Yet Another Damn Skill System

A few days ago, I got into a small discussion--barely a chitchat, really--with +Paolo Greco about our mutual love for diminishing returns in dice systems.  (He has a elegant example over at his blog.)

I've come to realize that there are a lot of ways to generate different trends with dice.  This is because I think about dice a lot.  I walk around with a couple in my pocket.  I fall asleep with dice in my bed.  Once I drank too much at a party and vomited, and that was like, 30-40% dice.  I think I rolled a 23.

Anyway, here's a diminishing return system for skills.

Another Damn Skill System

It's like a big smash up of Burning Wheel, BRP, and every single skill system I've ever read, all at once and forever.

You have skill slots equal to your Intelligence score. You can pick up as many skills as you want, but once you run out of skill slots, you need to start overwriting them.

There is no skill list.  You're grown-ups.  If you want to be good at using a rope, then just write it on your character sheet.

Caveats:

• “Thievery” is too broad of a skill. Use “burglary”, “pick-pocketing”, etc.
• “Wizard knowledge” is also too broad. Use “necromancy”, “dead languages”, etc.
• There is no "diplomacy" skill.  Roleplay it and/or roll under your Cha.
• There is no "search" skill.  Tell the DM where you are looking.
• There is no "perception" or "bluff" skill either.  

There is some wiggle room. Can “mountaineering” climb a wall? Probably. Ask your DM.

Every skill you have can be represented by a number from 1 to 16, called the rank. To attempt a skill, roll a d20. If you roll on-or-under your skill rank, you succeed. If you succeed by 10 points or more, it is a critical success, and you can choose an adjective to describe exactly how you succeed, like “irreversibly”, “reversibly”, “quietly”, or “impressively”. If you roll a natural 20, you have rolled a fumble, and the DM will invent some dire consequences.

The highest you can raise a skill is 10 + character level.  Or 16.  Whichever is lower.

Assumed Skills and Untrained Ranks

You are assumed to be literate, proficient in basic physical skills (running, jumping, climbing, swimming), familiar with your own background (the culture of your social group, the geography of your homeland, and the language of your people) and anything else that makes sense. For these skills, you have an untrained rank equal to whatever the most relevant stat is.

For skills in which you are non-proficient, you have an untrained rank equal to half of whatever the most relevant stat is.

Gaining New Skills

You start the game with 2 skills at Rank 10. Roll one skill on your racial table, and another skill on your class table. Thieves roll twice on each table, and so start with 4 skills at Rank 10.

You gain new skills by announcing “I want to start learning this skill.” and then writing it down on your character sheet at a starting rank equal to your untrained rank (half the relevant stat for most skills).

You learn Int-based skills (lores) a little differently. You begin learning a lore when you start studying it in a school or library, or from a tutor. There are some exceptions to this. You can learn “wilderness lore” by living in the woods, or “goblin lore” by dissecting a lot of goblins. Use your common sense. All lores start at Rank 1.

Advancing Skills

You advance a skill by using it. When you use a skill and succeed, put a check mark next to it. When you have a few days to relax in town (usually between adventures) you can erase all three check marks and roll a d20. If that d20 roll is equal-to-or-higher than the current skill Rank, the Rank improves by 1. Note that Ranks are limited by level (Max Rank 11 at level 1, for example).

You advance a lore by studying it. You can raise a lore by 1 point when you either (a) studying a new source for a week, or (b) studying an old source for a year. A source can be a book, a library, a sage, or whatever.  New sources are much faster, and so it pays to travel to foreign libraries and seek out distant sages.

The Skill Score

This is a skill system.  I tried to design something that was as beautifully simple as the "roll-under" method and would integrate seamlessly with it.

Skill scores are treated like backup ability scores.  They have a (soft) maximum of 18, the same as ability scores.  When you attempt a skill, you roll the skill die AND the ability score die.  If either of them succeed, the attempt succeeds.  If they both succeed, the attempt is a double success, and good things happen. (The action is faster/quieter/reversible/etc or an ally gets a bonus on the same check).

Examples:

Alice has 10 Dexterity.  Tip-toeing silently through a courtyard full of dead leaves requires her to roll a 10 or lower on a d20 roll.

Bob has 10 Dexterity and 8 Move Silently.  When he attempts to move through the same courtyard, he rolls two dice at the same time.  If his ability die is 10 or lower, he succeeds.  If his skill die is 8 or lower, he succeeds.  If both of the rolls succeed, Bob is even able to sweep a couple of cobblestones free of leaves, making it easier for Charlie, coming along behind him.

Modifying Difficulty

Easy/Hard: Treat the ability and skill scores as if they were 2 points higher/lower.

Really Hard: Treat the ability and skill scores as if they were 1/2 their current value.
Experts Only: Anything less than a double success is a failure.

Really Technical: Only roll the skill die.  Only experience can help you now.

Opposed Checks

Opposed parties roll their ability die and their skill die (if they have one).

Whoever has more successes wins.

In case of a tie, whoever has the highest number wins.

Generating Skill Scores

This is the chunky part.  I have some ideas about how to best do this, but I'll save that for a different post.  But if you want to convert X-in-6 to a skill score, then: 1-in-6 becomes 3, 2-in-6 becomes 7, 3-in-6 becomes 10, 4-in-6 becomes 13, and 5-in-6 becomes 17.

Closing Thoughts

The nice part about this is that both ability score and skill contribute equally to success.  And a lower a PC's ability score is, the more they gain by taking some training in a related skill.  But even if you have 18 Strength, you still might want some Climibing skill, because double successes are very nice.  And it naturally caps at 18/19, so there is no temptation to indulge in infinitely increasing DC silliness, a la 3.x.

Are there other systems that use something like this?  Scrap Princess had a sorta-similar something a little while ago, but I can't find any others.

Gimme Diminishing Returrns

I want to play a game of DnD where a bunch of level 1 character can fight alongside a level 5 character and still contribute.  I don't want PCs to start out being badasses, so I guess it'll have to be a low-level, gritty system.

There's some precedent for this.  Even in 0e, saving throws eventually slowed their rate of improvement, and +1d6 HP per level eventually becomes +2 hp per level, which I suppose is slightly less.  But by then, the PCs have already killed kings and tea-bagged tyrannosaurs.  I want a small, powerful little system that plateaus early.

For this to work, HP, skills, and attack bonuses cannot advance linearly.  I need a way for skills to be reined in heavily beyond third (?) level, but still easy to obtain at level 1 and 2 (because players like their level  1 thief to be mechanically differentiated than the other level 1 thief in the party).

I can think of two ways to do this.