Skill Development Rolls

[martinl]

I have been noodling around some of my Harn stuff and was reminded of an interesting Harnmaster concept - "skill development rolls." In that system, whenever you had a chance to improve a skill you tried to roll 1d100+stat and get more than the skill level (in a % skill system). This made it easier to improve low level skills but much harder to master them.

Being a GURPS guy by default, I wondered how hard it would be to port over, and I don't think it would actually be hard at all.

Skill Improvement:
If you want to improve a skill first roll 3d6. If the total is more than the number of CP you have in that skill already, you can improve the skill by one level. If not, you cannot improve the skill at this time.

Optional:
- Starting PCs with more than X points in any skill need to consult with the GM first. (X would be 8 in low power games, but higher in cinematic stuff.)
- A GM can give skill development rolls for specific skills (or any group of skills) as rewards alongside or instead of CP.
- A good trainer can add the smaller margin of success of a teaching roll and a roll in the relevant skill.
- Good or poor learning environments can add other modifiers as the GM sees fit.
- 'Taking extra time' rules can apply to your roll, but the minimum base time is a day, and the GM may impose a much higher one.


Footnote:
This does not negate any other requirements, like CP, training, etc. they GM requires for skill improvement.

[AlexanderHowl]

That caps CP investment in skills at 16 CP, making attributes, secondary characteristics, and advantages even more valuable. Certain characters, like master martial artists, become impossible.

[Anaraxes]

The main goal ("easier to improve low level skills but much harder to master them") is already built in to GURPS because the costs for the next skill level keep increasing. It's easy to learn the basics of a skill (1 pt), then harder to get one more level, then harder yet. If it caps out too early for you, why not just keep doubling?

I never cared for the BRP "roll over to improve" system. It certainly has that net effect. But it has a lot of deleterious side effects. Improvement becomes random -- some player gets lucky, and their character gets better, some don't, even on "easy" rolls, and keep on sucking. You can argue that it works out statistically over a long time period with a sufficiently large number of characters (like, your gaming lifetime's worth), but that's not very satisfying at _this_ table _right now_ for the next session. Random rolls take away player agency, as they become unable to choose where they want or need to get better.

GMs can't really plan for a campaign of dramatically increasing difficulty, because you're not sure whether or not the characters will really improve in the right places by the time there. It's good -- necessary, even -- to remain flexible and be able to improvise an adventure, but the random improvement system takes one tool out of the GM toolbox with no return other than forcing improv of some filler adventures to mark time while the characters catch up, or else rescaling those later, higher-stakes encounters down to match the unfortunate character's ability, meaning that they're not higher stacks at all, but just more of the same.

Also, it incentivizes players to take random, irrelevant actions just for the sake of getting a check against that skill they didn't really need. Characters wind up doing the things that aren't their shtick just to get the roll (after all, why not?), and also improve faster in the off-niche skills than the niche skills, which tends to make all the characters in the group homogenized.

There are better ways to address those problems than just leaving it up to the dice gods and hoping for the best.

[clu2415]

This really boils down to a) give your players max skill levels they’re allowed to start with and b) give character points at a rate that matches your expectation of growth. Except you add some randomness and extra dice rolls.

[martinl]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

That caps CP investment in skills at 16 CP, making attributes, secondary characteristics, and advantages even more valuable.

I'd certainly expect folks to pump stats up more under this setup, yes.

Certain characters, like master martial artists, become impossible.

16 pts in a skill is plenty to model mastery, in my opinion. Part of why I find this interesting is that PCs with 40 points in one skill feel weird to me.

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

The main goal ("easier to improve low level skills but much harder to master them") is already built in to GURPS ... It's easy to learn the basics of a skill (1 pt), then harder to get one more level, then harder yet.

First level costs 1 point, next level costs 1 more, then 2, then 4, then it plateaus forever with no further restriction. That plateau is where I think this would be interesting.

If it caps out too early for you, why not just keep doubling?

3e did that to some extent at least. It was ... OK ... I guess?

I never cared for the BRP "roll over to improve" system ... it has a lot of deleterious side effects. Improvement becomes random

This could be mitigated to a large extent by still handing out the CPs and just using the dev rolls as a barrier before spending them.

Random rolls take away player agency,

I actually agree 100% here, but nonetheless players love their random rolls. Sooooo much. It's weird.

GMs can't really plan for a campaign ...

OK, I would say the biggest problem to long run campaign planning in flexible systems is the players, and this includes character development, unless character dev is on rails like in DnD.

Also, it incentivizes players to take random, irrelevant actions just for the sake of getting a check against that skill they didn't really need.

That's a problem in BRP, not the system I proposed.

One of the perennial "problems" in GURPS is that for many things it makes more sense to spike a single skill than to develop a cluster of related skills. This might make learning more than two techniques off of your primary character skill desirable again.

They'd still get to a point wen it made more sense to pump up stats instead, but it's after a little more broadening out.

[martinl]

Originally Posted by clu2415

This really boils down to a) give your players max skill levels they’re allowed to start with and b) give character points at a rate that matches your expectation of growth. Except you add some randomness and extra dice rolls.

Well, it also incentivizes "wide" skill builds over "tall" skill builds, but yeah.

Dice rolls are a core part of the hobby. I don't think this would be tedious since most players are unlikely to increase many skills past the 4 CP level. There'd be a certain amount of drama when you wanted to improve your "primary" skills but that sounds like it would be suspenseful fun, like HP rolls on leveling in D&D.

Of course, some folks don't like those, but so many do.

[martinl]

After sleeping on this, I think 3d under CP is the wrong mechanic for this sort of thing - it limits the interesting rolls too much.

A will roll penalized by CP/4 seems like it would work better.

[Celjabba]

While I wouldn't use it myself,
why not requesting the player to fail a roll under the skill based on an virtual attribute ?
Ignoring talent and other modifiers, only the cp invested count (and any learning modifiers the GM assign)

For example, if you set the virtual attribute at 10, the player would need a roll of 15+ to be allowed to increase an average skill with 16cp invested (attribute+4).

-This give a soft cap (when the roll get to 16+) but still give a small chance of increase (on a 17 or 18 roll).
-It keep a distinction between E,A,H and VH skills
-adding/substracting bonus for training, teacher, ... is easy
-by setting the virtual attribute higher or lower than 10, you can easily varies the soft cap for each campaign.

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by martinl

After sleeping on this, I think 3d under CP is the wrong mechanic for this sort of thing - it limits the interesting rolls too much.

A will roll penalized by CP/4 seems like it would work better.

Then you will end up with everyone purchasing Will 20. In general, I really do not think that such a rule fits with the basic assumptions of GURPS. Since attributes are so efficent compared to skills, there really is no reason to further encourage people to purchase them.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Celjabba

While I wouldn't use it myself,
why not requesting the player to fail a roll under the skill based on an virtual attribute ?
Ignoring talent and other modifiers, only the cp invested count (and any learning modifiers the GM assign)

For example, if you set the virtual attribute at 10, the player would need a roll of 15+ to be allowed to increase an average skill with 16cp invested (attribute+4).

This is promising. And it doesn't even have to be virtual- PCs could drop points into it to improve their learning rate (with the oddity of spending points to lower the attribute though.)