Top 5 Skill Systems in Table Top RPGs

[TheOOB]

You're approaching the question from the wrong angle. It's better to let the setting inform the mechanics than the other way around. A skill or rolling system only works if it's helps to add to the feel and the theme of the game. It's why, for example, 7th Sea and Legend of the Five Rings were good, but they were terrible when converted to d20. It's not that d20 isn't a good system(it is), it's that both systems needed the player to have a more intimate connection with there characters, and both setting needed a way for combat to be really dangerous(err, 7th Sea is more dramatic than dangerous) and for even regular people to occasionally do great amazing things, neither of which the d20 system is good at. The d20 system is all about tactical wargaming like combat.

[D-naras]

I love L5R for the setting. It makes for a great social-politic-heroic-tragic game but I've found the skill system lacking. You see, in L5R you have skills and traits. Whenever you roll for a skill, you roll 1d10 for each skill rank, plus a number of d10s equal to your trait, and you choose and keep a number of dice equal to your trait. As you can see traits rule supreme in L5R, considering there are 9 traits, and over 50 skills. That, along with the increasing cost of raising skills leads to higher level characters being good in almost any skill they have 1 rank, because they roll 5 dice and keep 4. The biggest benefit of skill training is that it allows your dice to explode on a 10.

[BWR]

That is an issue with the system, but I haven't personally experienced it as a problem. 3E/R helped a little with that, what with emphases and mastery abilities and Raises being capped by Skill (or Void). And with limited xp to spend you start wondering if that ~+2 bonus to the skill is better right now rather than waiting another 5-6 sessions to increase the Trait.
My groups have never had problems with people ignoring Skills in favor of Traits, and whatever the theoretical mechanical issue, so long as it doesn't come up in play the system works well.

[skyth]

7th Seas used the same system, and I only ever took 1 rank in a skill and devoted everything else to traits.

[D-naras]

That's just the thing. We played the same campaign for 2 years, starting from the beginning and ending at insight rank 7. In the end, the only skills that were raised beyond 3 were those were we wanted to specialise in, and combat skills. Oh we had many skills, our characters were suppremely competent in the end, but that was due to our traits of 4 and 5. I love the game, I enjoy it's mechanincs but I recognise it's tendency for high level characters being the same. Hell, I had the highest stealth at rank 5 all game, and suddenly the mirumoto got a single rank and was beating my stealth rolls due to his 1 higher agility. Masteries help when they add new abilities, like stealth for instance but still, most skills don't have masteries.

In any case, a good skill system must give incentives to player's so that they will want to raise skills, preferably both vertically(better results) and horizontally(more applications). The only system that I am familiar with that does something like this, is Mage with it's arcanum dots. While not a skill system, raising dots allows for better use of old spells, as well as access to new ones.

[TheOOB]

I love L5R for the setting. It makes for a great social-politic-heroic-tragic game but I've found the skill system lacking. You see, in L5R you have skills and traits. Whenever you roll for a skill, you roll 1d10 for each skill rank, plus a number of d10s equal to your trait, and you choose and keep a number of dice equal to your trait. As you can see traits rule supreme in L5R, considering there are 9 traits, and over 50 skills. That, along with the increasing cost of raising skills leads to higher level characters being good in almost any skill they have 1 rank, because they roll 5 dice and keep 4. The biggest benefit of skill training is that it allows your dice to explode on a 10.

In L5R 4e skill mastery bonuses went a long way to fixing it, the system isn't perfect, but for most skills there is extra bonuses for raising your skill up.

For example with kenjutsu you get 1k0 to damage dice with 3 ranks, the ability to draw swords as a free action with 5 ranks, damage dice explosing on a 9 or 10 with 7 ranks, and a free raise on all rolls with 10 ranks.

Considering that after a short while skills are the best way of gaining insight, skills do have purpose.

That said, yes I would agree, the roll and keep system has several problems, and traits being overpowered is defiantly one of them(though not it's worst problem, which is that you often get huge rolls, but didn't call enough raises to take advantage of them because you are not stupid enough to expect to roll a 50 on 4k3).

[D-naras]

In L5R 4e skill mastery bonuses went a long way to fixing it, the system isn't perfect, but for most skills there is extra bonuses for raising your skill up.

For example with kenjutsu you get 1k0 to damage dice with 3 ranks, the ability to draw swords as a free action with 5 ranks, damage dice explosing on a 9 or 10 with 7 ranks, and a free raise on all rolls with 10 ranks.

Considering that after a short while skills are the best way of gaining insight, skills do have purpose.

That said, yes I would agree, the roll and keep system has several problems, and traits being overpowered is defiantly one of them(though not it's worst problem, which is that you often get huge rolls, but didn't call enough raises to take advantage of them because you are not stupid enough to expect to roll a 50 on 4k3).

To my experience, skills were never worth it for insight gains. Raising a ring gives 10 insight, raising a skill gives 1. To raise a ring from 2 to 3 you need 24 xp. Raising a single skill to 10 requires 55. Skill are only cost effective at the 1 and 2 rank level. Raising a skill to 2 costs 3 xp and gives a total of 2 insight. At that point you might raise it to 3 for another 3 to get a possible mastery and another insight point, but now you've spend 6 xp on a single skill that may or may not be important to your game. Obviously you will raise the skills that you want for your character to at least rank 3 maybe 5, even 7 for your weapon skill but soon enough that is a huge xp sink for a small insight gain. 15 xp for rank 5, 28 for rank 7. My endgame character had at least 20 skills but only a handfull of them were over rank 1. Namely, meditation, jiujutsu, kenjutsu, investigation, stealth, athletics, courtier, etiquette and maybe sincerity.
Considering the raise mechanic, I've found its better used when the mechanics call for raises like in combat or certain techniques. Otherwise it's way too vague on what it accomplishes.

Anyway, for me, a good skill system must have both talent and skill matter, leaning on neither.

[BWR]

Considering the raise mechanic, I've found its better used when the mechanics call for raises like in combat or certain techniques. Otherwise it's way too vague on what it accomplishes.

One of my constant complaints about the system was that TNs and effects of raises were too vague. It's one of the things I'd hoped they would fix in 4e, and was in a minority of being very vocal about them introducing in the new edition, but they didn't, so I just set about making some example TNs and Raise effects. Haven't had much chance to test it yet.

[TheOOB]

To my experience, skills were never worth it for insight gains. Raising a ring gives 10 insight, raising a skill gives 1. To raise a ring from 2 to 3 you need 24 xp. Raising a single skill to 10 requires 55. Skill are only cost effective at the 1 and 2 rank level. Raising a skill to 2 costs 3 xp and gives a total of 2 insight. At that point you might raise it to 3 for another 3 to get a possible mastery and another insight point, but now you've spend 6 xp on a single skill that may or may not be important to your game. Obviously you will raise the skills that you want for your character to at least rank 3 maybe 5, even 7 for your weapon skill but soon enough that is a huge xp sink for a small insight gain. 15 xp for rank 5, 28 for rank 7. My endgame character had at least 20 skills but only a handfull of them were over rank 1. Namely, meditation, jiujutsu, kenjutsu, investigation, stealth, athletics, courtier, etiquette and maybe sincerity.
Considering the raise mechanic, I've found its better used when the mechanics call for raises like in combat or certain techniques. Otherwise it's way too vague on what it accomplishes.

Anyway, for me, a good skill system must have both talent and skill matter, leaning on neither.

In 4e your insight score is skills+10*rings, but skills costs 1xnew rating, and attributes cost 4xnew rating(6xnew rating for void ring), and each ring(aside from void) is make of two attributes.

This means that raising a ring from 2 to 3 costs 24 xp for 10 insight which is 42% efficiency, 3 to 4 is 32 xp, which is 31%, and 4 to 5(the highest most campaigns will go) is 25%. Considering many characters may well raise some traits without the other related ring trait and the inefficiency gets worse.

For skills, you get 100% efficiency for 1 point, 50% for the second, 33% for the third, and 25% for the 4th, which means you are getting better efficiency rates for comparable increases, and getting skill mastery abilities on top of that. Courtier and Ettiquite also gain insight as mastery abilities, further increasing their efficiency.

That said. Were I remaking the system, your insight rank would be based solely on total xp earned, allowing players more freedom to learn kata and memorize spells and earn advantages and the like. Also Simple Action attacks would be gone.

[Rakaydos]

My favorite systems right now are Edge of Empire and Ironclaw. Both are "Dice pool with a twist" skill systems. Ironclaw has a mechanic that produces tight, weighted sucess curves based on levels of skill, and Edge of Empire adds an extra dimention to the dice pool by also generating Advantage or Threat on every roll.

[AceOfFools]

Definitely Burning Wheel. It's a dice pool d6 system (hacked from an older edition of Shadowrun, as I recall), so you'd roll one die for each rank in your skill. Then you get an extra die for each supplementary skill you have that applies to the task. This is important, because the skill rating alone is almost never sufficient to meet the (very tough) challenges most characters face.

In my experience, this very quickly makes how good your character is at anything a function of how good you--the player--are at ********ting your GM into letting skills count as applicable.

I haven't played much, but when I did, every single one of my die pools had significantly more "associated skill" dice than than "actual skill" dice, but the same was not true for other, less conniving players.

[Mr Beer]

GURPS

Roll 3d6 and get equal to or less than your skill to succeed. Skill is based on the relevant stat + how many points you put into it.

The system itself has a massive skill list, part of the job with GURPS is deciding which material you are going to use. Some settings use Wildcard skills, which let you do everything described by the name e.g. Gun! (combines Pistol, Rifle, Shotgun and Fast draw: Gun) or Drive! (combines Drive Motorbike, Drive Car, Drive Truck etc.).

Depending on what you are trying to achieve, I would consider using these sort of general skills otherwise skill bloat is always a real possibility.

[Airk]

You're approaching the question from the wrong angle. It's better to let the setting inform the mechanics than the other way around. A skill or rolling system only works if it's helps to add to the feel and the theme of the game. It's why, for example, 7th Sea and Legend of the Five Rings were good, but they were terrible when converted to d20. It's not that d20 isn't a good system(it is), it's that both systems needed the player to have a more intimate connection with there characters, and both setting needed a way for combat to be really dangerous(err, 7th Sea is more dramatic than dangerous) and for even regular people to occasionally do great amazing things, neither of which the d20 system is good at. The d20 system is all about tactical wargaming like combat.

Yeah, kinda along these lines. There are a lot of poor/faulty game design assumptions happening on the part of the OP here. You shouldn't be designing a "skill system". You should be designing a game. Skills might be part of that game, but should not be a seperate "system" designed in isolation. The fact that you view games where the skill system is not meaningfully distinct from the rest of the game as "not having a skill system" and therefore not worthy of your attention is an extremely flawed viewpoint. Also, honestly, polling for what "skill systems" people "like best" or whatever is...not a good plan here. I wouldn't want the Burning Wheel skill approach to skills in D&D4e, and I wouldn't want the D&D 4e approach in Burning Wheel, but I like both of those approaches and both of those games.

Instead of making a thread with a "Top Ten best ways a game can make you roll dice!" clickbait-sounding poll, you might consider some of these questions:

#0: What is your game about? (And no "it's a fantasy game" is not an acceptable answer to this question - that is, AT BEST, a genre, and tells us nothing about what characters do in your game or why they might need skills.)
#1: What purpose do skills serve in your game (Games shouldn't have skills just because 'games need skills'.)
#2: How broadly competent do you want characters to be (Is everyone supposed to be bad at things they didn't specifically hone in on?)
#3: How much advantage should a specialist character have over a generalist
#3a: How much specialization/generalization do you want to enable (some games make specialization practically a requirement for competence, causing generalist characters to suck, while some games have so many 'required' skills that you can't specialize too much or you'll end up with some sort of terrible achilles heel.)
#4: How will skills tie into the reward loop (if any) in the game? Will they just kinda lurk in the background while PCs get participation XP (ala White Wolf) or XP for something else entirely (most versions of D&D) or will they form a crucial part of that feedback loop (See: Burning Wheel).

There are probably others, but that should at least help calibrate your thinking in a direction that might help you avoid making a D&D Heartbreaker.

[Max_Killjoy]

Going to suggest looking at how HERO system (4th or 5th edition) handles skills for a different angle.

It's one of the systems I think anyone looking to create a system should learn as a point of reference. Not "do it this way", but rather "it's an important part of the map you need to study before you really know where you're going".

[Telwar]

Instead of making a thread with a "Top Ten best ways a game can make you roll dice!" clickbait-sounding poll, you might consider some of these questions:

#0: What is your game about? (And no "it's a fantasy game" is not an acceptable answer to this question - that is, AT BEST, a genre, and tells us nothing about what characters do in your game or why they might need skills.)
#1: What purpose do skills serve in your game (Games shouldn't have skills just because 'games need skills'.)
#2: How broadly competent do you want characters to be (Is everyone supposed to be bad at things they didn't specifically hone in on?)
#3: How much advantage should a specialist character have over a generalist
#3a: How much specialization/generalization do you want to enable (some games make specialization practically a requirement for competence, causing generalist characters to suck, while some games have so many 'required' skills that you can't specialize too much or you'll end up with some sort of terrible achilles heel.)
#4: How will skills tie into the reward loop (if any) in the game? Will they just kinda lurk in the background while PCs get participation XP (ala White Wolf) or XP for something else entirely (most versions of D&D) or will they form a crucial part of that feedback loop (See: Burning Wheel).

There are probably others, but that should at least help calibrate your thinking in a direction that might help you avoid making a D&D Heartbreaker.

I'm going to second this. Make sure you have your task resolution determined first, and then decide how much you want to have served using that. Make any skills flow naturally from your basic task resolution system.

[Potatomade]

I'm probably a dork for saying this, but AD&D 2E. I love nonweapon proficiencies. They can cover just about anything you could possibly want. And to determine success, you just take the relevant ability score, add/subtract the skill modifier, and roll under that on a d20. Kinda like how Mr Beer described the GURPS system, only more swingy, for extra drama! I really don't understand why 3.X moved away from NWPs. Sure, they're kinda clunky, but all they really need is some fine-tuning. Replacing them with a set number of generic skills was a big mistake.

[Slipperychicken]

I think OP needs a clearer vision for what he wants his roleplaying game to be about, and how he wants play to go. Then once he knows what he wants gameplay to look like, and what lore it has to support, that will inform his choices for rules.

Game rules don't exist for their own sake - they are tools meant to provide structure and support a wider lore and gameplay vision.

[ATHATH]

Personally, I like Shadowrun 5e's skill system.

[Arbane]

Going to suggest looking at how HERO system (4th or 5th edition) handles skills for a different angle.

It's one of the systems I think anyone looking to create a system should learn as a point of reference. Not "do it this way", but rather "it's an important part of the map you need to study before you really know where you're going".

Aren't Hero System skills just 'roll under TN on 3d6'? Or has it gotten more complex?

One system so simple I'd hesitate to call it a 'skill' system is from the indie game Trollbabe: a character has a Number, which I think is 2-9. If a PC is trying to do physical stuff, roll under her Number on a d10. If she's trying to do mental or magic stuff, roll over her Number. If she's trying to do social stuff, roll over/under or equal to the Number, whichever is worse.

[Max_Killjoy]

Aren't Hero System skills just 'roll under TN on 3d6'? Or has it gotten more complex?

The TN is derived from the relevant Characteristic rather than being pulled from a difficulty scale.

9+(CHAR/5) = the value in the SKILL, and that value is also the roll <= TN. (So technically, it's not roll under, it's roll under or equal to). Average CHAR is 10, so average SKILL is 11 or less (11-) on 3d6. Normal human max CHAR is 20, which is 13- on 3d6.

This is in contrast to many systems which add up everything and see if it rolls >= a sliding TN based on declared difficulty.