4eSkills: same feel, more options? (PEACH)

[Erk]

I'm penning this under the assumption that "PEACH" means Please Examine And Critique Here or some such; I've never found a definition. If it is actually a statement about fruit preferences, please forget about that and examine and critique my idea.

I've seen a couple ideas for improving skill selection in 4e, and I liked most of them. I feel they didn't quite capture flexibility well enough, though. I am missing a couple major things:

1) "secondary" type skills, those that adventurers rarely take but should be able to
2) synergy! It was borked in 3e to a small degree, but a greatly fun option
3) Cross-class skills. They may not be the best option, but they should be an option
4) Getting rid of Decipher Script. This was always a vastly useful skill in my language-heavy games. I feel it should be a primary skill.

Note that I am only very cursorily experienced in 4e so far, as these are the preparations for my first campaign in it, so I may have made some mistakes interpreting the system. Feel free to inform me.

Skill points
To determine the number of skill points a character gets, multiply the number of trained skills the character gets by 2 and add 1. Every time the character would be able to train a skill, he/she instead gets 2 more skill points.
class skills cost 2 skill points to train.
cross-class skills cost 4 skill points to train.*
secondary skills cost 1 skill point to train.

*Cross-class skill rules only apply at first level.

Primary skill list: The same as RAW except add:
Linguistics (Cha) Cleric, Rogue, Wizard
Linguistics is the art of understanding language through body motion, symbology, intent, etc. It includes spoken, signed, and written languages. Even a very successful linguistics check shouldn't replace actual knowledge of the language: intent can be followed but not actual meaning, and abstractions are always hard. DCs later, when I know the DC system better in 4e.

Secondary Skills I welcome advice on changing primary attributes or reducing # of skills. Don't want to add new ones particularly, unless absolutely necessary.
Agriculture* (Wis) Farming, botany
Animal Husbandry* (Cha) Ranching, husbandry, handling, breeding
Brewing (Int) Alcohol, alchemy
Culture* (Cha) Etiquette, literature, art study
Domestic Arts (Cha) Cooking, cleaning, mending, etc
Engineering (Int) Physical, [al]chemical, civil, mathematics
Metalcrafting (Str) Blacksmithing, smelting
Perform (Cha) Dance, music, storytelling, etc
Rope Use (Dex) knotting, tieing, splicing, making rope
Seamanship (Wis) Rafting, boating, sailing, navigating
Stonecrafting (Str) Masonry, sculpting, pottery, mining
Textiles (Wis) Dyeing, weaving, sewing, tailoring
Visual Art (Cha) Design and drawing: can be coupled with a specific type of crafting skill, eg. stonecrafting to make "sculpture"
Woodcrafting (Dex) Whittling, carpentry, woodworking

* these skills can be covered by related primaries, eg. Nature, Diplomacy, and History. However, in my opinion Nature should not cover "civilian" animal husbandry, ranching, and agriculture, nor should history be used as a blanket "knowledge" skill. thus the secondaries drawing a little away from these already very useful skills. Your mileage may vary, of course.

Synergies
Secondary and Primary skills can synergise. A player trained in a secondary skill gets a +2 synergy bonus to the secondary skill if trained in the synergistic primary. Synergy bonuses cannot stack. (GM option: or it could be a +1 to the primary and secondary but that is probably unnecessary).
Examples of synergies
Agriculture -- Nature
Animal Husbandry -- Nature
Brewing -- Engineering (Alchemy/chemistry uses only)
Culture -- Diplomacy
Metalworking -- Endurance
Perform -- Bluff
Stonecrafting -- Dungeoneering
Visual Art -- any one crafting skill (only one, chosen when the synergy is gained)
Woodcrafting -- Seamanship (boat building only)

Specialisation
I'm not totally pleased with the mechanic for this, but it's mostly intended as a flavourfull tweak anyway, not a major game design thing.
You can declare a specialisation when training a skill, for example: "Envalari History" for history, "Diabolism" for aracana, or "Herbalism" for nature. Your skill bonus from training increases to +6 for checks involving your specialisation, but drops to +4 for all other uses of the skill. You can purchase one new specialisation for a Primary skill at the cost of 1 skill point, or two new specialisations for a Secondary skill at the cost of 1 skill point.

Just what specialisations there are are up to you and the GM. Specialisations should be specific, but not absurdly so. As a rule of thumb, no specialisation should encompass more than about 1/3 of the utility of a secondary skill, or about 1/6 of the utility of a primary skill.

The GM may rule that a very tight-range specialisation or one that may not see much use has a +7 to all related checks rather than +6: an example of this might be "scaling stone walls outdoors at night" for athletics or "deciphering ancient runes carved on rock" for linguistics.

[erikun]

Yeah, that's what PEACH stands for. Or at least, "PEACH" means you want a full critique of your idea.


1.) Secondary skills are nice to have, although the biggest problem is in spending skills/feats to be good at what is basically background information about the character. Not that such skills aren't useful, of that some people wouldn't like to have them - I like the idea of characters having a free "background" skill at creation, that is basically the same thing. However, asking characters to choose between primary and secondary skills feels a bit like choosing between effectiveness and role-playing - and there really shouldn't be a conflict between the two.

Also, some of your secondary skills seem frivolous. Animal Handling is already part of the Nature skill, and you need to be doing something really unusual - such as taking several months to rear infant horses - to roll something that wouldn't be included in Nature. Culture is almost completely annexed by History, and I can't think of a situation where I'd roll a Culture rather than a History (or possibly Diplomacy). Also, chemical engineering?? Just how advanced are these skills supposed to be, anyways?

2.) Synergy seems... not that great an idea in 4e. The primary reason is that everything has been rebalanced, and tacking on a bunch of extra +1's doesn't feel like a great idea. I think it's setup so that Trained in an off-stat skill = Untrained in a primary stat, Trained in a primary stat is +10 higher than Untrained in an off-stat, and Trained + Skill Focus + primary stat + circumstance = +15 above what it would be otherwise. The main reason you don't want the numbers too different is because it tends to kill the everyone-has-a-chance mentality of the 4e skill system; it either becomes too easy for the people ahead or impossible for the people behind.

That said, it could work with the secondary skills. Picking up Skill Focus for a secondary skill seems a waste of a feat, but getting a +2 synergy bonus for being training in a related primary skill seems like a better idea - you become better at blacksmithing after training your endurance, or something.

3.) Please note that, anytime you pick up the Skill Training feat, you can choose any skill to be trained in. It doesn't have to be a class skill. I think it's an appropriate trade-off: you can only be training in class skills from the start, but are free to take feats for additional training outside your class afterwards.

4.) I like your Linguistics skill, and may use it myself. It makes a bit more sense than trying to use Arcana/Nature/Religion for the same purpose, although Sense Motive could get the gist of the comment, too.


As for the skill point mechanism, I'm not too impressed. Yes, it allows you to buy the same number of primary skills as you normally would, plus one secondary, but I don't see why you couldn't just say "you get the standard number of primary skills, plus one secondary" and be done with it. Also, they way you have it worded, you need to pick the Skill Training feat twice in order to pick up a "cross class" skill, while the currect system allows you to pick up any skill with the feat once. I think that's a disadvantage, as it discourages using "cross class" skills - which, I assume, was the point of your suggestion.

[Erk]

Secondary skills are nice to have, although the biggest problem is in spending skills/feats to be good at what is basically background information about the character. Not that such skills aren't useful, of that some people wouldn't like to have them - I like the idea of characters having a free "background" skill at creation, that is basically the same thing. However, asking characters to choose between primary and secondary skills feels a bit like choosing between effectiveness and role-playing - and there really shouldn't be a conflict between the two.

Also, some of your secondary skills seem frivolous. Animal Handling is already part of the Nature skill, and you need to be doing something really unusual - such as taking several months to rear infant horses - to roll something that wouldn't be included in Nature. Culture is almost completely annexed by History, and I can't think of a situation where I'd roll a Culture rather than a History (or possibly Diplomacy). Also, chemical engineering?? Just how advanced are these skills supposed to be, anyways?Sorry, the notes were initially for myself and should probably have been made more detailed. I renamed Animal Handling to Animal Husbandry; honestly I think the Nature skill covers too wide an area, and should be cut back, since at present it's the replacement skill for everything from farming wheat to selectively breeding cattle. Agriculture and Animal Husbandry represent the "civilian" side of what is RAW the Nature skill. Yeah, they do overlap, but I see most peasants as having either agriculture or animal husbandry, and I want players to be able to dabble in the same.

In my games, as I've grown tired of describing in other threads, these "secondary" skills have always seen lots of use. I don't know why it seems only my groups enjoy making clothing or building boats or whatever, but apparently we're an odd bunch. Therefore the need for the mechanic is not really the question. Folks who don't want them, or want to be able to just declare one background skill at creation, can use those mechanics. My players want the option to buy extra secondary skills as they progress, or voluntarily sacrifice mainline skills for more of them. Players who don't want a wide variety of "useless" secondary skills won't be penalised. Just take one - I'd suggest rope use or animal handling - at creation, and the rest of them can be just as ignored as before.

Regarding tech level, that's where the bad note taking comes in. Engineering (chemical) is to represent alchemy, which is a mechanic of my homebrewed world (where creating magical items is all but impossible, but alchemical potions are not so rare). No confusion intended, sorry.

Finally, while Diplomacy represents being able to reach an understanding with another being, Culture represents understanding how they think and how to behave according to their rules. Some of it could be covered with Diplomacy and History, but those don't (or shouldn't) cover what the latest fashion in the Great City of Paeal is, or which size of prival stick is most appropriate to use to spear the head of your roast kluuj beast at an orcish feast (of course, it's the big one with the black barbed head). Getting it wrong has only minor game effects, but it's fun to have a check to see if you know. At least, I think so. And I think covering that with diplomacy gets a little tired, myself... I don't see why the smooth-talking rogue should know that stuff necessarily just because he can talk real smooth. As for History, I really hate seeing a skill that is supposed to represent "knowledge" as a blanket, which that skill so far seems to do.


2.) Synergy seems... not that great an idea in 4e. ... That said, it could work with the secondary skills. Picking up Skill Focus for a secondary skill seems a waste of a feat, but getting a +2 synergy bonus for being training in a related primary skill seems like a better idea - you become better at blacksmithing after training your endurance, or something.First, the synergy we are talking about is +1 to each skill: realising bonuses are smaller I kept the synergy small. However, you do have a good point about balance, so I suggest keeping synergy bonuses limited to the secondary skill only.... for precisely the reason you suggest. It keeps players from feeling they need to Skill Focus on a secondary. I've edited the mechanic to reflect that. Thanks :)


3.) Please note that, anytime you pick up the Skill Training feat, you can choose any skill to be trained in. It doesn't have to be a class skill. I think it's an appropriate trade-off: you can only be training in class skills from the start, but are free to take feats for additional training outside your class afterwards.Ack! I didn't realise that. Cross-class training only applies at creation now.


4.) I like your Linguistics skill, and may use it myself. It makes a bit more sense than trying to use Arcana/Nature/Religion for the same purpose, although Sense Motive could get the gist of the comment, too.Calling it Sense Motive would work just as well, yeah. Especially with it being Cha rather than Int based. My nomenclature is at least in part based on the narrow margins of the document I am making this in... didn't want to run off to the next line :elan:


As for the skill point mechanism, I'm not too impressed. Yes, it allows you to buy the same number of primary skills as you normally would, plus one secondary, but I don't see why you couldn't just say "you get the standard number of primary skills, plus one secondary" and be done with it. Also, they way you have it worded, you need to pick the Skill Training feat twice in order to pick up a "cross class" skill, while the currect system allows you to pick up any skill with the feat once. I think that's a disadvantage, as it discourages using "cross class" skills - which, I assume, was the point of your suggestion.By fixing the cross class thing, points accomplish a couple things that are otherwise a bit confusing:
-They give a mechanic for getting cross class skills at creation
-They give a tradein value for secondary skills, allowing characters to have more than just "one bonus secondary skill"
-They're also useful for specialisation if anyone decides to go down that path.
It's a bit easier to use points than to say "the Skill Training feat lets you take one primary, or two secondaries, or one secondary and one new specialisation if you have any specialised skills, or two new specialisations".
YMMV of course.

Allowing players a tradeoff mechanic for secondaries that is better than 1:1 lets them have a lot of "flavour" skills without sacrificing much, and only marginally penalises their characters[I'd argue that the problem solving utility gained from two more trained secondaries is about equal to that of one more trained primary, myself]. For those who want even more flavour skills, the cost difference could be changed to 3:1 or even 4:1. Points make that easy.

[JaxGaret]

PEACH: Please Examine And Critique Honestly (http://forums.gleemax.com/wotc_archive/index.php/t-564071)

Hope your houserule works well for you! :smallsmile:

[erikun]

In my games, as I've grown tired of describing in other threads, these "secondary" skills have always seen lots of use. I don't know why it seems only my groups enjoy making clothing or building boats or whatever, but apparently we're an odd bunch.
Well, I can't say that I've even needed basketweaving for any character I've created. Still, a lot of characters I design usually end up with one or two "background" skills that really don't help the character, but to help define what they can do beyond 'wizard' or 'thief'. And I occasionally get to use them, too - although I'm normally the one finding uses for them. :p Plus, I find it nice when my character has an in-game mechanic to display how capable he/she is at a given task, beyond just: "You are good at it? Then you succeed."

The problem I'd like to avoid with a secondary skills system is creating redundancy. For example, a character with History, Diplomacy, and the secondary skill of, say, Etiquette would likely find that any situation which called for an Etiquette roll could also be resolved with either a History or Diplomacy roll... making the selection of Etiquette rather moot. I like providing skills that help flesh out the character's abilities, but not accessory skills that end up not having a situation where they can really be used.

Luckily, it doesn't look like you have any secondary skills like that - except perhaps Perform (Dance) overlapped by Athletics - and the synergy should at least keep the secondary skill partially useful.

I'm not sure I like the specialization system you have set up, primarily because you already have a better system - the secondary skill system does the same job better. Also, specializing in one area of a skill really shouldn't penalize other areas, at least not beyond the "penality" of spending a feat to do so.

Consider your currect system: you could specialize Nature in Woodlands Tracking. That would give you a +6 to Nature (Woodlands Tracking) and a +4 to other Nature skill checks. Or, you could pick up the specialization "Woodlands Tracking" as a secondary skill. You'll have a +7 to Woodlands Tracking and a +5 to other Nature checks: the same basic idea, without penalizing the player for their specialization. Besides, if they really wanted to focus on Nature checks, they'd just take the Skill Focus feat. (Skill Focus wouldn't stack with the specialization, but if they're focused on all aspects of the Nature skill, I'm not sure if they're "specialized" anymore.)

[Erk]

so if I read you right, what you are basically implying is that a secondary skill could be created to be a specialisation of a primary: instead of specialising in it, just create the secondary and make it synergistic, and you've done the same thing for the same cost (without the penalty). And it does not add a new mechanic. I like it; I was not happy with my specialisation system to begin with but I already have one player who i am pretty sure will be peeved if he cannot specialise in something obscure.

Thanks!