Skills - not that important?

[PaycheckHero]

Thanks for all the replies, there were some interesting points. And I think that, yes, looking at superheroic sample characters probably is a bad idea when you're looking at how skills would be distributed in a Heroic setting.

There might be an exception for well-written superheroes based on skillmasters. You could check over Surbrook's versions of batman, for example. The problem with that is that writeups of actual comic characters are often not written to a point total, so they don't have to be point-efficient. It's nice not to have everyone optimizing down to the last point, but it's NOT nice to be much less useful than anyone else in the party so efficiency does matter. So yeah, writeups for heroic games is probably by far the best idea.

 

 

And the "roll high" digression was surprisingly apropos, as my group switched over to that lately -- as nobody's really that entrenched in the system, it doesn't hurt and I'm a stickler for unified systems (which is my prime reason for using HERO in the first place). Gave us no problem that far, apart from the need to modify your HERO Designer print outs a bit for ease of reference.

It's unfortunate that Hero basically has a unified system, but it's not written up to make it explicit. It's good that you understand the system well enough to just convert. You can put the '10' term on either side of the inequality, and if I'm playing with people who don't know the system I'm likely to use it both ways so I'm always the one adding/subtracting it for the NPC rather than making the player do it. But if your players are learning the system, do as Tasha says and treat '10' as the default difficulty for all rolls, with DCV as the additional difficulty factor for hitting *that* character. It'll feel right to you, I think, and work extremely well. Just remember if you add the optional critical hit rules you basically have to use the little trick I posted about flipping over the dice (unless you change it to have different statistics, which is fine if you like the results). If you don't use

crits, everything just works.

 

 

Given a high-CP character, the purchasing structure for a skill monkey really doesn't justify putting a lot of points in single skills, true. You're better off with some generic skill levels and good attributes. And as opposed to combat, you're rarely juggling points. You're defending and attacking at the same time, but it's rare that you'll be using astronomy and biology for the same action.

True, but if you want the whole system unified you have to retain the possibility of using one skill to decide if an effect is achieved (to hit) and another to decide how much (damage). If you're clever you can find times where this makes sense. For example, suppose Jezebel is flirting with James, intending to seduce him and steal a secret code he has sewn into the lining of his jacket. Mary knows what is going on but (for whatever reason) can't reveal her knowledge to James, thus she instead must spoil Jezebel's seduction attempt more subtly. Sounds like a complex skill contest to me, and if this is crucial to the party's success it's worth elaborating. So let Jezebel attack with seduction vs James' ego, and either use the amount made by for damage or make a separate damage roll based on persuasion (so it's working as a kind of complementary skill) + striking appearance. Mary attacks with, say, High Society (she's being catty and trying to humiliate and denigrate Jezebel in James' eyes) vs Jezebel's High Society (because this is essentially a contest of wits and manners, I'd say it's the same skill both ways). If she succeeds, she can roll for damage based on presence as well. The first one that achieves more body damage than James has ego wins. You could also let Jezebel attack Mary with High Society as well to diminish her in James' eyes and thus be less effective against Jezebel.

 

Now here's the thing--that won't be fun unless the players enjoy actually role-playing out the seduction and cattiness. So know your group. That was also just an example off the top of my head. In practice I'd ask the players what skills they have that they think would be useful in the situation, to give them the maximum chance of using their character's strengths. (Maybe Mary doesn't have High Society--I'd let her use something else *if* she can role-play how she's using it in that situation and how it makes sense. Maybe she's going to change the subject to James' obsession, cricket, and fight with her KS: Cricket skill instead.)

 

Or, you could just buy the APG II and use their very detailed re-write of the martial arts rules to cover social interaction of precisely this kind. That's likely to be better in practice than something I just made up, but my point isn't about social skills but rather that you can treat *any* skill contest this way if the players are interested enough to appreciate spending twenty minutes gaming it out instead of making a quick roll. You could do Chess: The Roleplaying Game and let characters have separate offense/defense chess strategy skills (Karpov clearly was a more defensive player than Kasparov, and for this game we want to model that detail), and perhaps a third "tactics" skill to determine damage (as some players are stronger on detailed combinations than they are at overall strategy). You can do it with anything--*if* it's fun for everyone. Don't inflict this on people who just want to kill orcs after a hard day at work. :-)

 

 

Regarding background skills, well, the free PS/KS ain't that bad. And with some GM generosity you could eke some mileage out of that, especially with the complementary skill rules. But I think for future campaigns I might steal something from recent editions of Shadowrun (despite my general animosity towards that setting): A free pool of KS, but with rather specific specializations. So someone might buy KS(dwarven swords) or KS(Capitalia downtown street gangs).

You're getting at something here that *is* a system issue--that Hero skills are arguably too expensive and have no wholesale discount. For my batman-like character, I pointed out to the GM that to build the concept (which was a character learning to emulate batman) I'd have to buy every skill batman has (which is most of them), and it wouldn't be cost-effective because many wouldn't really come up much. So he let me create custom skill enhancers (e.g. master detective to reduce the cost of detective skills, master athlete for acrobatics and such, master engineer for all those gadgets he somehow knows how to make--I probably never rolled on those, they just justified the utility belt--and so on). I don't know that I'd let most characters do this because it's easily abused, but given how many skills I was buying and how seldom some would come into play, I think it was reasonable for that character and I'd allow it in my own games for a similar character (if only one player wanted to be the "world's greatest detective"--if several did, I'd want them to specialize and give each a different specialty in which he was supreme, so maybe each can pick *one* category for a special enhancer that can't duplicate someone else's enhancer).

 

What I'm getting at is that I do think there is a bit of a problem with the Hero cost structure for extreme characters with a very large number of skills, but it depends somewhat on the game, the party, and the character. If you find this a problem in your games, you can alter the cost structure a bit just as that GM did. You could just announce in advance that (1) you'll be generous with the free "skills that won't come up in the game much" category, and (2) skill-based characters can pick one custom enhancer by giving a one or two word description of what they're particularly good at. (If your players try to jerk you around on this, say that you can't have a custom enhancer for any character with OCV, DCV, DEF, or maximum active point power toward the top of the campaign norm.) I think that would work pretty well, as it gives a cost break for skills but encourages characters that have as specialty and not just "everything." (I only did "everything" for my character because his dream was to someday be as good as The Batman, who is like the Patron Saint of skill-based characters, and also nobody else had a skill-based character so I didn't step on any toes. He'd have been more effective if the skills were more focused (and thus cheaper).)

[mhd]

Just let me add that with "unified system" I just meant something where there are as few as possible orthogonal systems within the rules. HERO is pretty great in that regard, as almost anything can be broken down to simple Powers. It gets slightly hand-wavey with martial arts and probably some perk-based magic systems, but apart from that it seems pretty hunky-dorey. All kinds of power systems, special abilities of PCs and creatures -- no problem. This is why I switched over from GURPS, which has a greatly improved Powers system in its current edition, but also lots of old baggage when it comes to Magic and other subsystems.

 

That's the major unified part, not having too many dice rolling conventions is another (cf. AD&D). And with little effort, HERO fits the bill. Now we're basically down to task resolution & damage, which makes me and my group really happy.

 

I'm not particularly keen on trying to have unified approaches to resolving every task, i.e. no "social combat". Simple skill rolls for simple/lengthy situations, role-playing for the rest. Haven't met a "narrativist" approach that I like yet, so I'd much rather do it like HERO, GURPS, D20, BRP etc.

 

Speaking of GURPS (which basically has identical skill resolution mechanisms), is it wrong to say that one of the core differences is that task difficulties tend to be disregarded or slightly lower in HERO, thus there's little need for a skill value beyond 13- -- thus creating the situation where this is actually quite the high end of proficiency? Which really boils down to simple GM styles. Just by presenting higher difficulties, my campaign should have little issues with 13- being a somewhat heroic starting value, but Tracking/Stealth etc. beyond that is still valuable.

[Tasha]

I can't elaborate more(I need to leave for my Thursday night game), but my idea is for a Simplified Skill system. Perhaps merging some of the skills together to widen their appeal. Also making the system appear the same as the Combat to hit system. IMHO skill level in 6e are a bit expensive at the moment. Which tends to make buying stats up the better investment.

[Vondy]

I can't elaborate more(I need to leave for my Thursday night game), but my idea is for a Simplified Skill system. Perhaps merging some of the skills together to widen their appeal. Also making the system appear the same as the Combat to hit system. IMHO skill level in 6e are a bit expensive at the moment. Which tends to make buying stats up the better investment.

 

Some of this is character design philosophy and play-style rather than system design, I think. The zeitgeist as we've proceded through editions is increasingly granular builds: super-skills, more talents, and more background skills. We really saw it kick in hard with the 4E Dark Champions, which heralded the advent of "Longism." Steve has a very granular approach to character design, and we saw that formalized in 5E and 6E. We saw the addition of multiple auto-fire skills, rapid attacks (2), two weapon fighting (2), skills with sub-skills built in (survival, etc), and new skills. We also saw genre books loaded with super-skills, new lists of background skills, and new talents. Basically, Steve's general approach has been "anything that can be modelled and stated out should be on the sheet and paid for." I think Steve's approach is valid, but doesn't have to be eclusive. One could also build characters with "essentials only," and interpret the application of what's there liberally and flexibly to the character's overall advantage. For instance, instead of a laundry-list of background skills for a savvy private eye, why not just leverage streetwise and PS: private eye? A master hacker could just leverage computer program, some of the tech skills like sysops, and PS: hacker? Why list out a gazillion KS's, SS's, etc? Interestingly, Steve's 6E enemies books for Champions fly in the face of his own traditional granularity fetishism and fit this model: the write-ups tend to be power-heavy supers with only the bare minimum of perks, skills, and talents to round out the concept. I think, for the genre in question, he made the right call. But it also demonstrates there is more than one way to use the system - even as written. You can just ignore the extras and strip it down.

[Sean Waters]

.......

Social skills ... heck, anything other than direct attack powers ... certainly take a back seat in Hero. If skills were employed with the same absolute on/off treatment as powers, that would increase their importance, but most GMs aren't willing to do that. (By absolute on/off, I mean, a player who has 20 points in skills but no points spent in an Energy Blast is completely incapable of employing Energy Blast except by picking up a blaster pistol -- which may not exist. By contrast, the Energy Blaster with no points spent in skills is still all too often allowed to attempt to use many skills -- even in patently asinine cases -- and rolls of 3 or 4 on 3d6 do happen from time to time.) And social skills (other than the sledgehammer of the Presence Attack, which explicitly is not skill-based) are in practice worthless in HERO combat.

 

Sean and Tasha's idea about a more elaborate skill system possibly encouraging skill use ... I am not so sure about that. To encourage skill use you will have to provide clear benefits from use of skills that cannot easily be obtained without skill use, it seems as clear as that. If you can get the bennies without buying skills, then spending in skills is just a self-inflicted wound.

 

Well, it may be that you could address some of the problems with a few skill system rules.  For example:

 

If you adopt/adapt the 'combat' system for use with skills, you have Skill = +X where X = ((Characteristic/5)-2) + Skill levels.  You might decide that the maximum 'roll bonus' is Skill + 2.  That means that '9' is the best you can roll; anything 'better' simply meaning that the result reverts to an 9.  That would be an additional incentive to buy skill levels - not only do you get the advantage of the skill levels but you also have the chance to roll better numbers.

 

Or you could decide that the maximum 'difficulty' you can affect is Skill +4: some things are just not possible for a given skill level.  For a crunchier feel, each +2 that the difficulty exceeds the skill by applies a -1 modifier to the roll.  For example, if you, with your Lockpick 4, you can just roll against a lock of difficulty 4 or 5, but a difficulty 6 or 7 lock (as well as having a higher difficulty) applies a -1 to your total.  This would mean that tasks that are within your range are relatively straightforward but tasks that are beyond your normal competence rapidly become a lot more difficult.

 

Equally you could decide that you can not add bonuses to your skill that are more than your skill levels +1: that would mean that someone who is naturally talented (high characteristic) is still good with a skill, but they can not use all the little dodges and their knowledge to up the odds much: a natural talent is not going to be much better after an hour of preparation than there are right then, whereas someone who is skilled through training can put that hour to good use to maximise their chances.

 

These ideas (which need a lot more work) would begin to address the 'absolute/non absolute problem.  People with basic skills will find them quite limited in utility: they can still use skills, but their success will be capped.  This will give more value to skill levels over increased characteristics, or just relying on everyman skills.

[Sean Waters]

Paycheck Hero / mhd:

 

To add some confusion I toyed with the idea that a roll of '3', whilst being a very good roll for success, is not actually a great result.  The higher the roll the better for result.

 

Basically when you roll 3d6, roll 3 different coloured dice.  Say Blue Red White.  If the roll succeeds, use the roll as the first part of any damage roll (if the damage is less than 3d6, then use the blue then red then white dice in that order i.e. alphabetic).  When I suggested this before the general response was one of horror.  Still...

 

What it means is that a roll of 3, which is a matter of pure luck, means that you have a marginal success.  3 is no longer an automatic hit.  The best you can manage is a roll of 18, which is a great success i.e. you are starting off with 18 points of damage.  Of course you can only roll a 18 and still succeed if you have an enormous skill advantage over your opponent/the task, which rewards having a better skill as it means potentially better effect.  18 is no longer an automatic miss*.

 

It seems like a very good way of determining the chance to succeed and the level of effect from a single roll whilst maintaining the random element and rewarding skill investment.  This is particularly useful for extended skill rolls which - hang on, I'm not sure if we have them explicitly**.  Anyway, it means that someone with a skill roll of 16 or less is able to get an effect of up to 16 points.  Someone with a skill roll of 9 or less can only get up to 9.  This does not necessarily mean that the higher skill wins every contest, it just makes it a lot more likely.

 

You can do the same thing in combat, using the 3d6 roll to hit as the first part of any damage roll***.

 

Lovely.

 

Rotten fruit?  My favourite...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*You can handle this 2 (or more) ways:

 

1. If you have such an enormous advantage that you will succeed on a roll of 18, the success is automatic and the dice are rolled just to determine level of effect.

2. If you roll an 19 you need to make a secondary roll, and get 11 or less to hit (whatever your secondary roll, if you succeed, then you use the '18' for the effect roll).  For each point over 18 that you would have succeeded on with the original roll, you get a +1 bonus on your secondary roll, do if you would hit on a (modified) 21 or less and roll 18, you get a bonus to your secondary roll of (21-18  = 3) which means the secondary roll succeeds on 14- (11+3). 

 

 

 

**Simple stuff: each side has to accumulate a certain number of successes to win.  Using the 3d6 = success+effect idea, you might need to get 30 to win.  If one party has a skill of 11- and the other has a skill of 13-, they both start rolling, one for one, and count their successes (and, if you like, failures).  If they both roll an 8, they both get 8 points of effect.  If they both roll a 12 then the 11- player gets no successes (or 1 point of failure, which deducts from successes, if you are counting failures as setbacks) and the second gets 12 points of effect.  The more skilled character is not guaranteed to win, but the odds are in their favour that they will have more successes and those successes will, on average, have more effect on the final outcome.

 

 

 

***Just a footnote to say that I am deliberately avoiding mentioning Diceless Hero at this point.  

[mhd]

I can't elaborate more(I need to leave for my Thursday night game), but my idea is for a Simplified Skill system. Perhaps merging some of the skills together to widen their appeal. Also making the system appear the same as the Combat to hit system. IMHO skill level in 6e are a bit expensive at the moment. Which tends to make buying stats up the better investment.

 

If you can, of course. In Heroic campaigns this might be a bit difficult, especially if your caps are set a bit lower than simply the usual human limits. This was actually one of the bigger differences between GURPS 3E and 4E, whereas they kept 20 as basically the maximum human achievement, they also positioned that most people tend towards the lower third of the 10-20 range. I think they even called that by some cute name like "cult of stat normalization". Part of that comes from the different buying system (3E gave you the first points beyond 10 a bit cheaper), but another is simply a consensus on a more realistic playing style. Both of which could easily be ported to HERO for certain campaigns. Or you could just take another step on the road towards no figured statistics and eliminate the attribute bonuses wholesale.

 

As for simplified skill systems, I'm currently not looking into adapting this, as I'd actually like skills to be the primary candidate where points are spent, but in a system where either skills or advancement aren't that important, one might simply go with abolishing skills and just using skill levels as general "backgrounds". Cheaper if it's more specific, so "fire magic" costs significantly less than "court wizard of the gnomish burrows". Every background skill level just adds to the attribute base.

 

Looking at other systems, cinematic GURPS had its "bang" skills, where you had e.g. "Drive!" which applied to all kinds of vehicles, repairing them etc.. Just cost a lot more and thus could be used alongside the normal skill system. In a highly cinematic game you'd just have a collection of bang skills, in more "normal" ones each character would just have a few, if at all.. In HERO, one could buy that as a combination of skill levels and maybe a perk to use each skill in a group at its attribute base?

The recent Shadowrun revision has "skill groups", where you could have a base level for a whole skill category (ranged weaponry, science etc.), with the option of buying specific skills that exceed that rating. Expensive and rare, mostly for veterans who've seen it all or are just wildly talented. Reminded me a bit of the OCV+CSL system.

[Cancer]

I completely disagree with this; apparently you've only played with a particular type of GM. My favorite hero character was the most dedicated skill-based superhero I've played with, as already described.

I acknowledge the possible truth in what you say here; I admit that it seems likely I've had GM selection problems. Though it's not just one individual GM in the group with whom I've had the experience that many skills were of low value; it's four different ones.

 

This contradicts your (correct, in my view) assertion that it depends on the GM. The game can't make social skills take a back seat, that's entirely up to the GM (and what the players want--Jane Austen Hero, anyone?). This is not hero's fault--it is a GM choice. The hardest hard-SF game I ever ran was in hero, and I don't even remember if there was any actual combat in the game. There may have been a couple of minor encounters, but if so they weren't important enough to remember. The entire game was based around role-playing the skills (especially technical skills--everyone involved had advanced science or engineering training and one of the ground rules was that you could argue technical facts with the GM the way some groups argue rules). Combat abilities were basically irrelevant in that game. This worked at least as well in hero as it would have in any system.

I envy you your experience. Just looking back on characters I've played in the last dozen years ... one high-science background character in a Champions campaign got to use his sciences exactly once in the campaign. In a dark paranormal campaign (a Buffy sort of thing) the tech geek werewolf had his attempts at tech innovation (a technological vampire detector, via real-time image processing comparing images from optical trains with and without reflecting elements, since vampires don't make images in mirrors) stonewalled. In a Pulp campaign, it was information skills, not the sciences per se, that went nowhere. Deduction? Uhhh, no, you can't think of anything here, sorry. About the only skill that has been used often is Driving (which is used in combat with vehicles, of course).

 

My reference to social skills was not intended in this way, though. Another system, TORG, had explicit mechanics that strongly and specifically rewarded use of certain social-type skills (Trick, Test of Wills, Taunt, and the more-or-less-combat-only Manuver) in combat rather than having combat be nothing but a contest of attack powers/moves and defense powers/moves. That system as one of its design goals was to have combats that emulated movie-type action in combat. As a system it had its own problems, of course. But it provided a reason to try something in combat besides "I hit it with my alpha strike".

 

Of course [social skills] are [worthless in combat]. Is combat the only thing that happens in your games? If so, of course social skills are worthless. They're also worthless in Panzerblitz. You can't take social skills and complain they're worthless in combat. They aren't for combat.

I disagree here; the "of course" should not apply in an RPG (unlike PanzerBlitz, which explicitly is purely a tactical wargame, and I like tactical wargames). First example: If there's anything like a leadership (or perhaps tactics) skill which characters can be constructed to have in order to boost or enable their allies in combat (and I have Captain America as shown in the movies in mind here), that is a social skill which includes in-combat use and effects. That same skill should be useable outside of combat also, performing analysis of grand strategy and forecasting what an enemy is likely to try next, or analyzing an existing strategic situation to gain insight on the forces the opponent has and doesn't have available therefore what weaknesses the opponent has. Second example: I can see specific cases where seemingly irrelevant skills like Seduction would be applicable in combat (Catwoman vs Batman, anyone?). And yes, there should be specific times when skills can't help, and that is part of the intended features of an encounter: e.g., one of the reasons Automatons are dangerous enemies is that by definition automatons are impervious social things (but on the other hand, they may have technological or arcane vulnerabilities that a skilled tech or magic-using character can figure out on the battlefield).

 

One thing that I think more recent versions of hero make explicit is that a character sheet is like an agreement between the GM and the player. ...

I concur. I would extend the statement. It's a negotiable contract at game (or character) onset and that negotiation should be expected to be more than a take-it-or-leave-it thing on either side. The GM not only has the right to say, "No, in this campaign I'm not planning on this sort of thing arising, so you must change this facet of the character," the GM has the obligation to say it if it's true. And the player has to be willing to accept statements like, "No, no ninjas or anything like them. Superhuman stealth is a phenomenon that is not available in this campaign." But at the same time the player is able to make counteroffers/queries like, "Can I take a conditional invisibility power, then?" and come to a negotiated agreement about what player gets to do and what GM is expecting to reward and contend with.

 

I have known many GMs who wouldn't do that, on the basis that they didn't want to tip their hands in any way about what they planned to do. It's a throwback to the old days of strictly adversarial RPGs, and it seems to be very hard to unlearn.

[megaplayboy]

Has anyone toyed with the idea of skills-as-limited-stats concept?  E.g., "Charm" would be a bonus to PRE rolls and PRE attacks, only for purposes of befriending or seducing someone(-1?).  Skills that would require specialized knowledge or training could have a "base" adder associated with them(1-10+ points, depending on usefulness).  Perhaps in a hyper-simplified 4 color setting, a super-scientist might have an adder to their base INT, to simulate an extremely broad knowledge base(they get to roll their INT, plus any bonuses, where any scientific discipline is involved).  Just a thought. That would bring skills more into line with stats and/or powers, methinks.  Plus a GM could set a target number to beat and the skill player could roll a big handful of dice.

[Vondy]

Has anyone toyed with the idea of skills-as-limited-stats concept?  E.g., "Charm" would be a bonus to PRE rolls and PRE attacks, only for purposes of befriending or seducing someone(-1?).  Skills that would require specialized knowledge or training could have a "base" adder associated with them(1-10+ points, depending on usefulness).  Perhaps in a hyper-simplified 4 color setting, a super-scientist might have an adder to their base INT, to simulate an extremely broad knowledge base(they get to roll their INT, plus any bonuses, where any scientific discipline is involved).  Just a thought. That would bring skills more into line with stats and/or powers, methinks.  Plus a GM could set a target number to beat and the skill player could roll a big handful of dice.

 

You could just buy this as skill levels, basically.

 

Athletic: +4 to all "athletic related" DEX rolls.

Alluring: +4 to charm, conversation, and persuasion related rolls, etc.

Tell me Now: +4 to interrogation rolls.

 

It would work. My question is, would it actually prove cheaper?

 

That's probably a case-by-case analysis...

[Sean Waters]

No.  I'm pretty sure that we should make up our own stats*, and delete such things as PRE and INT.  I really don't recall anyone suggesting Einstein was any good at Bugging, Disguise or Survival.  Maybe he was, but that is not the point: the point is that 'Smart dos not equal Practical' and a lot of Intellect skills are practical, at least in practice.

 

Linking skills to characteristics is always going to cause appalling contradictions.  

 

Let's get rid of characteristics.

 

 

 

* Mna mnu malu: I don't actually mean make up characteristics, I mean you can build with skill levels and the skill levels apply to, well, whatever you like.  that defines how your combination of physical, mental and emotional innate abilities actually manifest in your abilities.  In effect you ARE making up characteristics, but you are doing it on a VERY individual basis.  I don't know: a 3 point skill level gives you +1 with 3 skills, 5 points gives you =1 with 6 skills, a 10 point level gives you =1 will the lot.

[Sean Waters]

You could just buy this as skill levels, basically.

 

Athletic: +4 to all "athletic related" DEX rolls.

Alluring: +4 to charm, conversation, and persuasion related rolls, etc.

Tell me Now: +4 to interrogation rolls.

 

It would work. My question is, would it actually prove cheaper?

 

That's probably a case-by-case analysis...

 

 

Gosh, great minds seldom differ and all that

[Grailknight]

No.  I'm pretty sure that we should make up our own stats*, and delete such things as PRE and INT.  I really don't recall anyone suggesting Einstein was any good at Bugging, Disguise or Survival.  Maybe he was, but that is not the point: the point is that 'Smart dos not equal Practical' and a lot of Intellect skills are practical, at least in practice.

 

Linking skills to characteristics is always going to cause appalling contradictions.  

 

Let's get rid of characteristics.

 

 

 

* Mna mnu malu: I don't actually mean make up characteristics, I mean you can build with skill levels and the skill levels apply to, well, whatever you like.  that defines how your combination of physical, mental and emotional innate abilities actually manifest in your abilities.  In effect you ARE making up characteristics, but you are doing it on a VERY individual basis.  I don't know: a 3 point skill level gives you +1 with 3 skills, 5 points gives you =1 with 6 skills, a 10 point level gives you =1 will the lot.

 

A lot of that is already in the system. Most of the skills have a general option in HD that divorces them from CHAR. There needs to be a repricing of the adds to those skills though, so that the CHAR option is not the only affordable way to build a Character.

[Tasha]

No.  I'm pretty sure that we should make up our own stats*, and delete such things as PRE and INT.  I really don't recall anyone suggesting Einstein was any good at Bugging, Disguise or Survival.  Maybe he was, but that is not the point: the point is that 'Smart dos not equal Practical' and a lot of Intellect skills are practical, at least in practice.

 

Linking skills to characteristics is always going to cause appalling contradictions.  

 

Let's get rid of characteristics.

 

 

 

* Mna mnu malu: I don't actually mean make up characteristics, I mean you can build with skill levels and the skill levels apply to, well, whatever you like.  that defines how your combination of physical, mental and emotional innate abilities actually manifest in your abilities.  In effect you ARE making up characteristics, but you are doing it on a VERY individual basis.  I don't know: a 3 point skill level gives you +1 with 3 skills, 5 points gives you =1 with 6 skills, a 10 point level gives you =1 will the lot.

you COULD argue that a high Int person would be able to puzzle out the best placement of listening devices to get the best room coverage(bugging) and perhaps even the places people would be least likely to look for such a device (concealment).

 

That said it would be VERY possible to ditch many of the stats. Since we already have a stat that works for Aiming stuff(OCV) and another for Dodging things (DCV) why do we even need a Dex stat? It should be possible to move the stats into Manual Dexterity(OCV) skills and Footwork Skills(DCV). We could probably redesign Mental Powers to work without an Ego Stat. Con's functionality could probably be folded into BODY or vice versa. You could even make a good case for Folding PD and ED together into a single Defense Stat. While we are at it. Buying stats 1 per 1 is silly since only stats that fall into factors of 5 actually have mechanical meaning. So you could make the primaries all 5 pts per +1 which is the number that they modify their stat roll by.

[Sean Waters]

No, burn it all down.  Let us see:

 

STR: OK that does have a use outside skills and very little in.  Still it should be 2 points per point (or one for lifting and one for damage...)

DEX: Meh.  Initiative, buy that separately.  DEX skills, well, buy skill levels

CON: useful for stunning, very few Skill associations.  Keeper.

INT: Grr.  Nothing,  I have nothing.

EGO: Sounds good, actually rubbish.  Build resistance skills into the system and you are golden

PRE: I hate PRE, just declaring my prejudice...remove and replace the PRE attack rules and then do the rest with skill levels.

 

The rest, well, I'm not convinced by OCV, DCV, OMCV, DMCV are necessary, but I can live with them..

 

Other than that, there are no skill associations...I think...

[PaycheckHero]

Though it's not just one individual GM in the group with whom I've had the experience that many skills were of low value; it's four different ones.

Fair enough. However, it seems to me that hero players develop a kind of shared local culture in gaming groups that share the same pool of players (this makes sense, because most people learn by playing with an existing group rather than buying a book and learning it ab initio). I've talked to hero players whose groups forbid things I regarded as standard or even preferred, and vice versa. I no longer worry too much about who is doing it "right," I suspect it has more to do with a preferred style of play or conventions that the local GMs are comfortable with. I guess what I mean is that you could have seen something that was common throughout a whole area.

 

I envy you your experience.

To be fair, the hard SF game was *not* normal at all, I just used it as an illustration of the fact that it isn't normal by GM and player choice, not because the system gets in the way. The game came about because I realized I'd never seen a real hard SF game, and that I had an entire group of Caltech grad students. I wanted to do it just once while I had the chance, and I had one plot idea that really required the players to use their own technical skills to stand in for the PCs' skills (I actually had one vital technical clue that required some general relativity knowledge, which I got away with because I talked another grad student in my group into playing). Oh, and I also had a GM that was stupid enough and overconfident enough to think he could pull it off. Well, I did manage it, so I guess I was right. :-) However, a somewhat less hard-core game would work pretty well for any group that likes science without requiring such specific knowledge--if you had the right players and the GM. Most people can't or just wouldn't enjoy that kind of game, I suppose.

 

Just looking back on characters I've played in the last dozen years ... one high-science background character in a Champions campaign got to use his sciences exactly once in the campaign. In a dark paranormal campaign (a Buffy sort of thing) the tech geek werewolf had his attempts at tech innovation (a technological vampire detector, via real-time image processing comparing images from optical trains with and without reflecting elements, since vampires don't make images in mirrors) stonewalled. In a Pulp campaign, it was information skills, not the sciences per se, that went nowhere. Deduction? Uhhh, no, you can't think of anything here, sorry. About the only skill that has been used often is Driving (which is used in combat with vehicles, of course).

I have to say that I don't much like any of those things. If a GM accepts a skill-based character, he should either provide some places where that character shines or warn the player in advance that his character is mismatched to the campaign. If the player still wants the character, OK (and in many cases should just get the skills for free as background abilities that don't affect play), but he deserves a warning and a chance to choose a different character. Really this isn't even about skills, it's about any ability--if someone wants to play a brick and you accept without any objections, you need to deliver plot points where the brick shines. The only reason we don't think of it that way is that we all happen to choose the sorts of campaigns that let bricks shine without having to arrange it specially.

 

I probably don't always deliver on that ideal as a GM, but I regard it as a flaw in my GMing when I don't.

 

Another system, TORG, had explicit mechanics that strongly and specifically rewarded use of certain social-type skills (Trick, Test of Wills, Taunt, and the more-or-less-combat-only Manuver) in combat rather than having combat be nothing but a contest of attack powers/moves and defense powers/moves. That system as one of its design goals was to have combats that emulated movie-type action in combat.

OK, that would be interesting, but I don't think I've ever played a system that had what you describe.

 

First example: If there's anything like a leadership (or perhaps tactics) skill which characters can be constructed to have in order to boost or enable their allies in combat

OK, fair enough, those are social skills. I guess we didn't really use those skills (for better or for worse) so I forget they're there.

 

I concur. I would extend the statement. It's a negotiable contract at game (or character) onset and that negotiation should be expected to be more than a take-it-or-leave-it thing on either side. The GM not only has the right to say, "No, in this campaign I'm not planning on this sort of thing arising, so you must change this facet of the character," the GM has the obligation to say it if it's true. And the player has to be willing to accept statements like, "No, no ninjas or anything like them. Superhuman stealth is a phenomenon that is not available in this campaign." But at the same time the player is able to make counteroffers/queries like, "Can I take a conditional invisibility power, then?" and come to a negotiated agreement about what player gets to do and what GM is expecting to reward and contend with.

I think I agree with all of that. The GM really has to warn a player if a proposed character is possible but won't shine in the campaign, and of course the player can offer ideas on how it might work after all, or even say he's willing to put up with being less effective because he really likes the concept. That's really just common courtesy.

 

I've always played with a much more expansive negotiation than that. If a player comes to me with a good background I am likely to see if I can alter or extend the world so as to make it possible. It's not only good GMing to let a player have the character they want if it isn't otherwise problematic, it's also nice when your players do your worldbuilding for you. :-) I've both played in and GM'd games in which player backgrounds kind of took over and became keystone elements to the plot and setting (usually in ways that surprised the players, who didn't know that the GM would take those particular details and run with them). I *like* it when this happens, when it works well it's fun for both players and GM. I had a campaign where an entire planet's details and the scariest villain group in the game all came from a player background.

 

I have known many GMs who wouldn't do that, on the basis that they didn't want to tip their hands in any way about what they planned to do. It's a throwback to the old days of strictly adversarial RPGs, and it seems to be very hard to unlearn.

Though I knew about it, I don't think I ever played with that style even with GMs who started with D&D when it required Chainmail to play. One thing I learned from them is that adversarial GMing is absurd--the GM has limitless power, so there is no point. And if the GM isn't making it fun, there is also soon no game.

[psyber624]

No.  I'm pretty sure that we should make up our own stats*, and delete such things as PRE and INT.  I really don't recall anyone suggesting Einstein was any good at Bugging, Disguise or Survival.  Maybe he was, but that is not the point: the point is that 'Smart dos not equal Practical' and a lot of Intellect skills are practical, at least in practice.

 

Linking skills to characteristics is always going to cause appalling contradictions.  

 

Let's get rid of characteristics.

 

 

 

* Mna mnu malu: I don't actually mean make up characteristics, I mean you can build with skill levels and the skill levels apply to, well, whatever you like.  that defines how your combination of physical, mental and emotional innate abilities actually manifest in your abilities.  In effect you ARE making up characteristics, but you are doing it on a VERY individual basis.  I don't know: a 3 point skill level gives you +1 with 3 skills, 5 points gives you =1 with 6 skills, a 10 point level gives you =1 will the lot.

The point is not that high INT would make you good with a skill like bugging, but someone with a high intelligence would be much better at the skill than someone of low intelligence with the same "investment". If you look at the cost of skills as reflecting the amount of time/effort invested in the skill then basing skills on Stats makes plenty of logical sense.

 

Right, Einstein doesn't automatically know how to use bugging, but if he and your average dude have the same training in the skill, Einstein will likely be MUCH better at it than Average Joe.

[PaycheckHero]

The point is not that high INT would make you good with a skill like bugging, but someone with a high intelligence would be much better at the skill than someone of low intelligence with the same "investment". If you look at the cost of skills as reflecting the amount of time/effort invested in the skill then basing skills on Stats makes plenty of logical sense.

It only makes logical sense if you've never actually known people that smart in that way. I have. Being really, really smart isn't what you think it is. Hero INT is a particular hobby horse of mine.

 

Right, Einstein doesn't automatically know how to use bugging, but if he and your average dude have the same training in the skill, Einstein will likely be MUCH better at it than Average Joe.

In general, this is totally wrong, because you believe that the same kind of ability ("INT") is the ability useful for both. It simply isn't, though how crazy it is varies from skill to skill. The most insane part is basing perception on INT--some of the smartest people I've met have remarkably low perception skills. Now, Real Life isn't balanced, and some people have high skills in many things, but that isn't the point. The ridiculous part is that hero makes them correlated; someone with high abstract reasoning skills is more likely to be good at things that have nothing to do with abstract reasoning. That isn't how life works.

 

What I've done for, well, forever is have a separate "Wits" characteristic. You use that instead of Int for perception and many practical skills that are listed as Int, while Int is used for skills involving, for example, abstract reasoning (including science skills--I *never* permit "general" skills because it compounds the error--ability with, for example, science skills *is* strongly correlated).

[psyber624]

It only makes logical sense if you've never actually known people that smart in that way. I have. Being really, really smart isn't what you think it is. Hero INT is a particular hobby horse of mine.

 

 

In general, this is totally wrong, because you believe that the same kind of ability ("INT") is the ability useful for both. It simply isn't, though how crazy it is varies from skill to skill. The most insane part is basing perception on INT--some of the smartest people I've met have remarkably low perception skills. Now, Real Life isn't balanced, and some people have high skills in many things, but that isn't the point. The ridiculous part is that hero makes them correlated; someone with high abstract reasoning skills is more likely to be good at things that have nothing to do with abstract reasoning. That isn't how life works.

 

What I've done for, well, forever is have a separate "Wits" characteristic. You use that instead of Int for perception and many practical skills that are listed as Int, while Int is used for skills involving, for example, abstract reasoning (including science skills--I *never* permit "general" skills because it compounds the error--ability with, for example, science skills *is* strongly correlated).

I definitely agree with you that perception being directly tied to INT is a bit of a stretch, but most of the INT based skills are skills that call for little manual dexterity or interaction with others. Intelligence does play a fairly significant role in the learning and application of those skills. And you are correct that Intelligence is a rather catch all category that doesnt fully translate into the real world since most people have areas they are stronger than others, and areas where they are weaker, but I would argue strongly that base Intelligence IS a factor in pretty much all of the skills listed. Yes, someone with average intelligence can learn them, and be better at them than a generally intelligent person, or have a natural "knack" for one of the skills, but on average someone who is very Smart will have an easier time learning and applying these skills than someone who is not. I know this from PERSONAL experience. While I am not a genius my intelligence was (when i was younger) frequently demonstrated to be in the top 25th percentile. (Granted many of these tests are somewhat biased and it is frankly impossible to TRULY measure intelligence but what tests we have placed me there). While i have skills that I am better at than others (math and computer programming come naturally to me, requiring almost no effort to master while history and other "fact based" subjects are more challenging) in general if placed in a group with a random number of people, given the same training/teaching/experience, I will do better than they will. Looking at the list of INT skills the only ones that I feel this likely would NOT apply (at least to me) to are Forging, Mimicry, Shadowing, Tracking, and Ventriloquism. All of those skills require a certain degree of either manual dexterity, physical ability, or artistic talent (of which i have none). The rest I would wager I would be able to outperform most people of average intelligence if we had the same degree of training/experience.

[Tasha]

It only makes logical sense if you've never actually known people that smart in that way. I have. Being really, really smart isn't what you think it is. Hero INT is a particular hobby horse of mine.

 

 

In general, this is totally wrong, because you believe that the same kind of ability ("INT") is the ability useful for both. It simply isn't, though how crazy it is varies from skill to skill. The most insane part is basing perception on INT--some of the smartest people I've met have remarkably low perception skills. Now, Real Life isn't balanced, and some people have high skills in many things, but that isn't the point. The ridiculous part is that hero makes them correlated; someone with high abstract reasoning skills is more likely to be good at things that have nothing to do with abstract reasoning. That isn't how life works.

 

What I've done for, well, forever is have a separate "Wits" characteristic. You use that instead of Int for perception and many practical skills that are listed as Int, while Int is used for skills involving, for example, abstract reasoning (including science skills--I *never* permit "general" skills because it compounds the error--ability with, for example, science skills *is* strongly correlated).

Since we are talking about Hero. It's very easy to simulate someone who is VERY intelligent, but not very good at noticing their surroundings. It's called a Complication and you can do it as either a Physical or a Psychological limitation (Absent Minded, Too wrapped up in their own head etc). I have met some truly sharp people who are very good at noticing the little things. BTW this is the Sherlock Holmes archetype. Super Intelligent, Great at picking up things that no one else notices. is able to put things together in ways "normal" people aren't really good at doing.

 

We really should be wary about talk about "realism". Hero is a system that is created to model Cinematic/Comic/Literature "reality". So it's set up to reflect that tropes of those media more than modeling some person's idea of "realism".

[mhd]

I'd say that most "human limits" attributes aren't that high in a general meaning anyway, most likely you'd be better off modeling it as a few points lower, but with some limited attributes or simply skill levels. So you'd end up with a weightlifter STR 15/+5 STR lifting only, or some scientist with INT 13/+3 physics/astronomy/mathematics.

 

Although I'd say that this wouldn't matter for most campaigns that are at least a bit heroic...

[Christopher]

I had to kinda stop reading at page two. People started to scatter quote too much. Sorry if I repeat something that was already said till then.

 

"It depends on the GM" I have read it soo often I cannot even quote one specific poster.

I think I found why so many GM struggle about using Skils in thier games: Lack of Meaningfull decisions.

The Combat system itself encourages meaningfull Decisions. Give the players a few mooks as enemy and a goal and they will find thier own fun "beating" this group/problem. The whole set of Rules about combat will make certain of that, because every Phase has a meaningfull decision. (unless of course you have a railraoding GM, but let's ignore that problem).

 

In turn skills are just "add all bonuses, make one roll". They either are "only one try" types or "try as often as you need to succeed" types. There is nothing that would make you think about not using a bonus. Unlike combat the rules do not encourage meaningfull decisions.

I wrote a much beter analysis in this post:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/index.php?/topic/87378-translating-characters-from-fiction-and-the-secret-of-having-fun-in-roleplaying/&do=findComment&comment=2312223

I do not have a perfect answer to the problem. But even just seeing the option for "conflict that does not involve combat" can help.

 

In a Heroic level game, you'll have typical skill rolls from 8- to 18-; with most in the 11- to 13- range.  Which is far less "granularity" than D20's +20 to +30 bonuses and DC's up to the 50's.  (Less Granularity hear means less overall range of difficulties / die roll results.  In HERO, you have about 10 "Difficulty Classes" from 8 or less on 3d6 to 18 or less on 3d6.)

When somebody asks about translating any system to HERO, I usually point out that "+1 in hero roughly equals +10% Chance of Success". This holds true from 8- (5% chance of Success) too 18- (95% CoS). Anything beyond 18- is only "Penalty buffer".

 

As such any +2 in D&D (+1 equals +5% CoS) would equal +1 in HERO. Every +10% in Percentile Systems equals +1 in hero.

 

It becomes easy to fall into the mindset that points spent on skills like these are wasted (indeed we have a member of the boards who loves the term "What not to spend points on" and appears to be a proponent of throwing out non-combat skills altogether).

I got the feeling you are talking about me here. Because I do point people on the "What not to spend points" on Rule quite often.

But I never said anything remotely like "remove all non-combat skills out of the system". I did say "when in doubt, let non-comabt skill cost nothing at first. Only when the player regulary get's a value out of it, consider letting it cost something retroactively/when next giving out XP".

This inverts the problem of "Skill Investment is wasted points with wrong GM" by making them only cost something if you have the right GM that actually uses them. And the same way any regular effect should be paid for, not every "once or twice per campaign" effect needs to be paid for.

[PaycheckHero]

Since we are talking about Hero. It's very easy to simulate someone who is VERY intelligent, but not very good at noticing their surroundings.

That's no different than saying in <6e that we can model characters with high PD, ED, REC, END, and STUN, but low STR and CON, or characters with a high SPD and CV but low DEX. We can, but the system punishes you too much to make it make sense. The point is about correlation, and the existing rules cause correlations that don't make either good game or dramatic sense just as the figureds caused correlations. By combining them, we effectively have figureds for skills that shouldn't be particularly related. The fact that it's been in there since 1e doesn't make it make sense, and I always disallowed it in my games. Now that I use HD, I don't, but only because I haven't yet dug into the manual to change the sheet.

[Grailknight]

There's a simple fix for this. Make the problematic CHAR linked skills into general skills. That way, all skills are 2 pts and 1 pt/+1. You can do the same with perception and start everyone at 11- as a campaign rule.

 

This does penalize some archetypes that rely heavily on skills but you can also use it as another way to highlight the exceptionalism of PC's and major NPC's.  Make the above rule the default for Normals only. Now your absent-minded scientist or overly focused doctor makes more sense in game terms. They had to tight focus their studies to get to the point that the natural genius PC's get to intuitively. 

[Lucius]

 

 

When somebody asks about translating any system to HERO, I usually point out that "+1 in hero roughly equals +10% Chance of Success". This holds true from 8- (5% chance of Success) too 18- (95% CoS). Anything beyond 18- is only "Penalty buffer".

 

 

Uh....did you just say that a roll of 8 or less on 3d6 is a 5% chance of success and that a roll of 18 or less on 3d6 is a 95% chance of success?

 

Or rather, did you actually mean to claim that this is so?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary is trying to figure out how one can possibly FAIL on a roll <= 18