Player skill vs. character skill

 A lot has been written on the subject of player skill vs. character skill, by minds more steeped in RPG theory than mine, but nonetheless I had some thoughts, and I'm going to write them down.

Player skill in tabletop RPGs is simply the ability of making good decisions within the context of a game*. ("Good" in the case of D&D-like games encompasses facilitating such outcomes as character survival, the acquisition of loot, discovery of interesting features, accomplishing party goals, and of course a fun time at the game table.) Perhaps I should say good, meaningful decisions. There must be enough information available to make the decision more than a mere coin toss (or worse, an obvious case of "one right answer," and the decision must produce some outcome different from other possible courses of action. It's easy to see that an emphasis on player skill is inseparable from an emphasis on player agency. Without agency, player skill never really comes into play.

*Naturally, other types of games test other areas of player skill, e.g. hand-eye coordination, agility, speed, etc. But we're not playing darts or Super Mario Bros., so these aren't of much interest here.

I would define character skill as any feature of a character that takes direct control away from the player. Character skill is usually (but not necessarily always) tied to randomized results, and represented by modifiers to (or modifications of) certain types of random rolls, e.g. a fighter's THAC0 or attack bonus, a thief's Open Lock percentage, or a cleric's Turn Undead ability. 

Note that, for purposes of this discussion, I am not considering character abilities which are completely under the control of the player to be "character skills," as such. Though a knock spell is certainly a skill possessed by a character, it is wholly the player's decision which determines how effectively it is used. 

It's often noted that old school play emphasizes player skill over character skill, but the truth is a little more nuanced than that. Clearly, character skill has a place in old school games, often a very important one. The relatively simple combat rules in many old school rule sets, for instance, rely heavily on character skill. 

To me, the maxim "player skill over character skill" really means the subordination of character skill to player skill. The decision to use a character skill in the first place belongs to the player; in essence, the player makes a strategic decision and then delegates its implementation to the character. The player says, "I attack the orc," and the particulars of when to thrust, when to slash, how high to feint and parry, are left to the character's fictional expertise to handle, subsumed in a couple of dice rolls and modifiers. The DM doesn't say, "Roll for X" until the player announces, "I try to do X." In this way, character skill is simply a tool in the player skill toolbox: it informs the player's management of risk. 

(The only exception to this principle I can think of is saving throws, which are usually called for by the DM when player skill has already failed.)

Another aspect of "player skill over character skill" is that character skill should never replace the need for player skill, and as a corollary, should not override or reverse the results of player skill. For instance, social skills (persuasion, negotiation, intimidation, or *ugh* seduction) should not make it unnecessary for the players to actually role-play dealings with monsters and NPCs, nor should they be allowed to overturn natural results of role-playing. If a player, in-character says something an NPC would find highly insulting or threatening, the NPC should react accordingly, regardless of how high the persuasion roll is, and if the player offers a gift or bribe the NPC would find very attractive, it's inappropriate to have it rejected because of a failed persuasion check. If a player declares her character searches the right place in an appropriate way, the character should find what's there to be found, not overruled by a bad dice roll.

Character skill should not be a crutch for players who don't want to actively interact with the game environment, nor for DMs who can't be bothered to create details (either during prep or in the middle of a game) to properly inform player choices. It's easy (and lazy) to say, "Roll a search check!" when a player announces he wants to search the area. It's harder, but more fulfilling, to say, "You see a large wooden desk with many drawers, books piled on top, and beside it a pile of moldy rags. What do you do?" It's easy and lazy to say, "Roll a persuasion check!" when a PC wants something from an NPC; it's harder and more fulfilling to give this NPC motivations and desires and have the players figure out how to press the right buttons to get what they want from him.

Goblins and Greatswords: A resolution to the thief skills conundrum?

I've been busy with lots of other things lately, but after letting ideas ferment in the back of my head for a while, it's time to take up the mantle of amateur game designer once again and look at my fantasy heartbreaker project with fresh eyes.

I've toyed with a lot of ideas, all of which have strong appeal for one reason or another, and also some drawbacks, and I've tried to pick and choose and integrate the ones that offer the lowest costs for the biggest bang.  As a playable beta version looms, the skills system is finally coming together.

My design goals here were simplicity and intuitive ease, with minimal dice rolling, but at the same time providing a relative wealth of information beyond a mere pass/fail. Scalability to higher levels is a must so improvement is meaningful, but at the same time it shouldn't make low-level characters incompetent at their professions.  The math should be minimal and easy for the average person to calculate in his or her head.

What I've settled on for the playtest version is a roll-under system using 2d12 (showing some love for the traditionally least-used polyhedron!) with target numbers rising as skills improve.  Unlike a percentile dice system, it's easy to apply standard adjustments of -3 to +3, while retaining an advantage of the roll-under format, allowing the individual dice to add meaning beyond the pass/fail binary.  The rising target numbers allow only low rolls to succeed with low skill, but increasingly large rolls to succeed with growing proficiency.

On any successful roll, the lower of the two d12s is read as the degree of success.  If, say, your healing skill is 11, and you make a healing roll with a 6 and a 4, you heal four points of damage.  Easy.  This provides more skilled characters with the possibility of getting bigger and better results than less skilled ones, as well as simply succeeding more often. If your low die was a 10, you probably rolled pretty high, and with a roll-under system, that means you blew it unless your skill level is superlative.  This is exactly what I want.

If you roll doubles, you've scored either a critical success or a critical failure, with either an enhanced outcome or a mishap resulting.  The higher a character's skill, of course, the more likely that a critical roll will be a success instead of a failure.  A roll of double 6, for instance, would be a critical failure for a character with a skill of 11, but a critical success for one with a skill of 13. Again, pretty easy.

This does entail having a table relating character levels to target numbers, rather than the simple bonus-per-level progression I had envisioned early on, but that was the easiest wish to give up, and I get a lot of functionality and flexibility in return.

Here are some examples of how this system will work with specific skills:

Healing: The degree of success die indicates how many points of damage are healed or the bonus to a fresh saving throw against disease or poison.  Critical success doubles the degree of success (both dice are "lowest" so add them together!)  Critical failure causes some amount of damage to the patient, probably also equal to the low die rolled.

Tinker: Each lock and trap has a number of Difficulty Points, similar to hit points for creatures.  The degree of success represents how many Difficulty Points are subtracted for each attempt to pick a lock or disarm a trap.  Critical success doubles the degree of success, as above.  Critical failure adds points back on, and if the number exceeds the device's original Difficulty Points, something bad happens -- lock has stymied the character, the trap has been triggered, etc.

Stealth: The degree of success is subtracted from the distance of an encounter.  Critical success doubles; critical failure makes detection automatic.  Say, a character wants to sneak.  The GM knows there are bugbears nearby, and rolls an encounter distance of 60 feet.  The player gets a degree of success of 4, which means the character can sneak within 20 feet of the bugbears without being noticed.  Of course, as GM, you don't tell the player -- let him decide how far he wants to push his luck!

Legerdemain (a.k.a. picking pockets and the like): Any success means the character got hold of what he was after, but if the target scores a higher degree of success on an Alertness check, the attempt is noticed, whether it succeeded or failed.  Critical success doubles the degree of success, and critical failure means automatic detection.

Alertness:  The degree of success determines how far away, in tens of feet, the character can discern and identify sounds or other anomalies.  Critical success doubles, as always, and critical failure indicates a misperception in direction, distance, or some other vital factor.  Alertness can be used to counter Stealth or Legerdemain.

Cipher: The degree of success times 10 represents the approximate percentage of a work that the character can understand.  Critical success doubles this, while critical failure will result in a crucial misinterpretation.

Athletics: The degree of success adds to the character's movement rate while running, swimming, or climbing, probably at the rate of x5 feet, x2 feet, and x1 feet, respectively.  Critical success doubles, and critical failure might be a stumble or a fall.

Any fool can attempt any action at "Untrained" level of ability, which never changes.  Characters who study a skill as part of their adventuring repertoire will improve as they level, at one of three different rates: Basic, Professional, or Elite.  A character can, and probably will, have different skills at different rates of progression, but keeping track requires no more than recording the relative ability with each skill and updating the numbers on the character sheet with each level gain.

Here's the tentative advancement table, which allows for chances ranging from 10.42% for an untrained person to 99.31% for an Elite practitioner at the pinnacle of his career.  (Double 12 is always a critical failure!)  A character with a Professional level skill would begin with a 19.44% chance of success and a maximum degree of success of 3 (unless a critical boosts it to 6 or 8, of course!)  These are subject to adjustment for relevant ability scores, but I prefer to leave it to the GM and player to decide which ability, if any, applies in a given situation.  Foiling a particular lock might hinge on Wit or Agility, while climbing a specific wall may require Might or Agility, for instance.  It's also a very simple matter to apply other bonuses or penalties if the task is deemed particularly easy or difficult.

It all looks a bit complicated in print, but I'm hopeful that it will become second nature with minimal practice.

Level	Untrained	Basic	Professional	Elite
1	6	7	8	9
2	6	7	9	10
3	6	8	9	11
4	6	8	10	12
5	6	9	11	13
6	6	9	11	14
7	6	10	12	15
8	6	10	13	16
9	6	11	13	17
10	6	11	14	18
11	6	12	15	19
12	6	12	15	20
13	6	13	16	21
14	6	13	17	22
15	6	14	17	23
16	6	14	18	24

Goblins & Greatswords: An alternate resolution mechanic for the thiefly arts and other skills

A while back, I posted my ideas on how the skills of thieves (plus a few others) would work in my fantasy heartbreaker, Goblins and Greatswords.  I chose to stick with the percentile dice model used by most old school iterations of D&D, as opposed to a simple d20 or d6 mechanic.  One reason for this is that rolling two dice allows for special results to be triggered on a roll of doubles.  Another is that the percentile dice "roll-under" format allows degrees of success to be easily determined and scale in the right direction: just take the tens digit of a successful roll, and the highest degrees of success are possible only with the highest levels of skill.

However, there are some things I don't like about it too.  It's very inelegant when applying modifiers, for one, and ability score modifiers are something I very much want to include.  The standard -3 to +3 ability score modifier is dwarfed by a 100-point range.  Sure, you can convert those to plus or minus 5, 10, or 15%, but you're still asking your players to crunch bigger numbers at the table, and either adding them to the base chance or subtracting them from the roll, which feels weird.  Then there's the problem of looking up numbers in a table every time you want to do something.  It's a lot easier to remember that you have a +5 bonus to your Stealth skill than it is to remember that you have, say, a 47% chance of success.

So, I'm considering a system using a roll of two dice, but adding them together in a roll-over format.  My first thought was 2d6, but the range just isn't big enough to accomodate both improving skill by level and modifiers.  2d10 has the range to work, but the "success" point would have to be at some wonky number like 16 in order to start with reasonable odds, and 2d8 has a similar issue. 

2d12, now...that's interesting.  (Go here and click on the "At Least" tab if you want to follow along with a visual aid.)  There's a 10.42% chance to roll 20 or higher, which means that, if you set the target number at 20 (intuitive and easy to remember!) the average schmuck who has no bonus in a skill would succeed roughly 10% of the time.  Start out with a +1 bonus, and you're up to 14.58%, which seems good enough for a dabbler in the skill.  A more serious student of a skill might start at +2, for a 19.44% chance, which maps pretty well to the beginning percentages of most thief skills in B/X. 

Add a bonus for a high ability score, and a character could start with 25%, 31.25%, or 38.19% odds - a meaningful bump, but not so much that it swamps the whole system.  There's still lots of room for improvement, which is desirable because I want leveling up to mean something, and it doesn't if you're bumping against the 100% success ceiling too soon.

Rather than using a table of percentages, increasing at different rates for Basic, Good, or Elite skill progression, I'd use a relatively simple formula:  Basic starts at +1, and gains an additional +1 at odd-numbered levels.  Good starts at +2 and gains +1 at levels divisible by 2 or 3; thus at level 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, and so on.  Elite also starts at +2, and gains +1 at every level.  One interesting feature of this is that Good and Elite are essentially the same at beginning levels -- all the way through 4th, in fact -- but Elite slowly pulls ahead at higher levels. 

Here it is in table form, so you can clearly see the relative progressions.

Level	Basic	Good	Elite
1	+1	+2	+2
2	+1	+3	+3
3	+2	+4	+4
4	+2	+5	+5
5	+3	+5	+6
6	+3	+6	+7
7	+4	+6	+8
8	+4	+7	+9
9	+5	+8	+10
10	+5	+9	+11
11	+6	+9	+12
12	+6	+10	+13
13	+7	+10	+14
14	+7	+11	+15
15	+8	+12	+16

If levels top out around 15 (and really, there's not much reason to go beyond that, is there?) then a Basic skill ends up succeeding 61.81% of the time, Good 85.42%, and Elite 97.92%, before any ability adjustments.  That sounds about right to me.  

Of course, we also still have easy access to the special-effect-on-doubles mechanic.  It's the degrees of success which get a little funky: something along the lines of subtracting half the larger die roll from 7, to generate a number between 1 and 5 (no 6 - if neither of your dice are higher than 1, you obviously didn't succeed - snake eyes is always a failure) with higher levels of success reserved to those for whom lower dice rolls can succeed.  (I could simply subtract the higher die roll from 13, but that generates a number between 1 and 11, but thats an awful lot of range.  Some skills use the degree of success for the number of questions the player gets to ask of the GM, for instance, and any more than 5 or so seems like it would bog down the pace of the game tremendously.)  Only a couple of skills, as I've written them, really make use of degrees of success, so this might not be a big issue anyway.

I'm still a little bit on the fence about this, so please weigh in: If you were running a game, which one would be easier, more fluid, more intuitive to use?  Is this the respect the humble d12 deserves, or is 2d12 for one of the game's core resolution systems just too weird to stick?  Would the moderate fiddliness of calculating degrees of success with 2d12 make you not want to use that particular mechanic?  Is there something else that strikes you as broken or unworkable?  Let me know in the comments!

Goblins & Greatswords: Thievery and secondary skills

Skills not directly related to combat or formal spell-casting fall into this broad category.  All of these skills are used by rolling under the target number on percentile dice.  I know percentile skills have kind of a mixed reputation in OSR circles - there are quite a few house rules to convert them to d20 or d6 - but I find that it's a useful mechanic for a couple reasons: 1) Rolling doubles may amplify the success or failure of an attempt; and 2) The tens digit may be used to signify degree of success, with a higher number indicating better results.  Both of these special cases reward a higher skill beyond simply a greater chance of success.

Unlike in B/X and other versions of D&D, all skills use the same table.  By default, all skills advance according to the "Good" progression.  (See table at the bottom of this post.)  However, a thief may choose to reduce a skill to Basic in order to become Elite in another. 

Each skill has an associated ability score which may modify the chance of success, if desired.  Each point of bonus or penalty equals a 5% adjustment, so +1 = +5%, +2 = +10%, and +3 = +15%, with negative modifiers exactly the opposite.  Ability modifiers are optional; if the GM prefers that the percentages be used as-is, ignore them.

The skill list below is divided into two parts, Thiefly Skills and Other Skills.  The first is the default array of skills for the thief class.  The second is a supplemental list, which may be used to modify the basic thief to a more general "Expert" class.  Characters of all classes are allowed a secondary skill to bolt onto their core class abilities, and may choose one from either list.  Thus, you can quickly make, say, a fighter character into a ranger (Tracking), a holy warrior (Divine Piety), a combat medic (Herbalism), a stealthy scout (Stealth), or a herald (Lore.) 

All secondary skills are at Good level, unless modified by a class or race feature.  (For example, all halflings have Stealth at Basic level.  A halfling taking Stealth as a secondary skill adds that to his default Basic, and gets it at Elite level.)  Optionally, if the GM allows it, a character may take two secondary skills at Basic instead of one at Good.

Note that secondary skills are skills that will see much use in an adventuring career, and are effectively part of a character's profession.  They do not include, for example, background skills of a profession practiced before the character became an adventurer which are only rarely applicable to adventuring, nor skills which have negligible mechanical effects on play like music or etiquette, nor skills primarily of use between adventures such as blacksmithing or animal training. 

I've deliberately kept the list fairly short and focused, for a couple reasons.  Firstly, because character creation shouldn't be an agonizing process, and the GM shouldn't have to remember what dozens of different skills do.  Secondly, because I want them to be useful, in conjunction with the basic classes, for building archetypal characters, something which becomes difficult when you must have multiple skills to affect the archetype you want.  If, for example, there's a separate skill for survival in each type of wilderness terrain, in addition to tracking for wilderness and underground, then your ranger character arguably isn't complete without all of them, and that would torpedo the simplicity of character creation.

It would certainly be possible to use the skill table and general principles (doubles or tens digit degree of success) for tasks in which all adventurers are assumed to be proficient and improve with experience.  For instance, if all adventurers know how to survive in the wilderness in your game, it's trivial to look up a character's level on the table and roll the dice against the listed percentage to see if she finds food, with the tens digit representing the number of character-days of food obtained, or doubles on a failure resulting in poisonous or tainted things mistakenly identified as safe and edible.

It's also easy to allow any character a marginal chance to succeed at any skill.  Just use the 1st level Basic line for any skill the character doesn't actually possess, i.e. a base 10% chance of success.  (This purposely doesn't allow for success with doubles!)

Thiefly Skills
The standard thief has the following skills by default.

Tinker (Int) is a knack for things mechanical, and encompasses the old skills of opening locks and removing traps.  Normally each Tinker attempt takes one turn (10 minutes.)  Rolling doubles on a success reduces the time to a single round (10 seconds.)  Doubles on a failure jams the lock or sets off the trap. 

Stealth (Dex) mashes together the abilities of moving silently and hiding in shadows.  A stealth roll is made only when some person or creature has a chance of noticing the character.  Doubles on a failure indicates that the character has inadvertently done something to draw attention, such as knocking something over.  Stealth is not possible when wearing medium or heavy armor. 

Climb (Str) allows a character to ascend sheer surfaces, as long as the surface is rough enough to provide hand- and foot-holds.  A climbing roll is made at the beginning of a climb.  The tens digit of the roll gives the number of rounds the character may climb before making another roll (on a success) or the number of rounds the character is stalled and looking for a way forward (on a failure.)  Normal climbing movement is at 1/4 the character's normal movement rate per round.  Doubles on a success allows double climbing movement until the next check.  Doubles on a failure result in a fall after covering half the distance.  Climbing is not possible while wearing medium or heavy armor.

Alertness (Wis) is similar to Hear Noise.  It isn't the ability to hear, per se, but rather the ability to interpret what is heard, making sense of the obscure mumblings behind a door or recognizing the significance of an anomalous sound from amid background noise.  Alertness is not possible when wearing medium or heavy armor unless the helmet is not worn (-1 penalty to AC.)  Time required: 1 round.

Sleight-of-hand (Cha) allows the picking of pockets, but also juggling, simple faux-magic tricks, and any other gambit that requires quick fingers and misdirection.  Each attempt takes one round (10 seconds.)  When used to take items from an unaware NPC, the roll is penalized by 5% for each level of the victim above 5th.  Each success procures one item.  Rolling doubles on a success nets an additional item, while doubles on failure means the attempt has been noticed.  Time required: 1 round.  (Why Charisma as a modifier?  Because picking pockets is often about misdirection rather than pure stealth - engaging your mark in distracting conversation while you surreptitiously loot him, staging a convincing "accident" as an excuse for invading his personal space and possessions, or simply looking nonchalant in a crowd while your hands are busy in the lady's shopping basket.  Substitute Dex if you prefer.)

Cipher (Int) is the ability to puzzle out codes and unfamiliar languages.  Rather than gaining a flat 80% at 4th level as in B/X, it is gained at level 1 and improves like any other skill.  The tens digit of a successful roll indicates the number of questions about the document that the player may ask and have answered by the GM. (If the tens digit is 0, the GM chooses one piece of information to give the player.)  Time required: 1 turn.

Other Skills
The following skills are not automatically gained by thief characters, but rather may be taken by characters of any class as secondary talents. 

Lore (Int) is knowledge of the campaign world and its history.  When a lore check is made, the tens digit of a success indicates the number of questions that the player may ask and have answered by the GM about a particular topic.  (If the tens digit is 0, the GM chooses one piece of information to give the player.)  Time required: 1 round.

Tracking (Wis) is the ability to follow the trail of some individual or group, or to cover the tracks of oneself and/or one's party.  On a successful tracking check, the tens digit of the roll indicates the number of questions the player may ask and have answered by the GM.  For example, what kind of creatures, how many, how quickly were they moving, which direciton, were they encumbered, etc.  (If the tens digit is 0, the GM chooses a piece of information to give the player.) Time required: 1 turn.

Herbalism (Wis) skill may be used to make healing salves, infusions, poultices, and such, to treat wounds, disease, or poison.  A concoction must be made for a specific purpose; it does not work for all afflictions at once.  The tens digit of a successful roll indicates how many points of damage are healed or a bonus to saving throws to overcome poisoning or disease.  Time required: 1 turn.

Arcane dabbling (Int) allows a character to use magic items normally usable only by mages, including wands and spell scrolls, on a successful roll.  Doubles on a failure result in a mishap, possibly spectacular.  The character also gains limited spell-casting ability, and may attempt to cast a number of spell levels per day equal to half his or her level or Intelligence bonus +1, whichever is less.  Thus, a character with 16 Intelligence could use one level 1 spell at 2nd level of experience; at 6th level she could attempt up to three level 1 spells, or a level 1 and a level 2, or one level 3 spell.  A roll must be made, with the same chance of mishap on doubles as for item use.  Failed spells still count against the day's total.  Time required: 1 round.

Divine piety (Wis) allows the character to use items normally reserved to clerics on a successful roll.  Doubles on a failure means that the gods are angered and the character suffers a curse.  The character may also attempt to pray for divine favor (i.e. cast divine spells) a number of spell levels per day equal to half his or her level or Wisdom bonus +1, whichever is less.  A roll must be made, with the chance of angering the gods as above.  Unanswered prayers still count against the day's total.  A character who abandons his or her faith loses all associated abilities.  Taking up a new faith may restore the benefits of piety, at the GM's discretion. Time required: 1 round.


                               Skill Advancement by Level

Level	Basic	Good	Elite
1	10	20	30
2	15	28	40
3	20	36	48
4	25	44	56
5	30	50	64
6	35	56	72
7	39	62	78
8	43	68	84
9	47	72	90
10	51	76	94
11	54	80	98
12	57	84	102
13	60	86	106
14	63	88	110
15	66	90	113
16	69	92	116
17	72	94	119
18	74	96	121
19	76	98	123
20	78	100	125

Dead simple B/X skills

While I strongly prefer the ease of a class and level system of character development over a skill-based one, there are times when a player rightly expects that something in the character's background should apply to a task or problem in an adventure.  Here's a quick and dirty system that has roots in an already existing B/X rule.

Whatever the character did before he or she became an adventurer is his or her skill set.  The default assumption is that the PC possesses these skills at an apprentice level.  In game terms, this means that the PC has a 2 in 6 chance to succeed at tasks related to these skills - in exactly the same way that a dwarf character has a 2 in 6 chance to detect certain features of mines and caves, because all dwarves are taught basic mining skills.

This chance is for things that, in the judgment of the DM, are so difficult that an ordinary layperson would have little hope of success.  In the interest of not discouraging players from attempting actions simply because their characters don't have a particular skill, the layperson should succeed on a roll of 1 on 1d6.)  A mere apprentice isn't a sure thing, either, but he's still twice as good as the layperson.

Some actions may be so basic that even a person with no special training can succeed without much difficulty.  For example, a character with a background as a pearl diver might be a better swimmer than everyone else in the party, but anyone ought to be able to swim unencumbered in a calm lake without need of a die roll.  On the other hand, maybe the DM deems retrieving an object from 30 feet of water in choppy seas to be a difficult task.  Any character may attempt it, but the pearl diver has the best chance of success.

If an obstacle or task would ordinarily require a roll which affords an unskilled character a good chance of success, then the DM may rule that a character with the relevant expertise succeeds automatically.  For example, if the dive above allowed a 3 in 6 chance for any fool to succeed, then the pearl diver might succeed without a roll - it's routine stuff for him.

Very rarely, if ever, should a d6 skill roll determine a character's death or survival.  In the example above of the dive, either the character succeeds or comes up gasping for air, having failed to retrieve the item.  Of course, other things could happen while the character is underwater - a shark could attack, or he could get his foot trapped in a giant clam - but a failed skill roll, in and of itself, should rarely be lethal, and then only with advance warning from the DM that the task is so hazardous.

Most characters should start with one trade, i.e. one broad skill set.  Dwarves may choose one other trade in addition to mining (or at the DM's option may double up on mining and start as journeymen with a 3 in 6 skill roll.)  Additional skills may be learned, and old ones improved, at the DM's discretion.  This isn't something that can be done during a week off beween adventures; it should require either a long period of down time (at least several months) or extensive use of skills during adventures.  For instance, if the party advances a couple levels in a series of maritime adventures, it's reasonable to allow them to gain an apprentice's proficiency in seamanship - provided, of course, that they're actively assisting the captain and sailors in piloting the vessel.  If the party magic-user stays below decks studying history books, he's not going to learn much about ships and the sea.

Gaining greater proficiency bumps the chance of success up by 1 point, i.e. to 3 in 6.  This should require that the character spend an even greater amount of time learning and practicing than is required for apprentice-level skill, or that it be central to his or her adventures for at least three or four levels of experience.  Increasing to 4 in 6 or better should really be beyond the scope of an adventurer; this level of skill is the province of people who make it their lifelong vocation, not vagabonds and thrill-seekers who dabble in it on the side.

Meta-classes

As I've already noted a few times, I'm pretty well soured on the idea of skill systems in D&D.  I won't recapitulate my case against skills here; if you want to see that, go here.

But there are still a couple of cases where I would like characters to be able to do certain things, which don't directly pertain to fighting, magic use, stealth and guile, or religion.  Things that are frequently useful in an adventuring career, that aren't so universal or easily learned as to work well as things that everybody knows, and that can't be modeled at the table through role playing or player/DM dialogue.

The first one that comes to mind, that inspired this post in the first place, is tracking.  Any fool can look at tracks in the mud, but reading subtle signs to determine whether something passed through, what it was, how recently, its physical condition, its speed, etc. requires some uncommon expertise.  Some editions add an entire character class (the ranger) to provide for tracking, but the class comes with an additional suite of abilities and restrictions.

Healing/herbalism is another.  Probably almost everybody in a medieval setting knows at least a little about how to bind a wound, but to do it well, and to treat diseases, poisons, and severe injuries requires more specialized knowledge and experience.  Again, D&D foists almost the entire responsibility for this important role onto a single class, the cleric.

I don't see any good reason why tracking should be limited to a particular fighter sub-class, nor why healing should be the sole province of the religious.  I also don't like the idea of giving those abilities to everybody.

A possible fix:  Meta-classes that bolt on to any standard class, adding the relevant abilities and a premium to XP progression - say, 500 XP added to the base XP required for level advancement.  Taking a meta-class might require the player to justify his or her character concept to the DM, but otherwise they could be combined with any of the standard adventuring classes.  Fighters who are battlefield medics and witch-hunting clerics who are expert trackers are possible this way.

This way, a character actually has to pay a price to obtain those abilities.  There's a genuine trade-off, and it's an ongoing one, instead of a one-off cost for a permanent benefit.  A thief who chooses to be a tracker too is going to be less effective as a thief than a "pure" thief with the same XP total.

Since the cost is ongoing, and since I'm putting these abilities in the context of class advancement, they should scale with level, starting out very limited and increasing in usefulness and reliability.  That means some objective mechanic for resolving those abilities.  I'm thinking of a 2d6 roll, similar to a cleric's turn undead ability.  How exactly that might be structured is a little beyond the scope of these musings, but I'll be giving it some thought to see if I can cobble together a workable system.  (If anybody else wants to tackle it, feel free to beat me to the punch.)

I suppose in theory you could have characters who were ONLY trackers or healers, but meta-classes don't provide for advancements in hit dice, attack rolls, saving throws, etc., so in all respects but the special ability of the meta-class that character would be a 0-level normal man or woman.  Come to think of it, that might actually be desirable in NPCs.

What's in your monster?

(I had initially set out to write about the explosion in complexity of monster stat blocks compared to old school games, but that line of thinking led to something a bit more far-reaching.  You never know what you're going to find when you start dissecting monsters.)

Monster stats sure have changed a lot over the history of the world's most popular RPG.  Early editions took a pretty bare-bones approach toward a monster's mathematical DNA - mostly just some basic combat stats.  When D&D "upgraded" to 3rd edition, though, I remember being completely flummoxed by the stat blocks I saw in my new issue of Dungeon Adventures.  Suddenly monsters had a full complement of ability scores and skills, among other strange notations!  (I let my subscription lapse shortly thereafter.)  I'm completely unfamiliar with 4e monsters, but considering the ubiquity of the "skill challenge" mechanic, I'd be surprised if they weren't fully statted-up like characters too.  Word is that monsters in the playtest version of 5e have ability scores as well.

I don't know what the initial impetus behind this seismic shift was.  Perhaps somebody started wondering why monsters and characters seemed to operate on different mechanics, and sought to "unify" things.  Perhaps it's merely the by-products of a misunderstanding of the importance of ability scores and the drive toward greater "realism" of the skills system.

In reality, in old editions monsters and characters actually did, for the most part, run on the same rules. Despite the obsessing of players and DMs over ability scores, they were never actually a core mechanic of the game, only a peripheral one.  They provide some points of reference for imagining and role playing the character as a unique individual, and a few minor statistical deviations from the baseline in certain actions that were governed primarily by the real core mechanics.  The real cogs and pulleys of the game engine were the things that were shared in common by PCs and monsters alike:  a number representing how hard they are to hit (Armor Class), matrices determining their ability to hit (a function of levels for PCs, Hit Dice for monsters), a number representing how much punishment they can take before dying (hit points, derived from class and level for PCs, Hit Dice for monsters), a number or range of damage they cause with successful attacks, chances for avoiding or mitigating the effects of special attacks (saving throws, again a function of level/HD), and a movement rate.  Some of these things could be modified by ability scores, but none were dependent upon them. The game, in fact, would play perfectly well without ability scores - essentially, as if everyone had modifiers of 0. 

Thus, there was no point in generating ability scores at all, save for those entities most important to the game, the player characters.  Take a look at the "monster" versions of humans and demi-humans (e.g. Bandit, Noble, Trader, etc.) in the rule books - nothing but standard monster stats.  Or thumb through the Keep on the Borderlands module, and see how many of the denizens of the Keep had been given ability scores.  (In a few cases, a single exceptional score is noted.  Other than that...nada.)

In  many or perhaps most cases, ability scores don't even apply very neatly to monsters.  How do you rate a horse's Strength score on a scale meant for humans?  Do you give it the strength several times that of a man, as a real life horse would have?  If so, what do you do about the massive bonuses to hit and damage that would come with such a score?  How about a pixie?  Or a grey ooze - does it even have a Strength score, and if so, how exactly does the creature employ it?  Does it have Wisdom or Charisma?  Does it have Dexterity?  How do you handle a giant's Constitution?  It's clearly orders of magnitude sturdier than any human by virtue of sheer size, but does that give it greater endurance and resistance to disease too?

No, rather than rate every ability of every monster on the same scale as player characters, their abilities are subsumed in their standard stats.   The Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution of grizzly bears and kobolds are reflected in their damage ranges, Armor Class, and number of Hit Dice.  There's rarely any need to individualize them further, but when there is, it can be achieved simply by granting a bonus or penalty to any or all of these stats, rather than mucking about with the intermediary step of generating ability scores.

Early skill systems were similarly peripheral to the essential rules of the game.  Originally they were bolted on to mainly to graft on background stuff that had nothing to do with interacting with monsters and NPCs, and often little to do with adventuring at all.  Formally granting a character the ability to rig a sail or weave baskets doesn't even touch upon the core mechanics of the game or any of the situations that they govern.  There's almost never any reason why you'd need to know whether an orc or dragon can do either, and if some situation arose in which it is important - say, encountering a ship crewed by orcish pirates - you just assume they have the ability to do what they're clearly doing.

Somehow, though, the game evolved to begin incorporating ability scores directly into core game mechanics, rather than simply modifying them with a bonus or penalty.  In case there's any confusion, resolving a situation by rolling a die and adding an ability score modifier is an example of the latter.  Even without the ability score, the roll can be taken straight.  A check of "1d20, roll under ability" is a simple example of the former - it cannot work at all in the absence of the requisite ability score.  (Granted, the d20 ability check does appear in old school rule books, but it's generally suggested as a sort non-specific or catch-all mechanic in the DM's tool box, to be used at the DM's discretion for adjudicating occasional actions covered by no formal rule.  As a tool for ad hoc rulings and resolutions, it seems no more objectionable than any other.  Only with the intent to formally codify it as an official mechanic for resolving specified actions does it really turn malignant.)

 Maybe this was an outgrowth of the inflated importance so often mistakenly assigned to ability scores, or maybe it was a conscious effort to actually make them as important as they were perceived to be.  Whatever, chicken and egg.  Once you have ability scores exerting a direct rather than indirect effect, you either have a mechanical double standard - a thing is done one way for PCs and another for monsters, which of course is fraught with opportunities for imbalance and abuse - or you have to assign ability scores to the monsters so they can use the same mechanics. If a certain action in combat is resolved with a check against Strength, then monsters need Strength scores, and even more problematically, they need Strength scores that are directly comparable to human Strength scores.  Simply rolling 3d6 won't do - see the aforementioned examples of the horse and the pixie.

Similarly with skills.  As long as they pertain to things like singing, basket weaving, and historical knowledge, they don't intrude upon the jurisdiction of the foundational rules for combat, negotiations, and other interactions, so they generate no disequilibrium if monsters don't have them.  When they do start branching into those areas (sometimes morphing into "feats;" same concept, different label) they become a point of asymmetry between PC and monster, and the pressure to balance things out mounts.  If a PC can have a Dodge skill for additional chance to evade attacks, what justification can there be for monsters not to have access to a similar ability?  When skills and feats function on an opposed mechanic of some sort, it's pretty much mandatory that monsters have skills, else what exactly is the PC's skill opposing?  When skills and feats are based on ability scores, it's then required that monsters have ability scores as well.

Where these changes lead in the end is not a to few new bells and baubles tacked onto a simple system, but to a fundamental transformation of a simple system into a much more complex one. 

Unique characters part 2: Background

Despite being no longer a fan of formal skill systems, I'm still in favor of individualizing characters in ways unrelated to their class and vital statistics, ways that capture a bit of who they are rather than merely defining what they can do.  This is a very basic framework only, because that's all I really need to get the effect I want.  It's assumed that the chosen adventuring class is a character's primary focus, and that any other skills and interests are only peripheral dabbling.

Background is what the character did before he or she decided to run off in pursuit of adventure, fame, and fortune.  In non-modern settings, almost everybody works from childhood on, and a player character is no different.  Pre-teen and teenage years would have been spent learning the basics of some trade.  Often this would be a family occupation, but a character might also have been apprenticed to another tradesman and learned a different craft.

A player should either choose or roll randomly to determine in what trade the character was brought up before being derailed into adventure.  In most games, adventurers start young, and it's unlikely they've progressed beyond an apprentice level of competency.  They're not going to master those crafts until and unless they settle down and leave the adventuring life behind.  Their character classes are their careers now.

Nonetheless, they have picked up the fundamentals, and sometimes those can be of use in specific situations during an adventure.  Rather than a detailed system to adjudicate specific abilities and results, the use of background skills in the game is best played out as a conversation between the player and DM.  If a player thinks the character's background has some special relevance to the situation at hand, she suggests it to the DM, who makes a ruling.

"Deck hands do a lot of climbing in the ship's rigging.  Crossing a rope bridge is somewhat similar, right?"

"I'm a farmer's daughter.  Shouldn't I know something about how to calm a spooked animal?"

"I was apprenticed to a pawnbroker.  Can I estimate what that painting would fetch on the market?"

The results should be fairly limited in scope: an automatic success on a minor action directly related to the background, a +1 bonus to a more important action or when the background is only indirectly relevant, a bit of information gained.  The character should be able to assess the quality of items that pertain to his old trade with a fair degree of confidence, and to perform basic tasks.  The rudimentary skills of a PC are not equivalent to the specialists listed for hire in the Expert Rules and elsewhere, and PCs should not be able to serve (competently, at least) as their own specialists, though they could easily act as assistants to a specialist if time and circumstances permit. 

The real point isn't to give the players extra abilities, but to get them thinking in terms of what a character of a certain background would do and give them a point of identity to role play from if they so desire. 

Below, a list of possible character backgrounds, choose or roll d30:
(1d3-1 for tens, 1d10 for ones if you don't have a d30)

1 Animal handler (Driver, ostler, groom, kennel keeper, beekeeper, etc.)

2 Apothecary/herbalist
3 Aristocrat

4 Artisan (Painter, sculptor, potter, glassblower, or other artistic profession)
5 Beggar
6 Church, lay member

7 Craftsman (Carpenter, blacksmith, candle maker, wheelwright, cooper, tailor, tanner, cobbler, weaver, dyer, etc.)
8 Dock worker

9 Entertainer (Musician, singer, dancer, actor, juggler, fortuneteller)

10 Farmer
11 Fisher
12 Food preparation (Butcher, baker, brewer, chef, cheese maker, etc.)
13 Guard

14 Healer

15 Herder
16 Hospitality (Innkeeper, bartender, cook)

17 Hunter
18 Law and justice (Constable, judge, lawyer)

19 Merchant, shopkeeper/peddler
20 Merchant, traveling
21 Miller

22 Miner
23 Porter
24 Sailor
25 Scholar
26 Scribe or cartographer

27 Servant
28 Stonemason

29 Soldier
30 Woodcutter

Obviously this list isn't exhaustive, and doesn't even attempt to represent the actual proportions of those occupations in a medieval or Renaissance society.  It's simply intended to churn out some interesting results for player character backgrounds.

Why I scrapped skills

Since I started posting about how to make characters unique, I thought I should address one of the most common systems added to the game for that purpose.  I'm aware that this topic has been covered pretty thoroughly and that I'm probably not offering much of anything in the way of fresh insights, but I felt like stating my reasoning in my own words, so here it is.  

My introduction to skills came via the Gazetteer series of supplements to the Known World/Mystara setting introduced in the Expert Rules set, specifically GAZ6, The Dwarves of Rockhome, which happened to be the first one I acquired.  Briefly, every character got four skill slots plus his Intelligence bonus, with additional slots gained at higher levels.  Each skill was based on an ability score, and checked by rolling d20 against that score.  The list of skills, accumulated over the entire run of the Gazetteer and Creature Crucible series, included things such as crafts (blacksmith, cobbler, armorer, weaver, etc.,) knowledge of whatever field you choose, acrobatics, dancing, singing, musical instruments, labor and professional skills (mining, engineering, sailing, cooking, etc.,) gambling, art, law and justice, alertness, weather sense, direction sense, healing, bargaining, persuasion, riding, tracking...the list goes on and on.  Some skills, such as quick draw, fighting instinct, and blind fighting even granted combat bonuses.

The system appealed to me immediately for its promise in making characters more than just generic members of a class.  At a glance, skills seem to do just that, defining a character's training and interests not directly related to the functions of his class, and since my players at the time were fairly experienced and game-savvy, they didn't have much trouble adding skill selection to the character creation process.  Until pretty recently, in fact, I thought of a skill system as an essential part of my game.  A few things have led me to rethink that view.  My new group, with only one veteran player, found the skills confusing, and fretted about choosing the ones most useful in an adventuring career.  Skills did not serve to add depth to their characters, but to gain bonuses and define what they could and could not do.  And of course, I had begun to read the ruminations of some old school game bloggers that clearly articulated a lot of my vague misgivings about the skill system and added even more that had never occurred to me.  In particular, -C of Hack and Slash has done a fantastic job of deconstructing skill systems and individual skills.

Using my own recently articulated framework for analyzing complexity, realism, and choices, here are my conclusions on skills.

Skills certainly do offer up a lot of additional options, but the placement of those choices and their actual interest are dubious.  Skill systems heavily front-load choices into the character creation phase.  Most of the choice comes in the form of whether to take the skill in the first place, very little in whether and when to use it in play. 

I divide skills into two admittedly nebulous categories:  Those that are directly and commonly useful in adventuring, and those that are mainly for role playing color and flavor.  The first sort are prone to either limiting the scope of choice in play, or else contributing to bonus inflation.  To be worthwhile at all, having a skill must provide an advantage over not having it.  That necessarily means that either characters who lack the skill are penalized or barred from attempting actions relating to it, or else characters with the skill get a boost over and above the baseline of ability assumed in the game.  It's debatable whether the "useful" skills actually expand the range of choice during an adventure at all.  At best they affect the odds of success of a particular action, but they generally don't open up completely new possibilities.  You can attempt to persuade someone without having the persuasion skill; you can bargain without bargaining skill; lack of mining skill doesn't prevent you from examining a cave wall or trying to tunnel through the wall with a pick; you can run and jump without athletics skill.

The choices implied by the "color and flavor" skills, the cooking and crafting and singing and all that, are generally ones that players wouldn't try without them, but also aren't all that interesting to most players. 99 times out of 100, a painting or leather-working skill roll has no significant consequences in the game. 

Skills add only a little complexity to actual play, but a lot to character creation.  The relatively uninteresting range of choices they add to game play doesn't even come close to offsetting this unless your players really know their way around the D&D game.  Even then, it's iffy.  It may be moderately interesting to make your character a singer or a blacksmith, but it has precious little application in play beyond a role playing hook, and that can be accomplished without codifying it into game mechanics.

Having failed the interesting choices vs. added complexity test, assessing realism is more or less a moot point, but the skills system does produce some wildly counter-realistic results.  For one, it allows a character with a high requisite ability score to be an instant virtuoso, while one with an average score can never be more than mediocre.  Worse, a character with a high score in a particular ability can load up on skills based on that ability, and be a virtuoso in multiple fields.  A character with a 17 Intelligence can begin play as a master blacksmith, tracker, shipwright, and alchemist, trades that each should require years, if not decades of diligent practice to attain mastery.  It's terribly unrealistic for someone who deserts the family farm at the age of 16 for a life of adventure to be a better farmer than his father who's been toiling in the fields for a quarter century simply because he has a higher Intelligence score. 

In my opinion, the skill system fails at what ought to be its primary purposes.  It doesn't add much in the way of new options in actual play - in fact, it subtracts from them.  As a means of distinguishing and individualizing characters, it's a Rube Goldberg device, and it even fails the lowest priority, the realism test.  Its cons far outweigh its pros in my estimation, which is why it's no longer a part of my game.

Why I hate character customization options

If you've played D&D very long, and I assume anyone reading this blog has more than passing familiarity with the game, you probably know what I mean by character customization.  Both Classic and Advanced D&D spawned a seemingly endless series of supplemental materials brimming with new classes, sub-classes, kits, skills, weapon mastery, combat maneuvers, character backgrounds, etc, etc, etc.

I understand the desire to play a particular sort of character. A good deal of the fun of D&D is in fleshing out your character and making him or her unique.  Where I disagree is the notion that every variation on an archetype must be codified in game mechanics.

In the first place, all those extra classes, sub-classes, kits, and what-have-you rarely or never add anything truly unique to the character creation and development options.  A swashbuckler, an archer, a barbarian, and a soldier all fit squarely within the fighter archetype.  All can be realized in game simply by equipping and playing a fighter character in a fitting way. 

Given that, why the enthusiasm for mechanically distinguishing sub-classes?  My hypothesis is that it's a convenient excuse to hand out bonuses.  Far more often than not, customization options, in game mechanic terms, are little more than bundles of bonuses.  Attack or damage bonuses with certain weapons or in certain situations, defensive bonuses, hit point bonuses, saving throw bonuses, movement bonuses, bonus spells, bonus skills - you name it, there's probably a specialty class or an optional skill that grants it.

But why give players extra perks for playing their characters as they would have anyway?  If I want my fighter to be a barbarian, he's going to use an axe whether or not he gets +1 to hit with it.  If I want to be a swashbuckler, I'll deal with the disadvantages of light armor and play up the advantages, rather than demand an AC bonus while lightly armored.  I don't need bonus spells to have my magic-user learn and memorize fire spells to play a fire mage, nor do I need special powers to play a cleric as a witch hunter or a scholarly monk. 

True, you may say, it's possible to differentiate characters that way, but what's wrong with distinguishing them with special bonuses?  Shouldn't a professional archer be a better shot with a bow than a plain old fighter?  I have two answers to those objections.  Firstly, it's a step down the road toward what I might call combat inflation.  By name level, if not before, a fighter is already able to hit pretty much any AC more often than not, especially if he's got a strength bonus and a magic weapon.  That +1 bonus may seem small by itself, but they add up, especially if you allow multiple modes of customization to stack.  Add ability score adjustments to the mix, and you're looking at a character that's hitting a lot more often than the baseline for someone of his class and level. The inevitable breakdown in the rules that creeps in at high levels is brought a step nearer.

Secondly, by asserting that an archer should be better at archery than a vanilla fighting man, we're moving the game away from a class and level-based system and toward a skill-based one.  Skill-based games are fine if that's what you like, but bolting it onto the class and level system creates some problems and redundancies.  In the class and level system, a character's competency in all areas is represented more abstractly.  Level advancement models the character's increasing skill generally, implicitly encompassing skill with all weapons and techniques he can employ.  A skill-based system attempts a more granular approach; instead of a general aggregate of skills, it aims at tracking each individual skill separately.

It's not unrealistic to suppose that a fighter might train more intensively with a bow, and less with other weapons, but bolting on elements of a skill system to a class and level system doesn't model this very well.  The archery specialist gets his bonus with bows stacked on top of his overall skill growth represented by his level - he gets to double-dip, as it were.  He has an advantage with his bow, and he can use every other weapon allowed him with all the usual proficiency of his class and level.  Meanwhile, the generalist fighter gains nothing for his choice not to specialize.  He's worse than the archer with bows, and no better with sword, spear, mace, or axe.  The same holds true for situational bonuses - a cavalier sub-class might have a bonus fighting from horseback, making him superior to a standard fighter when mounted, and no worse on foot.

One might be tempted to solve this double-dip syndrome by imposing a penalty on non-specialty activities.  Consider, though, how often a character in your game is forced to use a weapon other than his weapon of choice.  Not very?  Then a penalty to other weapons really doesn't balance out a bonus with a preferred weapon.  As noted above, you're just granting a bonus for using the weapon the player would already choose, and penalizing others that won't be used anyway.  The logical result is for everyone to play some sort of specialist, everyone gets a bonus, and the baseline level of ability gets bumped a step toward that inevitable breaking point.

All of this is not to say that I necessarily think all attempts to expand options are bad, but the urge to codify every possible variation has consequences to game play that I don't think are very often given full consideration.  It may add a touch of realism and some extra bells and whistles, but at the expense of added complexity and bonus inflation that skews game balance.  Is it worth it?  Not to me, but of course, your mileage may vary.