Quote Originally Posted by Stubbazubba View Post
Let's talk about this first. Have you played a Cortex game, like Smallville or Marvel Heroic Roleplaying? Do you know how much 7 seconds pulls you right out of the moment while you fish for the right dice?
In those games, if sudden use of a skill you've never touched before surprises you, somehow, while you're so immersed that you can see the general direction of the story, you're doing it wrong.

Tere really isn't fluff and crunch synergy. You'd have to roll a whole bunch of skill dice in order to ensure consistency, and that would be cumbersome to total up each time, and leave you with the chance of accidentally rolling a 40+ at level 5 on occasion, which is just ridiculous.
Show me where in the system having skills default to d6, and being skilled giving you a d8, somehow lets you roll above 40 (let alone above 8!) and I'll consider your points valid. As is, you misse that "the system" in question was the savage worlds skill system or an analogue, using ONLY d6 or D8 or D10 or whatever.

Quote Originally Posted by ImperiousLeader View Post
Since Bounded Accuracy and Modules are going to be things in 5th, may I suggest the following:

Skills are used as "DC reducers" and use an adjective ladder, as in Fate and one of Monte's early ruminations on skills. These adjectives match a series of standard DCs. For example:

Master: 20
Great: 15
Good: 10
Average: 5

For example, Bob, the skillful Rogue has "Great Stealth", "Good Diplomacy" and "Average Arcane Lore". When Bob is called to make a (DEX) stealth check, if the DC is less than Great, he doesn't need to roll, he simply succeeds. If the DC is higher, he rolls against a lower DC defined by difference between his skill and the DC required plus one step on the ladder. So a Master Level Stealth check for Bob requires a Good DEX check (DC 10), while untrained Laura has to make the 20.

This, to me, has a few advantages. One, it's allows skillful PCs to have that reliability, their skills mean something. It keeps number inflation down, and it doesn't require new information in an adventure. And PCs are still rolling their d20 + ability modifier whether skills are in the game or not.
"but then you're subject to DM fiat and the game breaks down if you disagree on whether you're great or whatever".
I like the idea, the Internet think tank seems not to care for it.