Would you guys say that having over 100 skills, provided that they all ran the gamut between useful and situational, is good or would you guys say that it's overkill and lead to trap options?
If you think it's too much, what would you say is a good number for skills, as far as skills that every character could know?
Having skills leads to trap options, almost universally, no matter how many skills there are.
Why? Because unless the player is clever enough (and want to push a concept), the GM will always prefer certain skills over other, subconsciously.
Having that many skills is not bad in on itself, depending on the rest of the system... But in almost any system it would be bad. Having more skills makes the character creation more versatile, but it also makes it complex. Having that many skills also doesn't add a lot of depth in the game, because the methods players use are going to be freeformed somewhat anyway, so having specific skills for it suddenly just becomes redundant.
The thing, though, is that having that many skills gives the players actually LESS FREEDOM while played. They're tied to their known methods, and need to develop the character to get new methods. And if there are a 100 skills, if you want to "Investigate", for example, you just take skills required to make a somewhat full investigation and use them EVERY TIME. And when the skills themselves are so shallow (You can't really have multi-faceted skills when you got so many), the characters wind up doing the same things over and over again.
For video games? Great!
For Veeky Forums? Fuck dude, nobody's gonna play that.
I practically always experience a big skill list as positive. Provided they are relevant to the setting/genre and have comparable breadth (which doesn't have to equal similar usefulness in every campaign e.g. naval skills). Also available points should be proportional to list size.
I love having the granularity to really represent the characters I come up with.
Many people seem to shut down at the sight of long lists, but skills in most systems all work with a singular skill mechanic and have names that are self evident, so it is only a neglectable increase in workload.
What if the more common skills like athletics, investigation, perception, etc. are stats, and the skills themselves cover specific abilities that not every character is going to know?
Like I can see why having 100 skills could be tedious if you included skills like perception or combat that every character would want and need but what if it's something like "oh, my character knows a bit of botany, programming, and surfing" and skill rolls are only made in specific circumstances?
Well, then you gotta have to make the system more complex by defining when you use a skill and when you don't use a skill, and also include all the things that are not in "skills" into another part of the game.
And at that point, having set list for the additional skills is meaningless and tedious, you would fare better by doing it with free text, basically.
Personal bias toward lighter systems though, I admit.
Not him, but wouldn't his method just have a bigger or altered list of attributes? Before you had an attribute and a skill list, after you have another attribute and a skill list. How is this added complexity? Only the rational behind the selection would change.
The idea is that for your bog standard campaign, you'd be relying on your stats to resolve an outcome while your skills could be used to replace a stat roll in order to gain an advantage in comparison to everyone else.
For example, if the task is "climb a wall," everyone would be able to do it (unless they invest none of their starting points into STR) but if one of the characters knows "rock-climbing" as a skill, he'd be able to cover more distance and he'd be more adept at dodging obstacles while ascending the vertical shaft.
You wouldn't be penalized by not being able to even perform the action (unless the stat has no investment in it) but in the moments where a skill is relevant to the task, now you're at a disadvantage because you're in one of your character's niches.
sorry "now you're at a disadvantage because you're in one of your character's niches." should be
>now you're at an advantage because you're in one of your character's nichescita .
The complexity would increase because the "necessary skills" need to be defined away from "additional skills", and their rolls would not mix and match, unless you made some system where additionals are just modifiers...
Because the difference when you roll perception and when you roll for, say, "scrounging" or something is not really that clear-cut.
Again, I didn't know how the system worked, and what you impose is one of the systems that can get away with it.
So skills are actually just positive modifiers to rolls, which are all actually made with the stats?
If you take away the huge skill list and free text it, that's just the regular light-rpg method, the one that I happen to use in my own system.
>So skills are actually just positive modifiers to rolls, which are all actually made with the stats?
Not necessarily.
Basically, instead of the rock climber only being able to ascend 5 ft. in a single turn, he'd be able to ascend 10 ft. in a single turn and could roll DEX to jump 5 ft. to any direction.
Eh? Adding derivative mechanics to 100 skills or so?
Derivative mechanics are already the thing that makes for unbalanced systems and trap options, having about 100 of them? That just smells like a heartbreaker in the making.
Listed skills are suggestions or ideas.
You don't have to pick from them. There are millions of possible skills.
Don't trap options usually manifest when the game restricts how many options a character can have access to while also dividing a single ability into multiple steps that require more investment to know?
Like I don't necessarily see this problem in games that offer a large skill list to choose from like CoC or ShadowRun.
A skill list is always more about what you can't do than what you can do. Skill lists exist to restrict methods of task resolution, in hopes that this will create more complexity in character creation and advancement.
The problem with talking about skill lists with no further context is that we have no way to know if that hope is fulfilled or not if we don't know what task resolution looks like. In some newer systems, GMs are encouraged (and sometimes told by the rules) to move the situation forwards, even if that means introducing new elements to a scene, or letting the player succeed but having a negative consequence for the failed roll. This turns skills into an abstraction of success chance. One could actually play a doctor who has performed countless surgeries but then represent a newly gained fear of blood and shaky hands as a lower skill.
In systems that don't treat skills this way, what you get are actual failures to perform as expected. The skill list becomes a wall you need to climb, and invariably the game will be balanced to give you the amount of handholds the devs saw as fitting; a whole new angle of design failure. Suddenly, your surgeon has no hope of success at all, and as far as the system is concerned he should know NOTHING about surgery.
If you want an autistic list of skills that kind of works, look at DSA/The Dark Eye. It has skills like Boating or Winemaking, but these skills are significantly cheaper than weaponskills or some other "core" adventuring skills.
Which means in theory your fighter can know other stuff than killing shit or your rogue can become decent with weapons (because his other skills weren't that costly). The problem is that it rewards specialization more than dabbling, but it really makes it easy to represent your character's background with the mechanics
In short, if you want to have a big amount of skills, the useless ones should be cheap to get/worth it with low investment
Trap option, as I understand them is just when the system presents multiple options of widely different power as equal choices. This can happen at any number of different points.
I'm not sure what you are on about with the second surgeon example. Yes if the resolution systems interaction with skills and difficulties is fucked beyond belief a surgeon could have a surgeon incapable of surgery. But a super freeform "doing fightyness" ability can be just as fucked. Or as another interpretation I don't see why a system should see fit to give a surgeon no surgery skill, except when it's background fluff in a game not at all about medicine and there is no such skill.
"Wall to climb" makes me think you are talking about leveling up, but then I would say you are not fully educated as a surgeon if you only have one point in it and that hasn't good odds attached. In this case you are a medicine student.
Assuming the system is build without mayor errors, even a accomplished surgeon can still fail, else you wouldn't roll. Him failing the expectation is not a break down of the system in that case.
I didn't express myself as clearly as I should've. What I mean is that there are systems that would penalize you for building a surgeon by requiring you to take the surgery skill to even know anything about surgery, whereas other systems wouldn't be as strict as that. Sometimes those systems will have disadvantages you can take to "simulate" the fear of blood example, which are there to up the complexity, but without context we can't know if that's the case here. It's very unlikely that a system would refund all the skill points you put in surgery just for that disadvantage, though, even then.
When I described the skill list as a wall to climb I was actually referring to character creation and during play. The idea is that skill points are your handholds, and not having enough skill points means you will fail every time. In these systems failure usually means completely failing to perform in that skill, rather than a narrative justification and a consequence. That might not be fully accurate if we count "You cause more damage" and "They inch closer to death" as a consequence and a moving forward of the story, but those systems certainly won't encourage a response like "The enemy breaks through your barricade and holds you at gunpoint, interrupting your attempt" the way the ones that treat skills more abstractly would.
A big problem with skill lists is the preponderance of knowledge skills. There's nothing dumber than knowledge skills in trpgs. Why the fuck would your knowledge of a subject be rolled randomly. That's so fucking stupid
Presumably it's to see if you know this specific thing that may or may not be random trivia for most people.
Like a botanist knowing about some rare flower or some shit.
Yeah but that's still stupid. If you're putting a flower in the spotlight, wouldn't the fucking botanist share it? That's clearly what the player expects out of making a botanist
Ok, that makes more sense.
I notice however you conflate a binary success/fail resolution with systems with high granularity skill lists, but such a system could just as well use degrees of success.
I guess this reinforces your original point that talking about the issue in a vacuum is difficult.
Still I feel like you mostly bring up issues of related mechanics associated with systems containing long skill lists, than problems with long lists as a element themselves. For example skill pricing, points available, what happens on failure, how much success chance is gained per point etc.
I think that would be the case if botanist is a yes/no kind of deal, like a perk. If there is a distinction of botanist 1/2/3/4/5/n that should matter. But for that to be fair you need to use the botanist skill more than one case. That character should face botanist challenges of varying difficulty some of which he will succeed, some he will fail at according to how much he invested. And with that volume of investment he showed how much he wanted it to matter. If he spend one point out of ten and expects to be a stellar botanist his expectations are misplaced.
Yes, 100 skills is too many. I'd argue that 50 skills is too many. Possibly 25 as well. My advice would be to sit down, figure out what the core conceit of your game really is, and hash out a good dozen skills supporting that.
Why would you make a system where there's a degree of being-a-botanist, though? What does that add to the game?
Is it really realistic for a botanist to *randomly* know/be ignorant of a fact? Doesn't it just make more sense for the player and GM to determine the limits of their knowledge in a more organic way that isn't just gonna lead to dumb situations where the botanist can randomly identify the mutant, magical plant but can't tell what a chrysanthemum is? If you build the system under the assumption the GM is going to know when to reference this skill, you're just contradicting the fact that "botanical knowledge" or whatever variant of that exists, because its existence implies broad usage.
If the skill is just there to signal that you know your fucking botany, wouldn't it make more sense to just have it be a freeform thing? I can understand a botany skill in a setting where plants play a major role, but that's because in those settings the skill would give you mechanical advantage, which is something you can actually base the worth of a skill point off of.
Allright, let me make this clear.
To me, there are two options that make sense:
1) Make a small list of skills and let them have derivative stats and effects. This keeps the game from bloating.
2) Make a larger list of skills / make skills freeform, but don't let there be any mechanical weight on them, meaning all stats are "equal" numbers-wise. No skill affects another skill or stat.
They do. Look at Pathfinder. Skills out the fucking ass and maybe 10% are even slightly useful in a game, and even less acceptable if you don't want to drop like a rock and be useless in the end game.
You are like a little baby.
Watch this.
G U R P S
I am not even joking when I say my entire system has less words than this skill list.
I dunno if that is more testament to how compact my game is or how bloated that skill list is.
Just like I would make a system with degrees of being anything. Botanist is just one example. If I want my game to operate at more than binary level. People and characters are differently capable and knowledgeable.
So why would I want different capabilities? Maybe I like the idea of being only the assistant botanist, my superior being killed in an accident and now I have to fill in to keep the colony ship alive. That challenge generates suspense. I'll have to use my other skills to creatively scramble for situational bonuses. I'll see my character grow in that field on level up.
For you second point, consider that you possibly can use skills passively so you auto succeed on tasks that are trivial for that skill level or trivial in general. If there is no way you could possibly fail, you don't roll. You don't roll walking, or opening unlocked functioning doors. It is possible to know a obscure fact but not a more widely known. I once had my interest in this obscure plant perked because of its hallucinogenic properties, because I had a stoner phase. I don't know this more widely known tree at a glance because trees are not my specialty.
Why do you assume the system has skills devoted to just signaling some fluff unrelated to gameplay? If the system is well build it contains relevant skills. That may contain botany or not. A system can have 5 skills that are all relevant, it can have 50 or 100 that are likewise. And a skill being not used much in one specific campaign style doesn't make it superfluous to the whole game. The players ether signal their wishes for the adventure by their choices or the GM says, build for this specific scenario.
>Why would you make a system where there's a degree of being-a-botanist, though?
Because there's a difference between "I remember sunflowers from my favoritie video game" and "this here is a rare breed of [insert latin shit here] that's only been documented in areas like [insert 1-3 areas of the setting here]."
>What does that add to the game?
It let's the player know where their character fits in, when compared to others who also having varying amounts of proficiency in an ability.
>Doesn't it just make more sense for the player and GM to determine the limits of their knowledge in a more organic way that isn't just gonna lead to dumb situations where the botanist can randomly identify the mutant, magical plant but can't tell what a chrysanthemum is?
Rolling is generally only done when the chances of success is less than 100%, and even then, a botanist who has 6/10 levels in botany should be able to identify a relatively common flower.
Would anyone ITT say that a "drive" skill is necessary for something like D&D?
Will the PCs be doing a lot of driving, or have lots of opportunities to drive stuff?
I mean in general, though I am planning on giving them a cart so that have a means of traveling and carrying loot.
I don't think so.
GURPS has hundreds of skills, but it's a generic system meant to cover everything, so it's understandable (and welcomed) there. Outside of that, no, don't have big skill lists. Fate and Savage Worlds have decently sized skill lists that cover almost everything you could want to do, and they're both under 25 skills total.
>Skills out the fucking ass
There's, like, 20
I'm gonna dilineate a big point behind what a lot of people are saying about trap options, whether skills or abilities. Everything has a potential to be a trap option, depending on setting context. All the badass fire spells mean nothing against shit that isn't weak to it and the few ice spells will be overpowered in Descent into the Lair of the Lavamen. 12 social skills will be useless in a murderhobo game and vice versa.
Now, I'm not saying, "Nothing's perfect, so go hog wild." You can avoid some of this by not getting too specific and trying to give options to the roles characters will fill. Does an ace pilot need extra skills to know how to drive a car, bus, tank, boat or will pilot cover them all?
Don't go too far in the general direction though or the game about gunslinging ace pilots with only the pilot and shoot skills is going to end up with a lot of the same character.
I would say that at the point you have that many skills, you're better off separating them and having a shorter list as actual skills, and a sublist of them being Specialties or something that cost less but are less versatile.
The best example is Athletics. Having Run, Jump, Swim, and whatever else be separate is pretty limiting and punishes people who want a well rounded physical character, especially when similarly broad skill categories aren't broken up as much.
Better to have one skill for being Athletic and then let the player decide if they want them to have a specialty in running, climbing, pole vaulting or whatever