One of the things I judge a new RPG I'm reading by is the size of the skill list. Personally, any more than about 40 and I start reaching for the red pen.
What's your ideal number of skills?
0 is a valid answer
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My RPG only has careers
I'm actually really partial to Barbarians of Lemura/Everywhen's career system for simplifying skill bloat. If your career could do a thing, your PC could do a thing. Very easy with only the occasional need for DM arbitration. No more need to invest points in 'knot tying,' or trying to get 3 different skills to move quietly.
this, Barbarians of Lemuria (and Honor + Intrigue, which is based off the same system but just imo more preferable) finally solved the INT / WIS / Skills problem by using careers. it's unbelievable how much more intuitive and better it is.
The only thing 'skill-list-like' left in H+I (less BoL, where you always have enough languages to get by) are languages, which depending on the game you might be very keen to pick up. Well, and I guess maneuver mastery, but that's really stretching it, especially since everyone has access to maneuvers by default.
however many your GM can remember
if you put in points to a skill and he never thinks to put a skill check for it, either he isnt doing a good job or there's too many skills to remember (or both)
12 or less, with one or two lines for "custom" skills if your campaign or character concept requires them.
Noncombat shit is irrelevant and can have as many skills as it wants.
>Posting a table from FATAL
Bold move, OP.
I don't have a solid hard number, but I think the ideal is to have some amount of room for players to either add skills wholesale, or to allow "specialising". WoD and Ars Magica do that. Ars Magica giving you a free "specialisation" per skill is nice.
>recognising a table from FATAL
It's colouring fabric, but I thought it was funny
>It's colouring fabric, but I thought it was funny
that's "dyeing"
did the tablemaker pass his spelling skill roll?
>
Bold move, OP.
I don't have a solid hard number, but I think the ideal is to have some amount of room for players to either add skills wholesale, or to allow "specialising". WoD and Ars Magica do that. Ars Magica giving you a free "specialisation" per skill is nice.
a table from FATAL
Reading Urimancy it is enough to realize where the table come from...
True, but I also did recognise the formatting and general appearance of the table. Only because I looked back over FATAL when some guy posted a "FATAL 2" earlier this month, but still.
Mea Culpa. I recognised FATAL, and to not admit this would be dezgra.
At Scatomancy it was still between FATAL and SotDL?
>when some guy posted a "FATAL 2" earlier this month, but still.
Under that name? Any gems or coproliths inside it?
>How many skills is too many?
Have I got a system for you buddy
gurps has a horrible skill system
Defaulting is a good system thoughever.
not with the vales they have in the book like -4, -5, etc
Lame answer: The actual number doesn't matter, but the application and the way they are presented and structured. You could theoretically have unlimited skills with a system that allows you to customize them and add your own. As long as everyone knows what they can do and what situations may call for what skills, it's fine.
Like, you should have ten skills for walking across a street. But specialized skills for specialized tasks would be a fine application.
>Dying : Hand-Eye Coordination
Wait, what? Sarge always said dying is no skill, staying alive is a skill.
Sometimes skill excess lets you and your players get more immersed in the little details of a world, especially one with specific atmosphere-(see "fletching" at the bottom of OP's image.)
Part of the fun is seeing/using "useless" skills in useful ways, like using your "fletching" skill to help identify who mightve made an arrow and their tribe, or even make objectively superior ammunition for your team archer.
That being said, I think that sort of play comes about cleanest when skills are combined not with a single sovreign ability, but changes its synergy based on the circumstances, like in WoD.
(Using cha x fletching to scmooze up a sexy bowyer, or int x fletching to figure out where and how far an archer could have fired from)
Ultimately, the answer i think lies in having about 5-10 "broad" skills and room for specific skills either written in or inherited from a profession
this is another example where the BoL or the H+I career system works better, it's principally what you're describing just without having big lists of skills.
Zero. The only thing a large skill list provides over a short list of base abilities is granularity (read: pidgeonholing uses of individual modifiers). These should be character-specific bonuses that you can buy like feats, rather than a common and massive set of tools that you lumber everyone with.
Stuff like Traveller is the equivalent of those ancient programs that had the shittiest UI possible, cramming every button into a single page. It’s not necessary, it’s not useful, and it’s not enjoyable to use.
It's hard for me to throw out a hard number, but the ideal for me is a number that effectively covers the major situations their associated abilities are valid in, and that properly represent the niche of their associated abilities.
Passive skills, action skills, movement and aerial skills, cover skills, etc for each ability, plus skills like follow-ups and counters? I'd say the number is going to sit at least a hundred.
Depends on how your skill system is set up.
I'm of the opinion that skill systems should be at least two-tiered, one for big, broad, generally useful skills, and one for less common niches. These skills should use different resource pools, or be different costs in an XP-buy system. "Perception" will pretty much always always be worth more than "Engraving", but in this tiered system they can co-exist.
To answer your question, a set of <15 broad skills and any number of lesser skills (maybe a custom field on the character sheet for them) is probably best.
More the merrier, in my opinion. I only enjoy RPGs as simulated worlds, and therefore having skills for things like weapon maintenance, housekeeping, and cooking are big bonuses to the verisimilitude for me. I have no tolerance for "gamist" compromises.
Imagine if you had to print twenty pages of class options, and checkmark whichever ones you select, instead of just writing down the few that you have. That’s the kind of moronation these massive skill lists have on display. It’s not a question of gamist compromise, it’s about a poor use of space.
I’ll give you an olive branch and say that there ARE scenarios in which a list is actually used well. See Shinobigami for instance. But that’s because it’s more than just a list, it’s a dynamic tree. You actually have to have every skill there, because they all relate to each other. But most of the time, that shit is not worth the space.
20
>Hit close
>Hit far
>Hit around you
Nothing more needed
My ideal number is the lowest number of skills that make sense for the game. If you can remove a skill without losing anything important, then do it.
>ITT: skill issues
>sensible_chuckle.jiff
My homebrew system doesnt have fixed skills except for social skills (3) and weapon skills (8 or so but assumed to be 0 if you dont specifically train them)
I dont expect a character to ever really have more than 10 skills at most, and id like to keep the number of actual skills in the game below 20 (not counting social and wep skills)
I've always liked Mothership's skill system.
>Trained skills are easy to acquire, and give you +10 on rolls
>the higher the tier of skill, the LESS useful it is, because they become more and more specific
>it's up to the players to think of ways to apply their skills, the GM never asks for a specific type of skill check
>your scientist might be a universally renowned expert on alien religions with absolutely frick-all other useful skills
a lot of skills is useful, but you should be given the proper amount of skill points to make use of a wide variety of skills. Obviously other choices during character creation will affect how many skills you get, but if the game has a frickload of skills, you ought to be given enough skills to be useful in at least a handful of them.
Enough to cover everything characters need to do, but few enough that all of them will be used more than once. Around 15 is probably the sweet spot.
I enjoy games without skills, but it can take some work to get people to switch in to the mindset that they can just do whatever their character's career or archetype should be able to do without asking to roll for it.
I'm not opposed to skills systems, but I don't often see one I like.
When you out a list of skills on a character sheet you are giving the players (including the GM) a list of verbs for their story. They should be verbs that come up in the particular genre of the game you are intending it to be. A detective game probably benefits from a skill list having things like "interrogate", "blend in" and "bureaucracy" as skills, but your magical girl game probably doesn't need those bloating the character sheet. Putting points in a skill that could have gone to something else is flagging the GM that you would actually like to be able to do that verb during the game and have it be something your character is good at and does under pressure in situations that are relevant to the story that is constantly taking shape during a role playing game session, so taking points in a skill is, in theory, a way of telling the GM what kind of game you want to be playing. This doesn't often work in practice for poorly designed games that don't have a clear intended genre.
If your game is going to be about killing goblins that should be clear from the options character sheet. If the game is going to be about competitive flower arranging the skills available to characters should reflect that.
As time goes on I'm really starting to prefer 0. Nothing wrong with skills, but I like when systems tell you to describe your character's history/skillset and use that to determine what you get bonuses to. Barring that, I can't recall the number off the top of my head by WWN/SWN have pretty good skill lists from what I recall. They cover a lot without getting too excessive.
Personally I like Palladium's over the top bloat with its four or so versions of Horseback Riding and three or so versions of First Aid.
does anyone remember Mythus?
I like world of darkness(20 anniversary) you have basic skills, but can learn specialist skills that make you very proficient in a niche(athletics can be used to skate, but skate it's easier to learn and let's you have reduced difficulty, but only for that area).
If you are ponding about a specific system (a DND type of system) more than 5ed less than 3rd ed)