New Skills Idea

[Gary]

One of the problems with running skill based characters in Hero is that they're prohibitively expensive. It costs a ton to buy lots of sciences, knowledge skills, area knowledges, languages, etc. And the skill enhancers don't quite do enough to bring down the cost. There's also a diminishing returns aspect with skills; having 10 sciences is wonderful, but having 20 isn't that much better. The second 10 sciences doesn't add nearly as much utility as the first 10.

 

There are various ideas out there for 'Universal' talents for other things besides languages, but for people who want a little more granularity with their skills, I have a proposal.

 

All skills of each category costs 3 pts for Level one of the skill which gives you one skill. Each 5 additional points would add one Skill Level and additional skills equal to the current Skill Level. For example with sciences:

 

3 pts buys Science 1 which allows 1 skill.

8 pts buys Science 2 which allows (1+2) or 3 skills.

13 pts buys Science 3 which allows (1+2+3) or 6 skills.

18 pts buys Science 4 which allows (1+2+3+4) or 10 skills.

etc.

 

You would have one separate category for Sciences, Knowledges, Area Knowledges, Languages, and Professional Skills. Perhaps one for Contacts, although the rules would have to be modified.

 

In addition, every pt you spend on increasing individual skills gives you the Skill Level in increases for individual skills. For example, someone who has purchased Science 4 can spend 1 pt and get +4 to spread among any of his 10 sciences purchased. He might add +1 to Mathematics, +2 to Physics, and +1 to Astronomy for example. Or +4 to 1 skill, or +1 to 4 different skills.

[Manic Typist]

Re: New Skills Idea

 

Aren't you worried that this might make skills TOO cheap?

 

It's a neat idea and all, but I think I might only allow it for campaigns with lots of powers, in order to make skills a more viable road. In a DC campaign, where most things are skills and not powers, I probably wouldn't allow it.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: New Skills Idea

 

In addition' date=' every pt you spend on increasing individual skills gives you the Skill Level in increases for individual skills. For example, someone who has purchased Science 4 can spend 1 pt and get +4 to spread among any of his 10 sciences purchased. He might add +1 to Mathematics, +2 to Physics, and +1 to Astronomy for example. Or +4 to 1 skill, or +1 to 4 different skills.[/quote']

I have a question about this part.

 

Suppose someone has Science 3 and thus 6 Science skills; he spends 1 point and gets +3 he can distribute among those 6 Sciences as he sees fit.

 

Now he spends 5 points and goes to Science 4, with 10 Science skills total, and once more he spends 1 point to get plusses to his Science skills. Does he get:

 

1) +4 to distribute among his 10 Science skills or

 

2) only +1 because he already got +3 for his 1 point at Science 3, and a further +1 brings him to +4, which matches his Science 4

 

 

I suspect it's (1), but I want to be sure.

 

One problem I have with this is a bookkeeping one; doing it this way requires you to keep track of two different point expenditures for your grouped skills: the points spent on "level" (i.e. Science 3, Science 4, etc.) and points spent on "bonuses", and what level you were at when you spent them. Consider:

 

Someone with Science 3 (13 points) spends 2 points to buy +6 total bonuses, and has thus spent 15 points total. He later buys up to Science 4, and has thus spent 20 total points.

 

Someone with Science 4 (18 points) spends 2 points to buy +8 total bonuses, and has thus spent 20 points total.

 

Both characters have spent 20 points total.

 

Both characters have 10 total Sciences.

 

But the first character has +6 in bonuses and the second has +8 in bonuses.

[Rapier]

Re: New Skills Idea

 

I totally understand where you are coming from. To play a Reed Richards type you end up dumping about 50 pts in Science skills and not getting a whole lot of bang for your CP buck.

 

We adapted a skill webby type thing. If you have SS: Biology you have a modified ability (-2) for Molecular Biology rolls.

 

We broke things down at the big ones:

 

Physics

Biology

Chemistry

Medicine

 

Then listed a bunch and how they connect. The list is always in a bit of flux as we add some and move others around. One of these days it'll be all worked out.

 

But spending pts in the Big 4, will get you SOME ability in all science skills. You can even purchase a Skill Level with a particular Science to offset penalties. We call that a Well Read Skill Level.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: New Skills Idea

 

We adapted a skill webby type thing. If you have SS: Biology you have a modified ability (-2) for Molecular Biology rolls.

Cancer posted something like that here. Just for people's reference.

[Rapier]

Re: New Skills Idea

 

Cancer posted something like that here. Just for people's reference.

 

Oh. That is handy. I'll have to compare his to ours.

[stan da ork]

Re: New Skills Idea

 

I've said this before on another skill thread. If you want Background Skills (knowledges, professions, and sciences) to be cheaper, then allow general skills to know lots of minute details about anything underneath them with a penalty to the roll. So instead of buying 50+ points worth of sciences for Reed Richards, just buy "Science" at 30- (or whatever level you think is appropriate) and say that if Reed needs to recall some specific thing about quantum mechanics as they relate to wormholes, he has to make a Science roll at -15 to effective skill (giving him a 15- roll to pull up the fact). No complicated skill webs (note that I absolute despise the Language chart), no weird house rules. KISS.

[Toadmaster]

Re: New Skills Idea

 

I never understand these posts, why should lots of skills be cheap?

 

If the game doesn't do much with skills then really generic skills like Stan suggests should be adequate, if the skills actually get used in the game then they should be paid for.

 

If you are buying lots of skills at high levels it would probably be cheaper to buy skill levels for a group of skills instead of buying each skill to a high level.

[Gary]

Re: New Skills Idea

 

Aren't you worried that this might make skills TOO cheap?

 

It's a neat idea and all, but I think I might only allow it for campaigns with lots of powers, in order to make skills a more viable road. In a DC campaign, where most things are skills and not powers, I probably wouldn't allow it.

 

 

Since these are only background skills, and not the more useful skills such as Acrobatics, Breakfall, or Stealth, I'm not too worried about game balance being thrown out of whack.

[Gary]

Re: New Skills Idea

 

I have a question about this part.

 

Suppose someone has Science 3 and thus 6 Science skills; he spends 1 point and gets +3 he can distribute among those 6 Sciences as he sees fit.

 

Now he spends 5 points and goes to Science 4, with 10 Science skills total, and once more he spends 1 point to get plusses to his Science skills. Does he get:

 

1) +4 to distribute among his 10 Science skills or

 

2) only +1 because he already got +3 for his 1 point at Science 3, and a further +1 brings him to +4, which matches his Science 4

 

 

I suspect it's (1), but I want to be sure.

 

One problem I have with this is a bookkeeping one; doing it this way requires you to keep track of two different point expenditures for your grouped skills: the points spent on "level" (i.e. Science 3, Science 4, etc.) and points spent on "bonuses", and what level you were at when you spent them. Consider:

 

Someone with Science 3 (13 points) spends 2 points to buy +6 total bonuses, and has thus spent 15 points total. He later buys up to Science 4, and has thus spent 20 total points.

 

Someone with Science 4 (18 points) spends 2 points to buy +8 total bonuses, and has thus spent 20 points total.

 

Both characters have spent 20 points total.

 

Both characters have 10 total Sciences.

 

But the first character has +6 in bonuses and the second has +8 in bonuses.

 

 

The GM has 2 choices.

 

1) He can grant the bonuses as the player spends the points. The person who spent a point when he has Science 3 gets +3 for that point and it doesn't get updated when he purchases science 4. Any points spent when Science 4 is in effect would grant +4 in bonuses. Simpler, but not as fair.

 

2) Every previous point spent gets automatically updated when the player upgrades. Ie if the player had previously spent 2 pts for +6 bonuses when Science 3 is in effect, he immediately gets +2 additional bonus points when he upgrades to Science 4. More fair, but a little more bookkeeping. Not that much more though.

 

Incidentally, these bonuses are the heart of why I like this idea. It becomes cheap enough for a player to make it worth his while to purchase enough pluses to get a clear differentiation between his skill rolls, rather than have every skill at his Int Roll.

[Gary]

Re: New Skills Idea

 

I never understand these posts, why should lots of skills be cheap?

 

If the game doesn't do much with skills then really generic skills like Stan suggests should be adequate, if the skills actually get used in the game then they should be paid for.

 

If you are buying lots of skills at high levels it would probably be cheaper to buy skill levels for a group of skills instead of buying each skill to a high level.

 

 

The problem is that many character's conceptions demand that they know many skills, most of which may show up only once or twice if at all. The skills are utilized in game and they should be legitimately listed on the character sheet, but it's really hard for a GM to setup situations where 25 sciences, 18 knowledge skills, and 9 professional skills come into play often enough to be worth the points spent.

 

Compare 3 pts spent on Breakfall to 3 pts spent on subatomic physics. The Breakfall will obviously be utilized far more often and to a much greater extent in any typical campaign as compared to subatomic physics. The GM can easily setup scenarios that highlight subatomic physics, but not nearly often enough, especially if the character has 20 other sciences on his character sheet.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: New Skills Idea

 

The problem is that many character's conceptions demand that they know many skills' date=' most of which may show up only once or twice if at all. The skills are utilized in game and they should be legitimately listed on the character sheet, but it's really hard for a GM to setup situations where 25 sciences, 18 knowledge skills, and 9 professional skills come into play often enough to be worth the points spent.[/quote']

Very true. For example, my namesake character (Dr. Anomaly) has a total of 24 Science skills, 17 Knowledge skills, and 57 Languages at various levels. I felt these were necessary for how I'd envisioned the character, and my co-GM agreed. The problem was there was absolutely NO way to fit them all into the points available. It ended up being the same with each PC (something that was 'flavor'-type stuff, but vital to concept, that cost too many points) so for each PC we made some kind of exception.

 

In the case of Dr. Anomaly, we decided on a set of 'super' Skill Enhancers: Polyglot (languages), Sage (knowledges), and Polymath (sciences). Each cost double the usual Skill Enhancer price (6 points each) but cut 2 points off the cost of each applicable skill.

 

All told, in a couple of years of playing this character, I've actively used about 1/3 of the knowledge skills, half the science skills, and half-dozen of the languages. Even then, the reason the number used is so high is that for my various gadgets in my gadget pool, almost all of them have Requires a Skill Roll as a limitation, and I try to spread around pretty liberally which skills get used. The other big thing that accounts for that relatively large number of skills being used is that when my fellow GM has me make a roll while I'm playing, he usually says something along the lines of "Given the situation, which of your skills do you think would apply best?" I'll give a quick glance at my skills list (because I know them much better than he does, naturally) and tell him which one or two I have I think would be most applicable, and then he chooses one as the skill I'm rolling against. In other words, it's a cooperative effort to see all those skills aren't "wasted", but neither do they dominate game play.

 

So you can put me firmly in the camp of "some character concepts require large numbers of skills, and if you pay listed price for those, you may well end up crippling the character in terms of usefulness-in-play, so an alternative pricing method is appreciated."

[Manic Typist]

Re: New Skills Idea

 

Since these are only background skills' date=' and not the more useful skills such as Acrobatics, Breakfall, or Stealth, I'm not too worried about game balance being thrown out of whack. [/quote']

 

Fair enough. So, no Professional Skills? Just Knowledge etc?

[Gary]

Re: New Skills Idea

 

Very true. For example, my namesake character (Dr. Anomaly) has a total of 24 Science skills, 17 Knowledge skills, and 57 Languages at various levels. I felt these were necessary for how I'd envisioned the character, and my co-GM agreed. The problem was there was absolutely NO way to fit them all into the points available. It ended up being the same with each PC (something that was 'flavor'-type stuff, but vital to concept, that cost too many points) so for each PC we made some kind of exception.

 

In the case of Dr. Anomaly, we decided on a set of 'super' Skill Enhancers: Polyglot (languages), Sage (knowledges), and Polymath (sciences). Each cost double the usual Skill Enhancer price (6 points each) but cut 2 points off the cost of each applicable skill.

 

All told, in a couple of years of playing this character, I've actively used about 1/3 of the knowledge skills, half the science skills, and half-dozen of the languages. Even then, the reason the number used is so high is that for my various gadgets in my gadget pool, almost all of them have Requires a Skill Roll as a limitation, and I try to spread around pretty liberally which skills get used. The other big thing that accounts for that relatively large number of skills being used is that when my fellow GM has me make a roll while I'm playing, he usually says something along the lines of "Given the situation, which of your skills do you think would apply best?" I'll give a quick glance at my skills list (because I know them much better than he does, naturally) and tell him which one or two I have I think would be most applicable, and then he chooses one as the skill I'm rolling against. In other words, it's a cooperative effort to see all those skills aren't "wasted", but neither do they dominate game play.

 

So you can put me firmly in the camp of "some character concepts require large numbers of skills, and if you pay listed price for those, you may well end up crippling the character in terms of usefulness-in-play, so an alternative pricing method is appreciated."

 

 

Hmm, the default method would cost your character 9 pts for Enhancers, and 196 pts for skills (assuming 3 base pts per language) for a total of 205 pts.

 

Your Super Enhancer method would cost 18 for Enhancers and 98 for skills for a total of 116 pts.

 

My method would cost:

 

33 pts for Science 7 (up to 28 Sciences)

28 pts for Knowledge 6 (up to 21 KS)

53 pts for Language 11 (up to 66 Languages at 3 pt level)

 

For a total of 114 pts. And each additional point spent can add +7 to various science rolls, +6 to a KS, or +11 to add to Languages (although each language only has 2 pts left to 'grow').

 

It works out roughly the same between the 2 methods, but my method allows you to customize the skill rolls of the different skills to your taste in a cost effective manner.

[Gary]

Re: New Skills Idea

 

Fair enough. So' date=' no Professional Skills? Just Knowledge etc?[/quote']

 

I'd personally allow Professional Skills, but I haven't run any Street Level Champions, so I wouldn't know if it were unbalancing. I suspect it wouldn't be though.

 

I would also allow Area Knowledges as well. I don't see it as unbalancing to allow characters to purchase in bulk for a decent discount.

[Zed-F]

Re: New Skills Idea

 

This is what a limited skills-only cosmic VPP is for.

 

18 I Know Lots Of Stuff: Variable Power Pool (Skill Pool), 10 base + 8 control cost, Cosmic (+2) (25 Active Points); Only Professional, Science, Knowledge, and Language Skills Limited (-1/2), Known Skills Only (-1/4)

Notes: Adding new slots requires substantial study time and can only be done between adventures.

 

Much more reasonable price for a bunch of skills that will pretty much never see use. If it's not a limitation, it's not worth points, and if it doesn't help your character, it's not worth points. Besides, that way you aren't rolling fistfuls of dice for complementary skills all the time.

[ghost-angel]

Re: New Skills Idea

 

Here's an idea that doesn're require recosting the skills...

 

For characters that have a heavy set of skills is to buy the skills that are most likely to have immediate ingame impact. And write down the rest of the skills in a big list somewhere. The player and GM agree that this character "knows" these skills, but they rarely come into play. If they do come into play the character then pays for them to the level they agreed on, either with current XP or the next available XP.

 

At any time a character can pay XP to take a skill from The List and have it on their character sheet.

 

While I like Gary's method, it seems overly complex to me.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: New Skills Idea

 

My method would cost:

 

33 pts for Science 7 (up to 28 Sciences)

28 pts for Knowledge 6 (up to 21 KS)

53 pts for Language 11 (up to 66 Languages at 3 pt level)

 

For a total of 114 pts. And each additional point spent can add +7 to various science rolls, +6 to a KS, or +11 to add to Languages (although each language only has 2 pts left to 'grow').

 

It works out roughly the same between the 2 methods, but my method allows you to customize the skill rolls of the different skills to your taste in a cost effective manner.

Very true; on the other hand:

 

1) Neither my co-GM nor I thought of anything like your approach and

 

2) The 'super' enhancer method is much quicker & simpler, especially when it comes to bookkeeping and

 

3) Since we use HD to manage our charcter sheets, it's every easy to set up a 'super' enhancer in HD that does all the work for you, figures everything automatically, etc. I don't think that would be possible with your method.

 

Not saying it's a bad one, Gary; as I noted, as a player of 'skill-heavy' characters, I'm behind something that gives a price break to seldom-used background skills without which the character concept wouldn't feel right. I just don't think it would work for our particular application.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: New Skills Idea

 

Oh, one other question, Gary; does your method take into account (or even permit) using the Language Chart to influence the cost of Languages?

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: New Skills Idea

 

This is what a limited skills-only cosmic VPP is for.

 

18 I Know Lots Of Stuff: Variable Power Pool (Skill Pool), 10 base + 8 control cost, Cosmic (+2) (25 Active Points); Only Professional, Science, Knowledge, and Language Skills Limited (-1/2), Known Skills Only (-1/4)

Notes: Adding new slots requires substantial study time and can only be done between adventures.

 

Much more reasonable price for a bunch of skills that will pretty much never see use. If it's not a limitation, it's not worth points, and if it doesn't help your character, it's not worth points. Besides, that way you aren't rolling fistfuls of dice for complementary skills all the time.

Problem: you can now have the situation in which a skill you knew yesterday, or last week, at the 'world expert' level, is now one you don't possess at all (used the points for something else). While that might be right for some characters, I don't think it feels right for most skill-heavy characters I can think of off the top of my head.

 

Oh, yeah, a couple of other things, Zed-F: I wouldn't put the "Cosmic" advantage on the control cost, as part of "Cosmic" is "switch as a zero-phase action"...and you have in the notes "requires substantial study time, only between adventures." And what does "only known Skills" mean? If you already know the Skill, what's the pool for?

[stan da ork]

Re: New Skills Idea

 

I believe he's saying that when you create the character, you determine a list of "known skills." You can then at any time switch the VPP to include any of the skills on the list. Adding skills to the list takes study time, as if you were actually learning the new skill. This way you don't really forget anything, as you can always change the VPP to any of your known skills, but you don't get to automatically know every conceivable science or knowledge skill. As far as how many skills should be on the list to begin with, well, that would be a matter of character concept and balance considerations.

[Gary]

Re: New Skills Idea

 

This is what a limited skills-only cosmic VPP is for.

 

18 I Know Lots Of Stuff: Variable Power Pool (Skill Pool), 10 base + 8 control cost, Cosmic (+2) (25 Active Points); Only Professional, Science, Knowledge, and Language Skills Limited (-1/2), Known Skills Only (-1/4)

Notes: Adding new slots requires substantial study time and can only be done between adventures.

 

Much more reasonable price for a bunch of skills that will pretty much never see use. If it's not a limitation, it's not worth points, and if it doesn't help your character, it's not worth points. Besides, that way you aren't rolling fistfuls of dice for complementary skills all the time.

 

 

That's probably too cheap to know any background skill. Especially since Universal Translator is priced at 20 pts, and you still have to make an Int roll to use it.

[Gary]

Re: New Skills Idea

 

Oh' date=' one other question, Gary; does your method take into account (or even permit) using the Language Chart to influence the cost of Languages?[/quote']

 

 

I wouldn't recommend using it, but any GM is free to do whatever makes sense in his world.

[RDU Neil]

Re: New Skills Idea

 

I've said this before on another skill thread. If you want Background Skills (knowledges' date=' professions, and sciences) to be cheaper, then allow general skills to know lots of minute details about anything underneath them with a penalty to the roll. So instead of buying 50+ points worth of sciences for Reed Richards, just buy "Science" at 30- (or whatever level you think is appropriate) and say that if Reed needs to recall some specific thing about quantum mechanics as they relate to wormholes, he has to make a Science roll at -15 to effective skill (giving him a 15- roll to pull up the fact). No complicated skill webs (note that I absolute despise the Language chart), no weird house rules. KISS.[/quote']

 

This is definitely the directly I'd take... more in line with the original design of Champions... more in line with the superskill character, which is a superheroic style (rather than a "realistic" style) character.

 

KISS is exactly right.

 

(Oh... and before somebody brings up James Bond... I consider him on the unreasistic superheroic side of things as portrayed in the movies.)

 

For more "realistic" games (low level, crunchy, whatever) then I think the skill costs are good, because it isn't realistic for characters to have tons of master level skills... they should be that good in only a few, focused areas... that being where they put their points.

[RDU Neil]

Re: New Skills Idea

 

Here's an idea that doesn're require recosting the skills...

 

For characters that have a heavy set of skills is to buy the skills that are most likely to have immediate ingame impact. And write down the rest of the skills in a big list somewhere. The player and GM agree that this character "knows" these skills, but they rarely come into play. If they do come into play the character then pays for them to the level they agreed on, either with current XP or the next available XP.

 

At any time a character can pay XP to take a skill from The List and have it on their character sheet.

 

While I like Gary's method, it seems overly complex to me.

 

I'm all for this idea, too. Essentially it puts the burden on the player to say "It is important for me for my character to know this information as part of who-the-character-is. Thus I'm willing to spend my next EXP on this, right now."

 

I've done similar in a lot of games where a player will take 15 points in KS or SC or whatever... and have that be "five 3 point skills to be determined as needed"

 

Did this with "Contacts" quite a bit, so player's could say "Oh... I make one of my contact's an illegal chop-shop owner, who would have an idea where souped up van's could be bought/purchased" and away we go.