Thoughts on reducing skill list.

[Crakkerjakk]

So, a perennial problem I have with some players is the size of the skill list. I was thinking about ways to reduce it that strike a compromise between wildcard skills and the status quo.

The main idea I had was to group similar skills together, and then allow optional specializations and apply familiarity penalties. So create an "Athletics" skill with optional specializations that include hiking, running, lifting, jumping, etc. The broader skill would increase in difficulty a level, but still allow people who want specialization their druthers.

Other candidates were skills that require specialization currently. Instead of multiple variants of Electronics Operation at IQ/A, you may purchase a single skill at IQ/H that covers all variants, with familiarity penalties if you try to mess with something you don't have experience with.

Additionally I was looking at compressing weapon skills. Perhaps a single "Sword" skill for both one handed and two handed slashing + thrusting variants, a single "Knife" skill covering jitte/sai and knives, and a single "Fencing" skill that covers lighter fencing type weapons.

I'm trying to strike a balance between realism and ease of use. I don't want unrealistically omni-competent characters, but I'm hoping to seriously reduce the size of the skill list while still allowing a bunch of optional specialties for the granularly-minded.

The main roadblock I see is how you deal with someone who wants to specialize in two versions of the Electronics Op skill.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

[Dinadon]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

Other candidates were skills that require specialization currently. Instead of multiple variants of Electronics Operation at IQ/A, you may purchase a single skill at IQ/H that covers all variants, with familiarity penalties if you try to mess with something you don't have experience with.

At present, if have one speciality and no others, the rest will be -4 for default, then another -2 for familiarity. If you instead had an average specialisation, you would have -2 for defaulting to the base skill, then -2 for familiarity. For a professional with skill 12, that's a jump from 6 to 8. Of course this assumes defaults are allowed with a given speciality.

The main roadblock I see is how you deal with someone who wants to specialize in two versions of the Electronics Op skill.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

The problem is that most people only have one or two specialities. I couldn't see someone with EO(Media) having EO(Medical), but I could see someone having EO(Medical, Scientific), EO(Comms, EW), or EO(Security, Surveillance).

Nor are all the skills which require speciality as nice. The various Drive and Pilot specialities have complicated relationships between each other. Engineer has various defaults from other skills for each of its specialities, and ends up with similar problems to EO (in principle, how many highway planners do you think would make good weapon designers?). Then there's Artillery, which has specialisations so that all those skills are in one place for simplicity.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Dinadon

Of course this assumes defaults are allowed with a given speciality.

That was generally my intention.

Originally Posted by Dinadon

The problem is that most people only have one or two specialities. I couldn't see someone with EO(Media) having EO(Medical), but I could see someone having EO(Medical, Scientific), EO(Comms, EW), or EO(Security, Surveillance).

I was thinking individuals with multiple specialities could be modeled as just having the core skill, and only be familiar with their specialities. So maybe some level of "Hm, never seen this model before (-2)" and "Okay, on a radio the power switch would be somewhere around here... (-2-4)" Basically I don't mind preserving most of the relative skill levels, I'd just like a cleaner way to represent someone with multiple specialities.

Originally Posted by Dinadon

Nor are all the skills which require speciality as nice. The various Drive and Pilot specialities have complicated relationships between each other. Engineer has various defaults from other skills for each of its specialities, and ends up with similar problems to EO (in principle, how many highway planners do you think would make good weapon designers?). Then there's Artillery, which has specialisations so that all those skills are in one place for simplicity.

Perhaps for TL dependant skills, the TL (or TL/2?) acts as a default penalty between specialties? It seems like rising TL is correlated to depth of specialization, so that, say, a TL 3 city planner could probably build okay seige fortifications, but situations like you mention are at much higher penalties.

[giganerds]

While not realistic, Wildcard skills (B175) can help you to group some of them.

Some skills that can be mixed at the top of my head.

Fast-Talk + Acting + Brainwashing + Sex Appeal + Carousing + Diplomacy
Acrobatics + Aerobatics + Aquabatics + Climbing + Escape
Cloak + Shield (any)
Computer Skills mixed in one
Each skill category in Meele Weapons
Armoury (any) + Engineer + E. Reapirs + E. Operaton + Electrician
Artillery + Gunner
Autohypnosis + Meditation + Breath Control + Dreaming
Gun (any) + Beam Weapon (Any) + Crossbow
Bycicling + Driving (Motorcycle)
Body Language + Detect Lies
Brawling + Boxing + Karate + Forced Entry
Judo + Wrestling + Sumo Wrestling
Fisrt Aid + Physician

Plus drop any specialties and look at Talent to get more inspiration.

[Mailanka]

If you're going the all-wild-cards route, you quickly run into the problem of the cost of Wild Cards vs the cost of Attributes. I suggest, in such games, charges 2x, rather than 3x, the cost of VH skills. This means raising 3 or 4 wild cards can still be cost effective.

In other games, I like to introduce one wild-card skill that takes up a given templates "less important but still defining skills," and carefully define in the template what they can do with the rest of their character points a la Dungeon Fantasy or Action. You end up with a list that's quite easy to write down on a character sheet, which is very important for high point-total games

*still has nightmares of writing down skill lists from 3e Black Ops*

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Dinadon

At present, if have one speciality and no others, the rest will be -4 for default, then another -2 for familiarity. If you instead had an average specialisation, you would have -2 for defaulting to the base skill, then -2 for familiarity. For a professional with skill 12, that's a jump from 6 to 8. Of course this assumes defaults are allowed with a given speciality.

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

That was generally my intention.

You know, that's kind of an interesting idea.

Let me lay out a very exaggerated version of this: You have five skill categories, Fighting, Talking, Knowledge, Technical, and, I dunno, Survival. Each character buys them to the levels they want, but they must specialize. They perform their specialty at base value, and everything else at -4 (ignore the familiarity penalties except for obvious familiarity problems, such as using alien tech or performing techniques you wouldn't know).

Thus, a character with Fighting (Sword) 18 is better at using a gun than someone with Fighting (Gun) 12, but is generally as good in combat with his sword as someone with Fighting (Karate) 18 is with his fists. Everyone has the same basic skills, more-or-less, but they define themselves a little differently with their specialties.

Obviously, you'd want something more granular than that (Fighting would divide up into Melee, Ranged, and Athletics, at a minimum, for example). White-Wolf's 25-skill model works pretty well. I'm just not sure how well this would interact with things like Talents and Techniques. In the very least, you need to make sure you have more skills for a given attribute than is economic to raise (Say 6-8), forcing players to either specialize in the skills they want, or to raise their attribute to high levels, just like the current model.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

You know, that's kind of an interesting idea.

Let me lay out a very exaggerated version of this: You have five skill categories, Fighting, Talking, Knowledge, Technical, and, I dunno, Survival. Each character buys them to the levels they want, but they must specialize. They perform their specialty at base value, and everything else at -4 (ignore the familiarity penalties except for obvious familiarity problems, such as using alien tech or performing techniques you wouldn't know).

Thus, a character with Fighting (Sword) 18 is better at using a gun than someone with Fighting (Gun) 12, but is generally as good in combat with his sword as someone with Fighting (Karate) 18 is with his fists. Everyone has the same basic skills, more-or-less, but they define themselves a little differently with their specialties.

Obviously, you'd want something more granular than that (Fighting would divide up into Melee, Ranged, and Athletics, at a minimum, for example). White-Wolf's 25-skill model works pretty well. I'm just not sure how well this would interact with things like Talents and Techniques. In the very least, you need to make sure you have more skills for a given attribute than is economic to raise (Say 6-8), forcing players to either specialize in the skills they want, or to raise their attribute to high levels, just like the current model.

Currently I've got it down to 133 skills, with lots of specialities. Way I'm looking at it is that I'm trying to layer the skill levels. Psychology is a VH skill, fex, with Detect Lies as a hard speciality and Body Language as a average Speciality.

The problem I'm running into is that, because the skills tend to be priced based on actual difficulty to learn and not adventuring utility, stuff like Physics can't be bundled in with other skills without providing a point discount.

And logically, I can any sort of vehicle operation into one skill, but that's canonically Drive! which is much more expensive than just a VH skill containing all the drive and piloting skills. Then again, if a character had Drive! I wouldn't generally be assigning familiarity penalties at all.

I'll post the final skill list with specialities to my site once I finalize it.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

In other games, I like to introduce one wild-card skill that takes up a given templates "less important but still defining skills," and carefully define in the template what they can do with the rest of their character points a la Dungeon Fantasy or Action. You end up with a list that's quite easy to write down on a character sheet, which is very important for high point-total games

Yeah, I generally do the same for more cinematic games. I'm trying to strike a middle ground in this approach, with skills that are both less broad and less cinematic than wildcard skills. Ideally, to "cinematicize it up" you'd just remove familiarity penalties for specialities the PC has no experience with.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

Currently I've got it down to 133 skills, with lots of specialities. Way I'm looking at it is that I'm trying to layer the skill levels. Psychology is a VH skill, fex, with Detect Lies as a hard speciality and Body Language as a average Speciality.

The problem I'm running into is that, because the skills tend to be priced based on actual difficulty to learn and not adventuring utility, stuff like Physics can't be bundled in with other skills without providing a point discount.

And logically, I can any sort of vehicle operation into one skill, but that's canonically Drive! which is much more expensive than just a VH skill containing all the drive and piloting skills. Then again, if a character had Drive! I wouldn't generally be assigning familiarity penalties at all.

I'll post the final skill list with specialities to my site once I finalize it.

First, I don't understand what you mean by "hard" or "average" specialties. Does my "Easy" Psychology specialty (I dunno what that would be, say Savoir-Faire Psychologist, I dunno, it's hypothetical) default to all of those Psychology skill-specialties? If so, why bother with Psychology (Psychology) (VH) at IQ for [8] which gives me Savoir-Faire at IQ-4 and Body Language at IQ-4 if I can have Psychology (Savoir-Faire) (E) at IQ+3 [8] and have Body Language and Psychology at IQ-1?

As for the rest, you're making a major change to the system. Thus you're going to innately mess with pricing. Don't worry about the fact that you might be stepping on the toes of Wild Card skills: You're system will essentially replace them in the first place.

If I were doing it, I'd just make all the skills Very Hard. You simply choose your specialty and buy your skills, and all skills cost the same. I'd then have somewhere between 20 and 50 skills, and simply list what all the possible specialties in those skills are. It's simple, it's fast, it doesn't completely eliminate Talents from the game. It will eliminate Wild Cards, for the most part, but Wild Cards exist to do what you're already doing, so they're redundant anyway.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

First, I don't understand what you mean by "hard" or "average" specialties. Does my "Easy" Psychology specialty (I dunno what that would be, say Savoir-Faire Psychologist, I dunno, it's hypothetical) default to all of those Psychology skill-specialties? If so, why bother with Psychology (Psychology) (VH) at IQ for [8] which gives me Savoir-Faire at IQ-4 and Body Language at IQ-4 if I can have Psychology (Savoir-Faire) (E) at IQ+3 [8] and have Body Language and Psychology at IQ-1?

More than anything this an attempt to clean up bookkeeping. So Psychology is normally a Hard skill. In my system, there's now the Psychology (IQ/VH) skill. It encompasses the Psychology, Detect Lies, and Bodly Language specialities at the VH level. But you can choose to specialize. Lets say you take the Body Language speciality. You now have Psychology (Body Language) IQ/A skill. You get improved defaults to try to use either Psychology or Detect Lies compared to the person with no Psychology skill whatsoever, but that's about it.

I guess what I'm trying to do is group together skills that default to each other, if possible, so it's right on the character sheet what other skills might be "close enough" to help you out in certain situations.

Originally Posted by Mailanka

As for the rest, you're making a major change to the system. Thus you're going to innately mess with pricing. Don't worry about the fact that you might be stepping on the toes of Wild Card skills: You're system will essentially replace them in the first place.

If I were doing it, I'd just make all the skills Very Hard. You simply choose your specialty and buy your skills, and all skills cost the same. I'd then have somewhere between 20 and 50 skills, and simply list what all the possible specialties in those skills are. It's simple, it's fast, it doesn't completely eliminate Talents from the game. It will eliminate Wild Cards, for the most part, but Wild Cards exist to do what you're already doing, so they're redundant anyway.

Ideally I'd like to keep the amount of points people invest into skills v. advantages v. attributes the same. That's the only balance issue I'm concerned with. I don't want to make skills so good a deal that it's suddenly a better deal to buy them up as opposed to attributes for most character concepts, nor do I want to make them so expensive that it's widely considered better to just crank up stats even for a narrowly defined character concept.