+100% skill

[atgxtg]

I like open ended skills. Just as long as it doesn't get into overkill. I think a cap is a bit unrealist and counter to good play. Just as long as the development slows down at the high skill end I think things can work.

 

[GbajiTheDeceiver]

I think a cap is a bit unrealist and counter to good play.

Me too. The only thing is that there's eventually going to come the point where one person is so far off the scale by comparison to the other that any higher score won't really matter. It's not much different if a 5 ton rock or if a 2000 ton rock falls on you, to use an unrelated but relevant example. You're still paste. Likewise, if Jimi Hendrix or a street busker tried to play better guitar than me, I'd lay odds that both of them would have a roughly equal chance of doing so. :lol:

 

[Adept]

I like open ended skills. Just as long as it doesn't get into overkill. I think a cap is a bit unrealist and counter to good play. Just as long as the development slows down at the high skill end I think things can work.

Exactly how is a cap at something like 115 unrealistic and counter to good play? What do you mean?

Note that the whole problem with halving skills and so forth doesn't exist unless one has the open ended skills.

As long as are on a closed scale, it's easy to see what they mean. When they aren't this becomes much harder. Exactly what does a skill of 170 mean, especially in comparison to a skill of 225.

I currently play in a Warhammer game that has a game engine much influenced by RQ and Hârn. In that game skill levels are generally quite low, and there is an absolute cap at 100%. That works briliantly, even at the higher ends. A chaos champion with a fighting skill of 80 is a pretty terrifying thing.

 

[Adept]

Wow, loads of long posts.

All I'll add is that I've written a program to do a brute force approach (testing for every possible value of 2 d100 rolls vs. 2 skill scores) using a few different resolution mechanics, and it appears that the Relative/Linear combo works, and works well.

As we all knew it would.

So reduce the highest to 100, and reduce the lowest by the amount that the highest is above 100.

The only breaking point is where the difference between the 2 is over 100. To resolve this, just use a straight 95% for highest to win, and it works out beautifully.

Again, this get's my vote.

I'd also put an absolute maximum into the system, but that may be just me.

 

[Adept]

I think a cap is a bit unrealist and counter to good play.

Me too. The only thing is that there's eventually going to come the point where one person is so far off the scale by comparison to the other that any higher score won't really matter. It's not much different if a 5 ton rock or if a 2000 ton rock falls on you, to use an unrelated but relevant example. You're still paste. Likewise, if Jimi Hendrix or a street busker tried to play better guitar than me, I'd lay odds that both of them would have a roughly equal chance of doing so. :lol:

What type of situation are you thinking about? The rock example makes me think of combat. Since realism is mentioned, I wonder what in this world makes you think there are people with a skill of 300 in fencing, for instance? For epic play, I'd think a skill a little bit over 100, some heroic abilities and magic would make the hero go through the skill 50 opponent's readily enough for your needs.

 

[atgxtg]

I like open ended skills. Just as long as it doesn't get into overkill. I think a cap is a bit unrealist and counter to good play. Just as long as the development slows down at the high skill end I think things can work.

Exactly how is a cap at something like 115 unrealistic and counter to good play? What do you mean?

BVecuase once you reach the cap, you no longer have anything you can do to improve the skill. THis is both counter productive and unrealsitc. SOrt of say, okay Mr. Clapton, you got your Stratocaster up to 100%, now what are going to to put your improvement rolls into.

Since the skill roll controls everything with the skill, you can essentially cut off a character's advancement.


THe "problem" with high skills didn't exist prior to the 'halving" rule. In RQ3 it was easy to work out with the degress of success. Same with RQ2.

The "streamlining" and "simplication" used in MRQ endded up making skill roll more complicated and difficult than they used to be.

 

[Adept]

I like open ended skills. Just as long as it doesn't get into overkill. I think a cap is a bit unrealist and counter to good play. Just as long as the development slows down at the high skill end I think things can work.

Exactly how is a cap at something like 115 unrealistic and counter to good play? What do you mean?

BVecuase once you reach the cap, you no longer have anything you can do to improve the skill. THis is both counter productive and unrealsitc. SOrt of say, okay Mr. Clapton, you got your Stratocaster up to 100%, now what are going to to put your improvement rolls into.

Composing? Singing? Performance?

There is nothing unrealistic or limiting in that. Haven't you ever heard of somebody reaching their peak?

I think the problem may be that you come from a gaming enviroment where the characters becoming more powerful is very important. There always has to be room for the next 1d6 points in the skill, regardless of how high it already is.

In a high fantasy Hârnmaster game I play in (set in Shadow World) my character has lived for about 150 years, and being a swordsman has always been very important for him. He has reached a very high skill, but he still isn't at his absolute peak.

The character reached about 100% by training, a fighting as a mercenary in countless wars. He had studied several traditions of swordplay, and developed his own style, but he couldn't progress beyond that. Then he took it as a quest to go around the world, challenging the finest swordsmen in different cultures to duels. Seeking out the best he could find challenging matches, and new things to learn.

I think he's currently at something like 111%, and his absolute maximum would propably be around 116% (from stats). [I don't know the exact figures since the GM keeps the character sheets on his computer, as we like to run our games] At the moment the character only get's to roll for advancement if he matches swords with a new opponent of approximately equal (or better) skill, and even then I would have to roll d100+16 adn get better than 111. If that happens his skill goes up one point.

But what do I care. He's one of the ten most skilled swordsmen in the whole world, and almost certainly the most skilled human. Of course some are faster or (a lot!) stronger, but his hard won skill can't be disputed. Even the gods don't have that much raw skill, I think. Not that they particularily need it, of course.

His wife (the character of another gamer) is a very powerful archmage. She studied in the same elf-culture where my character got honed his skill to 100%. As the characters lived there for 70 years, the GM said she get's her skills to 80%, as she is not a particularily fierce in temperament. That means she is a technically superb fighter, but to her it's like a martial arts hobby, rather than a driving passion. Still, even an arch-mage needs steel in her hand every now and then (also knife fighting and unarmed combat).

***

Anyway, quite obviously my character has had "somewhere to go" on his skills for all that game time. And it's much more satisfying than having his skill be 170 by now, and not knowing what that means in the absolute scale of things. In an open ended system I would have absolutely no idea what that 170 meant, and whether some legendary swordsman would be 100, 150 or 300 in skill. That would suck, and make the game feel like a bad D&D clone.

 

[atgxtg]

Exactly how is a cap at something like 115 unrealistic and counter to good play? What do you mean?

BVecuase once you reach the cap, you no longer have anything you can do to improve the skill. THis is both counter productive and unrealsitc. SOrt of say, okay Mr. Clapton, you got your Stratocaster up to 100%, now what are going to to put your improvement rolls into.

Composing? Singing? Performance?

There is nothing unrealistic or limiting in that. Haven't you ever heard of somebody reaching their peak?

Yes, and I've also heard how they are past thier peak, then they turn around and do something better than anything they have done before.

I think the problem may be that you come from a gaming enviroment where the characters becoming more powerful is very important. There always has to be room for the next 1d6 points in the skill, regardless of how high it already is.

In a high fantasy Hârnmaster game I play in (set in Shadow World) my character has lived for about 150 years, and being a swordsman has always been very important for him. He has reached a very high skill, but he still isn't at his absolute peak.

The character reached about 100% by training, a fighting as a mercenary in countless wars. He had studied several traditions of swordplay, and developed his own style, but he couldn't progress beyond that. Then he took it as a quest to go around the world, challenging the finest swordsmen in different cultures to duels. Seeking out the best he could find challenging matches, and new things to learn.

I think he's currently at something like 111%, and his absolute maximum would propably be around 116% (from stats). [I don't know the exact figures since the GM keeps the character sheets on his computer, as we like to run our games] At the moment the character only get's to roll for advancement if he matches swords with a new opponent of approximately equal (or better) skill, and even then I would have to roll d100+16 adn get better than 111. If that happens his skill goes up one point.

But what do I care. He's one of the ten most skilled swordsmen in the whole world, and almost certainly the most skilled human. Of course some are faster or (a lot!) stronger, but his hard won skill can't be disputed. Even the gods don't have that much raw skill, I think. Not that they particularily need it, of course.

His wife (the character of another gamer) is a very powerful archmage. She studied in the same elf-culture where my character got honed his skill to 100%. As the characters lived there for 70 years, the GM said she get's her skills to 80%, as she is not a particularily fierce in temperament. That means she is a technically superb fighter, but to her it's like a martial arts hobby, rather than a driving passion. Still, even an arch-mage needs steel in her hand every now and then (also knife fighting and unarmed combat).

***

Anyway, quite obviously my character has had "somewhere to go" on his skills for all that game time. And it's much more satisfying than having his skill be 170 by now, and not knowing what that means in the absolute scale of things. In an open ended system I would have absolutely no idea what that 170 meant, and whether some legendary swordsman would be 100, 150 or 300 in skill. That would suck, and make the game feel like a bad D&D clone.

THat all depends on how the system is open-ended. I'm not talking about a D&D style open-end where the skill points just keep coming and just keep adding on. THat does make 170 pointless, as it would be entirely relative to the characters in the campaign. If you have a point of dimishing returns, that is something else. FOr example some games that are open ended become so difficult to advance that the process slows down. You can still improve, but the improments take a lot longer. RQ used to be that way. Once you hit 100%, you were a master. You could still improve, but making those improvement rolls became harder and the benefits were less. It could take twice as long to get from 100 to 110% as tit toook to reach 100% in the first place.

 

[Gnarsh]

Adept. That's great. But that simply does not work with most RQ games that most people are going to play.

Let's take a straight RQ3 campaign. Assume a character starts using a culturally appropriate weapon (base 25%). Assume he starts at age 15 as a soldier (he enlisted as young as he could). Assume he's got slightly better then average physical stats, resulting in an attack bonus of 15%.

By age 25, his weapon attack skill will be 80%. By age 35, his weapon attack skill will be 120%. By age 45 (about the time he might *start* to think about retirement), his weapon attack skill will be 160%. His parry will be slightly lower then that (typically 5-10% due to lower base).

That does assume he focuses on that one weapon skill. And that's just taking experience points directly out of the profession lists in the core book. No special rules. Nothing. And that's joe average lifer in the local guard. I'm pretty sure that heroic fantasy characters can and should exceed those values.

How on earth can you assume that skills should cap just slightly over 100%? The only way that works is if you dramatically change the game rules to ensure that characters start at lower skill levels, eliminate the ability to take skill points via profession (I'm curious how your GM figured that after 70 years a character should only be 80%), and dramatically decrease the odds of advancement. That just seems like a heck of a lot of modification to make to a game just to keep some numbers low.

In any RQ varient post RQ3, skill advancement to 100% is "fast". It's not uncommon at all for a character to be hitting 90+ by his third adventure. I've played many characters that have started young, adventured their entire lives and then grown old and retired. I've found that 200% is a typical "maximum" that a human character can reach in a normal lifespan who adventures regularly and utilizes the normal rules of the game. And that's not a cap. It just tends to work out that way (at least I've found several characters retiring at about that skill level).


The negatives to capping are huge (and IMO worse in a game like MRQ where there are fewer broad skills). You end up with the "tank-mage" problem. RQ is a skill based game. This only works if skills are open ended. Because otherwise, over time, characters will simply max out one skill, then another, then another. And pretty soon every character looks the same. Allow skills to go up endlessly (and retain the aging rules), and it becomes a matter of how good can you get during a lifetime? A character can learn sorcery and swordfighting, but he's not going to be as good at either as someone who focused on only one.

That's how you maintain diversity in a skill based game. You must allow characters to see benefits from advancement in a single direction. Ideally, you want a balance between the benefits of focusing on a narrow number of skills and being a bit more broad with your abilities, so that both are viable routes for a character to take, but both will result in a "different" type of character. I have a character who is a "wizard", not because there's a character class of "wizard" in RQ, but because he's dedicated his life to mastering and advancing his skills at casting sorcery. He doesn't have a single combat skill over 100 (heck. I'm not sure he's even close!), but he's got a list of spell skills a mile long and can cast them all proficiently. And that takes time. Time you can't spend if you're playing around with swords...

 

[Rurik]

I am going to go back to my idea of just killing characters when their skills get to close to 100. No artificial ceilings, no halving, no linear or relational adjustments. Just Skybolt.

 

[Adept]

How on earth can you assume that skills should cap just slightly over 100%? The only way that works is if you dramatically change the game rules to ensure that characters start at lower skill levels, eliminate the ability to take skill points via profession (I'm curious how your GM figured that after 70 years a character should only be 80%), and dramatically decrease the odds of advancement. That just seems like a heck of a lot of modification to make to a game just to keep some numbers low.

The GM and the player talked for a while about the character's approach to developing herself as a swordswoman, and determined that 80 is as good as she is going to get.

That is precicely my point. The skills mean something, and tell things about the characters. One also has to maintain the skills. The higher the skill, the greater a portion of the character's time is spent just maintaining his/her abilities. My character trains with the sword one or two hours every day. The archmage trains a bit a few times a week, and mostly trusts her mentalism (sort of like psionic memory) to keep the skill fresh in mind.

 

[Adept]

The negatives to capping are huge (and IMO worse in a game like MRQ where there are fewer broad skills). You end up with the "tank-mage" problem. RQ is a skill based game. This only works if skills are open ended. Because otherwise, over time, characters will simply max out one skill, then another, then another. And pretty soon every character looks the same. Allow skills to go up endlessly (and retain the aging rules), and it becomes a matter of how good can you get during a lifetime? A character can learn sorcery and swordfighting, but he's not going to be as good at either as someone who focused on only one.

The super fast skill advancement of (any version of) RQ is the problem there. Check out Hârnmaster some day for a good alternative.

Also, if you concider that the character's have to keep up their skills the question of mastering every skill in the book becomes a non-problem. That requires some roleplaying (at least in one's head) and thinking about the character's daily routines and lifestyle.

If a character has gourmet-chef skill of 95% and then doesn't do anything with the skill for three years, would you (as a GM) still say he has that skill at that level? Would the player think so? Not here they wouldn't.

 

[Gnarsh]

The super fast skill advancement of (any version of) RQ is the problem there. Check out Hârnmaster some day for a good alternative.

Harn is a decent source. Never been impressed with the system though. There are two aspects at play here. First, players like their characters to be competant. No one likes a wiff-fest. That's why RQ3 dramatically upped the starting skill level for new characters. Second, you should allow for a decent meaningful range of skill. If you've decided that starting characters at 15-20% skill levels isn't fun, but starting them at say 50-60% works well, then you have to allow for significantly more skilled people to be, well... significantly better.

Interestingly enough, once you get over the initial concern over "uber-skills", you'll find that allowing an open range over 100% in conjunction with the sliding scale skill methods makes this work wonderfully. Treating a 120% character as a 100% character with the ability to reduce opponents by 20% allows you to always keep skill levels meaningful while not having to crowd everyone in a narrow range.

Dunno. This one's a matter of preference of course. It's just that defining a significant difference between someone with a 75% and a 90% is hard. Both are going to perform similarly most of the time. And this is a doubly meaningless restriction when you have spells in the game like bladesharp. Now both characters have effectively the same skill level. It just seems like you have to spend a huge amount of effort changing the game to make it work with the caps, when it's easier to just make it work by scaling skills upwards naturally. I just personally don't see a benefit to trying to cap skills in this case. It may work fine in other games, but not in RQ IMHO.

Also, if you concider that the character's have to keep up their skills the question of mastering every skill in the book becomes a non-problem. That requires some roleplaying (at least in one's head) and thinking about the character's daily routines and lifestyle.

If a character has gourmet-chef skill of 95% and then doesn't do anything with the skill for three years, would you (as a GM) still say he has that skill at that level? Would the player think so? Not here they wouldn't.

And now you are introducing yet another new rule in order to justify caps. I know that some gamers like the idea of degrading skills. I personally hate the idea. As a GM, it's almost always a bad idea to take things away from the players. And having them reduce their skills in a skill based game is a big no-no IMO.

YMMV, but I don't see much reason to do that. It just seems like by creating the caps, you then have to create a whole set of rules in order to make the capped skill system work. And several of those rules are not going to sit well with players. It just strikes me as totally unecessary grief visited on the players so you can apply another totally unecessary rule into the game.

Why not just not cap the skills? Then you don't have to have degrading skill rules. And you don't have to start characters at lower levels. And you don't have to toss out the profession skill system. And you don't have to figure out what to do to prevent bladesharp from making skill levels meaningless. To me, avoiding having to come up with four rule changes (maybe more if I spend time thinking about it), so that I can avoid having to make another rule change (which also limits players) is a win-win. Applying them in the first place just runs your game into a corner over time...

 

[atgxtg]

I am going to go back to my idea of just killing characters when their skills get to close to 100. No artificial ceilings, no halving, no linear or relational adjustments. Just Skybolt.

Why wait. Get 'em during character gneeration while they are unskilled and at their most vulnerable.

"Have you got you hit points figured yet?"

"No, not yet."

"Good, then this 8 points to the head should be enough since you are already at zero! Bwha-hahah-ha! Wanna try again?"

 

[algauble]

I am going to go back to my idea of just killing characters when their skills get to close to 100. No artificial ceilings, no halving, no linear or relational adjustments. Just Skybolt.

Why wait. Get 'em during character gneeration while they are unskilled and at their most vulnerable.

"Have you got you hit points figured yet?"

"No, not yet."

"Good, then this 8 points to the head should be enough since you are already at zero! Bwha-hahah-ha! Wanna try again?"

This will actually fit it quite well with my Runequest/Traveller Chargen Houserules. Of course you'll only die during chargen if you fail your Resilience Test. Are there any changes I'll need to make if Glorantha is a planet instead of a lozenge? Does UPP 78AC889 sound right? Plus the Red Moon is a space station ("That's not a moon")

 

[atgxtg]

This will actually fit it quite well with my Runequest/Traveller Chargen Houserules. Of course you'll only die during chargen if you fail your Resilience Test. Are there any changes I'll need to make if Glorantha is a planet instead of a lozenge? Does UPP 78AC889 sound right? Plus the Red Moon is a space station ("That's not a moon")

Hey, I remember having characters die in Traveller during character generation. ZTHat was before the "purple heart" rule mods.

 

[simonh]

But what do I care. He's one of the ten most skilled swordsmen in the whole world, and almost certainly the most skilled human. Of course some are faster or (a lot!) stronger, but his hard won skill can't be disputed. Even the gods don't have that much raw skill, I think. Not that they particularily need it, of course.

I think this paragraph is very telling. We just have a different expectation of what we want to be possible in the game. We know that in Glorantha it is possible to become incredibly skilled in your chosen ability. Great heroes are so powerful than most ordinary people can't even begin to compete with them. Therefore the game system needs to be able to model that.

The world of Harn master is presumably different and 'more realistic'. The fact is that what's 'realistic' in Glorantha and what's realistic in the real world or Harn differ greatly.

As a generic set of rules this puts RQ in a tricky possition. It needs to be able to model gritty settings on the one hand, and yet also scale up to model Gloranthan heroes, demigods and non-humans with superhuman levels of skill.

IMHO the best way to handle this is to one the one hand have a skill contest mechanic that can handle very high skill levels, with a smooth progression curve. On the other we need to be able to adjust the advancement rate so that if you want a gritty setting the character's abilities cap out at an appropriate level. That way both needs can be met with a minimum of adjustments and incompatibilities between campaigns.


Simon Hibbs

 

[Adept]

The super fast skill advancement of (any version of) RQ is the problem there. Check out Hârnmaster some day for a good alternative.

Harn is a decent source. Never been impressed with the system though. There are two aspects at play here. First, players like their characters to be competant. No one likes a wiff-fest. That's why RQ3 dramatically upped the starting skill level for new characters. Second, you should allow for a decent meaningful range of skill. If you've decided that starting characters at 15-20% skill levels isn't fun, but starting them at say 50-60% works well, then you have to allow for significantly more skilled people to be, well... significantly better.

There are things to contest in that.

People like competent characters. I'd say people like characters that feel as competent as their concept of them is. Since when is roleplaying about gaining power for the character? (ok, since D&D, but we've come some distance since then)

Player character skill levels should depend on the campaign and the desires of the player. If the character is a weaponthane , he should have the skills to reflect that. When I'm playing a weaponthane with skills in the 70+ range, I'm quite happy with that. I don't need (or want) the character to suddenly start zooming up in his skills when playin starts.

Also there is a world of differense between skill 60 and skill 90. There definitely is somewhere to go. That is only wrecked with an experience system that is too fast.

By this time you either get the point or you don't. No need to argue further, I think.

 

[Adept]

But what do I care. He's one of the ten most skilled swordsmen in the whole world, and almost certainly the most skilled human. Of course some are faster or (a lot!) stronger, but his hard won skill can't be disputed. Even the gods don't have that much raw skill, I think. Not that they particularily need it, of course.

I think this paragraph is very telling. We just have a different expectation of what we want to be possible in the game. We know that in Glorantha it is possible to become incredibly skilled in your chosen ability. Great heroes are so powerful than most ordinary people can't even begin to compete with them. Therefore the game system needs to be able to model that.

The world of Harn master is presumably different and 'more realistic'. The fact is that what's 'realistic' in Glorantha and what's realistic in the real world or Harn differ greatly.
Simon Hibbs

The example wasn't from harn, but from Shadow World, that is so high fantasy that is put's Glorantha to shame. It's a place where heroes literally can get to swordfight with (greek style) gods.

I also run my Glorantha games with a system that has capped (and defined) skill levels. In the game one of the player character's is a Household of Death humakti, that could (and possibly will) cross sword to scimitar with Jareel the Razoress.

I'm not surprised to see you on the opposite side of the argument though. You are pretty much my nemesis in your approach to Super Rune Quest Glorantha. Judging from your website you take as features the kinds of bugs that drove me from RQ3 in disgust when the games started to move to very high skill & equipment levels.

Still, each to our own

 

[Gnarsh]

People like competent characters. I'd say people like characters that feel as competent as their concept of them is. Since when is roleplaying about gaining power for the character? (ok, since D&D, but we've come some distance since then)

Sure. But the word "Roleplaying" includes the world "play". People play games for entertainment and fun. And overwhelmingly players hate feeling like their characters have no contribution to a combat (and lets face it combat does tend to take up a fair amount of playtime in a typical game). In another thread, there's already talk about what a "merchant" will do in a combat when the rest of the party is made up of "warriors". I don't think it's unreasonable at all to assume that players are concerned by this and want even their "wimpy" characters to feel like they're at least doing "something useful".

Player character skill levels should depend on the campaign and the desires of the player. If the character is a weaponthane , he should have the skills to reflect that. When I'm playing a weaponthane with skills in the 70+ range, I'm quite happy with that. I don't need (or want) the character to suddenly start zooming up in his skills when playin starts.

Ok. But you're not really playing RQ. It's kinda interesting because you keep slamming on D&D, but it appears as though you want to play RQ as much like D&D as possible. There are no classes in RQ. There's no such thing as a "Weaponthane", much less a definition that says "Weaponthane's have about a 70% skill with their weapons". It just sounds like in your game you define characters by "concept" after discussing it with the GM, and that concept defines what the character is and can do.

That's great. But that's not really the skill based game that the rest of us play when we play RQ. Ultimately, you're free to create the equivalent of "classes" in your game world and limit the skills that different characters can gain based on those classes. But that's your game. It's unlikely to be the same process used by even a small percentage of RQ players.

Also there is a world of differense between skill 60 and skill 90. There definitely is somewhere to go. That is only wrecked with an experience system that is too fast.

Sure. But only if we're measuring the progress of a character. In most RQ settings a modestly valued bladesharp will eliminate that skill difference. If you've capped skills near 100%, and have no game mechanic to benefit people with skills higher, then the exitence of bladesharp 4 in your game effectively makes 80% the cap (technically 75%). In classic RQ rules, an initiate of Humakt gets bladesharp 4 for free.

Your system likely works great in your game. It's not going to work *at all* in any game that actually uses the skill bases and bonuses out of the book, or the previous experience rules (of any version of RQ including MRQ). It's not going to work because as a dozen different people have already pointed out, it's not hard at all for a starting combat focused character to start at or near 80% skill with their primary weapon on roll up. Assuming that combat focused character is playing in a gloranthan campain where joining a combat cult is the logical course of action, he's going to gain magic very quickly that will destroy the usefulness of any sort of skill capped system (especially one so low).

I'm sure everyone appreciates the input, but since we're discussing the "generic" rules (with perhaps some assumptions about the standard gloranthan rules as well), it just makes sense to make suggestions and present ideas that are going to fit into those games. Your suggestion requires massive alteration of both the rule mechanics and the play "style" of RQ in order to work. That doesn't make it "wrong", but it does limit the value of the suggestion in the context of RQ in general.