Skill Points and Adventuring skills

[phantomdoodler]

This is actually taken from the Freeway Warrior books, but I thought it may make an interesting addition to Lonewolf. Each rank, a character gains 4 skill points to build their character (thus a starting 5th rank character begins with 20 skill Points). You may spend these points however you wish, but no more than 5 in any one.

Available Adventuring Skills:

Acrobatics (escape from bonds, do backflips etc)
Animal Handling (training animals, riding, coach driving)
Athletics (climbing, jumping, swimming)
Deception (Disguise, fast talk, bluff)
Medicine (first aid, surgery, treat disease)
Intimidation (Scare, torture)
Intuition (read emotions, appraisal)
Knowledge (read/write, heraldry, regional lore, history)
Languages (fluency in one language per point)
Stealth (hiding, sneaking, shadowing)
Survival (tracking, hunting, foraging)
Thievery (lock picking, pick pocket)
Perception (hearing, seeing, smelling)
Persuasion (charm, diplomacy, seduction)
Warfare (leadership, command, tactics)

For a more granulated experience system, a Gm may award 1-2 skill points for completing an adventure. When you have 4 skill points, you gain a new rank.

So for example, Jim is building a Kai Lord, Swiftfox and has 20 skill points to spend.
His Disciplines are Hunting, Weapon Skill, Sixth Sense, Camouflage and Tracking. He then decides on his adventuring skills:

Survival 3, Athletics 4, Knowledge 2, Medicine 1, Animal Handling 2, Warfare 1, Stealth 3, Perception 3, Intimidation 1

These bonuses are not additional to others gained from Disciplines or abilities. Always use the greater bonus.

 

[Random Code]

As written, I don't think it works for Lone Wolf.

There's too much of an overlap with disciplines and the progression of the skills (and therefore their bonuses) is faster than the Kai Disciplines which are based upon half of the Kai's rank. This will therefore mean that they are used instead of the discipline, which I think impacts too heavily on the strong themes and the flavour of the LW system and setting.

Also, with other classes coming out, these skills could impact on their particular areas of focus. If you're not bothered about niche protection though then this isn't a problem. For me it would be.

I'd be inclined to wait for the Heroes of Magnamund supplement to come out as its imminent. Take a look at which character classes focus on which things and then build some kind of "Career and Hobbies" system to support all classes rather than steal their thunder.

 

[The Wolf]

I'm with Random Code there.

 

[Sado]

Available Adventuring Skills:

Acrobatics (escape from bonds, do backflips etc)
Animal Handling (training animals, riding, coach driving)
Athletics (climbing, jumping, swimming)
Deception (Disguise, fast talk, bluff)
Medicine (first aid, surgery, treat disease)
Intimidation (Scare, torture)
Intuition (read emotions, appraisal)
Knowledge (read/write, heraldry, regional lore, history)
Languages (fluency in one language per point)
Stealth (hiding, sneaking, shadowing)
Survival (tracking, hunting, foraging)
Thievery (lock picking, pick pocket)
Perception (hearing, seeing, smelling)
Persuasion (charm, diplomacy, seduction)
Warfare (leadership, command, tactics)

I agree with the others about having reservations about this working for LW, but I do think you have a nice, tight skill list there in general. Maybe for another game that lacks a skill system.

 

[Zager Krahl]

...another game, like the LW d20 system maybe? The idea of the LWMPGB rules was to keep things simple, the way they were in the LW gamebooks. phantomdoodler's level of complexity detracts from that with rather big steps...

 

[lightmage81]

I think the d20 system already has a nice tier system in place that can be nodded to accept these rules. They certainly work better there given the complexity of that game.

The current rules-lite system would do better with simple bonuses given for good role-playing.

 

[Smiling Fox]

Skills in the d20 system is horrible. I've always favoured systems like BRP that give you increases in skills for actually using skills. Personally I see the system in the Lone Wolf Multiplayer Gamebook as rather ingenious. If a discipline can be correlated to a certain task it gives you a bonus or even right out success.

It won't agree with all players since it gives a huge amount of power and responsibility to the game master. I know that some of my players wouldn't like it, because they like to work out rules that can be applied to a certain situation if a similar situation would come up again. What I see as so nice is that there will be a minimum of rule discussions, which take up valuable game time.

 

[phantomdoodler]

Hi all,
on reflection, this doesnt seem to work with disciplines and abilities, and is rather clunky for a rules lite system, so your points are valid ones.