[GRITTY REALISM]Proposed House Rule Modifying Skill Maintenance

[lugaid]

In another thread, RyanW proposed the following modification to the Maintaining Skills optional rule on p. 294 of the Basic Set:

Originally Posted by RyanW

Like most things, I would instinctively use the SSR scale. Something like:

skill  hours/week
att+5  1
att+6  1.5
att+7  2
att+8  3
att+9  5
att+10 7
att+11 10
att+12 15

At att+17, you're basically spending every waking moment practicing.

I liked the idea and adopted it into my set of "Gritty Realism House Rules", but developed it slightly, as follows:

Maintaining Skill (p. 294) is adjusted to require the following number of hours per week of practice for higher Skill levels:

Skill	Hours/week
att+5	1
att+6	1.5
att+7	2
att+8	3
att+9	5
att+10	7
att+11	10
att+12	15
att+12	20
att+13	30
att+14	50
att+15	70
att+16	100
att+17	150
att+18	200

Beyond att+17 is generally impossible without extensive field use, as there is not enough time in a week to maintain such a high level of Skill. In a practical sense, att+16 or att+17 are probably unlikely without Advantages like Doesn't Sleep. Alternately, use in the field on a given day counts for 1/5 of the required hours for that week (round fractional hours down, but for levels below att+9, field use counts as the entire week's worth of practice time for that Skill). Practice, including notional "practice" from field use at higher Skill levels, beyond the amount required to maintain the Skill counts as Self-Study. For this purpose, "field use" is defined as the GM asking the player to make a roll using that Skill in an adventuring context, regardless of the success or failure of that roll.

Am I missing anything obvious that would make this unworkable (other than the slight addition to record-keeping, which I don't consider particularly onerous)?

[Celjabba]

I like it !
I wonder if you could not extend it lower, switching to hours/month but starting at attribute +1 would roughly line up with your times.
On the other hand, it is probably not worth the bookkeeping below att+5, as long as the player remember to give a nod toward the skill from time to time, and the time use sheet are in weeks anyway ...

In either case,
Att+14 is the max you can maintain with 8h of daily practice.
Att+10 is the max you can maintain with 1 hour of daily practice.
Att+5 is the max you can maintain with 1 hour of weekly practice.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by lugaid

Am I missing anything obvious that would make this unworkable (other than the slight addition to record-keeping, which I don't consider particularly onerous)?

You're creating a perverse incentive for characters to use skills that are only tangentially connected to the problem they need to solve, so that they get the week's practice credit for a use in the field.

This became a problem in some RuneQuest campaigns, where you got a free chance to improve a skill if you used it successfully in the field. You saw characters in fights that they didn't consider especially dangerous drawing, using and discarding several different weapons to get a "tick" in each one.

There was also the sport of "tick-fishing", which consisted of trying to catch fish using as many skills as possible. It went something like this: Stalk along the riverbank (Move Quietly) looking out for fish in the water (Spot Hidden). When you see one, jump into the river (Jumping) and attack it (Heavy Maul). A character noted for this did finally manage to succeed on all those skills, got a tick for all of them, and was told never to do it again.

[Varyon]

One idea for maintenance - treat the nominal time required per week as Self Study. Thus, training under a teacher is worth twice as much, and more intensive training is worth four times as much. Field use is more intense still; how much it shaves off training time is up to the GM - 10 hours per stressful encounter might work alright. You should only really expect a character to have one or maybe two skills that call for extreme maintenance, such that they'd be inclined to seek out stressful situations in order to make use of it. For a character obsessed enough about, say, Rapier that he/she has bought it up to DX+11 (so 1 encounter per week will do), I'd argue it's very much in character to purposefully seek out duels and the like.

Maintenance time would take away from any sort of learning. For the above character with Rapier at DX+11, self-study for 20 hours a week only nets 5 hours (of the 200 per [1]) per week toward increasing skill - 10 hours is spent on maintenance, and the other 10 gets cut in half due to being self-study. Said character training under a teacher for 40 hours a week instead nets 35 hours per week - 5 hours go toward maintenance (training under a teacher handles maintenance at double speed). Said character undergoing more extreme training, say for 60 hours a week, would net 115 hours per week - extreme training means learning at twice the normal rate, for 120 hours work, but 5 hours of that is again going toward maintenance. Things are worse for someone with even higher skill, of course - extreme training for 60 hours a week for someone at DX+18 would only net 20 hours of learning.

[Willy]

Looks good to me, because in rea life you need to hone your skills permanent or start to get a bit rusty.

As for rusted skills, they should be kept a the lower level until reuse. The higher the skill loss before the longer it will take to get back in shape.

Does anyone made a corresponding skill relearning scheme like that for keeping your skills in this thread?

[lugaid]

Originally Posted by johndallman

You're creating a perverse incentive for characters to use skills that are only tangentially connected to the problem they need to solve, so that they get the week's practice credit for a use in the field.

This became a problem in some RuneQuest campaigns, where you got a free chance to improve a skill if you used it successfully in the field. You saw characters in fights that they didn't consider especially dangerous drawing, using and discarding several different weapons to get a "tick" in each one.

I have a lot of experience with RuneQuest and other BRP-type games, so that's not really an issue for me. Check-fishing was only ever a problem if the players were taking advantage of an inexperienced GM.

That said, if a particular GM isn't able to rein in that sort of behavior (usually by simply disallowing obvious attempts to game the system, but there are other ways of dealing with it such as creating a culture of play over power acquisition), just get rid of that provision. It's mostly there to cover the perception that use is equivalent to practice and study anyway, which is not necessarily a realistic assumption. But as I said, it's up to the GM to decide what counts as an actual skill use and not just gamist abuse.

There was also the sport of "tick-fishing", which consisted of trying to catch fish using as many skills as possible. It went something like this: Stalk along the riverbank (Move Quietly) looking out for fish in the water (Spot Hidden). When you see one, jump into the river (Jumping) and attack it (Heavy Maul). A character noted for this did finally manage to succeed on all those skills, got a tick for all of them, and was told never to do it again.

Eh, I wouldn't have much problem with that, actually. Since failing any of those skill rolls results in not getting the fish, it's mostly counter-productive. I'd disallow the Move Quietly (or more usually Move Silently in RuneQuest, but everybody would know what was meant either way) and probably the Jumping roll since they're both irrelevant to the process. But Spot Hidden Item (again, the more usual name of the skill in RQ until 3rd edition) and the attack roll are fine. I might decide that Tracking is a better choice than Spot Hidden Item, but that's a judgement call for the circumstances I think. It's not a great way to fish, though, and I'd probably penalize the Heavy Maul attack by halving the attack skill and giving only one chance using the method per maybe 15 minutes or half hour, or even longer, justifying it as scaring the fish.

And of course, the same idea holds with GURPS. A skill use that isn't legitimate doesn't count for anything.

[lugaid]

Originally Posted by Varyon

One idea for maintenance - treat the nominal time required per week as Self Study. Thus, training under a teacher is worth twice as much, and more intensive training is worth four times as much. Field use is more intense still; how much it shaves off training time is up to the GM - 10 hours per stressful encounter might work alright. You should only really expect a character to have one or maybe two skills that call for extreme maintenance, such that they'd be inclined to seek out stressful situations in order to make use of it. For a character obsessed enough about, say, Rapier that he/she has bought it up to DX+11 (so 1 encounter per week will do), I'd argue it's very much in character to purposefully seek out duels and the like.

Those are some interesting suggestions. I'll think about them.

And for sure, one of the things I like about Skill Maintenance is that it forces players to really consider what Skills their character is really built around.

[lugaid]

Originally Posted by Willy

Looks good to me, because in rea life you need to hone your skills permanent or start to get a bit rusty.

As for rusted skills, they should be kept a the lower level until reuse. The higher the skill loss before the longer it will take to get back in shape.

Does anyone made a corresponding skill relearning scheme like that for keeping your skills in this thread?

I think that the basic rule assumes that you'd have to develop them all over again. It might be worth considering an option that, say, doubles the effectiveness of training or something to recover lost Skill levels. I'd want to look through Social Engineering: Back to School to see if the idea is already covered there, actually.

[Opellulo]

On one side your system makes sense...

...on the other hand if the purpose of "Maintaining Skills" rules is to provide a somewhat realistic limit on the number of high level skills PC can have, would it be simpler to just enforce arbitrary limits and call it a day?

I know I am a particularly lazy GM (especially regarding booking) but to me is just more straightforward to say directly to a player something like: "Your character can have only 3 skills past att+5 and in no case past att+10".

As other have pointed out complex or recursive mechanics shift the focus from the game to the meta, and that's something not everybody likes.

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by johndallman

This became a problem in some RuneQuest campaigns, where you got a free chance to improve a skill if you used it successfully in the field. You saw characters in fights that they didn't consider especially dangerous drawing, using and discarding several different weapons to get a "tick" in each one.

Heh. I remember that, playing it a long, long time ago (mid 80's?). Bushido had something similar, and the number of Tea Ceremonies that were conducted was sometimes out of control. Pendragon had a similar system. They all had a tendency to encourage use of skills. So long as the GM kept it under control, it was OK, but there were times I recall it getting out of hand.