Current direction and skills.

[Siggi]

I decided to add my two cents to this thread, and while it wandered off the initial topic and came to mechanics discussion, I'd like to get back to the skills list.

At one point I found that I had several issues with the BoB skill list. I decided to figure out what was wrong, so I made a table in which I compared BoB skills with skills from other fantasy roleplaying systems (namely, WFRP 2nd ed., Zweihander, TRoS, Dark Heresy). Now the list has changed a bit and I definitely like the changes. Below I'll comment on the current skill list taking into account my comparative study.

Athletics
I see that the concept is to make skills quite broad so that there won't be dozens of them in the game. The Athletics here is a good example of that. In my opinion, the key features covered are climbing and swimming. Usually (hereinafter this means "in many other systems") these two are separate skills while running and jumping/leaping is covered by attribute checks. Indeed, a good climber is not always a good swimmer (bar James Bond, of course), and for me personally, it would make sense to separate climbing from swimming. But this would make those skills too narrow and incoherent with the system, so, I guess, this one is OK and may be left as it is.

Command
Now, this one is quite common, but it is used quite seldom in games. Besides, it seems not so broad. With Athletics you can run, and swim, and scale cliffs... With Command you can, well, command (on those rare occasions when your character has some subordinate NPCs). I sincerely haven't got a clue as for how to deal with it, and probably it should be left as it is. Another option is to merge it with Warfare skill.

Coercion
This one is a good addition. Torture, blackmail, intimidation – all in one. It's fine.

Craft
Removing Trade and adding Craft makes sense. I also liked the flexibility of Trade, just like taelor, but I can see Agamemnon's point.

Culture
A lore skill, not very useful (unless the GM comes up with some interesting ideas). In WFRP it is called Common Knowledge (area or country). It's fine, I guess.

Education
Now, this one seems a bit too broad but it may be mitigated easily. If a GM wants to make a science-heave adventure, he may feel free to add certain science-related skills as he sees fit.

Engeneering
This is also a good one. There are really a lot of things one may do with this skill. However, I'd suggest that in order to bring some fruits of engineering to life the character (or other characters at his command) should use the appropriate Craft skills. E.g. you may know how to make a trap, but to actually make it you'd require assistance from a smith.

Gambling
That's a curious one. On one hand, it also seems narrow and not very useful (and besides, can you really learn to gamble well, bar cheating?). On the other hand, that's what bastards and scoundrels do in their spare time: drinking, debauching and gambling! Agamemnon, you've mentioned that you know how to deal with it, so I'll just relax about it and wee what you bring us.

Horsmanship
It's a good idea to make a broader version of a necessary but rather dull Ride skill. But I see here a couple of issues that will be discussed later under Teamster skill and in Uncovered section.

Impersonation
This is acting, right?.. See also the entry for Perform skill.

Language
It's OK, no comments.

Larceny
This one's fine (albeit, I had to consult a dictionary to discover what the word means).

Legerdemain
I bet, it was intentional to name these two skills so that they would go one after the other. Maybe a bit too broad (as well as Larceny), but that's in line with the concept.

Lore
I guess that's what you use when you want to narrow down some knowledge skills that would otherwise fall under Education.

Manipulation
My biggest issue was with social skills and I think that the changes that you've made have all but repaired it. Still, I'm not feeling very comfortable with this skill's name. In other games, there are usually skills that let you communicate with people (and get something from them) by being nice. Those skills are usually called Charm or something like that. This is probably covered by this skill. But it still feels strange if I say: "OK, I come up to those guys in the tavern, greet them, put in a joke and ask 'What's up?'" And my GM nods at me and says: "A smart move this is. Now roll your Manipulation ". Hope you see what I mean. Maybe changing the name would fix it? "Persuasion"?..

Medicine
Powerful skill. What if I want my character to know how to dress a wound (and nothing else). Take 1-2 points of Medicine? But I want my character to dress wound really well! Make it a Lore (dress wounds) skill? I dunno. Apart from that, the skill is fine (but see Uncovered section below).

Mercantile
Fine skill, BoB lacked it. There are players that enjoy playing successful merchants.

Navigation
What's that exactly? Finding your way in the wilderness and at sea? You've probably stripped it off Survival skill. Wouldn't it be too narrow?.. On the other hand, if Survival included full-scale navigation, it would be far too broad. So, it's probably OK.

Negotiation
I can see DannyBoy's point:

Wouldn't Mercantile be sort of part and parcel with Negotiation? They seem to be pretty close to the same thing.

Seems that you can swap those skills and achieve the same results. I'd rather call it Diplomacy (and that would take a chunk off Politics skill which is fine).

Oration
Now, this one seems to me too narrow, especially in comparison to most other skills. In the same time, this skill is quite necessary. I like the way it is dealt with in WFRP. In that system, there is a talent called Public Speaking which allows a character to use his Charm skill while talking to large groups of people. It may be done the same way here: remove the Orate skill and add an Edge called Orator that would allow characters to use their Manipulation, Negotiation (Diplomacy!) and even Coercion skills with large crowds.

Perform
It seems fine, but if Impersonation is really acting, then it should be a part of Perform skill family. You may say that Impersonation is a different, broader skill that allows a character to completely 'turn into' any other character, just as, I dunno, some Shakespear characters or fairy tale heroes. If so, than Impersonation seems to be too powerful and I'd consider changing or removing it.

Seamanship
A good one.

Stewardship
This one's also fine. It's not the same as Mercantile, as far as I am concerned, and it may be useful in longer campaigns about noble houses or something like that.

Politics
Good skill. (That reminds me of the plot of "The Fencing Master" by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, where the protagonist was a valorous man, but he couldn't understand the intrigue he was involved into due to the lack of the Politics skill).

Stealth
A good and necessary one, but speaking strictly for me, it feels so powerful! I mean, you see, in WFRP 1st ed. there were 5 skills that would fall under this one (those were Concealment (Rural), Concealment (Urban), Silent Move (Rural), Silent Move (Urban) and Shadowing (which was a skill of following a person without being noticed)).

(Steel)
Liked it. )

Streetwise
This is a good one, but I didn't really like the description in BoB rulebook. It says just about getting information, and in my understanding, Streetwise is much more. It includes the knowledge how to behave in certain places and circumstances, where to find certain people, how to deal with them, etc.

Survival
That's fine.

Teamster
In my opinion, this skill falls out of the whole 'broader skills' concept. It is said in the description that this skill covers construction of carriages, etc. which is wrong because construction should be covered by a Craft skill. This is a common skill and you can often see it in other systems, but, while quite useful, it always seems somewhat... boring. When you manage to put this heavy treasure chest on the cart, the GM will smile evilly and ask: "So, is there anybody who can drive this thing?" That's why you always take it. And it's boring. And narrow.
That's why I suggest that this skill should be included in the Horsemanship skill. And the construction part should be covered by an appropriate Craft.

Warfare
It seems necessary, but as for me, I don't really know how to use it (as a GM or otherwise). This skill probably requires a subsystem in which it would be used (such as mass combat or something similar). I'll leave it for you, dear authors, to deal with.

Uncovered
In the bottom of my comparison table, there are a few skills that were left uncovered by the BoB skills list. Fortunately after the update that list became shorter (there were such things as Row (which is now covered by Seamanship), Torture and Evaluate (now covered by Mercantile)). There are still a couple left.

Let's return to Horsemanship. It says that the skill covers horses training. While this makes sense, it also suggests that there should be a skill that would allow to train other animals. ) For this reason, I suggest that animal training may be covered by a separate skill (which would also cover caring for animals, knowing their habits, etc.). And the Horsemanship skill would still retain its broadness by incorporating Teamster.

There's no skill in BoB and SaS that would deal with non-verbal information, lip-reading, body language and empathy. In Dark Heresy there's a skill called Scrutiny, that allows a character to see if he is being lied to. There's also the Deceive skill in that game, but that's probably covered by Manipulation.

There's also Acrobatics skill that is absent, the favorite thing of all elves and showoffs. ) It may be incorporated into Athletics, but I don't think it is a good idea. Adding this skill may also require some addition to combat rules (which is a pain). Maybe another Edge?..

The most important thing that is absent from the system is alchemy/apothecary/herbalism-related skills. I was impressed by the approach to Herbalism skill in TRoS. In other systems, this was a really boring and unimportant skill that basically allowed characters to tell one weed from another. In TRoS (as you can't fail to know) Herbalism was an important and powerful skill that allowed characters to brew remedies and poisons that actually worked. What TRoS lacked was a skill to work in a laboratory, – the kind of stuff that was covered by Trade (Apothecary) skill in WFRP 2nd ed. That system also has a specific skill with a self-explanatory name called Prepare Poisons. As it follows from the description, now herbs knowledge and poisons are covered by Medicine skill, but that makes it far too powerful.

So that's what we got to deal with in my opinion: (1) knowledge of herbs, beneficial or poisonous, and ways to make preparations from them; and (2) the skill of working in a laboratory and prepare drugs or poisons using different substances, including nonorganic materials. As far as I am concerned, Herbalism skill may be introduced for the former, and the latter may be covered by a dedicated Craft skill (though calling it a Trade would've been more appropriate) together with an appropriate Education or Lore skill (such as Alchemy).

And this is it. I sincerely hope that this was somehow useful or entertaining. Thank you for reading.

[thirtythr33]

Command
Now, this one is quite common, but it is used quite seldom in games. Besides, it seems not so broad. With Athletics you can run, and swim, and scale cliffs... With Command you can, well, command (on those rare occasions when your character has some subordinate NPCs). I sincerely haven't got a clue as for how to deal with it, and probably it should be left as it is. Another option is to merge it with Warfare skill.

It is mostly there to support the "Leader" archetype. There are a lot of edges that give you henchmen, and this is a way to determine how they behave without the GM just having to be arbitrary.

Gambling
That's a curious one. On one hand, it also seems narrow and not very useful (and besides, can you really learn to gamble well, bar cheating?). On the other hand, that's what bastards and scoundrels do in their spare time: drinking, debauching and gambling! Agamemnon, you've mentioned that you know how to deal with it, so I'll just relax about it and wee what you bring us.

You absolutely can learn to gamble incredibly well without cheating. It isn't just games of pure chance; gambling games like Poker, Blackjack, Backgammon and Mahjong are very skill intensive. Some probability and mathematics is involved, but equally important is bluffing and reading your opponent as playing his hand is as important as playing your own. I think it's good to have as a method for making money for street-rat type characters who aren't going to have formal skills like Mercantile, Stewardship or Craft to make some seasonal money during downtime.

Education
Now, this one seems a bit too broad but it may be mitigated easily. If a GM wants to make a science-heave adventure, he may feel free to add certain science-related skills as he sees fit.

Yeah, it is kind of hard to see what this is exactly going for. It's like a broad Lore skill, but sits with me strangely. For physical skills having All Sales are Final and Resort to Violence work, but that doesn't really make sense to things like Lore skills. I wouldn't mind replacing Education with something like Research. If you fail a Lore or knowledge skill, you could use Research to do an "escalation" to try again. This time it requires time, resources and the chance of tipping people off to your activities.

Stealth
A good and necessary one, but speaking strictly for me, it feels so powerful! I mean, you see, in WFRP 1st ed. there were 5 skills that would fall under this one (those were Concealment (Rural), Concealment (Urban), Silent Move (Rural), Silent Move (Urban) and Shadowing (which was a skill of following a person without being noticed))

I've always seen splitting up stealth into sub skills to be an unnecessary skill tax. It would be better to just say "stealth costs double the skill points to purchase" and be done with it (the same could be done with other "professional" skills like medicine and engineering if desired). But I think it is important to keep stealth cheaply accessible in this type of game, so even big dumb fighters have a chance to be stealthy in team situations (see Conan, various "sneak over the walls and open the gates" exercises and ambushing in general). One way to do it is to make stealth cheap, and perception expensive. Another way is to give large enough bonuses and penalties based on environment and equipment such that an untrained bruiser will still be able to sneak up behind someone at night in the rain, but a rogue can't sneak up on a man in an open field in the day light. Then the follow up question is why would you bother putting a bunch of points into stealth at all if the modifiers are so large you just have to wait until night anyway?

Also, I don't feel Stealth is particularly powerful when comparing it to skills like Athletics, Coercion, Manipulation or Medicine. Especially since Stealth is inherently one of the most risky skills that is likely to get you killed if you press your luck with it.

Oration
Now, this one seems to me too narrow, especially in comparison to most other skills. In the same time, this skill is quite necessary. I like the way it is dealt with in WFRP. In that system, there is a talent called Public Speaking which allows a character to use his Charm skill while talking to large groups of people. It may be done the same way here: remove the Orate skill and add an Edge called Orator that would allow characters to use their Manipulation, Negotiation (Diplomacy!) and even Coercion skills with large crowds.

I actually quite like this suggestion. Especially since the "leader" and "party face" type roles are already being heavily pushed into the Edges/Flaws section to create their build. (in order to pick up henchmen and other social skill boosters as well as the removal of the Social attribute)

There's no skill in BoB and SaS that would deal with non-verbal information, lip-reading, body language and empathy. In Dark Heresy there's a skill called Scrutiny, that allows a character to see if he is being lied to. There's also the Deceive skill in that game, but that's probably covered by Manipulation.

This is a tricky one. I think the rules around social skills definitely need more explanation. If a manipulation is successful, what exactly does it get you and when does it "wear off"? What if an NPC uses it on a player? I think the idea is supposed to be that you don't have a "sense motive skill", rather you attempt to oppose the NPCs manipulation of you. The problem here is that it has to always be liar initiated, which effectively completely gives away the lie with out of character information when you make the roll (unless you go the route of randomly throwing in unnecessary manipulation rolls just to cover your tracks...). If the GM instead decides to not make the manipulation roll up front it feels strange to have a player in the situation of having to ask the NPC to attempt to use Manipulate on them so they can oppose the roll to find out what is going on.

There's also Acrobatics skill that is absent, the favorite thing of all elves and showoffs. ) It may be incorporated into Athletics, but I don't think it is a good idea. Adding this skill may also require some addition to combat rules (which is a pain). Maybe another Edge?..

Good riddance. Tumbling and acrobatics in combat is done in games and movies way too often is really just ridiculous. It doesn't fit the gritty feel of the game at all either.

The most important thing that is absent from the system is alchemy/apothecary/herbalism-related skills.

Without a alchemy sub system, I think it is okay for this to covered by Medicine and Survival. However, a fully built out alchemy system would be cool if the game decided that it was going to be a thing (maybe something for a Alchemy & Astronomy expansion).

[Agamemnon]

There have been changes to the list since we last talked about it.

Athletics
I see that the concept is to make skills quite broad so that there won't be dozens of them in the game. The Athletics here is a good example of that. In my opinion, the key features covered are climbing and swimming. Usually (hereinafter this means "in many other systems") these two are separate skills while running and jumping/leaping is covered by attribute checks. Indeed, a good climber is not always a good swimmer (bar James Bond, of course), and for me personally, it would make sense to separate climbing from swimming. But this would make those skills too narrow and incoherent with the system, so, I guess, this one is OK and may be left as it is.

Athletics has been axed. It's now just a function of your attributes. Most of what it would have covered are better covered by attributes, and like an attribute nearly all people have some level of athletics. The only real outlier here is swimming (which is an acquired skill.) In a nautical game, I'd be tempted to make this a stand-alone skill. Otherwise, make it an attribute roll or assume it fits under the seamanship skill.

Command
Now, this one is quite common, but it is used quite seldom in games. Besides, it seems not so broad. With Athletics you can run, and swim, and scale cliffs... With Command you can, well, command (on those rare occasions when your character has some subordinate NPCs). I sincerely haven't got a clue as for how to deal with it, and probably it should be left as it is. Another option is to merge it with Warfare skill.

It is mostly there to support the "Leader" archetype. There are a lot of edges that give you henchmen, and this is a way to determine how they behave without the GM just having to be arbitrary.

Edges & Flaws have changed quite a bit, but I suspect you'll have more players with NPCs to boss around than ever -- especially once the factions system gets in play.

Craft
Removing Trade and adding Craft makes sense. I also liked the flexibility of Trade, just like taelor, but I can see Agamemnon's point.

Amusingly, this got renamed back to trade, but is functionally the same intention. Trade now carries the following description:

An umbrella representing various forms of craftsmanship or skilled labor, with the exact trade specified when the skill is taken.
For something to be a valid trade, it has to meet two criteria. First, it must have a tangible product. Farming, blacksmithing, fishing, or carpentry are all valid trades. Second, it must not be covered by some other skill. Physician or Lawyer would not be valid trades, as their functions a combination of social skills and Medicine or Lore (Law), respectively.

Culture
A lore skill, not very useful (unless the GM comes up with some interesting ideas). In WFRP it is called Common Knowledge (area or country). It's fine, I guess.

Presently removed from the list. If you want to have an area knowledge, take it as a lore skill.

Education
Now, this one seems a bit too broad but it may be mitigated easily. If a GM wants to make a science-heave adventure, he may feel free to add certain science-related skills as he sees fit.

Yeah, it is kind of hard to see what this is exactly going for. It's like a broad Lore skill, but sits with me strangely. For physical skills having All Sales are Final and Resort to Violence work, but that doesn't really make sense to things like Lore skills. I wouldn't mind replacing Education with something like Research. If you fail a Lore or knowledge skill, you could use Research to do an "escalation" to try again. This time it requires time, resources and the chance of tipping people off to your activities.

Education is a broad, basic lore skill. It covers the listed subjects, as well as being the research skill and representing literacy.

The character’s higher learning, whether through self-study, or formal tutoring and academia. This is classically the Artes Liberales, consisting of grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music (theory. Actually playing music is governed by Perform), and astronomy/astrology. In game terms, this skill represents both a character’s general book learning and their ability to research. Characters without at least one point in education are illiterate.

Also worth noting, All Sales are Final reads:

No new attempts can be made until that character improves their circumstances, whether by improving the thing tested (whether skill, attribute, or proficiency), acquiring better insight into the thing, finding better tools, or making the attempt under more favorable working conditions.

Using Education to research the thing would already grant the ability to re-test an ability via "acquiring better insight" or "more favorable working conditions."

Engeneering
This is also a good one. There are really a lot of things one may do with this skill. However, I'd suggest that in order to bring some fruits of engineering to life the character (or other characters at his command) should use the appropriate Craft skills. E.g. you may know how to make a trap, but to actually make it you'd require assistance from a smith.

Temporarily pruned from the list. Will be reinstated when I have time to work out exactly how the rules for engineering as thing should work. It's a cool concept, but the mechanical implimentaiton at present is unsatisfactory.

Gambling
That's a curious one. On one hand, it also seems narrow and not very useful (and besides, can you really learn to gamble well, bar cheating?). On the other hand, that's what bastards and scoundrels do in their spare time: drinking, debauching and gambling! Agamemnon, you've mentioned that you know how to deal with it, so I'll just relax about it and wee what you bring us.

You absolutely can learn to gamble incredibly well without cheating. It isn't just games of pure chance; gambling games like Poker, Blackjack, Backgammon and Mahjong are very skill intensive. Some probability and mathematics is involved, but equally important is bluffing and reading your opponent as playing his hand is as important as playing your own. I think it's good to have as a method for making money for street-rat type characters who aren't going to have formal skills like Mercantile, Stewardship or Craft to make some seasonal money during downtime.

Gambling has been implemented in a way that both allows you to have an advantage over people gambling without it and allows you to cheat.

Impersonation
This is acting, right?.. See also the entry for Perform skill.

Removed. It's now the Disguise skill and covers altering your physical presentation/looking the part.

Manipulation
My biggest issue was with social skills and I think that the changes that you've made have all but repaired it. Still, I'm not feeling very comfortable with this skill's name. In other games, there are usually skills that let you communicate with people (and get something from them) by being nice. Those skills are usually called Charm or something like that. This is probably covered by this skill. But it still feels strange if I say: "OK, I come up to those guys in the tavern, greet them, put in a joke and ask 'What's up?'" And my GM nods at me and says: "A smart move this is. Now roll your Manipulation ". Hope you see what I mean. Maybe changing the name would fix it? "Persuasion"?..

Coercion, Manipulation, and Negotiation are all kinds of persuasion. They all accomplish the same thing, ultimately: get someone to do what you want. The difference between the three is how you get them to do it. Coercion is a threat of some sort. Manipulation is playing on their emotions -- usually to convince them that they want to do the thing you want them to do. Negotiation is making a deal with someone. None of these are just "roll to interact." Your scenario doesn't work because there's no conflict. If, on the other hand, you walk up to those guys in the tavern and want information out of them, then how do you get it? Are you going to threaten or blackmail them? -- Then coercion. Are you going to come out nad try to make a deal "help me and I'll help you." Then negotiation. Or are you going to try to seduce them or tell them some sympathetic sob story about why they should help you? That's manipulation.

Medicine
Powerful skill. What if I want my character to know how to dress a wound (and nothing else). Take 1-2 points of Medicine? But I want my character to dress wound really well! Make it a Lore (dress wounds) skill? I dunno. Apart from that, the skill is fine (but see Uncovered section below).

While Medicine is probably the broadest skill, I don't know that behooves anyone to break the thing down into First Aid, Medicine, Herbs, Surgery, and so on. It would make playing a character with medical expertise incredibly expensive and thus limit whomever plays the surgeon character to being just a surgeon.

It also creates some silliness when you start looking at each skill separate from the rest. How did you get to Surgery 8 without knowing how to dress a wound (First Aid)? Are Medicine and Herbs perfectly overlapping? If not, where is the break? Does medicine not cover the knowledge of herbs as medicine? Does the Herbs skill not cover what those herbs are used for or how to use them for it? Breaking up Medicine starts to create a mess that never quite works out right.

Navigation
What's that exactly? Finding your way in the wilderness and at sea? You've probably stripped it off Survival skill. Wouldn't it be too narrow?.. On the other hand, if Survival included full-scale navigation, it would be far too broad.

Exactly what happened. Cut off of Survival and seamanship.

Negotiation
I can see DannyBoy's point:

Wouldn't Mercantile be sort of part and parcel with Negotiation? They seem to be pretty close to the same thing.

Seems that you can swap those skills and achieve the same results. I'd rather call it Diplomacy (and that would take a chunk off Politics skill which is fine).

Not what either of those skills do. Mercantile is essentially economics. Supply and demand. Politics is a knowledge skill and a grasp of political maneuvering and strategy. Negotiation is a social tactic.

Oration
Now, this one seems to me too narrow, especially in comparison to most other skills. In the same time, this skill is quite necessary. I like the way it is dealt with in WFRP. In that system, there is a talent called Public Speaking which allows a character to use his Charm skill while talking to large groups of people. It may be done the same way here: remove the Orate skill and add an Edge called Orator that would allow characters to use their Manipulation, Negotiation (Diplomacy!) and even Coercion skills with large crowds.

I actually quite like this suggestion. Especially since the "leader" and "party face" type roles are already being heavily pushed into the Edges/Flaws section to create their build. (in order to pick up henchmen and other social skill boosters as well as the removal of the Social attribute)

If we weren't set up the way we are, it might be tempting. On the other hand, given that all the other social skills are about the tactic one uses to persuade, oration is just as valid. In my games thus far, Oration has seen quite a bit of use.

Stewardship
This one's also fine. It's not the same as Mercantile, as far as I am concerned, and it may be useful in longer campaigns about noble houses or something like that.

Fun fact: in my current home campaign, one of the characters in this would-be thieves guild had the character concept "accountant that broke bad." He was a clerk in a shipping guild who got blacklisted and has now used stewardship and merchantile to fantastic effect to help bring his former guild-mates to ruin. You'd be surprised what kind of drama you can create with off-beat skills.

Stealth
A good and necessary one, but speaking strictly for me, it feels so powerful! I mean, you see, in WFRP 1st ed. there were 5 skills that would fall under this one (those were Concealment (Rural), Concealment (Urban), Silent Move (Rural), Silent Move (Urban) and Shadowing (which was a skill of following a person without being noticed))

I've always seen splitting up stealth into sub skills to be an unnecessary skill tax. It would be better to just say "stealth costs double the skill points to purchase" and be done with it (the same could be done with other "professional" skills like medicine and engineering if desired). But I think it is important to keep stealth cheaply accessible in this type of game, so even big dumb fighters have a chance to be stealthy in team situations (see Conan, various "sneak over the walls and open the gates" exercises and ambushing in general). One way to do it is to make stealth cheap, and perception expensive. Another way is to give large enough bonuses and penalties based on environment and equipment such that an untrained bruiser will still be able to sneak up behind someone at night in the rain, but a rogue can't sneak up on a man in an open field in the day light. Then the follow up question is why would you bother putting a bunch of points into stealth at all if the modifiers are so large you just have to wait until night anyway?

Also, I don't feel Stealth is particularly powerful when comparing it to skills like Athletics, Coercion, Manipulation or Medicine. Especially since Stealth is inherently one of the most risky skills that is likely to get you killed if you press your luck with it.

If you were breaking it up into anything, you'd break it up environment (urban vs. rural). Breaking it up into hide and move silently a la 3e would be redundant unless you also broke Perception up into Vision and Hearing -- which we aren't going to.

That said, I agree with ThirtyThr33. This would just be a skill tax. I also agree with his assessment. You want people to feel free to dip into stealth. The rogue-type guy is already investing in Larceny, Ledgerdemain, and other skills anyway on top of it. No need to make it more expensive.

Also worth noting: Perception is already more expensive by virtue of it being an attribute, not a skill.

Teamster
In my opinion, this skill falls out of the whole 'broader skills' concept. It is said in the description that this skill covers construction of carriages, etc. which is wrong because construction should be covered by a Craft skill. This is a common skill and you can often see it in other systems, but, while quite useful, it always seems somewhat... boring. When you manage to put this heavy treasure chest on the cart, the GM will smile evilly and ask: "So, is there anybody who can drive this thing?" That's why you always take it. And it's boring. And narrow.
That's why I suggest that this skill should be included in the Horsemanship skill. And the construction part should be covered by an appropriate Craft.

Description in the current writeup:

Teamster
Covers everything from the manual skill at driving chariots, carts, and other animal-drawn wheeled vehicles, to the packing of loads upon and general repair and maintenance same.
Teamster checks are generally only called for when a character wishes to do something unusual, or they must perform under stressful circumstances. Most characters who regularly use wagons only ever need a few ranks in the skill. Traveling merchants or caravan traders may have as high as 4 or 5 ranks. Six ranks and higher are generally only used by nomadic peoples, or those who use chariots to race or in war.

I disagree with your example. Per the rules, you don't roll just to drive the thing in the first place. You only roll under dramatic circumstances. If you're just taking some hay home, no one needs the skill unless something comes up. The trick is that, like seamanship, this skill usually isn't worth it unless your campaign is going to feature it. That's just the nature of the premise, rather than a flaw with the skill. The moment you're playing gypsies, nomads, carvan merchants, it's as important to your success as seamanship for a nautical campaign.

There's no skill in BoB and SaS that would deal with non-verbal information, lip-reading, body language and empathy. In Dark Heresy there's a skill called Scrutiny, that allows a character to see if he is being lied to. There's also the Deceive skill in that game, but that's probably covered by Manipulation.

This is a tricky one. I think the rules around social skills definitely need more explanation. If a manipulation is successful, what exactly does it get you and when does it "wear off"? What if an NPC uses it on a player? I think the idea is supposed to be that you don't have a "sense motive skill", rather you attempt to oppose the NPCs manipulation of you. The problem here is that it has to always be liar initiated, which effectively completely gives away the lie with out of character information when you make the roll (unless you go the route of randomly throwing in unnecessary manipulation rolls just to cover your tracks...). If the GM instead decides to not make the manipulation roll up front it feels strange to have a player in the situation of having to ask the NPC to attempt to use Manipulate on them so they can oppose the roll to find out what is going on.

I have a fundamental dislike of any kind of "roll to see if lying" skill. It's mechanically broken for a lot of the reasons ThirtyThr33 points out. Beyond that, I think it's way, way more interesting for players to have to figure out who to trust on their own.

Within the context of our system, it's an even worse fit. There can be no "figure out if they are lying" skill because there is no "lying" skill. Command, Coercion, Manipulation, Negotiation, Oration. These are all tactics. Tactics do not dictate content. You can use any one of them by being honest. Or by lying. Or lying by being honest. How does one "detect lie" when they are using the truth to deceive you?

The roll to resist a social skill only indicates whether your character is convinced of the thing they were trying to convince you to do. Whether you believe what they told you to convince you to do that thing is on you.

There's also Acrobatics skill that is absent, the favorite thing of all elves and showoffs. ) It may be incorporated into Athletics, but I don't think it is a good idea. Adding this skill may also require some addition to combat rules (which is a pain). Maybe another Edge?..

Good riddance. Tumbling and acrobatics in combat is done in games and movies way too often is really just ridiculous. It doesn't fit the gritty feel of the game at all either.

Also agreed. The difference between acrobatics and athletics is academic at best, and we axed athletics as a skill. If you want to be an acrobat, either take a profession (Perform: Acrobat), or just get a high Agility.

The most important thing that is absent from the system is alchemy/apothecary/herbalism-related skills.

Without a alchemy sub system, I think it is okay for this to covered by Medicine and Survival. However, a fully built out alchemy system would be cool if the game decided that it was going to be a thing (maybe something for a Alchemy & Astronomy expansion).

[/quote]
Another place I'm inclined to agree. Without a dedicated subsystem, there's no real way to make these worth fleshing out and individuating. If you want them, take them as Lore skills for now. I'd be open to any of the above as a subsystem (and indeed, I've got some ideas for an alchemy system already, once we get to fleshing out the magic section).

[thirtythr33]

Athletics has been axed. It's now just a function of your attributes. Most of what it would have covered are better covered by attributes, and like an attribute nearly all people have some level of athletics. The only real outlier here is swimming (which is an acquired skill.) In a nautical game, I'd be tempted to make this a stand-alone skill. Otherwise, make it an attribute roll or assume it fits under the seamanship skill.

Interesting. I see what you mean, without the X+Y system having athletics with 0 skill would feel very awkward. But no athletics skill or speed attribute means that moving around in a skirmish must be done with an attribute test based on Brawn and Agility, which doesn't feel like a great fit to me.

especially once the factions system gets in play.

You tease.

Education is a broad, basic lore skill. It covers the listed subjects, as well as being the research skill and representing literacy.

I like that description a lot more.

The trick is that, like seamanship, this skill usually isn't worth it unless your campaign is going to feature it. That's just the nature of the premise, rather than a flaw with the skill. The moment you're playing gypsies, nomads, carvan merchants, it's as important to your success as seamanship for a nautical campaign.

The difficult part is deciding whether or not the swimming and seamanship skills go in the core rules or they belong specifically only in a Sabre & Sails campaign. Likewise, there is a choice of including Teamster or dropping it unless you are playing a Caravans & Chariots game. Languages is another skill that is either completely irrelevant in a monolingual setting but indispensable if you were trying to do a hardcore historical European game. Even in The Floating City game I have had to gloss over the languages and lump everything into "Italian" when in reality each city-state spoke their own language. It might even be an idea to have a "core skills" list that are appropriate for every setting and a smaller list of "campaign specific skills" where the GM decides what is appropriate to include where you put your narrow skills like Swimming, Teamster and Languages which might otherwise be subsumed into another skill like Seamanship, Horsemanship and Education respectively.

Another idea is to use specific break points in skills to "gain abilities" like you have that 1 point in Education makes you literate. Maybe 4 points makes you bilingual and for 1 point in Seamanship you learn to swim. But then if you are just using character points to purchase binary abilities like literacy or swimming, they probably belong in the edges section... Then again, a 1 skillpoint tax to become literate is less than having to buy a whole edge.

[Benedict]

Some thoughts.

Untrained Ability Checks
On occasion, a character will need to test an ability they do not have. The way this is resolved depends on the type of ability being called upon.
...
Characters may use the value of a related skill or the most relevant attribute, whichever is higher or more applicable. When substituting an ability in this fashion, all dice from that pool (including any from other sources) are rolled at FTN6.

I strongly believe that the untrained situation should be made with increased REQs, not a FTN6. With that in mind.

Athletics
I see that the concept is to make skills quite broad so that there won't be dozens of them in the game. The Athletics here is a good example of that. In my opinion, the key features covered are climbing and swimming. Usually (hereinafter this means "in many other systems") these two are separate skills while running and jumping/leaping is covered by attribute checks. Indeed, a good climber is not always a good swimmer (bar James Bond, of course), and for me personally, it would make sense to separate climbing from swimming. But this would make those skills too narrow and incoherent with the system, so, I guess, this one is OK and may be left as it is.

Athletics has been axed. It's now just a function of your attributes. Most of what it would have covered are better covered by attributes, and like an attribute nearly all people have some level of athletics. The only real outlier here is swimming (which is an acquired skill.) In a nautical game, I'd be tempted to make this a stand-alone skill. Otherwise, make it an attribute roll or assume it fits under the seamanship skill.

The way I see it Athletics should not be axed. Yes, it covers climbing and swimming. And much more for me. Long-distance running, tumbling, balance, bodily coordination, physical stamina, lifting ability, and so on. Yes, all these get covered by Attributes (Agility, Brawn, Will). By representing athletic activities with Attributes alone creates the paradox of people who can be exceptionally gifted in one thing and really bad at others. You want to have a marathon runner? By Attributes you need both high Brawn and Will. Since things can be tapped I'd prefer a Pheidippides with Brawn5 Will5 Athletics8 rolling 10D6 vs REQ5 TN4 instead of Brawn8 Will8 rolling 9D6 vs REQ5 TN6. There should be a distinction between natural talent and acquired training.

Impersonation
This is acting, right?.. See also the entry for Perform skill.

Removed. It's now the Disguise skill and covers altering your physical presentation/looking the part.

It is semantics, but I personally loathe the Disguise idea. Too DnDey for my tastes, and it also describes one specific thing (not unlike breaking Stealth down to Hide in Shadows and Move Silently). Imo it should be named to any of Impersonation/Intrigue/Subterfuge and cover social and body language stealth and misdirection. In essence it can also serve as the Lying skill. Which you can interchangeably tap with Coercion, Negotiation, Manipulation, Attributes, etc.

Oration
Now, this one seems to me too narrow, especially in comparison to most other skills. In the same time, this skill is quite necessary. I like the way it is dealt with in WFRP. In that system, there is a talent called Public Speaking which allows a character to use his Charm skill while talking to large groups of people. It may be done the same way here: remove the Orate skill and add an Edge called Orator that would allow characters to use their Manipulation, Negotiation (Diplomacy!) and even Coercion skills with large crowds.

I actually quite like this suggestion. Especially since the "leader" and "party face" type roles are already being heavily pushed into the Edges/Flaws section to create their build. (in order to pick up henchmen and other social skill boosters as well as the removal of the Social attribute)

If we weren't set up the way we are, it might be tempting. On the other hand, given that all the other social skills are about the tactic one uses to persuade, oration is just as valid. In my games thus far, Oration has seen quite a bit of use.

Again a point of personal preference. Oration could easily be axed as a separate Skill, and appear instead as a specific Perform skill. Perform is about performing infront of a crowd and make them act/think/feel in specific ways. It's about group dynamics influenced by the performer.

Take music for example. Perform: Guitar is one's skill of playing the instrument in front of a crowd, Lore: Music his theoretical knowledge of music. Let's take an example. CharA has Perform3 and Lore/Music8, while CharB has Perform8 and Lore/Music3. CharA performs with 3+2=5D and composes music with 8D. CharB performs with 8D and composes with 3+2=5D.

Likewise CharA has Manipulate8 Perform/Oration3, and CharB has Manipulate3 Perform/Oration8. CharA manipulates an individual with 8D and a crowd with 5D. CharB manipulates and individual with 5D and a crowd with 8D. Similarly Manipulate can be substituted for any Social influence skill.

Also worth noting: Perception is already more expensive by virtue of it being an attribute, not a skill.

That really bugs me to be honest. Yes Perception is an Attribute with a capital P. Still I feel that at there should be some skills that would cover Perception under specific circumstances. Namely Education (mental perception/research/ etc) which is already in. And I'd love two additions to make it whole: Investigation (searching for physical clues) and Empathy (social perception). Investigation would counter Stealth, while Empathy the aforementioned Impersonation/Intrigue/Subterfuge suggestion.

This is a tricky one. I think the rules around social skills definitely need more explanation. If a manipulation is successful, what exactly does it get you and when does it "wear off"? What if an NPC uses it on a player? I think the idea is supposed to be that you don't have a "sense motive skill", rather you attempt to oppose the NPCs manipulation of you. The problem here is that it has to always be liar initiated, which effectively completely gives away the lie with out of character information when you make the roll (unless you go the route of randomly throwing in unnecessary manipulation rolls just to cover your tracks...). If the GM instead decides to not make the manipulation roll up front it feels strange to have a player in the situation of having to ask the NPC to attempt to use Manipulate on them so they can oppose the roll to find out what is going on.

I have a fundamental dislike of any kind of "roll to see if lying" skill. It's mechanically broken for a lot of the reasons ThirtyThr33 points out. Beyond that, I think it's way, way more interesting for players to have to figure out who to trust on their own.

Within the context of our system, it's an even worse fit. There can be no "figure out if they are lying" skill because there is no "lying" skill. Command, Coercion, Manipulation, Negotiation, Oration. These are all tactics. Tactics do not dictate content. You can use any one of them by being honest. Or by lying. Or lying by being honest. How does one "detect lie" when they are using the truth to deceive you?

The roll to resist a social skill only indicates whether your character is convinced of the thing they were trying to convince you to do. Whether you believe what they told you to convince you to do that thing is on you.

Well, lying through ones teeth or bending and twisting the truth to one's favor are prime examples of conflict and drama. The real problem starts when these situations are handled in a binary fashion: he lies/he speaks the truth. If the GM answers in this way it becomes boring and dull. When the GM starts to describe things instead of giving "yes/no" answers it works.

As for the mechanical effect: When there is a Contest, no matter who the aggressor is, a roll is called. If the PC trying to discern info when there's no subterfuge involved the PC is the aggressor. Because he initiates (an uncalled) contest. Should he roll bad he could look like a fool, or even worse, earn an enemy. Simple as that. If the player can't handle a bad roll and doesn't act properly it's his failing, not the game's.

Ignoring social perception invalidates the social influence concept in general. If there is no "sense motive" mechanic , I fail to see the need for Intimidate/Manipulate/Negotiate mechanics and not just RP the whole thing.

Another idea is to use specific break points in skills to "gain abilities" like you have that 1 point in Education makes you literate. Maybe 4 points makes you bilingual and for 1 point in Seamanship you learn to swim. But then if you are just using character points to purchase binary abilities like literacy or swimming, they probably belong in the edges section... Then again, a 1 skillpoint tax to become literate is less than having to buy a whole edge.

While it has merit on paper, I believe that it will get too iffy. Not all skills will be eligible for "Tier Abilities" (swim, literacy, etc). If one tries to make every Skill with Tier Abilities it will become even more iffy. I think it should be Campaign dependent, with accompanying Edges/Flaws to flesh it out. A Sand&Scimitar campaign? Everyone can't swim and Swim is a Minor Edge. In a Sail&Cutlass campaign on the other hand everyone swims and you can get a Major Flaw: Can't Swim.

[thirtythr33]

You want to have a marathon runner? By Attributes you need both high Brawn and Will. Since things can be tapped I'd prefer a Pheidippides with Brawn5 Will5 Athletics8 rolling 10D6 vs REQ5 TN4 instead of Brawn8 Will8 rolling 9D6 vs REQ5 TN6. There should be a distinction between natural talent and acquired training.

I think this is less a problem to do with cutting athletics, and more a problem of cutting down to so few attributes. Brawn, Agility and Willpower just aren't enough dimensions to accurately represent the diversity of athletics like sprinting, marathon, swimming, climbing, jumping and weight-lifting. If we still had Speed, Strength and Stamina, it would be far less jarring to find an attribute combination that would feel satisfactory. Pheidippides for example might be represented as having some combination of high Speed, Stamina and Willpower.

It is semantics, but I personally loathe the Disguise idea. Too DnDey for my tastes, and it also describes one specific thing (not unlike breaking Stealth down to Hide in Shadows and Move Silently). Imo it should be named to any of Impersonation/Intrigue/Subterfuge and cover social and body language stealth and misdirection. In essence it can also serve as the Lying skill. Which you can interchangeably tap with Coercion, Negotiation, Manipulation, Attributes, etc.

Depending on precisely what it is trying to do, it should just be called Acting. Acting is what you are doing to make a Performance, Impersonate someone, lie well or blend in so someone overlooks you.

The difference is that Disguise also implies the knowledge of costumes and makeup that Acting doesn't. That also implies that you can use your disguise skill on other people but acting is something an individual can only do for themselves. Some other skill name that could cover both Acting and Disguise might be Theatre or Stagecraft.

That really bugs me to be honest. Yes Perception is an Attribute with a capital P. Still I feel that at there should be some skills that would cover Perception under specific circumstances.

Don't forget you can still tap appropriate skills into a Perception test if you can justify it.

[Benedict]

You want to have a marathon runner? By Attributes you need both high Brawn and Will. Since things can be tapped I'd prefer a Pheidippides with Brawn5 Will5 Athletics8 rolling 10D6 vs REQ5 TN4 instead of Brawn8 Will8 rolling 9D6 vs REQ5 TN6. There should be a distinction between natural talent and acquired training.

I think this is less a problem to do with cutting athletics, and more a problem of cutting down to so few attributes. Brawn, Agility and Willpower just aren't enough dimensions to accurately represent the diversity of athletics like sprinting, marathon, swimming, climbing, jumping and weight-lifting. If we still had Speed, Strength and Stamina, it would be far less jarring to find an attribute combination that would feel satisfactory. Pheidippides for example might be represented as having some combination of high Speed, Stamina and Willpower.

That's one way to view it. Imo it's not the number of attributes. It could come down to only three attributes (Mind, Spirit, and Body) and a huge assortment of learned abilities (Skills + Proficiencies) to complement them.
What really bugs me is that Athletics is restricted to natural talent with the current write-up. Yes, you could tap anything into it. Still it doesn't change the fact there's no learned ability in athletic activities.

If one wanted to stretch it even further in this kind of logic, proficiencies or the riding part of horsemanship would be obsolete too, easily represented by Attributes alone. I fail to see why climbing a 100-feet vertical mountain side or pole-vaulting over a 15-feet wall requires less training than jumping from a moving horse's saddle safely or nailing a bullseye with that bow. No matter what his natural talent is.

It is semantics, but I personally loathe the Disguise idea. Too DnDey for my tastes, and it also describes one specific thing (not unlike breaking Stealth down to Hide in Shadows and Move Silently). Imo it should be named to any of Impersonation/Intrigue/Subterfuge and cover social and body language stealth and misdirection. In essence it can also serve as the Lying skill. Which you can interchangeably tap with Coercion, Negotiation, Manipulation, Attributes, etc.

Depending on precisely what it is trying to do, it should just be called Acting. Acting is what you are doing to make a Performance, Impersonate someone, lie well or blend in so someone overlooks you.

The difference is that Disguise also implies the knowledge of costumes and makeup that Acting doesn't. That also implies that you can use your disguise skill on other people but acting is something an individual can only do for themselves. Some other skill name that could cover both Acting and Disguise might be Theatre or Stagecraft.

As I said, it is semantics. However, as a professional performer myself, I'd beg to differ. There's no point in thoroughly detailing the thing. In bullets it requires knowledge and skill in your chosen medium, natural stamina to pull it off, tons of willpower to expose yourself in public and remain focused at the same time, the ability to read and redirect a group's mood, among many. Ha! Seems the Tapping concept suits it well from a rules-point-of-view.

And a note: The knowledge and appliance of disguise (costume and makeup) is one of the main things that differentiates actors (Perform: Acting) from other performers (Dancers, Musicians, etc). It's an essential part of their job. These are their tools.

Still giving it an umbrella name like Acting (or Stagecraft) which is a very specific thing, is similar (albeit from an opposed starting point) to merging the 3 socials (Coercion, Manipulation, and Negotiation) to a single skill: Interaction. Heck, even merge Commands, Orations, and Performances under it too.

That really bugs me to be honest. Yes Perception is an Attribute with a capital P. Still I feel that at there should be some skills that would cover Perception under specific circumstances.

Don't forget you can still tap appropriate skills into a Perception test if you can justify it.

Ofc. Still, its similar as above with Athletics. There are specific Actions that are countered by Perception that require Skill (aka training). Training that when you lack it roll at FTN6.

Take Stealth for example. By rolling straight Perception+Taps @ BTN when the opposing side rolls @ FTN6 when untrained sounds a bit harsh. Which means that I can make the top thief by investing in Attributes and certain Skills. If I want to make the top detective I only have to max Perception. Not that skills won't help him. But they are added flavor, as opposed to the thief's dependency on Larceny, Legerdemain, and Stealth, without counting other less obvious choices, like Manipulate.

[thirtythr33]

What really bugs me is that Athletics is restricted to natural talent with the current write-up. Yes, you could tap anything into it. Still it doesn't change the fact there's no learned ability in athletic activities.

Attributes are not necessarily solely natural talent. Hafþór Björnsson is naturally tall, but the majority of his Brawn has been developed and trained over his whole life through constant exercise, practice and dietary regiment. Many other attributes can be trained, such as agility, balance, memory and perception. At most your probably only getting to Brawn 7 naturally. Anything above that is the purview of professional athletes with decades of training, and I would argue the same for Agility.

Besides, what is the alternative? You have an athletics skill that is completely divorced from attributes? That makes so little sense it boarders on absurdist.

If one wanted to stretch it even further in this kind of logic, proficiencies or the riding part of horsemanship would be obsolete too, easily represented by Attributes alone. I fail to see why climbing a 100-feet vertical mountain side or pole-vaulting over a 15-feet wall requires less training than jumping from a moving horse's saddle safely or nailing a bullseye with that bow. No matter what his natural talent is.

For starters, it is obvious pole-vaulting is a specialized skill and not analogous to an athletic jump. As for running and actual jumping you would probably be surprised how little skill makes a difference.

An average person will run 100m in 18 seconds.
A state level high-school athlete will run 100m in 14 seconds
An athletic man who otherwise doesn't specifically train for sprinting will make 14 seconds also
An Olympic gold medalist will run 100m in 10 seconds

For long jump an average person will get around 14 foot.
A state level high schooler will jump 19 feet.
An Olympic medalist will jump 26 feet.

An average person's vertical jump is 18 inches.
A average basketballer can jump 28 inches.
A NBA basketballer's record vertical jump is 46 inches.

An average first time marathon runners will complete in 4.5hrs
A fit amateur will make around 3.5hrs
An Olympic medalist time for marathon is 2.25hrs

Average swimming speed does 100m in 1:50
A state level high schooler can swim 100m in 1:30
An Olympic medalist swimmer can do 100m in 0:50

Looking over these numbers it is actually remarkably consistent that an Olympian will only approximately double the performance of the average person, with a generically fit but untrained person sitting somewhere half way between the two. I don't really see a 30% improvement from a generically fit person to the specialized Olypian level being particularly "skill intensive". Especially not when you compare it the degree to which a master of one of the following skills outmatches an amateur: Education, Engineering, Language, Larceny, Legerdemain, Lore, Medicine, Perform, Survival, Trade or Warfare. For any of these I imagine atleast a 10 fold increase in performance due to training and skill.

The place you will see a big difference is in weight-lifting (for deadlift 75kg for average man, and 500kg for Olympian). The problem here is that there are a multitude of different weight lifting types, which each require specialized training on particular muscles. You almost never see weightlifters winning multiple Olympic categories, but you often see runners and swimmers winning several different events.

So, going purely by the numbers it would make the most sense for running, swimming and jumping to be attribute tests (all based on Willpower+Agility I suppose, since Speed and Stamina are out) and for weight lifting to be a skill. But that is when considering muscle building to essentially be training a skill. If you redefine Brawn to represent general muscle training instead of "natural bigness" then weight lifting too is simply an attribute Brawn+Willpower test.

I will concede though, that climbing would most make sense as a skill rather than attribute test. The problem there is that it just wouldn't be worth spending points on for such a narrow and weak skill compared to having a more broad and powerful skill and just buying a rope.

If I want to make the top detective I only have to max Perception. Not that skills won't help him. But they are added flavor, as opposed to the thief's dependency on Larceny, Legerdemain, and Stealth, without counting other less obvious choices, like Manipulate.

A top detective is going to need Perception, Cunning, Connections, Education, some Lore and some social skills for conducting interviews. To say the detective only needs perception is like saying the thief only needs Larceny.

Maxing out the stealth skill is trivial, it costs you 1 tiers worth of skill points. Maxing out the Perception attribute costs 2 tiers worth of attribute points. Perception is twice as expensive as stealth. (assuming the S&S tier charts are similar to BoB).

[Benedict]

What really bugs me is that Athletics is restricted to natural talent with the current write-up. Yes, you could tap anything into it. Still it doesn't change the fact there's no learned ability in athletic activities.

Attributes are not necessarily solely natural talent. Hafþór Björnsson is naturally tall, but the majority of his Brawn has been developed and trained over his whole life through constant exercise, practice and dietary regiment. Many other attributes can be trained, such as agility, balance, memory and perception. At most your probably only getting to Brawn 7 naturally. Anything above that is the purview of professional athletes with decades of training, and I would argue the same for Agility.

I don't disagree with that one. Yet training your muscles or coordination has nothing to do with technique. Take weight lifting for example or cliff climbing. Yes, these athletes train their bodies (Attributes) but also learn specific techniques (Skills) to make things easier for them.

Besides, what is the alternative? You have an athletics skill that is completely divorced from attributes? That makes so little sense it boarders on absurdist.

Why divorced? For starters you can always tap Attributes as well as anything else. With Athletics getting the axe we get this absurdity:
I believe it's safe to assume that we all agree that leaping to safety from a moving horse obviously involves Horsemanship and Agility in some degree.
If you are untrained in Horsemanship you roll your Agility + whatever you can tap in there @ FTN6.
If you are trained in Horsemanship you can use your skill if its higher than your Agility, tap, and roll @ BTN.

Let's lose the horse.
Swinging across a flaming room using a chandelier, with Athletics gone, you do it with Agility plus possible taps @ BTN no matter what.

Dunno, but for me Athletics is the quintessential movement skill, among other things. Don't see why it should go.

If one wanted to stretch it even further in this kind of logic, proficiencies or the riding part of horsemanship would be obsolete too, easily represented by Attributes alone. I fail to see why climbing a 100-feet vertical mountain side or pole-vaulting over a 15-feet wall requires less training than jumping from a moving horse's saddle safely or nailing a bullseye with that bow. No matter what his natural talent is.

(list of numbers)

Looking over these numbers it is actually remarkably consistent that an Olympian will only approximately double the performance of the average person, with a generically fit but untrained person sitting somewhere half way between the two. I don't really see a 30% improvement from a generically fit person to the specialized Olympian level being particularly "skill intensive". Especially not when you compare it the degree to which a master of one of the following skills outmatches an amateur: Education, Engineering, Language, Larceny, Legerdemain, Lore, Medicine, Perform, Survival, Trade or Warfare. For any of these I imagine atleast a 10 fold increase in performance due to training and skill.
For starters, it is obvious pole-vaulting is a specialized skill and not analogous to an athletic jump. As for running and actual jumping you would probably be surprised how little skill makes a difference.

Trust me there's no surprise in all these numbers, at least not for me.

Consider this. The trained professional athlete (Olympic swimmer/CL footballer/NBA player/etc) not only performs twice as much as the average person, he can also do it for a very long time consistently. Yes, a well trained teenager can run 100m in 14-18s. Once. Maybe twice. If its a brawny kid he could do it all day long. Then collapse from exhaustion and rest for a month. A soccer pitch is 105m by 68m since 2008. A top level professional soccer player makes short sprints from 20m to 90m numerous times within a 90 minute game, on average covering 11Km each game, or simply an average of 123 sprints of 90m. Midfielders who must cover more space by default - that's the nature of the game - average 15Km, or 167 90m sprints. And that's over a length of time spanning several months. In the least severe conditions (only championship matches; without counting possible friendlies, cup, and international matches) that means 30 matches a year. Which equals 330Km. That's the kind of difference the guy with Athletics8 over the guy with Athletics1 has. Similar to the difference a master musician with Perform8 has over a rookie musician with Perform1.

If I want to make the top detective I only have to max Perception. Not that skills won't help him. But they are added flavor, as opposed to the thief's dependency on Larceny, Legerdemain, and Stealth, without counting other less obvious choices, like Manipulate.

A top detective is going to need Perception, Cunning, Connections, Education, some Lore and some social skills for conducting interviews. To say the detective only needs perception is like saying the thief only needs Larceny.

Maxing out the stealth skill is trivial, it costs you 1 tiers worth of skill points. Maxing out the Perception attribute costs 2 tiers worth of attribute points. Perception is twice as expensive as stealth. (assuming the S&S tier charts are similar to BoB).

No, I'm not saying the detective needs only Perception. His main function is based on Perception tho. And he always rolls against BTN. When the thief who invests in larceny, legerdemain, and stealth rolls at FTN6 when untrained in said skill. Comparing one Attribute to one Skill obviously is a no brainer. Comparing one Attribute to three Skills however is entirely different, don't you agree?

Yes, the master detective will need Perception, Cunning, Will, Connections, a social Skill to interact, a Lore, possibly Streetwise, and probably a Proficiency to stay alive.

Likewise the master thief needs Agility, Cunning, Perception, Stealth, Larceny, Legerdemain, a social skill to interact, most probably Streetwise, the --now dead-- Athletics skill, Connections, and again a Proficiency to stay alive.

As I said earlier, Perception counters specific Skills by default. Legerdemain and Stealth being the most obvious ones. All have Perception, all roll @ BTN vs those skills. Not all have the skills, so they have to do it @ FTN6 when untrained. I just believe it's a flaw of the system having rolls that you can always take on a BTN when others opposing rolls that are affected by training level (and FTN6), not an unholy crusade to champion Athletics and smite Perception.

[Agamemnon]

I lack the time available to go back and start quoting everything again, but the important points of contention:

Athletics
There are two main issues at play. First is the assumption that attributes are solely innate ability. There is no attribute that is solely innate, otherwise you couldn't increase them.

My main problem with athletics as a skill, however, is that it doesn't work in reverse. In real life, climbing, jumping, running? Learning to do any of those things necessitates becoming physically stronger and building more endurance. There's no such thing as Brawn 2 Agility 2 Athletics 8 olympic runner.

The moment we make the argument "but technique is important and not covered by attributes" then you immediately present the question as to why your running technique makes you a better swimmer, or why your swimming technique makes you better at climbing. The whole thing falls apart anyway from a logistic standpoint.

Given that every healthy human has some athletic ability (children all learn to run and climb just as part of play) AND given that ability to do athletics stuff tends to directly translate to an increase in attribute levels, it doesn't make sense to have as a skill on its own unless we introduced a bunch of fiddly rules exceptions into the system to make athletics work differently than other skills mechanically. Also, that stuff that ThirtyThr33 said. Keep in mind, even the olympian differential is easily represented within the actual range of stats. A "fit" person is going to be a 4. Normal human max is 8. With a tier 5, you can get to 10.

Also worth noting, we presently have:
Agility, Brawn, Cunning, Perception, and Will.

Derived attributes are
Grit (Brawn+Will/2) -- serving as endurance/stamina/health/trauma
Reflex (Agility+Cunning/2) -- Reaction time, avoidance
Speed (Agility+Brawn/2) -- raw speed, movement.

On the reverse, you also have the problem that once you decide that athletics now covers literally all forms of personal movement, what are the physical attributes even for? You already made the argument that weight lifting was about technique and therefore also athletics. Balance can be as easily argued to be athletics. Climbing is athletics. Swimming is athletics. At that point, attributes only exist to occasionally be tapped on something and under that circumstance we might as well remove them. Not something I'm particularly keen on.

Disguise
Impersonation was a skill that didn't work, conceptually, because what it governed was broken. In reality, no matter how good of an impersonator you are, you can't impersonate things without knowing what they are. You can't impersonate a doctor for any length of time without some medical knowledge. You can't really impersonate a soldier without knowing something about military protocol -- or, at least, you can't do it in front of anyone who knows anything about the thing you're impersonating.

It also doesn't really function as a social skill on its own, either, as actually getting people to do things because they believe you are who you claim would still be a function of one of the other social skills.

So if it doesn't cover knowledge of in what way to act and speak, and it doesn't cover persuasive ability, what's being covered? We're left with altering appearance and the general ability to mimick behaviors enough to avoid standing out.

Acting is a weird topic on its own, especially given that we're talking about a pre-modern setting. Acting in the renaissance and earlier had very very little to do with convincing people you legitimately were the thing you were and feeling the emotions you were. In a pre-modern setting, it's all stylized and almost symbollic representation of the emotions and action taking place. It has to be exaggerated and caricaturized just so the audience in the back can tell what's going on. Over-acting was acting. It wasn't generally about a realistic portrayal of the subtlty of human behavior so much as the representation/communication of ideas.

Acting is a weird topic on its own in a pre-modern setting. Stage acting wasn't really the subtle realistic portrayal of emotion we associate with modern acting so much as a stylized peformance art meant to make sure the people in the back could still understand what was going on. There's a reason we call over-the-top gestures and exaggerations "Theatrical." I'm sure there is some overlap with "impersonating someone" but it isn't as direct a correlation as you might think.

Oration
Oration is still a social skill, even if there is an elemence of performance to it. Making it into a specific Perform skill doesn't actually change the use or necessity for it, but it would obfuscate the thing as an option, make it harder to reference, harder to explain the rules for, and lead to fewer people taking it. I'm not sure what is gained in the exchange.

Lie detection:
Even if you assume that it's automatically always rolled, a failed roll tips your hand. "I roll to detect subterfuge." Even if the NPC isn't lying, I now have to roll. If I tell you "you detect no subterfuge" but you lost the roll, you're now going to assume they are lying for strictly metagame reasons. And what if you don't assume they are lying but they are? I now need to tell you to roll anyway, which tips my hand. The only way to not tip my hand is to always make you roll detect subterfuge every time an NPC tells you anything, which is a direct contradiction to the way conflict mechanics are supposed to work.

It's a huge can of worms and the only benefit is to give players more metagame information to base their choices on, which I'm not a huge fan of in the first place.

No, I'm not saying the detective needs only Perception. His main function is based on Perception tho. And he always rolls against BTN. When the thief who invests in larceny, legerdemain, and stealth rolls at FTN6 when untrained in said skill. Comparing one Attribute to one Skill obviously is a no brainer. Comparing one Attribute to three Skills however is entirely different, don't you agree?

No, I'm not saying the detective needs only Perception. His main function is based on Perception tho. And he always rolls against BTN. When the thief who invests in larceny, legerdemain, and stealth rolls at FTN6 when untrained in said skill. Comparing one Attribute to one Skill obviously is a no brainer. Comparing one Attribute to three Skills however is entirely different, don't you agree?

Yes, the master detective will need Perception, Cunning, Will, Connections, a social Skill to interact, a Lore, possibly Streetwise, and probably a Proficiency to stay alive.

Likewise the master thief needs Agility, Cunning, Perception, Stealth, Larceny, Legerdemain, a social skill to interact, most probably Streetwise, the --now dead-- Athletics skill, Connections, and again a Proficiency to stay alive.

As I said earlier, Perception counters specific Skills by default. Legerdemain and Stealth being the most obvious ones. All have Perception, all roll @ BTN vs those skills. Not all have the skills, so they have to do it @ FTN6 when untrained. I just believe it's a flaw of the system having rolls that you can always take on a BTN when others opposing rolls that are affected by training level (and FTN6), not an unholy crusade to champion Athletics and smite Perception.

It is different, but also moot. Attributes are way more expensive than skills, both at character creation and to raise afterward. A Tier5 attribute pick gives you 24 points that you must divide between 5 attributes. Dropping 10 into Perception leaves you 14 points to divide between 4 attributes - leaving you 3.5 per other attribute. That's a steep price to pay. On the other hand, a Tier 5 Skill pick gives you 45 points to spend. Even if you get 10 Stealth and 8 Larceny, you've got 27 points left to drop.

You can't compare attribute usefulness directly to skill usefulness because attributes are significantly more expensive by comparison.

Also worth note -- if you're searching for things, perception will tell you that a window frame has been scratched or that there are boot prints on the floor, but if you want insight into the crime, I'm going to ask you as the detective to roll Larceny.

[Benedict]

First is the assumption that attributes are solely innate ability. There is no attribute that is solely innate, otherwise you couldn't increase them.

Well, I guess I wasn't clear enough.

What really bugs me is that Athletics is restricted to natural talent with the current write-up. Yes, you could tap anything into it. Still it doesn't change the fact there's no learned ability in athletic activities.

Training is one thing. Knowledge is another. Yet technique another. As an athlete you learn how to regulate your breathing, which leads to lower heart beat rate, lower blood pressure, and consequently less fatigue. You learn how to moderate and coordinate movement to achieve better results compared to someone untrained for longer periods of time while minimizing injuries and physical strain. To say that all the above are represented solely by Attributes is equally problematic to saying that Attributes are strickly innate abilities.

What I had in mind regarding Attributes and Skills is this:

In Band of Bastards, much of a character’s abilities are defined by two sets of traits: attributes and skills.

Attributes represent the various areas in which a character may have raw aptitude.

(...)

Skills are various specific areas in which the character may have recieved formal training or simply learned on their own.

I believe that 'Scoundrels will have a different wording, but won't deviate from the core concept.

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There's no such thing as Brawn 2 Agility 2 Athletics 8 olympic runner.

Agreed. As there's no such thing as a leading physicist with Cunning 2 Perception 2 Science/Physics 8. Or an Olympic fencer with Agility 2 Cunning 2 Rapier 8.

On the reverse, you also have the problem that once you decide that athletics now covers literally all forms of personal movement, what are the physical attributes even for?

That's kinda extreme imo. I believe it comes down to context.

Walking up a flight of stairs is a no roll thing unless you are dead drunk. A sprint down the same flight of stairs is an Agility roll. Tumbling down the same flight of stairs doing parkour-style shite without breaking bones is Athletics/Acrobatics.

Likewise, paddling in head-deep calm sea water is a no roll. Swimming across a relatively calm river is Brawn. Swimming across the English Channel is Athletics/Swim.

At that point, attributes only exist to occasionally be tapped on something and under that circumstance we might as well remove them. Not something I'm particularly keen on.

That's a tradeoff for replacing the Attribute+Skill concept for Ability+Tap+Tap. At certain Skill ranks your Attributes become redundant. But only for specific appliances tied to said Skill. Otherwise Attributes have a more varied area of application, either as core Abilities or Tapped Abilities.

The moment we make the argument "but technique is important and not covered by attributes" then you immediately present the question as to why your running technique makes you a better swimmer, or why your swimming technique makes you better at climbing. The whole thing falls apart anyway from a logistic standpoint.

I agree that it's annoying. In truth the most annoying thing with Athletics is that its a huge category of related (or not so) subskills. One way to tackle this would be to make Athletics a group Skill like Lore. Which will give you a bigger number of Skills to chose from.

But let's agree that it does fall apart from a logistic standpoint. From a rational standpoint killing Athletics alltogether creates some inconsistencies.

Let's say I have a character with Agility7 and Horsemanship0. My buddy has Agility3 and Horsemanship8.

Session after session I pull off various acrobatic stunts with my Agility (+applicable Taps) rolling 7-10 dice at BTN.

Then we happen to both need to leap at the same time from galloping horses and land safely. The GM calls for Horsemanship rolls.

I do it at Agility (+Taps) vs FTN6 while my partner does it at Horsemanship (+Taps) vs BTN. Feels awkward, iffy, and niche to need to purchase Horsemanship for that singular leap.
If on the other hand the GM ruled that we both roll vs BTN it feels bad for my buddy who invested big in a Skill and he sees me throwing almost the same amount of dice as him at equal chances. Or even worse the GM could call Agility rolls and the option to Tap Horsemanship in there. Meaning I roll 7D vs BTN while my companion rolls 3D+2D=5D.

A heads up. We agree that a single Skill representing all these activities is problematic. Doing so with two Attributes (Brawn and Agility) is equally problematic. See below on that.

Also, that stuff that ThirtyThr33 said.

I guess you mean the numbers. Well, that doesn't account for the fact that professional athletes perform consistently for longer periods of time over repeated applications, like the numbers I provided for football players.

Keep in mind, even the olympian differential is easily represented within the actual range of stats. A "fit" person is going to be a 4. Normal human max is 8. With a tier 5, you can get to 10.

Here is a disturbing fact, at least from a rules-point of view:

• Usain Bolt: 1.95 m (6 ft 5 in), 94 kg (207 lb); 200m Sprint 0:19.30
• Michael Phelps: 1.93 m (6 ft 4 in), 88 kg (194 lb); 200m Freestyle 1:42.96
• Szymon Kołecki: 1.85 m (6 ft 1 in), 94 kg (207 lb); Clean & Jerk 224 kg

All these three would be Brawn7? 8? Even 10? Meaning that a given Brawn score would allow my character to run, swim, and lift like an Olympic record gold medallist at the same time? Where exactly -- from a rules point of view -- these guys are different?

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Oration is still a social skill, even if there is an elemence of performance to it. Making it into a specific Perform skill doesn't actually change the use or necessity for it, but it would obfuscate the thing as an option, make it harder to reference, harder to explain the rules for, and lead to fewer people taking it. I'm not sure what is gained in the exchange.

Er, you mean that Perfomance is not a social skill?

I could reference a ton of material why Perform/Music, Perform/Dance, Perform/Act, Perform/Storytelling are all social skills. And I honestly believe that in the same vein Oration is in reality Perform/Oration.

All these accomplish the same thing: getting an idea across a large crowd. Only the medium used differs, hence the subskills.

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Even if you assume that it's automatically always rolled, a failed roll tips your hand. "I roll to detect subterfuge." Even if the NPC isn't lying, I now have to roll. If I tell you "you detect no subterfuge" but you lost the roll, you're now going to assume they are lying for strictly metagame reasons. And what if you don't assume they are lying but they are? I now need to tell you to roll anyway, which tips my hand. The only way to not tip my hand is to always make you roll detect subterfuge every time an NPC tells you anything, which is a direct contradiction to the way conflict mechanics are supposed to work.

I believe rolls should occur when the player declares that he tries to detect subterfuge. Or when the GM controlled character believes he is been lied to. MoS5 and no lies? Good for him. MoF3 and no lies? He might end with a punch in the face from the single person that can set up for him that crucial meeting. MoS5 and lies? Good for him. MoF3 and lies? He might even believe the liar is his long-lost brother.

It's a huge can of worms and the only benefit is to give players more metagame information to base their choices on, which I'm not a huge fan of in the first place.

If the story is the goal by everyone involved, there's no problem with actual or factual metagame knowledge.

Perceiving intent is only the tip of the iceberg. Tbh the whole Social interraction thing is the huge can of worms, not "detect lie".

Do players get Coerced/Manipulated/Negotiated into unfavorable positions by NPCs? By that I mean by actual Conflicts. I believe yes. How do you erase the metagame knowledge that his character is Manipulated? Does the player chooses specific actions based on the knowledge his character got suckered? How do you enforce the character's cooperation when the player doesn't act up?

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It is different, but also moot. Attributes are way more expensive than skills, both at character creation and to raise afterward. A Tier5 attribute pick gives you 24 points that you must divide between 5 attributes. Dropping 10 into Perception leaves you 14 points to divide between 4 attributes - leaving you 3.5 per other attribute. That's a steep price to pay. On the other hand, a Tier 5 Skill pick gives you 45 points to spend. Even if you get 10 Stealth and 8 Larceny, you've got 27 points left to drop.

Well, we don't know the exact Priority Tables and we have to guess at best, with only 'Bastards as a guideline. Ok, with these Tiers we can deduce that:

Attributes
Question. Attributes start at 0? Or 1 like in Bastards?

If they start at 1 its 29pts, not 24pts. Making the spread One @10 and Four @4,75. Or an average spread of 29/5 = 5,8 out of 10.
In Bastards they average 28/8 = 3,5 out of 5, plus the phantom dot.

At a first glance I think that Attribute power level is significantly decreased.

If they start at zero its even worse. 24/5 = 4,8 out of 10, as opposed to 'Bastards average of 3,5 (+1) out of 5.

Skills
Likewise Skills are downplayed too. In 'Bastards you got 31pts (4@4 5@3). Or an average of 3,444 out of 5 across nine skills. Without taking into account the 5pts everyone gets for free: Background2 and Trade3.
If we average 'Scoundrels 45pts across nine skills we get 5 out of 10.


When comparing with 'Bastards, at Tier5 Attributes get a decrease of 18% ; or 32% if they start at zero.
Likewise Skills get a decrease of 28%.

With the above figures in mind it's safe to assume that Tier 5 Proficiency is somewhere between 15pts (-25%) and 14pts (-30%)?

Anyway.

You can't compare attribute usefulness directly to skill usefulness because attributes are significantly more expensive by comparison.

If Attributes start at 1 they are cheaper by 10% when compared to Skills. If they start at 0 they are more expensive by 4%.

Not only that, Attributes can be tapped to a lot more things than Skills can.

Also worth note -- if you're searching for things, perception will tell you that a window frame has been scratched or that there are boot prints on the floor, but if you want insight into the crime, I'm going to ask you as the detective to roll Larceny.

And the detective has Perception8 Larceny1. Let's assume a REQ of 3.

What is better, 8D @FTN6 for a MoS0 (13.48%)/MoS1+ (3.06%)?
Or 3D @ BTN3 for a MoS0 (12.5%) max?
Or the detective doesn't get a choice and he MUST use Larceny no matter the rating?
If yes he is better off not having the Skill at all and simply roll untrained Perception, unles he can get it to a decent rank from the start.

[thirtythr33]

This isn't meant to be a rebuttal of any of the preceding conversation, but I've recently been looking into Factor Analysis and realized it would be a really great way to conceptualize Attributes for design. Basically, factor analysis is a way of looking at a very wide range of statistics and finding the underlying correlated variables which makes the best predictions from minimal information. Also, it lets you separate factors that you might think are related but in fact are not.

As it turns out, the US army did a very comprehensive factor analysis of athletics in the 60s in order to find a way to efficiently evaluate new recruits. They were trying to solve the problem of "identification of the components of physical proficiency and the development of appropriate tests to measure these components".

They subjected 204 male recruits that were 6 weeks into basic training to a slew of 63 tests each (as well as recording physicals like age, weight, height) and they found:

Dynamic Strength:

• Described as "repeatedly or continuously moving or supporting the weight of the body"
• Governs tasks such as Chin ups, Push ups, Arm hang, Dips, Rope climb
• Negatively correlated to weight and height

Static Strength:

• Described as "exerting a maximum force for a period of time"
• Governs tasks such as Hand grip, Arm pull, Carrying, Dragging
• Positively correlated to weight

Energy Mobilization:

• Described as "expending energy for a burst of effort"
• Governs tasks such as Shuttle run, 50m Dash, Horizontal Jump, Vertical Jump
• No correlation to physical factors

Balance:

• Described as "maintenance of body equilibrium"
• Governs tasks such as Standing on 1 foot, balance beams, rail walking
• No correlation to physical factors

Dynamic Flexibility:

• Described as "repeated, rapid, flexing or stretching short or long movements"
• Governs tasks such as Lateral bend, footwork, squats, leg circles
• No correlation to physical factors

Extent Flexibility:

• Described as "stretching laterally, forward or backward as far as possible"
• Governs tasks such as abdominal stretch, twist and touch, toe touching
• No correlation to physical factors

Cardio Vascular:

• Described as "low intensity, long duration energy generating processes"
• Governs tasks such as long distance run, jumping rope, jumping jacks, swimming
• No correlation to physical factors

In a separate study they tried to so a similar thing to determine the factors for motor abilities but found that almost every motor control task was completely independent. The difference was that some people learned new motor skills a lot faster than others, but the skills didn't translate directly from one task to another.

Moving over to the world of Psychometrics, psychologists have done similar factor analysis on peoples personalities and metal performances. They are roughly Assertiveness, Enthusiasm, Openness, Intelligence, Volatility, Withdrawal, Politeness, Compassion, Industriousness and Orderliness. Unlike the physical factors above where higher is always better, with the mental ones you usually want to be in the middle (Being either Very assertive or very Unassertive is bad). Looking at the literature, the only ones agreed to be universally beneficial to have at an extreme are Intelligence and Industriousness. So in an RPG, Intelligence and Industriousness would be attributes you spend points on and the others have their own pros and cons you leave up to roleplaying. For all the others you might think of someone with a lot of middling scores as having a high charisma and someone with a lot of extreme scores would have a low charisma.

If I were putting all these into more RPG friendly language, it would probably be something like: Agility, Strength, Speed, Balance, Flexibility, Endurance, Intelligence, Diligence.

Just food for thought.