Revision as of 18:37, 21 December 2015

Haha, of course we're working on other stuff.

Skills... skills. It always comes back to skills. The d20 skill system is a mess; in Trinity, we've compounded the problem by adding a ton of skills, which further bloats the game and makes individual skill points generally worthless, with the exception of a few skills (Tumble, anybody?).

We're going to fix this. Not by going more specific - nope, by going more generic, and by changing the definition of how skills are used.

Inspiration taken from here and here, because who doesn't love the Alexandrian?

Overview

Okay, so: skill grades. You have some picks at character creation, whatever, get some skill groups at different grades.

Okay.

Every now and then (how to determine?) you get to upgrade a thingy, so that you feel less small in the pants.

Question - how much can you suck?

Assume rogue seconding Int and a mage. Rogue has +3 Int, Mage has +4.

Rogue is untrained at X skill, Mage is novice.

Rogue - d2+3 [4/4/5]

Mage - d4+4 [5/6/8]

Now let's do same, 1st level mage (Int +4, Novice), 20th level mage (Int +8, Grandmaster)

Lil Mage - d4+4 [5/6/8]

Big Mage - d12+8 [9/14/20]

Okay so in general it will be most unlikely that two members of the same class trained in the same thing will make the higher level guy feel small in the pants.

Let's do the skill point thing.

Lil Mage - d4+4+1 [6/7/9]

Big Mage - d12+8+20 [29/34/40]

Hmm... that could be workable... brings the low-end skills down in DC... hrm.

How do you pick a lock?

Picking a Lock

Troi is an 8th-level learner with the Criminal knack, at Expert, with a Dex +4. So his open lock "damage" is d8+4 [5/8/12] or d8+4+8 [13/16/20].

However, in order to "deal damage" to the lock, he has to "hit" it. This is a skill check... d20 + 4 + 8, so take 10 of 22 [9/21/32].

The lock is a level 10 lock. So it has an AC of... 20, let's say (10 + 1/2 level). According to d20, opening a lock is a full-round action; so it should probably have somewhere in the range of ... well, crap. What do we expect at this point?

A level 10 d20 rogue would probably have... let's see, d20 + 13 + 5, +2 for tools, so a take 10 of 30. So your average 10th level rogue could easily just handle a "good lock" in a round, but pretty much nobody else could at that level. Which means...

Lock has AC. Lock has HP. We're only messing with one-half of this equation.

How do you improve your "skill attack"?

Let's go sim for a minute.

Outside of combat, in a non-threatening situation (ie, no penalty for failure), the DC is irrelevant. If you're looking at a level 30 lock with 250 hp, and you have a d2+2 open lock, you can keep picking at it. Eventually, you'll get it open. Why? Because that's how learning works. We represent that in this game by giving you XP for "killing" a skill challenge. You get xp, you gain levels, you get better at stuff. Yes, picking locks can make you better at killing shit, just like killing shit can make you better at picking locks.

Skill points are attack bonus. Think they have to be. So you put skill points into knacks; that makes your to-hit better.

How do you make your damage better?

Crap, Other Thoughts

Okay, so you gain your level as a bonus to all skill damage.

To prevent mages from suddenly being able to pick locks simply by virtue of being stupidly high level, the bonus is capped by the die you use. So if you have only a d2, you only get d2+2, even if you're 200th level.