for each stat. Strength disarms. Agility trips. Social feints. Intelligence outmaneuvers (margin of success allowing you to move yourself and your foe by a number of squares). The idea here is that I want melee characters to have choices to make each round. Giving them a variety of buttons to push should help with that. I also want to encourage balanced stats. The character who only has strength will get knocked down and pushed around.

I'm toying with the idea of letting you move or attack each turn, but not both. I think it's one of those ideas that sounds good to me on paper but I'll change my mind on once we get to playtesting.

There are however smaller actions, again one per stat. These cost one of the aforementioned willpower points (although the cost may increase the more you use them. I can't really speak to costs yet as they're not at all calibrated.). Agility moves you one square. Social lets you command an ally - they get to spend a point for a fast action. Intelligence lets you find out the value of a skill (or maybe stat - needs playtesting) of one of your enemies. Strength's ability is modeled after Hulk Hogan and lets you hulk up before an attack. It seems a little silly at first glance, but keep in mind there are bidding caps. If you can only bid 5 chips on a single attack, this ability will let you bid more if you do it in advance and in the open.

I would like to have a system for representing who has advantage/guard/whatever in a fight. There should be some sort of maneuver for slipping past your opponent's guard. Ideally I want this to take into account the reach of the weapons involved, but I keep getting stymied here. I'd rather not include rules that make things ugly. In particular I'm not sure how reach works with multiple weapons. If I have a rapier and a main gauche and you slip past the rapier, presumably you have advantage against it, but not the main gauche. How does that work if you also have two weapons? How about if you're facing more than one enemy? If I can't come up with succinct rules for these questions, I'll just ditch that part of the game as overly complex.

Ranged combat is still in my todo list. I don't think it'll be as interesting.

[Dethklok]

For the sake of discussion, let's say I have 4 strength skills and 10 intelligence ones. Skills cap at 10. If we say it costs N skill upgrades to increase a stat, where N is the number of skills, strength upgrades after 4 skills and intelligence upgrades after 10. Each of them will have stat upgrades if all skills are purchased. But the strength character will have purchased 40 skill upgrades and the intelligence one will have 100 upgrades before their stats max out. The effect of that is that the strength character will reach maturity more than twice as quickly (not to mention having better concentrated skills), which I think goes against what we're trying to model.
What are you trying to model? In real life, academians attend school for decades and reach the peak of their careers in their 30's or 40's, while athletes peak in their mid to late 20s. Is the problem that the strength character maxes out at all? If so, the problem isn't the rate of progression in attributes, but the small number of skills under strength. Anyway, use the idea or not, but that feature you're pointing out as a problem was my exact reason for suggesting it.


I'd love to discuss combat, but the details there aren't as solid yet.
Looks good so far... I'd be interested to see more details when you have them.