Skills in RPGs

[jaysm]

Shadowrun 1E was was probably the first 'modern' game I played, D20 and Traveller before that (and T&T, Take That You Fiend!) so I am always biased towards something like their Skill cascade posted in the other thread, it left an impression on me. In that respect I admit I house rule a lot, I have treated the specialised skills in Engineering to be the characters main job, and just have a -1DM to the others, sometimes with an increase in difficulty, but I try to be gentle there, especially if the players give me a reason no to, I like a good creative story/excuse. Electronics specialties can work the same way, just be a little harsher on difficulty if the start trying to hack an Imperial Cruiser.

Letting a single character chain a difficult Mechanic check into Engineering is an nod to the players using spit and duct tape to get things done, sometimes the by the book repair just gets done a bit creatively/cheap until you get to a starport with the Cr needed. I keep track of all those repairs that they fail to redo properly, because they tend to break again under duress. It does make the Engineer feel a lot of agency about their character.

I also allow Pilot1 or higher to have effective Eng0 just for the purposes of spinning up the Jump Drive, call it Bridge Operations if you like, same with a very basic Sensor sweep when you first come out of jump. That is a bit further from RAW.
Even further, and I admit very arbitrary, I split Science into Social and Physical, with a -DM within a group and no jumping between groups.

 

[actionman]

Do you really want a character sheet that looks like a BRP or GURPS character sheet with all those lovely skills...

Absolutely.

 

[actionman]

It does make the Engineer feel a lot of agency about their character.

Something I considered was skills by role. What does a character do on the team? What is his job?

• Infantryman skill would include skill with rifles, pistols, machineguns, fighting knife, grenade throwing, unarmed combat, and physical fitness, map reading, and generally any skill that a competent fit well-trained infantryman would reasonably do during a mission.
• Starship Drive Systems Engineer skill would include operating and maintaining starship drives, maneuver and FTL, and would include skill in working with all of the mechanical and electronic components of those systems.
• Starship Systems Technician skill would cover all the maintenance, repair, and operation of other non-specialized starship systems like life support and so on.
• Computer Specialist skill would include operating and maintaining computers, like maintaining the hardware and being skilled in using the software applications that are a part of the character's job.
• Computer Programmer skill would be for developing software.

 

[Vormaerin]

That's largely how Traveller works. Engineer covers all the stuff you put on Engineer. Mechanics covers all the stuff you put under Technician (except some of the life support stuff is Engineer).

Computer, being part of the Electronics MegaSkill does all of the specialist & programmer and more.

Infantryman is a bit of the exception, since that's several skills. Gun Combat, Melee Combat, Athletics, Survival.

 

[Condottiere]

Point system allows customization.

For finer detail, you can GURPSize.

 

[rinku]

If people are looking at their own skill suite, especially in terms of expanding skills available, you could do worse than import the cascade skill concept from older editions.

Blade Combat and Gun Combat were always cascade skills; the advanced careers expanded the concept, and Book 1 1981 replaced a few Air/Raft and ATV entries with Vehicle. MegaTraveller REALLY embraced cascades, including those for Physical and Mental stat increases.

The skill tables are easily tweaked. Just replace a fixed skill with a relevant cascade. Pilot or Gunnery may become Space. Gambling or Carousing may become Vice. In many cases it may be more appropriate to leave a fixed skill as is. Fixed skills can also appear in more than one cascade; in MegaTraveller, SensorOps is part of Exploratory, Space, Space Combat and Technical.

I was always a little surprised Mongoose didn't adopt the concept. It's clean, simple, and both reduces the random and expands the skills available in a career. I guess they preferred everything to be specialties. Maybe the admittedly complex web of skill cascades, "serves as" and "Includes" was seen as a bit much.

If you want to add lots of new skills without going entirely down the new specialty route, it's not a bad idea.

 

[Condottiere]

Point and click is how most hand guns work, difference being principally effect and recoil.

Now, I could have airships have a similar, if not quite identical, interface like a spacecraft, which would be familiar to spacecraft pilots, with the difference being that airships are slower, and operate in a different medium, with weather effects.

 

[mavikfelna]

That's largely how Traveller works. Engineer covers all the stuff you put on Engineer. Mechanics covers all the stuff you put under Technician (except some of the life support stuff is Engineer).

Computer, being part of the Electronics MegaSkill does all of the specialist & programmer and more.

Infantryman is a bit of the exception, since that's several skills. Gun Combat, Melee Combat, Athletics, Survival.

Electronics (Computer) is entirely too broad a category. I've been doing computer support for nearly 40 years, I've got a great Electronics (Computer) skill, except I can't program to save my life, and my general use skills are good, but no where near my troubleshooting ability. Also, even with some electronics background from high school, I can't do board level repairs, just parts level swapping. Now if I were to break those down into the current skill, my Electronics (Computers) is 3, maybe a 4, but since programming isn't a separate skill, how do write that exception? I could classify computer use skills as Electronics (Communications) instead of (Computer) since that seems more appropriate in some sense because it's primarily a communications device these days, but I can't build, repair or use a ham radio, at least beyond skill 0 levels.

But, the MgT system just really doesn't have enough skill points available to do those kinds of skill cascades, so everything gets all lumped together. But some broad cascades are appropriate. I wouldn't mind having social as a single skill and then having diplomacy, carouse, streetwise, persuade and deception be cascades for it. Science should be the same, broad cascades, life sciences, physical sciences, mathematics, social science, computing and robots, psionics. And then have clusters under those that are optional for the GM that wants to add more skill points, so life sciences would get biology, agriculture, and what not and physical science would get things geology and mineral science. Weapon skills would fit in with that too, have handgun, rifle, bow, artillery, mounted, blade and unarmed/natural and then under handgun have energy, plasma, ballistic, spotting and whatever else. And then under say energy have lasers and stunners, where that third level is only for the gamers that want a higher level detail and add a mechanism for gaining more skill points.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Cascades didn't solve the problem of skill bloat in MT, granting way more skill points per term did.

A cascade was just s grouping of skills you could select from - gain the space cascade you had to pick as skill for the list, you didn't get the rest at 0.

The addition of the rule of four and the special duty for basic characters made getting a skill per year of service pretty normal, some careers you could expect to get even more.

The artificial limitation on maximum skills being Int+Edu needs to be dumped as well. (which MgT has done by increasing the cap)

 

[rinku]

Cascades didn't solve the problem of skill bloat in MT, granting way more skill points per term did.

A cascade was just s grouping of skills you could select from - gain the space cascade you had to pick as skill for the list, you didn't get the rest at 0.

The addition of the rule of four and the special duty for basic characters made getting a skill per year of service pretty normal, some careers you could expect to get even more.

The artificial limitation on maximum skills being Int+Edu needs to be dumped as well.

Mostly what I was suggesting was just using skill table cascades for existing skills. That's a separate thing to how many skill points you get per turn, or any other aspects of MegaTraveller. As I pointed out, Classic had Cascades too, but MegaTraveller integrated it more fully into Basic career tables. The big advantages of that were more choice while retaining the core random, and better access to skills that made sense for the career, without having to change the D6 table concept.

Cherry picking what you think works from older editions without ruining Mongoose.

 

[Sigtrygg]

MegaTraveller doubled the number of skill points a basic character would earn during prior history.

If you add skill bloat you need to grant more skill points to keep up.

Which MT did.

 

[Vormaerin]

The limit actually something insanely high like 3(Int+EDU) in Mongoose. I've never had it be relevant. You would have to be pretty mentally stunted AND old for it to matter.

I am not at all interested in breaking down skills further unless there is a campaign specific reason for doing so. Namely to differentiate several characters who would be doing the same skill otherwise. The only skill in the game I think needs to be split up is Electronics.

The only purpose of Cascades in a system like Traveller is to increase the range of skills that someone might get from a particular career. SO if you want to let them choose Pilot or Astrogation or Sensor Ops without needing 3 slots on the die roll.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Bridge operations - specialisms in pilot, navigation, sensors, comms

Bridge operations grants skill 1 in every specialism. Higher skill requires raising individual skills

Ship engineering - specialisms in jump drive, power plant, maneuver drive, gravitcs

Ship engineering grants skill 1 in every specialism. Higher skill requires raising individual skills

Spec Ops - specialisms in demolitions, recon, tactics, forward observer

Spec Ops grants skill 1 in every specialism. Higher skill requires raising individual skills

Infantry combat - you get the idea by now so I will stop.

But it is how I would do it if I could re-write the lot.