Dungeon Fantasy RPG template formatting

[philosophyguy]

Originally Posted by Pseudonym

I think if they needed to remove one number or the other between the absolute and relative skill level, it would have been more informative to say:
Broadsword-DX+2[8]
than
Broadsword-14[8]

Especially true for skills that float to other attributes often.

I've been thinking about this for a while because it's challenging when you start adding in bonuses from advantages. For instance, the Bard profession has the Acting Skill and the option for the Born Entertainer advantage. So, a bard with IQ 14 and 2 points in Acting will have Acting (IQ+0) 14 [2], which can be accurately abbreviated as Acting-IQ+0 [2]. But, when the bard takes a level of Born Entertainer, they have Acting 15, even though there are still only 2 points in that skill.

I see a couple of ways to handle this notation for simplified template formats:

1) Notate skill levels and advantage bonuses separately. For instance, Acting (IQ+0+1) [2]. It's clear that the base skill level has a contribution from both the skill points and an advantage. It's not the prettiest, but it works.

2) Notate the final relative skill level only. In this case, it would be Acting (IQ+1) [2]. There's no information lost; the player still knows that they have put two points into the skill, so the next skill advancement requires an additional 2 points (even though IQ+1 would normally entail a 4 point jump to the next level of IQ+2). On the flip side, the disconnect between the relative skill level and the point cost could be confusing for new players, and would be an additional source of error for GMs to check when verifying character sheets.

3) Use superscripts. The bard would have Acting (IQ+1)* [2], with a footnote (*Includes +1 from Born Entertainer). The templates already do this with the advantages built into professions, but it gets messy when there are lots of advantages involved because it's necessary to use a lot of different superscript characters, and it requires more space because the footnotes each require an additional line.

I'm leaning towards option 2 as my preference but I'm curious what others think.