Basic Skill Nitpickityness...

[iamtim]

Ok, so, how come we have Lore (Animal), Lore (Plant), and Lore (World), but not Athletics (Brute Force), Athletics (Climbing), Athletics (Jumping) and Athletics (Swimming)?

I was thinking about separating out the Athletics sub-skills into separate skills; it seems odd to me that improving your Jumping automatically improves your Swimming. But then I remembered Lore and how it has sub-skills that are improved separately.

I think I'll be breaking out Athletics into separate sub-skills as with Lore, each that is improved separately.

Thoughts?

 

[Utgardloki]

I think you'll want to check out the Specializations thread, which should be somewhere on this forum. The idea is that there is an Athletics skill, and there are also specializations of this skill, such as Climbing, Jumping, and Swimming, as well as the various sports activities such as Pitching, Batting, and Tackling.

(Sports seem to be modelled better by breaking them out so that a person could excell at pitching or batting, at tackling or blocking, etc, unless you want to go to triple specialization as in Athletics + Baseball + Pitching.)

The way specialization works is that specialization skills are built the same way as general skills, and you simply add the two together to determine your effective skill. In order to keep things from getting out of hand, specialization is limited to half your main skill, so if you have Athletics at 50%, you can add 25% Running to get an effective skill of 75%.

It's not just Athletics, but any skill that can be specialized, such as Acrobatics and Balance, First Aid and CPR, Driving and Drive Auto, etc.

I did break out Brute Force and Athletics, because BF has a different default. I don't think it works to have two things with different defaults be the same skill.

You only get your default bonus for one skill. So if Athletics starts at STR + DEX, then Climbing starts out at 1%. To support this more smoothly, I changed the Default Starting % to a Default Bonus, so instead of having Athletics of 35% if you have STR 15 and DEX 10, you have Athletics of 10% with a 25% bonus from your STR + DEX. It seems to make things to more smoothly all around.

Does this help?

 

[Arkat]

I think Lore skills are seperated because they each require unique knowledge, where someone who excels in Athletics is usually competent in anything athletic.

Einstein was an incredibly smart guy and a master of Lore: Physics but Lorelant.. not so much. The flip side is Bo knows sports!

 

[Richard]

Wrong I'm afraid. Mr.Einstein was a major wizz at the old plant lore long before the relativity palaver. Fungi specialist if memory serves.
You're right though...it was probably a separate skill. Lhankor Mhy Runelord I guess.

 

[iamtim]

The flip side is Bo knows sports!

Right. Bo knows sports because that's all he does. But should a local inn's bouncer become a better climber, jumper, and swimmer because he got better at pushing the drunks out (i.e. increased his Athletics (Brute Force))?

I don't think specializations are what I'm after either; I like the simplicity of the skill list. I'm just wondering the Athletics sub-skills shouldn't be their own skills -- like the different Lore sub-skills.

 

[Utgardloki]

I don't think specializations are what I'm after either; I like the simplicity of the skill list. I'm just wondering the Athletics sub-skills shouldn't be their own skills -- like the different Lore sub-skills.

If you don't want specializations, then just breaking out Athletics the way the Lore skills are broken out is a decent way to go.

Hmmm, now that I think of it, just about every Lore skill is a specialization of Lore (World). I ought to work that in somehow.

You could do the same thing with Acrobatics.

 

[RMS]

The flip side is Bo knows sports!

Right. Bo knows sports because that's all he does. But should a local inn's bouncer become a better climber, jumper, and swimmer because he got better at pushing the drunks out (i.e. increased his Athletics (Brute Force))?

I don't think specializations are what I'm after either; I like the simplicity of the skill list. I'm just wondering the Athletics sub-skills shouldn't be their own skills -- like the different Lore sub-skills.

This would make sense. At the very least, I'd like to see STR based Athletics and DEX based Athletics (and even perhaps CON based Athletics) as separate general skills. Outside of very specialized training, a persons general ability to climb things, jump things, etc. is probably pretty well linked. Swimming is the odd one out there (being a specialized and rare skill until modern times). I've always just interpreted RQ swimming as the ability to keep one head above water and dog paddle to safety, which fits back into the general DEX based skill nicely.

 

[Trifletraxor]

Ok, so, how come we have Lore (Animal), Lore (Plant), and Lore (World), but not Athletics (Brute Force), Athletics (Climbing), Athletics (Jumping) and Athletics (Swimming)?

I was thinking about separating out the Athletics sub-skills into separate skills; it seems odd to me that improving your Jumping automatically improves your Swimming. But then I remembered Lore and how it has sub-skills that are improved separately.

I think I'll be breaking out Athletics into separate sub-skills as with Lore, each that is improved separately.

Thoughts?

Fully agree. I'll break it up too. Jumping, climbing and swimming. "Brute force" just be a STR roll when I play.

(Mysteriously close to the old RQ rules you would say? Only a coincidence of course! :wink: )

SGL.

 

[Utgardloki]

I'm not sure if this is in the rules as written or not, but I've decided that contests of strength such as wrestling or trying to push someone off a cliff or trying to break down a door should be handled as such:

A character may made a Brute Force roll. If he succeeds, he may treat his Strength as 1 higher for the task he is attempting. If he gets a critical success, he may treat his Strength as 3 higher. A "super-critical" success (less than 1% of his effective skill) lets him treat his Strength as 5 higher. If he spends a Hero Point, he may also add 2 to his effective Strength.

If the effective Strength scores of two characters are equal, than Brute Force contests are resolved as normal opposed rolls. If they are not equal, the one with higher STR or STR + SIZ (depending on the exact nature of the contest) wins.

Thus, Fred the Barbarian (STR = 8) is not likely to be able to push Wanda the Witch (STR = 15) anywhere. He could hope to win a contest against Sam the Thief (STR = 10). If Sam the Thief has a very high Brute Force skill, or is willing to invest a Hero Point and manages to roll a critical success, then he might be able to win a contest against Wanda (assuming she fails her die roll and does not elect to invest a Hero Point).

This reserves the superheroics for those with superhuman strength, but allows for anyone to occasionally exceed his "normal" limits.

 

[Halfbat]

Whilst the Athletics conglomeration seems odd, and I'm not a fan of the different bonuses for each type within a skill, I'm quite happy to run with it for a simplicity. If one can't be done in a special case I'd specifically give a trait of some kind. It's not that much different from Perception rolls being the same for eyesight, hearing and smell or Stealth for being able to hide or move silently (if you can forgive the d20-isms).

For example, my sense of smell is (unfortunately?) pretty good, but my eyes need lenses and my hearing is way less acute than it was*. Luckily under MRQ it's all one roll! The point of the merged skills is that one can compensate for the other and it allows the characters to be heroes.

Breaking these rolls down further just makes for even more skillsets. And the conglomerated skill works on the whole without forcing the players to get bogged down in all sorts of specific cases (what sort of climbing? Rock face or vertical stretch? What sort of swimming? Lake, sea or white-water? What about surfing?). Even the Brute Force roll includes the knack of knowing _how_ to apply force and pressure to get the desired effect For example, I knew a QB/HB who was often used as an up-back/TE as he could block (Athletics/Brute Force), not 'cos he was big but knew _how_ to block.

To me it seems it's worth staying with until it breaks.

That said, I'm ocassionally tempted to use a variation of STR vs STR/SIZ for some Athletics:Brute Force rolls... a recent SIZ 10 STR 13 character had more chance of rolling a SIZ 30 boulder away from a cave mouth than the party's "Tank" (SIZ 18 STR 17).

Note: It's worth ensuring that objects (and perhaps characters) have penalties to Brute Force based on SIZ or, in the case of objects, have a Brute Force roll based on, perhaps, 2*SIZ to force an opposed check. **

* Just realised I sound rather decrepit from this example. Not so.***
** "Whaddya mean, the rock pushed me over the edge?":lol:
*** Well, probably not so.

 

[Trifletraxor]

Having the skills as athletics, perception and stealth is not bad at all. Just a simplification. I don't like the "brute force" part of the athletics skill, and personally I prefer to have climbing, swimming, jumping, scan, listen, search, sneak & hide as different skills so I'll go with that. Much easier for the players to get high skills fast if you have few skills, something I don't really like. Simplicity vs. realism, both have their own advantages.

SGL.

 

[Exubae]

"brute force"

Seems a bit like raw strength anyway, if you want to get stronger it makes more sense to train up strength attribute than double up the traits coverage with the 'brute force skill'.
I do like the idea of a fixed STRx5 used instead. Simple clean and makes a degree of sense.
You can always add a bonus equal to INT or cap the results by the characters lore/Physics skill if your using fulcrums/pulleys in the test.

athletics, perception and stealth

Work well with the more limited manner in which characters grow through experience, as soon as you break down the skills in to subs skills, the rate of character drowth slows.
So you'll need to dish out double or more XP/HP as reward to keep the current charater growth levels. Unless you of course allow Subskills to gain double the %points when raised than the broarder base skills.

Paul

 

[Trifletraxor]

athletics, perception and stealth

Work well with the more limited manner in which characters grow through experience, as soon as you break down the skills in to subs skills, the rate of character drowth slows.
So you'll need to dish out double or more XP/HP as reward to keep the current charater growth levels. Unless you of course allow Subskills to gain double the %points when raised than the broarder base skills.

Paul

Characters are supposed to grow slowly! Where's the excitement if you can't fail?

SGL.

 

[Exubae]

Characters are supposed to grow slowly! Where's the excitement if you can't fail?

In RQ using the tick and check method - initial growth was quite, you could check may be ten to fifteen skill on a really good session, skill rising quite quickly till about the 50-60% mark, then progression became a bit of struggle.

In MRQ your PCs get 3-6 HP/XP to spend on skills/stats/Legendary Powers - this produce a fairly slow improvement curve up to 60%ish, but over that you can at least get a 1% increase in a skill as opposed to the old RQ.
The compacted comon skills evens the diferences between % rise between RQ3 and MRQ a little, but if you use a full skill list, then the PCS might as well stay at home and train than risk life and limb trying to gain a hand full of XP/HP.

After two sessions found that PC improvement seems a lot slower, which was is amplified by the limited access to magic (Rune Magic).
Combat was a bit of a chore at low skill levels, and as slow as RQ3 if not slower, mainly because its harder to kill an opponent. But on the other side of the argument PC last longer as well.

Paul

 

[iamtim]

Hmm. In re-reading this thread, maybe it's just the "brute force" part of the Athletics skill I don't like. While I still think that swimming should be Athletics(Swimming), for instance, I'm really liking the idea of making "brute force Athletics" synonymous with STRx5.

Veddy intereztink.

 

[Utgardloki]

The compacted comon skills evens the diferences between % rise between RQ3 and MRQ a little, but if you use a full skill list, then the PCS might as well stay at home and train than risk life and limb trying to gain a hand full of XP/HP.

I disagree. If the PC's are regarded as actual characters rather than just as collections of numbers on a sheet of paper, then their reason for adventuring is not to reach "90% skill level" or some other measure of advancement. It may be "to learn to fight" or "learn magic", but that is more abstract. Most characters will be motivated by tangible rewards such as treasure, saving the local village, or the thrill of bringing evildoers to justice 8)

Personally, I don't like campaigns where advancement is too fast, because it makes me feel that it is just an exercise in character sheet development rather than character development. OTOH, advancement is also fun, but I'd much prefer a "realistic" system of advancement over one designed to meet a certain rate target.

Hmm. In re-reading this thread, maybe it's just the "brute force" part of the Athletics skill I don't like. While I still think that swimming should be Athletics(Swimming), for instance, I'm really liking the idea of making "brute force Athletics" synonymous with STRx5.

I'd say that Brute Force is definitely the worst offender. Not only does it seem like something that should be a Strength check, but the fact that it has a different default (STR + SIZE) than the other Athletics tasks (STR + DEX) indicates to me that it should really be a separate skill, if it exists at all as a % skill.

I would rule that different tasks of the same skill must use the same default, and that by that logic, Brute Force is a different skill than Athletics.

Whether Athletics should be broken out into Swimming, Climbing, Jumping, etc, is another opinion. I can see an argument for breaking out Swimming as an advanced skill, because while everybody can try to climb, jump, or run fast, not everybody can even try to swim. Thus, I've decided to break Swimming out as a separate skill, the way Brute Force was.

My criterion for determining whether something is one skill or two is to ask whether a person trained in that skill could be expected to be good at both tasks. Thus, one could argue that Perception is one skill, because different senses can reinforce one another, and someone who can't see as well may be able to hear something suspicious, and vice versa. Swimming, Climbing, and Brute Force seem to me like these should be three different skills.

 

[Exubae]

Advancement is also fun, but I'd much prefer a "realistic" system of advancement over one designed to meet a certain rate target.

I agree with your comment.

I was just stating if your using the guidelines for rewards and you double the number of skills then you'll end up with a short fall in experience for the way system has been engineered/tailored, and as it stand MRQ is slower to advance skills than RQ3.