Why do we have skills?

[pinecone]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

Yeah, in general, "how the GM and players feel" is not a "rulable" item....some people just can't handle skiing backwards and shooting ninjas.....others Can.

 

And how you build it may or may Not change that.

 

Some people can accept the weird as a power, but not as a skill, no matter how skilled you may be. Others can, that makes it a "style" issue, and rules can't help with those issues (much...)

 

Me, I have no problem, other people do have a problem, and it's not nessisarily logical. I remember a thread where someone really did not like the idea that big people have a big advantage (heh I jest!) in hand to hand fighting. That not an entirely logical feeling, but thats their feeling none the less and theres no "fix" available either way....

So I can see room for both, in my experiance, heroic level has mostly all skills, but at the "super" level powers take precidence, and they should. Supers are all about the powers..

[David Johnston]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

As a tangent, there has been lots of talk about prices. Since Skills and Powers can accomplish the same tasks for different costs, should a point based system unify the mechanic? Should we arange things so that "Not Being Seen" costs exactly the same whether you build it as "Stealth 14-" or "Invisibility to Normal Sight and Normal Hearing, Requires a Dex Roll, Not when attacking or under direct observation"?

 

No. For one thing, it wouldn't just be Invisibility to Normal Sight and Hearing. It would be invisibility to the Sight and Hearing sensory groups. Also, it would be Innate.

 

I don't like using powers to sub for ludicrous skill levels precisely because it's wrong if Sherlock Holme's inductive faculties can be screwed up with Lex Luthor's anti-JLA ray.

[Mike W]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

Characters who are meant to be hackers often represent their hacking with powers, not Skills.

 

Characters meant to be based around skills often end up using Super Skills built with powers rather than Skills.

 

Characters meant to be Master Linguists often represent this with Powers or Talents.

 

Even when discussing real world uses of skills and equipment (tapping into a com link was the example that got me thinking about this again) many GMs and players prefer to use Powers rather than Skills.

 

At what point do you say "Skills can't accomplish this real world task in my game, let's use a power"?

 

Why do we have Skills at all in HERO System?

 

I think we are playing very different games. There are a lot of things that skills can do that powers can't and plenty of other things that skills can do which powers can also do - but skills allow "normal" humans to, say, hide in shadows, rather than have to generate a darkness field. And skills are often the basis for powers: Batman has all those cool gadgets in part because he built them. Hank Pym was a scientist who discovered Pym particles that let him change size. Spiderman built his webshooters and spider tracers.

[OddHat]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

No. For one thing' date=' it wouldn't just be Invisibility to Normal Sight and Hearing. It would be invisibility to the Sight and Hearing sensory groups. Also, it would be Innate.[/quote']

 

So, if that's how you see it, should Stealth 14- cost the same as Invisibility to Sight and Hearing Groups, 0 END, Innate, Dex Roll resisted by PER, May not Vanish Under Observation, Not When Attacking, Acts Exactly As Stealth? In a point based system, is this a case where the same effect purchased two different ways should have two different costs?

[OddHat]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

I think we are playing very different games.

 

Possibly. Mostly I'm asking to see other's takes on these issues.

 

There are a lot of things that skills can do that powers can't and plenty of other things that skills can do which powers can also do - but skills allow "normal" humans to, say, hide in shadows, rather than have to generate a darkness field. And skills are often the basis for powers: Batman has all those cool gadgets in part because he built them. Hank Pym was a scientist who discovered Pym particles that let him change size. Spiderman built his webshooters and spider tracers.

 

Fair enough. How would you feel about building a Batman style character with a raft of Superskills?

[Gadodel]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

For a newish player like myself, the distinction between Skills, Super-Skills and Powers is not only necessary, but functional. I tend to address the 'cinematic' aspects in which I would like to simulate by using the Power Luck. With it, I can let a player modify a character's action in all sorts of cool ways. The rules can be bent and shaped quite a bit and I still don't feel like a I am breaking anything.

[Chris Goodwin]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

Why do you prefer the Power build to giving James Bond a high enough level in PS:Skiing to allow him to ski backwards, or Holmes enough skill in Deduction to pull off his trick? After all, both can be acomplished using the Extraordinary Skill rule, and the exact penalties for both could be worked out.

 

This is not meant to be a leading question: I think there's a genuine feeling on the part of some GMs that skills and penalties aren't detailed enough, and that powers should take their place. I'm looking for confirmation of that, or other justifications for Power based "Skills" rather than Skills using the current system.

 

Late to the party, I know, but....

 

A Power is generally built according to the player's vision of a certain ability or concept; many GMs are loath to step on a player's concept based on a Power. A skill is a little less defined, and in a lot of ways relies on the player and GM to come to an understanding of exactly what the skill is capable of. Not to mention, as others have mentioned, the uncertainty inherent in a 3d6 roll.

[Vondy]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

Could I build all the skills ala powers?

 

Yes.

 

Is that desireable?

 

Though the answer is subjective, mine is "no."

 

First we have to consider genre. Whether or not the super-skill (meaning built with powers and not necessarily "super") route is apropos to the genre needs to be evaluated. Skills built with powers tend to be very effective, and to better represent the style of play in cinematic and superheroic games where characters have "uncanny abilities." In those cases super-skills are good. In grittier genres, or groups where more granularity and realism is desired, this is not necessarily the best way to model skills.

 

Second, and here is the kicker in my opinion, Lockpicking 13- (3) is a heck of a lot cleaner than building a telekinesis power with fine manipulation and a host of modifiers to represent the precise application of the power called "lockpicking." Or, God forbid, a transform locked lock into unlocked lock. Its absurd to think you would have to do this for every skill a character has. Not merely absurd - its an obscenity.

[David Johnston]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

So' date=' if that's how you see it, should Stealth 14- cost the same as Invisibility to Sight and Hearing Groups, 0 END, Innate, Dex Roll resisted by PER, May not Vanish Under Observation, Not When Attacking, Acts Exactly As Stealth? [/quote']

 

There are so many not officially defined modifiers on that one that I can't even say whether it does or not. And, frankly the second one is so inconvenient that the only thing that concerns me is making sure it's more expensive so nobody will ever point grub to that extent.

[OddHat]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

There are so many not officially defined modifiers on that one that I can't even say whether it does or not. And' date=' frankly the second one is so inconvenient that the only thing that concerns me is making sure it's more expensive so nobody will ever point grub to that extent.[/quote']

 

The official status of a given modifier is a side issue; you can always find a price for them that works for you in your campaign. The question is, should two game elements that do exactly the same thing in play have different costs? If not, why?

[OddHat]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

Could I build all the skills ala powers?

 

Yes.

 

Is that desireable?

 

Though the answer is subjective, mine is "no."

[sNIP]

 

Second, and here is the kicker in my opinion, Lockpicking 13- (3) is a heck of a lot cleaner than building a telekinesis power with fine manipulation and a host of modifiers to represent the precise application of the power called "lockpicking." Or, God forbid, a transform locked lock into unlocked lock. Its absurd to think you would have to do this for every skill a character has. Not merely absurd - its an obscenity.

 

Repped.

[Kristopher]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

Personally, I think that "superskills" shouldn't have been introduced to the game. I agree with Von D-Man's most recent post, as well.

[Mike W]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

Possibly. Mostly I'm asking to see other's takes on these issues.

 

 

 

Fair enough. How would you feel about building a Batman style character with a raft of Superskills?

 

Define "super skills" please. If you're talking about the practice of "building skills as powers" because the character's ability to do them come from their powers - well, that's still powers to me. If you want to be able to do what a skill does, buy the skill. If you build a power to replace it, the power will be more limited in application(and probably more expensive). Buying actual skills as powers doesn't work for me unless you have a very good reason, so it almost never happens. One permissible example I could think of (maybe) allowing would be a cyborg character whose brain goes "offline" in certain circumstances and it causes him to not be able to access the information at times when a normal character could.

 

Since most of Batman's equipment is theoretically possible in real life(just impractical), you don't need skills beyond normal human ken. And even for the things you can't do in real life, within a comic book setting, especially one as rose colored as DC traditionally is(recent changes aside), you could still explain everything he does with skills. (I'm talking Batman here, not JLA Batgod, but even then, you could do it by building extra equipment that does not directly replace his skills).

 

As far as "realism" goes, anything past about 15 or 16- is getting into the world class level. From there on out,you're buying against penalties as much as anything. Depending on campaign tone/setting, a 17- Pharmacology roll lets you do different things. In a superhero game, it can help you invent an actual "Hyde formula" like Calvin Zabo did, to turn himself into Mr. Hyde. In a gritty, heroic, "realistic" setting, it means that you can invent a drug that makes people really angry by messing up their brain/body chemistry. But no Hyde formula because it isn't realstic for the drug to also make you double in size and gain super strength. Hyde formula makes sense in "comic book science" but not in real life science.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

Personally' date=' I think that "superskills" shouldn't have been introduced to the game. [/quote']

 

A) They weren't "introduced", they're just another expression of the Powers rules.

 

That aside, why not?

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

A) They weren't "introduced", they're just another expression of the Powers rules.

 

That aside, why not?

 

I think that what bothers me the most about them is that they run against what had been clearly established in Fifth Edition as reasonable campaign genre parameters. For campaigns that are fairly realistic in terms of what characters can do, Skills are appropriate. For very powerful characters with nonrealistic abilities such as from supers or high fantasy, Powers let you accomplish their feats. For campaigns that allow for extraordinary feats that are still within the realm of the humanly possible, such as filmic "action heroes," Talents are the choice in between the other two. 5E even gave us precedents for designing our own original Talents.

 

Super-Skills as a separate category completely leapfrog over Talents, which IMO was mostly unnecessary and undesirable.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

The official status of a given modifier is a side issue; you can always find a price for them that works for you in your campaign. The question is' date=' should two game elements that do exactly the same thing in play have different costs? If not, why?[/quote']

 

Well, first you'll need to have player/GM agreement as to what would be required in the way of Modifiers to a Power to get it to work exactly the same as a given Skill. There's a lot of subjectivity involved there, not to mention the aforementioned complexity of the build. Second, there are many ways that the costs of Powers can be mitigated in the game, from putting them in Power Frameworks to changing base costs for Spells as suggested in FH, which aren't normally available for Skills. Getting a comparable cost may depend on which groundrules you set out for your individual campaign.

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

Super-Skills as a separate category completely leapfrog over Talents, which IMO was mostly unnecessary and undesirable.

 

I mentally class superskills as talents - I think of them as a subcatagory, even if that isn't how they are presented in the published material. In my FH game I have a number of things that would be "superskills" - I have them written up in the talents section of my campaign stuff.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

I think that what bothers me the most about them is that they run against what had been clearly established in Fifth Edition as reasonable campaign genre parameters. For campaigns that are fairly realistic in terms of what characters can do, Skills are appropriate. For very powerful characters with nonrealistic abilities such as from supers or high fantasy, Powers let you accomplish their feats. For campaigns that allow for extraordinary feats that are still within the realm of the humanly possible, such as filmic "action heroes," Talents are the choice in between the other two. 5E even gave us precedents for designing our own original Talents.

 

Super-Skills as a separate category completely leapfrog over Talents, which IMO was mostly unnecessary and undesirable.

 

Ah -- yes from the semantics standpoint they are just Talents. Ive been very vocal about not understanding why they chose to make anoter category that is identical to Talents and call it "Super Skills".

 

Personally, I just think of them as Talents.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

All right, you guys make a good point. If you use the writeups for Super Skills as just the mechanical way that their cost is derived, you could otherwise treat most of them as Talents.

 

I am somewhat mollified, and my blood pressure thanks you.

[David Johnston]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

The official status of a given modifier is a side issue; you can always find a price for them that works for you in your campaign. The question is' date=' should two game elements that do exactly the same thing in play have different costs? If not, why?[/quote']

 

It's impossible to ensure that there will never be a more expensive way to produce the same result. There are too many idiot Innate Area Effect AVLD Mind Control Single Command (Don't Notice Me) possibilities. Just use Stealth dude. That's what it's there for. It's all you need.

[Just Joe]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

Characters who are meant to be hackers often represent their hacking with powers, not Skills.

 

Characters meant to be based around skills often end up using Super Skills built with powers rather than Skills.

 

Characters meant to be Master Linguists often represent this with Powers or Talents.

 

Even when discussing real world uses of skills and equipment (tapping into a com link was the example that got me thinking about this again) many GMs and players prefer to use Powers rather than Skills.

 

At what point do you say "Skills can't accomplish this real world task in my game, let's use a power"?

 

Why do we have Skills at all in HERO System?

Ugh, my computer just ate my first reply (halfway complete), so here's the shorter version. I am no fan of Super Skills. I think they're generally amusing, but often inefficient and rarely add to the game.

 

I like regular skills (though sometimes bought at 17- or better). TUS (which I received only yesterday and have barely skimmed) looks like it's going to make me like them even more.

[OddHat]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

So, what we have as of this point in the thread:

 

Pro Super Skill / Talent / Power as Skill:

• 1) More control in the hands of the Player rather than the GM.
  2) More quantified in HERO system.
  3) Can accomplish tasks that skills can't, though this becomes subjective.
  

 

Pro Skill:

• 1) Simple and direct.
  2) Flexible.
  3) Cheap.

 

Anti Super Skill / Talent / Power as Skill:

• 1) Too complex.
  2) Too expensive for some campaigns.
  3) Mechanics sometimes don't represent the full range of what the skill should do.
  4) Mechanics can cause non-intuitive results, i.e. Super Sleuth becoming less of a detective when hit with a Power Drain.

 

Anti-Skill:

• 1) Not detailed enough as far as exactly what can and can't be done.
  2) Too cheap compared to accomplishing the same thing with a Power.

 

General Issues:

• 1) In a point based system, similar effects should have similar costs.

 

Anyone have anything to add to the above?

[RDU Neil]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

Characters who are meant to be hackers often represent their hacking with powers, not Skills.

 

Characters meant to be based around skills often end up using Super Skills built with powers rather than Skills.

 

Characters meant to be Master Linguists often represent this with Powers or Talents.

 

Even when discussing real world uses of skills and equipment (tapping into a com link was the example that got me thinking about this again) many GMs and players prefer to use Powers rather than Skills.

 

At what point do you say "Skills can't accomplish this real world task in my game, let's use a power"?

 

Why do we have Skills at all in HERO System?

 

Late coming to this thread (and I did not read other replies) but I just have to say that your assumptions above do not represent my 25 years of play experience at all. My ninjas have stealth and they roll it. My hackers have Comp. Programming and they roll it. Skills are a huge part of the game as I play it and even if we occassionally have Super Skill builds it is rare. (I, for one, am not fond of the concept.)

 

Even in Supers games, I often recommend... "Build the person first... the basic characteristics and skills... then layer on powers." That is certainly not 100% the path, but tends to be how our play group approaches it.

 

I think, in many ways, this touches on posts in the past where I've commented on Hero being "two games." One game is "clever builder game" which is all about trying to know every mechanical in-and-out and build based on mechanical functionality... and the other is actual play. I find that the two are often quite dissimilar and contradictory. Building to functionality (which is the Super Skill concept in a nutshell) drives a much more mechanical style of play I do not enjoy. I'd rather someone have broadly defined skills on a page... then just "play the character" and be clever about "I'd like to use my Accounting skill to..." in play.

 

In fact, my favorite games are the ones with PCs focused around characteristics and skills with few or no talents or powers at all. In supers, I'm not fond of the clever builder... usually focused on greater functionality at the most efficient cost... vs. powers as defining elements about what is "cool and Story driving" about the character.

 

To me, Skills are what the game is all about... much more so than powers.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

RDU, weve gone round and round on similar subjects before, but I still am at a loss for why you insist on postulating such a false dichotomy between the design time and run time of a game system.

 

You seem to have a very definite mindset that a person is either focused on design time (which in your opinion is wrong) or on the run time (which in your opinion is proper).

 

Is it impossible for you to imagine that for some people each one reenforces and enables the other, in a classic yin yang arrangement? That one can use the mechanics to design just the right way to properly acheive the desired in game effect that you imagine, and that the way things work during actual game play can in turn inspire the design process?

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: Why do we have skills?

 

That one can use the mechanics to design just the right way to properly acheive the desired in game effect that you imagine' date=' and that the way things work during actual game play can in turn inspire the design process?[/quote']

 

That is almost exactly the way I play. I cannot play a character I don't have defined down to most exact state I can; I have to know exactly what the character is capable of, and how he acts within the game world. In the acting within the game world, I get ideas for things he should learn to be able to to do, design those things, with the same precision, and then use those in the game.

 

Nicely stated, and repped.