'Bastards 0.2 - Attribute/Skill Change Discussion - Feedback Wanted.

[Benedict]

Bunch of great ideas in here!

First things first. I said I'll cook up some drafts and here they are. Have at it gang!

PS Have mercy on the low res. They are available in vector ofc, no need to upload huge images here.

First. Skills stay were they are. 1 Block goes to Background with 2 dots already marked. 11 blank ones to fill in Skills with respective Expertises. Biggest con. Few Skill blocks for Skill-heavy builds.


Second. Switched places of Skills with Edges & Flaws/NPCs & Notes. Edges lose 1 line. Notes lose a lot more (about half in size). Skills get 1 Background block and 17 empty Skill blocks. Biggest con. Useless to low-Skill builds.


One might argue that it looks bad having a cluster of blocks and he'd be right. One possible solution would be to create another block with Atrs and derived Stats, One for Pic (already there), one for Char Info, one for Edges, and a final one for Notes. Takes some time but its entirely doable and it will look nicer.

Another might argue that he wants Atrs and Skills in the same left half of the page but keep 17 skills instead of 11. With some rearranging its also doable. Left side: Pic goes on top, then Atr Block, then Skill blocks. Right side: Char Info, SAs, Edges, Notes, each in its respective block. Logo probably will move to the top center of the page, zweihander stays where it is.

There are plenty of options, I just couldn't assign more than 30m to it, so I came with only these two drafts. Bottom line is, you like what you see? Is it readable? Keeps attention to gameplay instead of sheet?

Nemedeus suggested earlier that if the total CP penalty exceeds ST score it should be doubled to represent encumbrance. Just a thought.

Thanks for mentioning it.

I'd be a dick if I didn't.

How to fix Strength:
a) tie an encumbrance system to it. The encumbrance system replaces CP penalties from Armour (and weapons, like 33 said if that is gonna happen in the future). Not having the strength to carry your equipment around should be a big problem.

In retrospect your CP is already penalized by CP penalty. Doubling the CP penalty when it exceeds ST might seem a bit of a redundant solution or a compromise. Making a specific encumbrance system where you count everything you carry sounds iffy and too much of book keeping.

Encumbrance means you fight less efficiently and move less efficiently.

Another alternative is that when CP penalty equals or exceeds ST either all battle movement checks have their OBs increased, or any Positioning Rolls and Movement checks are at a Disadvantage. It's less appealing to be swinging heavy weapons and wearing full proofed plate if you can't move around. Also makes unarmored speedy characters that can dash across the battlefield more appealing (adding to the swashbuckling element), provided SP is adjusted to that.

Apply Speed as a base for Positioning and Movement rolls

Excellent idea! When Positioning and Moving in combat you use your SP stat flat, and can add 1 die/2CP spent like I suggested for Preempting. SP finally gets what it advertises it does. As for Athletics, maybe leave it to out of combat situations.

Under the old system, each additional point in a skill adds one extra die to checks of that particular skill, whereas each additional point in an attribute adds an extra die to multiple skills checks. The result of this is that if you want to build a skill-based character, you should, on the margin, favor putting priorities into attributes, rather than skills. Under the new system, attributes only contribute (on average, because of dead levels) half a die to skill checks.

So true. On the other hand, under the old system, that can be remedied by changing the Skill points you get per Priority tier. Dividing stats to create averages imo is a nightmare and an open invitation to minimaxers. Unless we are talking about a percentile system (we don't) I see no reason why to divide numbers and create dead levels.

As for the ST vs SM debate. I won't quote everything for purposes of readability. Many of the propositions have merit. But none can answer my main concern.

By clustering ST and SM together you either hit hard and endure greatly, or you don't. Unrealistic as Hell imho and boring to character builds. Instead of killing the "naked dwarf" it creates the "naked giant".

[DRaziel29]

About the new system, have you thought of rolling the attribute modifier and the skill value together? For example, if a character had 4 points in Agility, 6 in Cunning, and 3 in Lockpicking, he would roll 5 dice when using Agility and 6 when using Cunning. That way, you would reduce the importance of attributes in skill checks while keeping the flexibility of the original system.

Speaking of the new system in general, there are two things I don't like:

- The skills being tied into a fixed attribute, which gives up the flexibility of the original system.

- Making Body one third of Brawn leaves too many dead levels. With this, it would only be worth putting either 3 or 6 points in Brawn. Why don't you make it 1/2 of Brawn?

[nemedeus]

How to fix Strength:
a) tie an encumbrance system to it. The encumbrance system replaces CP penalties from Armour (and weapons, like 33 said if that is gonna happen in the future). Not having the strength to carry your equipment around should be a big problem.

In retrospect your CP is already penalized by CP penalty. Doubling the CP penalty when it exceeds ST might seem a bit of a redundant solution or a compromise. Making a specific encumbrance system where you count everything you carry sounds iffy and too much of book keeping.

Encumbrance means you fight less efficiently and move less efficiently.

Another alternative is that when CP penalty equals or exceeds ST either all battle movement checks have their OBs increased, or any Positioning Rolls and Movement checks are at a Disadvantage. It's less appealing to be swinging heavy weapons and wearing full proofed plate if you can't move around. Also makes unarmored speedy characters that can dash across the battlefield more appealing (adding to the swashbuckling element), provided SP is adjusted to that.

On second thought, you're right. the cp penalty system is great as it is.

I'll stick to my original suggestion, with the "CP penalty greater/lesser than Strength", but instead of doubling if CP-Penalty > Strength, we could HALVE if CP-Penalty =< Strength (still assuming CP penalties for weapons are also introduced).

Apply Speed as a base for Positioning and Movement rolls

Excellent idea! When Positioning and Moving in combat you use your SP stat flat, and can add 1 die/2CP spent like I suggested for Preempting. SP finally gets what it advertises it does. As for Athletics, maybe leave it to out of combat situations.

I'm with you on that one, see further down this post.

Under the old system, each additional point in a skill adds one extra die to checks of that particular skill, whereas each additional point in an attribute adds an extra die to multiple skills checks. The result of this is that if you want to build a skill-based character, you should, on the margin, favor putting priorities into attributes, rather than skills. Under the new system, attributes only contribute (on average, because of dead levels) half a die to skill checks.

So true. On the other hand, under the old system, that can be remedied by changing the Skill points you get per Priority tier. Dividing stats to create averages imo is a nightmare and an open invitation to minimaxers. Unless we are talking about a percentile system (we don't) I see no reason why to divide numbers and create dead levels.

True that, as i said Dividing Stats isn't the way to go.

I'm not sure about the Skill Points. I feel that, just giving the higher Tiers even more points won't fix the problem, while on the other hand giving the low tiers even less points would imo stifle certain character concepts too much. I do agree though that Skill Characters should get more bang for their buck.

New Suggestion:

- scale is 1 - 5, with 6th dot reserved for high skill tier.
- having 5 in a skill permanently decreases the TN for that skill by 1. Note that this is not advantage, it's a Base TN decrease.
- having a 6th dot in a skill nets you that extra die as before, but it also decreases TN one further.
- the fifth and sixth dots still cost 2 points each.

maximum skill rank at creation still tied to Tier, as follows:
T1 -> max 3
T2 -> max 4
T3 -> max 5
T4 -> max 6
T5 -> max 6

Tier 5 should essentially be the equivalent of a renaissance man / polymath, so i'd also raise skill points from 31 to 35 or 36. EDIT: either that or they pay only 1 skill point for rank 5.

Why am i saying TN decreases? Simply because they have much more impact than extra dice ever could.
I know it breaks the "TN decrease is only available with Advantage", but i think this is the most elegant solution. Now, being a Master in a skill really makes you go a lot further than just being very talented (read: have high Attributes).

As for the ST vs SM debate. I won't quote everything for purposes of readability. Many of the propositions have merit. But none can answer my main concern.

By clustering ST and SM together you either hit hard and endure greatly, or you don't. Unrealistic as Hell imho and boring to character builds. Instead of killing the "naked dwarf" it creates the "naked giant".

The problem is that i will never have a character have higher Strength than Stamina. That's why i think having Strength somehow interact with CP penalty/Encumbrance is important.

The only other thing i can think of is, other than with Athletics, replace stamina use in skill checks with willpower.

And that said, I'm thinking more and more that the inclusion of an Athletics skill might be a big part in the problem (could replace it with an Acrobatics skill or Climbing skill though).

Yes, i know, we already had that Athletics can be trained like any skill in real life. So I'm doing something i didn't think i would ever do, and promote the less realistic rule in favor of playability and game balance, so...

Why not make Athletics a pool?

Athletics (Strength/Speed)

I like the sound of that.

Bottom line is, it's perfectly fine to not have every single Attribute be used in Skill checks. I mean, i thought that's kinda the reason why attribute pools exist in the first place.

[Benedict]

The problem is that i will never have a character have higher Strength than Stamina.

Well, I've personally run numerous characters that had substantially greater SM than ST, or the equivalent for whatever system was playing. The idea that in order to be extremely resilient I also have to be super-strong it's kinda unappealing. To me that is.

[Korbel]

Well, I've personally run numerous characters that had substantially greater SM than ST, or the equivalent for whatever system was playing. The idea that in order to be extremely resilient I also have to be super-strong it's kinda unappealing. To me that is.

Well looking at characters here on forum, almost everyone has Strength equal to Stamina. Some of them - Strength one dot higher.

[Agamemnon]

But compromise after compromise after minor complication after compromise (and resorting to violence after every instance) feels a bit too much.

Yeah, that's not how I run things at the table. You make the roll. If you fail, you accept the complication or escalate to violence.

One of the things I'm looking forward to is getting the GM section written up in this draft because I suspect that will do a lot of good in communicating how the game is meant to be run.

One thing about rolling attribute+attribute. I always felt it should be rolled primary Atr + secondary Atr, and the secondary Atr can be replaced with the appropriate skill when the skill is higher than the secondary Atr. For example. A weight-lifter obvioiusly uses ST+SM to lift weights. Both these Atrs represent his inborn capacity and result of training. Let's say he has ST3+SM3=6. What about the guy who has the same Atrs and also has Athletic 4? Doesn't he has better technique than the other? can't he lift the weights better? Ofc this approach opens a new world of pain as one must come up with associated skill per Atr+Atr combination. Don't know if its worth the effort honestly, just thinking out loud.

That's already how the rules are written. See Skills In Attribute Checks, page 34.

About merging ST and SM to one Atr, namely Brawn. The idea has merit. With a small asterisk. There are people who don't have outstanding muscle power, but they do have excellent health, pain thresholds, or endurance. Most women weighting a lot less than well built men for example have substantially greater pain thresholds, where men have greater muscle power. Brawn creates the situation where one is both very strong and enduring at the same time. Ofc it comes down to what one wants to model and compromises he is willing to make.

Even if Strength and Stamina become Brawn, general physical health, recovery, etc are all functions of Brawn+Will. One could as easily argue that these people have higher willpower than simply higher stamina/brawn.

This is almost exactly the scale that Burning Wheel uses (though stats are usually capped at 6 at character creation, and in practice, 90% of all characters, PC and NPC alike, end up with stats in the 3-6 range).

That sounds about like what I was shooting for, which is handy because that means that it keeps the pools down overall. Even if we went as high as half-attribute for skills, it wouldn't eclipse the available skill range.

If 2 than, well, it is kinda zero sum game. When players run into climatic fight with badass antagonist, GM of course can predict, SAs will be firing. Therefore he will adjust opponent's stats to get a hard to overcome to but beatable opponent. If players decide to burn some SAs for advancment, GM just decreases stats of opponent and we still have exciting, yet possible to win fight. Same goes for roll obstacles and so on.

I'm not a fan of that approach at all. The numbers have an inherent meaning, even in proficiency scores. 1-4 is someone dabbling in the thing. 5-6 is a competent amateur. 7-8 are professionals and trained military. 9+ is going into Truly exceptional characters.

Players should be able to guess what someone's proficiency level is by what they know about a character. If I have Prof 11 from character creation, I should know for a fact that I'll have a higher raw proficiency than 95% of people I will encounter in the game. It is by design that players can start off as more skilled and exceptional in their chosen path than the majority of the game world they will encounter.

The thing I absolutely hated about d20 games is that the numbers ultimately became meaningless. As your AB goes up, the AC of your CR-appropriate expected opponents goes up. As your skills go up, so do the DCs of the stuff you're expected to do. You get a +4 sword? Well, you need a +5 to get past their DR.

The GM should be setting the stats of NPCs in accordance with the fictional reality of those NPCs, not to compete with the players. Same goes for Obstacles.

This is not a game about overcoming challenges. It's a game about making hard choices and taking risks. Those choices and risks lose much of their meaning if they can't rely on the fiction as a source of information about how dangerous that risk could be. That's not to say there shouldn't be challenges, but there are more interesting ways to challenge a player than "how hard is it to take this guy in a fight?"

Having said that, I still think it is not necessary to ask player to pay everything at once. You can make a tiny square next to stats for advancement purposes and whenever he wants he can spend some points in order to build up advancement pool for this particular stat. This way player can save up to increase some stats and still keep his high rolls (which are still just an illusion)

That's a possibility, though it adds even more clutter to the sheet. Worth chewing on.

That's exactly the beast you wanted be dead a couple of weeks ago, right? And now you feed it to grow even bigger?
Not that it's a problem for me (as I'll probably stick to my homerule - "SAs give Advantage" - and won't give a single fuck about pool sizes), but what about you? It doesn't bother you anymore?

My problem in the thread you were mentioning is the same problem we're discussing now -- that SAs made your skill meaningless. It's not the overall weight of SAs on a roll, it's that you could have one dot in a thing and beat someone who had maxed out that skill. It makes skill-based characters less valuable overall, which is a shame. Also, the SAs give Advantage rule is not a bad idea but has two flaws that immediately come to mind:

• You lose out on the "should I spend down this SA or keep it for its bonuses" aspect.. which is fine, but at that point, you might as well lump them in a common pool instead of tracking them for SAs individually.
• Since advantage doesn't stack, if an SA is firing there's no reason for players to do all the other stuff that would have given them an advantage in that situation. This is particularly noticeable for melee combat, as a couple proficiencies have an advantaged situation as part of their emphasis.

By clustering ST and SM together you either hit hard and endure greatly, or you don't. Unrealistic as Hell imho and boring to character builds. Instead of killing the "naked dwarf" it creates the "naked giant".

Brawn was suggested in the context of moving to the 1-10 scale where attributes are rolled independently. In this setup, I don't think we're going to have a "naked giant" problem by virtue of how the where things plug in. The naked dwarf issue is solved by the fact that Body is probably only going to be a 0-3 scale in humans with almost all able-bodied men being 2s. Even the sedentary office worker (1) taking on Andrey the Giant (3) is only a +2/-2 scenario, which is such a low impact that naked dwarf no longer applies. The "endure greatly" issue probably also isn't one, as almost everything you might have rolled constitution for in other games would fall under trauma here anyway - which is brawn and will.

If we wind up keeping the 1-5 scale, we aren't going to be able to put St and Sm together anyway because we have to roll everything in pairs, so Strength has to have something to pair with for physical tasks. It's a non-issue. For skills, this is one of the greatest strengths. For attributes, it's probably the greatest weakness as literally every function of an attribute is handled through derived attributes. It nearly doubles the amount of attributes needed for play.

Agility, Brawn, Cunning, Perception, Social, Will,
Body, Reflex, Trauma (9)
vs
Strength, Agility, Stamina, Speed, Acumen, Cunning, Willpower, Social
Feat of Strength, Balanace, Health, Knockdown, Knockout, Memory, Perception, Reflexes (16)

- Making Body one third of Brawn leaves too many dead levels. With this, it would only be worth putting either 3 or 6 points in Brawn. Why don't you make it 1/2 of Brawn?

By the same logic, it would then only be worth putting even numbers in Brawn. The wider disparity means that it's more expensive to put more points into brawn solely for the purposes of raising Body. On the other hand, it also highlights that there are other reasons to raise Brawn than just damage.

On another note, is there an upper limit to proficiency? At character creation you can go up to 11, and the number 12 comes to mind for some reason. I ask because the old skill + attribute total dice pool and the new skill dice pool should have the same range as proficiencies. Maybe that's just a desire for consistency. The automatic-successes-if-you-have-more-than-ten-dice rule suggests that the intended maximum dice pool is 10, though.

As written, the current limit for proficiencies is really just established by how many points you can physically put into them at max-SA cap. That said, I'm not as worried about proficiency ranges and skill/attribute ranges falling into line for three reasons.

• Proficiencies aren't really rolled against obs. You can technically use them as a skill check for something related to that proficiency, but it's such a niche use that I'm not worried about it.The reason one would want to put a cap on skills or attributes is that the ob scale becomes meaningless if everyone can run around with 15 Agility and 20 Larceny.
• A corollary to the above, proficiencies are only really interesting in reference to the proficiencies of the other characters, and the mechanics of combat are such that you're splitting your dice anyway.
• You can only kill someone so dead. At a certain point, there are diminishing returns. Yes, you could theoretically get to Prof 36 in Longsword, but even if we assumed you maxed it out at character creation (11 with a priority A), you've spent a staggering 611 SA points to do so. At a rate of 3-4 SA points earned per session, that's 174 sessions worth. Even played weekly, you've spent two years doing nothing but making this character a better longswordsman -- and now? Uh. They can .. fight three people at the same time comfortably, I guess.

I used to have them in my games, but now i try to avoid them. Division and averaging just doesn't work on a 1-5 scale, and i definitely want to keep that scale.
Also, one of the things that made me fall in love with Bastards was definitely the absence of divided and averaged Derived Stats.

This is less of an issue with bigger scale numbers, like Proficiencies, but "using Proficiency as a skill" is kind of a niche case anyway.

I wasn't suggesting dividing anything on a 1-5 scale. The division would have only occurred if we went to a 1-10 scale.

The big that that would have been handy for "proficiency as a skill" on a 1-10 scale is not that I can roll proficiency checks easily.. but that you could use skills as proficiencies.

If skills are on a 1-10 scale, it becomes very easy for me to make some kind of social combat system where we just use your Oratory skill as the proficiency for it and form an attribute pool just like we do for melee. Then we can easily make social combat a split-dice pool system the way melee is.

If that doesn't catch your fancy, replace "oratory" with "warfare" and "social combat" with "battlefield combat," with the commander's strategic knowhow becoming the "proficiency" the army uses for a split-dice pool system.

(the sheets and such)

They aren't bad looking, if we go that direction.

Honestly, it reminds me of the game Alternity, in a way. You had "Broad Skills" and "Specialty skills" that nested under them. I might have Ranged Weapons, Modern as the broad skill, but then Pistol, Rifle, and SMG were all specialty skills beneath it with the skill in the foremost benefitting all the latter.

[Korbel]

it's that you could have one dot in a thing and beat someone who had maxed out that skill

And what do you mean, it won't happen under the new rules?

the SAs give Advantage rule is not a bad idea but has two flaws that immediately come to mind

Well that's exactly what I did in my game: all SA points in one pool, Advantages stack.

[nemedeus]

The big that that would have been handy for "proficiency as a skill" on a 1-10 scale is not that I can roll proficiency checks easily.. but that you could use skills as proficiencies.

If skills are on a 1-10 scale, it becomes very easy for me to make some kind of social combat system where we just use your Oratory skill as the proficiency for it and form an attribute pool just like we do for melee. Then we can easily make social combat a split-dice pool system the way melee is.

If that doesn't catch your fancy, replace "oratory" with "warfare" and "social combat" with "battlefield combat," with the commander's strategic knowhow becoming the "proficiency" the army uses for a split-dice pool system.

I get that. I'm not sure. State as-is, i like the fact that proficiencies have this open-ended feel to it, but i also prefer the way attributes are set up. I honestly don't know.

Doubling numbers will always be better than halving them, but it's also ugly, as said.Hmm.

Outlandish idea:

Add (Attribute Pool) + Skill + Skill to form a pool.

Strategy Pool = (Cunning/Acumen) + Warfare + Command
Persuasion Pool = (Social/Cunning) + Manipulation + [Intrigue or Streetwise, depending on whom you're having the argument with]
Lawer Pool =(Social/Acumen) + Oratory + Lore (Law)
etc.

Wait, unless we admit to an overlap between different Skills, this kinda even makes sense!
I had the impression, the fact that there are really "only" 22 skills was kinda MEANT specifically to avoid skill overlap.

(the sheets and such)
They aren't bad looking, if we go that direction.

Honestly, it reminds me of the game Alternity, in a way. You had "Broad Skills" and "Specialty skills" that nested under them. I might have Ranged Weapons, Modern as the broad skill, but then Pistol, Rifle, and SMG were all specialty skills beneath it with the skill in the foremost benefitting all the latter.

I gotta say, i really kinda hope we don't. Bastards doesn't strike me as a game about knowing exactly, in detail, what my character is good at. As i said multiple time, you can make expertise weigh in more by having it add +2d or +1 auto successes.

Also, the SAs give Advantage rule is not a bad idea but has two flaws that immediately come to mind:

You lose out on the "should I spend down this SA or keep it for its bonuses" aspect.. which is fine, but at that point, you might as well lump them in a common pool instead of tracking them for SAs individually.
Since advantage doesn't stack, if an SA is firing there's no reason for players to do all the other stuff that would have given them an advantage in that situation. This is particularly noticeable for melee combat, as a couple proficiencies have an advantaged situation as part of their emphasis.

While i'm not with Korbel on the "SA give TN decrease" (i said numerous times, i like "SA give exploding dice", although i'm also planning to use d6 instead of d10), i'm not sure that you should automatically assume that, just because that's how TRoS did it, you need to do it too.



And another thing, regarding skills.
A quick fix to make skill tiers more valuable: just increase the Attribute points you get from lower Attribute tiers. I say this because, i've recently made a ton of Stat Blocks for Characters, and none of them ended up with Attribute Tier lower than 3.
I could imagine (very simple):
T5: stays as is
T4: 18 points
T3: 16 points
T2: 14 points
T1: 12 points

[Agamemnon]

it's that you could have one dot in a thing and beat someone who had maxed out that skill

And what do you mean, it won't happen under the new rules?

Assuming average stats:
The difference between the highest possible mastery character and an absolute novice before was 5 dice.
The difference between the highest possible mastery character and an absolute novice on a 1-10 scale is 8-9 dice.
SAs are worth up to 5.

I gotta say, i really kinda hope we don't. Bastards doesn't strike me as a game about knowing exactly, in detail, what my character is good at. As i said multiple time, you can make expertise weigh in more by having it add +2d or +1 auto successes

That's what expertise do now technically. They allow you to take specifications within an existing skill. If we went with Benedict's suggestion, it would just allow you to add further depth to said specifications.

Of course, the natural downside of this is that we are now adding attribute+skill+expertise which makes the possible pool for a character with a tier 5 priority 6+5+3 -- 14 dice off the bat. If you've got Karma or just went for a very particular build, you could push that to 6+6+3 if you wanted. Throw in SAs and you can chuck 20 dice at a skill check, which gets kind of silly. Granted, one could also argue that the rules as they stand let you chuck 6+6+1 at a skill check (given the existing expertise rules) so 2 more dice might not be worth worrying over.

[nemedeus]

Agamemnon, i added some stuff to my previous post, please take a look over it.

I gotta say, i really kinda hope we don't. Bastards doesn't strike me as a game about knowing exactly, in detail, what my character is good at. As i said multiple time, you can make expertise weigh in more by having it add +2d or +1 auto successes

That's what expertise do now technically. They allow you to take specifications within an existing skill. If we went with Benedict's suggestion, it would just allow you to add further depth to said specifications.

Of course, the natural downside of this is that we are now adding attribute+skill+expertise which makes the possible pool for a character with a tier 5 priority 6+5+3 -- 14 dice off the bat. If you've got Karma or just went for a very particular build, you could push that to 6+6+3 if you wanted. Throw in SAs and you can chuck 20 dice at a skill check, which gets kind of silly. Granted, one could also argue that the rules as they stand let you chuck 6+6+1 at a skill check (given the existing expertise rules) so 2 more dice might not be worth worrying over.

I really don't think expertise levels are worth the effort. same reason why i quickly scrapped the Mastery Rank idea i had earlier.

[Benedict]

One thing about rolling attribute+attribute. I always felt it should be rolled primary Atr + secondary Atr, and the secondary Atr can be replaced with the appropriate skill when the skill is higher than the secondary Atr. For example. A weight-lifter obvioiusly uses ST+SM to lift weights. Both these Atrs represent his inborn capacity and result of training. Let's say he has ST3+SM3=6. What about the guy who has the same Atrs and also has Athletic 4? Doesn't he has better technique than the other? can't he lift the weights better? Ofc this approach opens a new world of pain as one must come up with associated skill per Atr+Atr combination. Don't know if its worth the effort honestly, just thinking out loud.

That's already how the rules are written. See Skills In Attribute Checks, page 34.

Yes, seems I've missed that. In my defense under Athletics it explicitly states that...

Athletics covers a wide range of physical tasks. Stamina may be called for to represent sustained effort over time (running a marathon). Agility represents tasks where nimbleness or timing is the primary factor. Strength is somewhat less common, but could represent tasks that primarily leverage muscle (climbing a rope with only your arms). Any raw physical tests should use the Feat of Strength (Strength/Stamina) pool instead.

I guess this is what got me mixed up.

About merging ST and SM to one Atr, namely Brawn. The idea has merit. With a small asterisk. There are people who don't have outstanding muscle power, but they do have excellent health, pain thresholds, or endurance. Most women weighting a lot less than well built men for example have substantially greater pain thresholds, where men have greater muscle power. Brawn creates the situation where one is both very strong and enduring at the same time. Ofc it comes down to what one wants to model and compromises he is willing to make.

Even if Strength and Stamina become Brawn, general physical health, recovery, etc are all functions of Brawn+Will. One could as easily argue that these people have higher willpower than simply higher stamina/brawn.

And another might argue that there are hotheads (low WP) lazy bums (low ST) with Iron Stomachs that can gulp 3 weeks stale milk without getting ill (high SM). I guess it depends on viewpoint and how one wants to model things. I'm not saying that I am right, nor that you are wrong. Just stating that I feel a bit uncomfortable with this.

(the sheets and such)

They aren't bad looking, if we go that direction.

Honestly, it reminds me of the game Alternity, in a way. You had "Broad Skills" and "Specialty skills" that nested under them. I might have Ranged Weapons, Modern as the broad skill, but then Pistol, Rifle, and SMG were all specialty skills beneath it with the skill in the foremost benefitting all the latter.

Alternity? Wasn't that when TSR was bought off by WotC? Tbh I'm unfamiliar with Alternity, as sci-fi ain't my kind of cookie unless they contain a healthy amount of fantasy in them (ie Fading Suns).

Since you said that (I might have Ranged Weapons, Modern as the broad skill, but then Pistol, Rifle, and SMG were...), now I'm going to say something dreadful I've been thinking since day 1. Sorry but I have to ask.

The first thing I asked my self when reading the Beta was "Why Skills + Proficiencies? Aren't they the same thing?". Well, I read the rules and I understood why. However, was or is there any thoughts of merging those two? Or no because of the 2 tempi per phrase combat structure?

[Benedict]

That's what expertise do now technically. They allow you to take specifications within an existing skill. If we went with Benedict's suggestion, it would just allow you to add further depth to said specifications.

Of course, the natural downside of this is that we are now adding attribute+skill+expertise which makes the possible pool for a character with a tier 5 priority 6+5+3 -- 14 dice off the bat. If you've got Karma or just went for a very particular build, you could push that to 6+6+3 if you wanted. Throw in SAs and you can chuck 20 dice at a skill check, which gets kind of silly. Granted, one could also argue that the rules as they stand let you chuck 6+6+1 at a skill check (given the existing expertise rules) so 2 more dice might not be worth worrying over.

Oops, got ninja'd. What I was thinking was that if the expertise path is to be taken then it needs serious balancing on OBs table.

[Agamemnon]

(the sheets and such)

They aren't bad looking, if we go that direction.

Honestly, it reminds me of the game Alternity, in a way. You had "Broad Skills" and "Specialty skills" that nested under them. I might have Ranged Weapons, Modern as the broad skill, but then Pistol, Rifle, and SMG were all specialty skills beneath it with the skill in the foremost benefitting all the latter.

Alternity? Wasn't that when TSR was bought off by WotC? Tbh I'm unfamiliar with Alternity, as sci-fi ain't my kind of cookie unless they contain a healthy amount of fantasy in them (ie Fading Suns).

It was published in 98. TSR was technically bought off officially in 97 but the game had been in development already and thus released. It's the last game TSR ever published, really. WOTC discontinued it in 2000 when they restructured all the acquired assets. Alternity is one of very few games I actually own in dead tree edition. I probably played four solid years of that before we kept playing the same game with a different homebrew engine (alternity could be a bit fiddly).

Since you said that (I might have Ranged Weapons, Modern as the broad skill, but then Pistol, Rifle, and SMG were...), now I'm going to say something dreadful I've been thinking since day 1. Sorry but I have to ask.

The first thing I asked my self when reading the Beta was "Why Skills + Proficiencies? Aren't they the same thing?". Well, I read the rules and I understood why. However, was or is there any thoughts of merging those two? Or no because of the 2 tempi per phrase combat structure?

The biggest reason to keep proficiencies separate is because they are so much more detailed than skills. By comparison, it would be if we took Manipulation and not only turned Seduction, Intimidation, and Interrogation into their own separate skills but added specific maneuvers that were available to each and emphasises to each that made you want to use intimidation even when your interrogation skill might be higher and cover the same maneuver.

If your game really didn't have a combat focus though, it would be just as easy to house-rule in "weapons" "unarmed" "bows" and "guns" or something as skills and then resolve everything as Simple Combat when it came up and ignore the advanced combat structure entirely. I don't think that's what we want to do for the core rules, though.

[nemedeus]

Here's another idea i just had, for how to make Conflict Pools from Skills:

We add 2 Attributes. That's the pool. Every Action we do uses [Skill + Dice from the pool].

I know it looks weird, but in terms of dice rolled, it looks the same as Melee. Also, Melee is Special, so i don't think it would be too much of a hassle to have this system here separately.

[Korbel]

Assuming average stats:
The difference between the highest possible mastery character and an absolute novice before was 5 dice.
The difference between the highest possible mastery character and an absolute novice on a 1-10 scale is 8-9 dice.
SAs are worth up to 5.

Cool, I like this balance.
Now my only objection is the fact of halving the scores of Attributes, I hate that just like nemedeus
So, I would probably leave Attributes on 1-5 scale, and make skills 0-10 (but we have already discussed this very solution: http://www.grandheresyforums.com/viewto ... 5&start=30).