Revision as of 21:16, 19 January 2016

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 (specifically this) and here, because who doesn't love the Alexandrian? And also here, because apparently the Tomes are ridiculously awesome. Also look at this and this. This pdf is also pretty solid.

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. No, that is wrong. You are working to reduce granularity and bookkeeping; spending skill points in this kind of fashion means that you have it back, and brings back class disparity. You don't want class disparity in skills.

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.

Force Skills

Yay!

• M - Arcana
• P - Psionics
• T - Science
• D - Theology
• V - Nihilism
• N - Geomancy
• I - Futurity
• C - Entropy
• B - Informatics

Trinity Alignment: Philosophy

What is alignment? In traditional D&D, this question - and all those that come after - has been the source of no end of arguments and debates. Over the years, while many can agree on what "good" and "evil" mean, the concepts of "law" and "chaos" are significantly more nebulous. Not to mention that this divides everyone in the world into two opposed camps, with those who refuse to commit often being held in disdain by those on both sides.

This approach is not conducive to trying to model what should be a living world. A more nuanced approach is required. Where D&D has two axes, each with two positions and a "neutral" third, Trinity once used a wheel of five "alignments," opposed to and allied with each other in various ways. However, upon further reflection, this single axis - though more varied than that of D&D - is also not sufficient to model peoples' approaches to life, and so the initial axis - now called the moral axis - has been trimmed down, and a second axis - the ethical axis - added.

Much as with D&D, these two axes are independent of each other. One could just as easily encounter a morally WU, ethically Y person as a morally RG, ethically Y person; likewise, one could encounter a morally UB, ethically O person as easily as a morally UB, ethically K person. It is up to a player to explain how or why their individual character believes what they believe; that said, races have a tendency to encourage particular morals, while cultures trend towards impressing their ethics onto their occupants.

Example: Trolls almost universally encourage their young to work with the tribe, to trust their gut, and to get results at any cost: these are troll morals, and many consider them part of what it means to be a troll, resulting in most trolls having a GB morality. By contrast, the Golgari tribe may encourage imagination and trying new ways of doing things, allowing outsiders to travel through their lands without fear of reprisal, with PK ethics; while the Drakkari tribe may reward those who are steadfast in their beliefs and focus on the problems of the now, with OE ethics.

Naturally, some combinations are trickier to justify than others (and may even result in somewhat inconsistent beliefs and actions: after all, real people often rarely manage to always act in accordance with what they think they believe), but they are all valid.

In addition to the colors, an individual can have insufficiently strong beliefs that they do not claim to participate in any color. Rather than "neutral," these individuals are "unaligned:" individuals who either have not put much thought into how they behave, or that have actively decided to forego determining how they want to live their lives. Some such individuals profess a "neutral" stance, that balance in all things is best and that claiming that one action is right while another is wrong is not conducive to life in a world with so many varied peoples and cultures.

Combining colors for a given axis is sensible, and many people fall into at least two colors. Three colors is somewhat more rare, but is generally a "core" moral framework supported by virtues of its allied colors (for instance, a primarily U morality could also include W and B elements, leading to a three-color morality in support of U). Four-color moralities are all but unheard of, and five-color moralities are almost literally impossible. The same is true of ethics.

We'll now talk about the colors.

Morality

Moral colors.

White (W)

White is a color!

Blue (U)

Blue is a color!

Black (B)

Black is a color!

Red (R)

Red is a color!

Green (G)

Green is a color!

Ethics

Ethical colors.

Yellow (Y)

Yellow is a color!

Purple (P)

Purple is a color!

Pink (K)

Pink is a color!

Brown (E)

Brown is a color!

Orange (O)

Orange is a color!