[blacxthornE]

I'd been searching for TES4: Oblivion for a long time, and it was sold out everywhere... But a couple of weeks ago I found the Game of the Year Edition. I've been playing, and I like it a lot... It's also my first TES experience, so I found a couple of things really interesting.

One of them was the level advancement. I don't have anything near a plan, so just for the sake of discussion:

What do you think about a skill-based level advancement? Well, in the game, you have some major skills, and the rest are considered minor skills. We could consider this an equivalent of Class and Cross-Class Skills, except that the number of major skills are the same for every class in the game. Anyway, as you use your skills (for example, running is using your Athletics skill, jumping is using your Acrobatics skill, sneaking is using your Sneak skill, etc) you slowly advance in them. And as you advance in your major skills (to a particular total number), you advance in levels. Three of your main stats go up, again, in different rates depending on how much you used them.

How does that sound? I mean, virtually everybody's already b*tching constantly about how combat xp sucks and everything. This one seems to be more realistic: You don't advance in skills because you advance in levels, it's vice versa.

Now... Can this be done in D&D? Should it? If so, how?

Again, off the top of my head, and with no real theories at all:

Maybe (depending on your current level) you could have a total number of natural roll results. Let's say it's, 1000 for level 1. When you roll a 12, you have 988 left. Only the die counts (no modifiers) and taking 10 or 20 doesn't count against this total... This would be good for a number of things: Encourages taking risk rather than taking 10, and your die rolls are worth something even with the worst modifiers.

Is it too lame, or is it something to think about?

[Raven Bloodmoon]

Skill-based RPG is something I've actually grown to prefer over the levels of set stuff you can do. GURPS seems to handle it pretty well by making the advancement of skills an RP-based thing with the only exceptions being DM allowances. While the dice mechanics differ from d20 substantially from a statistical outlook, it handles skills pretty well. Skills are divided up by relative difficulty. The difficulty as wella s its current level affect how may points ti takes to advance the skill, and it requires 200 hours of practice to gain one point in a skill. So as an example, if I wanted to go from Bluff +1 to Bluff +2, I'd need 1 point (Bluff is considered Easy), which requires 200 hours of practice for my character. The nature of the practice could be anything from reading books on how to effectively lie to trying to pick up women in bars with lies to being a compulsive liar. You don't have to actually RP the practice itself, but you need to make sure your PC spends time practicing.

Something similar can be done for abilities, however they tend to cost abotu 250% to 500% more than a skill does in GURPS, and they require specific training. To get stronger, you excersize or what not.

Now realize that GURPS is a level-less system, so a direct application would be tricky at best. Your method, while requiring a lot of bookkeeping, would probably be more easily implemented by far, although it doesn't take into consideration such things as studing skills or having a teacher help you. Both are probably easily remedied.

That's not really my two coppers, since I didn't write gurps, but whatever. Take it and make it your own, right?

[blacxthornE]

Raven Bloodmoon, on Oct 31 2007, 08:02 PM, said:

Now realize that GURPS is a level-less system, so a direct application would be tricky at best. Your method, while requiring a lot of bookkeeping, would probably be more easily implemented by far, although it doesn't take into consideration such things as studing skills or having a teacher help you. Both are probably easily remedied.

Well, I thought a little about these problems too. Still, there are counter-thoughts to these:
First, yeah, although it requires more bookkeeping, it is less complicated than calculating the CR stuff, the XP and all... You just note the natural rolls down as you make skill or ability checks (or even saving throws, I don't know, whatever the system would be based on). Leveling up could be only available if you rest (which is how it is in the game TES4 too). This way you'd only have to add them all up if you have an opportunity to rest. If you have enough, you level up as you rest.

Studying skills through a book doesn't really appeal to me. It's too "The Sims"-like. Speaking in D&D terms, I think the best you could learn from books for any skill is probably +2 to, I dunno, maybe +6...

Having a teacher, or practicing alone is another matter though. Some rules could be made up for that, like, a daily "session" which would last 2d4 hours and gives the character an equivalent of 5d20 points for the skill. Some feats and spells might add bonus to this kind of practice.

Of course, if this is considered fair (based on the system that does not yet exist), that means there should be limitations to the advancement through skill use, because this suggests that the fair number of points someone could advance in a skill is 55 points over 5 hours for per day (and this also assumes no particular practicing, just everyday use).

There's still nothing as a system but I'm starting to like the idea.

[Raven Bloodmoon]

I think it has a lot of merrit. I would suggest that the number of points needed for a new level of the skill should increase with your current skill level. As for book learning as apposed to practice, that is definitely a realm best left to the DM, in my opinion. Firstly, that can vary greatly from skill to skill. Knowledge (physics) is pretty much only learned from books while Balance is virtually impossible to learn from any text. So I'd just leave that for DM arbitration.

One nice thing about this, I think, is that it naturally limits epic PCs. As you go higher and higher in yoru skill levels, it becomes harder and harder to advance, so you won't be as likely to have 120 ranks in Sleight of Hand and be capable of stealing your own pants off of yourself while wearing them and not realize you did it. (I'm not kidding. The DC is 120.)

So I guess I'm saying this is well worth developing.

Now another question to ponder are class abilities. How would those be handled? They could easily be converted to skills or feats, as appropriate. Simliarly, BAB could become a group fo weapon skills whose checks become your attack rolls. You could even have a Dodge skill and a Parry skill. At that point, having armor offer DR might make sense. You could even have armor offer variable DR, such as DR 1d3/-. Sometimes it rocks, sometimes it doesn't. That would also open up a lot of interesting feat chains that allow you to enhance your armor capabilities, skill with..err...skills, etc.

[blacxthornE]

Raven Bloodmoon, on Nov 1 2007, 05:30 AM, said:

I think it has a lot of merrit. I would suggest that the number of points needed for a new level of the skill should increase with your current skill level. As for book learning as apposed to practice, that is definitely a realm best left to the DM, in my opinion. Firstly, that can vary greatly from skill to skill. Knowledge (physics) is pretty much only learned from books while Balance is virtually impossible to learn from any text. So I'd just leave that for DM arbitration.

Well, obviously I didn't think about Knowledge skills when I said what I said about how books are helpful. But still, the very practice of such skills would already be reading books, so I don't see why there should be another set of rules for books.

And, I agree about the increasing number of needed points for a skill based on the current rank. That's effectively how it is in TES4:O too (The actual number of needed points don't increase, but gaining points last longer and longer, so it's basically the same thing). The increments could be determined.

Raven Bloodmoon, on Nov 1 2007, 05:30 AM, said:

Now another question to ponder are class abilities. How would those be handled? They could easily be converted to skills or feats, as appropriate. Simliarly, BAB could become a group fo weapon skills whose checks become your attack rolls. You could even have a Dodge skill and a Parry skill. At that point, having armor offer DR might make sense. You could even have armor offer variable DR, such as DR 1d3/-. Sometimes it rocks, sometimes it doesn't. That would also open up a lot of interesting feat chains that allow you to enhance your armor capabilities, skill with..err...skills, etc.

I didn't think about these that much. Class abilities could still be based on class levels. The more you advance as a rogue, the more abilities you get -- that doesn't sound that bad. Coz you're already practicing the skills, such as sneaking (move silently) or lockpicking. Special abilities should be gained as you advance in class levels. The basic idea is that the class system doesn't change, it's just the advancement, i.e. roll results replace XP.

Attack roll should count for advancing in BAB, and BAB should help advancing in class just as skills do. This is because some classes like the fighter, don't rely on skills. Combat is their domain. This is not a problem in TES4:O because fighting and blocking are also skills, but there's no such skill in D&D (except for some not-so-cruical skills). Since BAB does basically the same thing to attack rolls as skill ranks do to skill checks, I see this adjustment fit. There could be a different system for BAB advancement, or maybe the same only just requiring more points for a +1.

The defense roll variant could also help, eliminating the basic AC 10 with a 1d20 die roll.

Any more suggestions?

[Cuilean]

The TES skill system is awesome. Just note that in TES4, there *are* books that raise individual skills.

I'd played with this same idea for a while when Daggerfall first came out... even built a framework for it on graph paper. If I ever make an MMORPG, it'll be skills-based like this, because I think that's a far better solution than pure combat-oriented experience systems.

But the problem I encountered: Too. Much. Paper. It sort of breaks the immersion factor if you have to remember to do a little bit of math after each roll, especially if one of your players reaches for a calculator when two-digit numbers come into play. (He's an intuitive artist by nature, and so the numeric side of things comes very unnaturally for him.)