Trying to Make Sense of Skills, BX, and a Sci-fi Setting

Once I accepted the idea of skills for a sci-fi version of BX, my brain started to run in several directions at the same time. I apologize if this rambles a bit, but this post serves the function of trying to find some order within the chaos firing off in my brain...

Firstly, I am sore tempted to fiddle with ability scores. D&D has never really seemed to understand WIS. Indeed, CHA seems to be a better fit for what WIS should be. I also think there needs to be a better representation of knowledge and how society and individuals understand themselves in relation to knowledge.

The first place I went to begin this exploration is my favorite Sci-fi RPG — Traveller. CT also has six ability scores: Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education, and Social Status. I really like the distinction between Intelligence and Education as well as the implications on the game for the existence of Social Status. I am not done fiddling yet, though.

There are quite a few rules that are unique to the Holmes edition of Basic D&D. On paper, one that seems to be broken is DEX = Initiative. I held this opinion for many years, but I did so without ever putting it into practice. Once I had the humility to do so, however, it became my favorite way to handle initiative at the table. Once everybody gets used to the overall order within the party, it makes combat faster. Players understand when they always go, and so have a tactical and strategic role to fulfill, which they no longer have to think about, just do. I know what to expect, because the basic pattern remains similar if not the same. It is difficult to explain other than to say: It works.

I do, however, worry that using DEX = Initiative places too much mechanical weight on DEX. While in my own games I have tried to mitigate this weight by giving low DEX characters tactical choices higher DEX characters would likely not make, I think Initiative should be its own thing. Thus, I am tempted to roll up STR and DEX into one attribute: Physical. I'll address the mechanical implications of this below.

Before we get there, I need to explain my own expectations of a classic D&D campaign vs. those of a generic Sci-Fi RPG campaign:

The first is centered around delving into various areas of a campaign map looking for treasure and fighting/avoiding a variety of monsters and traps along the way. As the party delves deeper, monsters and traps get harder and treasures become more valuable. Thus, as the campaign goes on characters need to gain abilities that can better adapt to the increasing difficulty of these monsters and traps.

The second is much more mission oriented with a healthy slice of exploration/information gathering. Thus, the rewards that characters get along the way are much less about the character's ability to deal increasingly difficult challenges, but rather on obtaining better equipment and reputations so that they can attract better paying/influential patrons to get increasingly more meaningful missions.

To illustrate this, let me compare Conan the Destroyer and the original Star Wars. At the beginning of the movie, Conan is fighting normal soldiers. As the movie goes on, the relative strength of his opponents increase in strength and danger until the climax where he is trying to kill some demon/demi-god thing. In contrast, the main combatants throughout Star Wars are Storm Troopers and Tie-Fighters. What really changes is the mission, who is sponsoring that mission, the equipment being used, and the importance of that mission.

As an aside, the guys that I played D&D with growing up almost all prefer low-level campaigns. The stories we tell each other about the old days almost always involve a PC that has absolutely no business adventuring, let alone succeeding. As a consequence, we have discussed at length about various mechanical means by which to keep the game low-level without sacrificing a lot of the other stuff we love about the game. One bugaboo we keep running into is the Hit Die — a central mechanic in the older rulesets we prefer to play.

Given the narrative structure of a sc-fi game, the import of the Hit Die is far less significant. Characters are just as likely to encounter their campaign's version of storm troopers early in the campaign as they are late in the campaign. Thus, the need for the HD/hp arms race of D&D isn't really necessary. If I wanted to be radical about it, Hit Points could even be static throughout the campaign.Thus, I am sore tempted to simply equate Endurance/Constitution with hit points.

This brings me back to Physical — combining STR and DEX into one ability. Given that STR and DEX both have a lot of mechanical consequences in combat, this seems like I am putting too much mechanical weight into one ability score. I would agree, if I kept all of the mechanical bonuses that STR and DEX have in D&D. I don't plan to.

Classic D&D has three Classes (Cleric, Fighting-man, and Magic-user), three Prime Requisits (STR, INT, and WIS), and (almost) three Abilities that directly affect combat (DEX, CON, and CHA). I want to use this structure.

Classes: Adept, Expert, and Warrior

Prime Requisits: INT, EDU, PHYS

Combat Abilities: INI, END, SOC

One might notice (and even complain) that this set-up gets rid of various mechanics such as "to-hit" bonuses, AC modifiers, etc. You aren't wrong; however, this is where the idea of a "trained" skill comes into play. Classes and Backgrounds will give players an opportunity at Character Creation to choose various skills that are "trained" and therefore give the character access to an additional mechanic based on an Ability Score. For example, if you wanted a melee character, you would choose a class or background that gave you access to PHYS skill training and then choose a skill that would give you access to melee "to hit" bonuses or damage bonuses.

I'd have to play-test this, but there is also the opportunity to have two levels of "trained" skills. As a general rule, all skills are 1-in-6. Class and Background allow characters access to training all skills under specific ability scores, allowing them to increase their success chance based on the Open Doors mechanic from B/X.

All I have to do now is come up with a balanced list of skills for each ability score and the mechanics associated with them...God help me.

Why Skills?

In response to my recent meditation on skills in RPGs (especially in modern and sci-fi settings), Anzon asked the very pertinent question: Why skills? To answer that question I need to quote another question from John 18:38. Prior to sending Him off to be crucified, Pontius Pilot asks Christ, "What is truth?"

In his Gospel, St. John uses a lot of contrasts (Light v. Dark, Life v. Death, the World v. the Kingdom, etc.). This question is no exception. Pilot, representing the non-Christian world view, cannot see the fact that Truth is right in front of him:

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life." — John 14:6

In other words, Pilot asks the wrong question. Truth is not a "what." Truth is a "who." While this has a bunch of connotations, I want to concentrate on how this distinction affects the way we understand ourselves.

When truth is a who, we tend to define ourselves by what we do — what Orthodox Christianity sometimes calls praxis. For a practical example, take surnames. Widespread use of surnames did not exist in Europe prior to the mid-to-late medieval ages — a world very much Christian in its world-view. A quick glance at European surnames will reveal a plethora of names that describe what people do for a living: Baker, Cook, Smith, Wright to name just a few.

Beginning in the Late Renaissance, Pilate's version of the question began a comeback in the Western world. Indeed, in our own post-christian world asking the question, "Who is truth?" sounds strange. With this shift, people began to define themselves by what they know, not what they do. As technology got more complicated and essential for daily living, this view of ourselves became normative. College degrees became a basic qualification to get most jobs. Indeed, the types of jobs suggested by the surnames Baker, Cook, Smith, and Wright began to be known as "menial," because they didn't require the type of knowledge necessary to qualify for "better" jobs.

The term "Doctor" is an example of this shift. While colloquially it still refers to a medical doctor, the term isn't exclusive to the medical field. For instance, if I were to continue my education, I could a get Doctorate in Theology. In other words, doctor does not refer to what a person does, but rather what they know.

This distinction also manifests in the mechanics of RPGs. D&D, especially the earlier editions, mechanically reflect the medieval mind quite well. PCs are defined by their Class — what they do. As one moves into games that try to emulate modern and sci-fi genres, the mechanics shift away from Classes to Skills — what a character knows. Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, and the Hero System are examples of games that make this mechanical choice.

Thus, when meditating on how to use the B/X chassis to emulate a sci-fi setting, I am almost compelled to use a skill system of some kind. This is especially true of any setting that is 40k adjacent. The Grimdark is an extreme materialist dystopia where what passes for acceptable religion has its adherents worshiping material things such as the Emperor or the Machine. Factions who acknowledge beings in the Immaterium (aka the Warp) are classified as Chaos and are understood to be among the worst antagonists in a setting that has no real good guys.

If I am to emulate such a setting, I feel that a strictly class-based system doesn't do the setting or the mind-set of those who live in that setting enough justice. Some kind of skill system better represents the presuppositions of a culture that asks Pilate's question, "what is truth?"

Gamer ADD: A Meditation on Skill Systems

This time of year (Great Lent & Holy Week) are always very busy for me, so I haven't been able to keep up with the various Cruthanarc battle reports or even put miniatures on the table. Thus, my Gamer ADD brain has been contemplating what Cruthanarc might look like if it were a D&D campaign. Of course, my system of choice is B/X because of its flexibility and built-in sci-fi elements; however, sci-fi always seems to imply a need for a skill system in order to emulate all the technology that exists in these kinds settings.

Those familiar with this blog will understand that I am very wary of skill systems because they tend to tell players what they cannot do rather than what they can do. Thus, when meditating on modern and sci-fi settings I have been trying to reconcile the mechanical need with the mechanical drawback of skill systems. 

My recent musings have seized upon an already extant skill within B/X — Open Doors. It is tied to an ability score (STR) and is a simple d6 roll. There are two implications here that I really appreciate about this nascent skill system:

1. No matter how low an ability score a character has, there is always at least a 1 in 6 chance at success.
2. There is a benchmark for when a skill check is necessary. If something is not as difficult as opening a heavy locked door, no dice need to be rolled.

There is one more implication here that I can derive from how I handle Opening Doors in my own campaigns. I got sick and tired of seeing players roll d6 after d6 trying to open a door they saw as necessary to their progress in an adventure. Thus, the way I rule the Open Door roll is not to see whether or not the PC can physically open the door, but rather whether they can open the door and still surprise any monsters that are behind that door. Thus, the roll isn't success vs. failure, but rather success without complication vs. success with complication.

Should I ever write out a skill system, I would be sore temped to use the Open Door mechanic as the basis for that system. It does not encourage players to think their character cannot do something, rather it encourages players to think in terms of risk/reward for doing things. "Am I willing to accept complications for trying this?"

Regardless, here is some advice I have for Referees/GMs/DMs/etc. on how to use skill systems:

Before asking a player to roll the dice, go through the following steps:

1. If you are unwilling to accept the consequences of a bad roll, don't have the player roll any dice. Rather, simply arbitrate an outcome that you see as fair.
2. If the task at hand is easier than opening a heavy locked door, simply rule that the PC automatically succeeds.
3. If the task at hand is necessary for the PCs progress in their chosen adventure, the roll should not be success vs. failure. Rather, it should be success without complications vs. success with complications.

Are there any ways that you arbitrate skill systems that encourage players to experiment and try things rather than seeing skills as a barrier that tells them what they cannot do?

 

RPG Dreamin': Re-thinking 5e Skills

Have you ever had a dream where you are in a game shop and you find a really interesting game that you want to buy but then wake up and realize that the game actually doesn’t exist? I have.

Recently, I had this very vivd dream of seeing a stack of RPG supplements in the form of cheap comic books printed on newspaper quality stock. Each supplement promised invaluable information on how to add various cheesy 80s cartoon characters and worlds to the RPG experience: He-Man, Space Ghost, Thunder the Barbarian, etc. They cost two bucks each and I was really interested. When I found the actual ruleset, it was also a comic book, also two dollars, but someone had ripped pages out of it. Then I woke up.

In my half-awake haze of coming out of a dream state, it occurred to me that what I had dreamt about was not something all that new: Basic Roleplaying, Fudge, and GURPS have gone down this path for decades now. The big difference is that while the main rule-books of these three games are tomes of hundreds of pages, my dream envisioned a comic-book sized rulebook of maybe 32-64 pages. While I don’t think this is practical or even possible, I can’t help but think someone could get close.

Then my hazy brain started to have a conversation with itself that went along these lines:

You know, I just finished up a pretty good game that is under 64 pages…

Yeah, but that’s a fantasy RPG what about modern stuff like guns? Or superhero stuff?

Yeah, a lot of those 80s cartoons were riffs off of superhero concepts.

So, if this comic-book sized game could do superheroes, it could do exactly what you wanted in your dream, right?

Yeah…

So let’s see if the 5e SRD could do superheroes!

Yeah! This could work!

Back when I was playing RPGs with my high school buddies, those words, “This could work” were dreaded words. It meant that our party was about to push the limits of both our characters and the DMs ability to accommodate whatever outlandish idea we had come up with. It either broke the campaign or it was awesome.

So, in order to test these dangerous waters, I decided to start with my least favorite part of any universal system: skills. I dislike them because they are rules-heavy and tend to tell players what they cannot do rather than what they can. Unfortunately, they come with the territory with RPG settings like cyber-punk, space, and even superheroes.

Since I have had the idea of stripping down the SRD to its mechanical core, I remembered something rather interesting about Champions: it has a bunch of skills that are not tied to any ability. In other words, it doesn’t matter how smart, dumb, strong or weak you are, this skill is going to work or not work because of skill. While interesting, this still informs players that they can’t do stuff unless they have that skill on their character sheet. So, what if I took the spirit of this idea — skills are not tied to a specific ability score — and went the opposite direction. What if a player could use any ability score with a skill?

Here is the basic premise: Skills should be cinematic rather than mechanical. In other words, rather than having dice rolling being the primary reason why a character succeeds or not, have the player’s creativity be the primary mover in any given situation. Let me illustrate by taking a few skills from the SRD and applying non-traditional ability scores to them:

Stealth

Strength: Use the angles of the ceiling to hang from an otherwise impossible place where no one would think to look.

Constitution: Hold really still in a small place until no one is looking.

Intelligence: Analyze the position of the surveillance cameras and/or guards to determine where all the blindspots are.

Wisdom: Read the guards and determine what kind of distraction would create the most confusion.

Charisma: Walk through like I’m supposed to be there.

History

Strength: Intimidate the librarian until she tells you the information you need.

Constitution: Find a place where people talk and hold-out until I overhear something important.

Dexterity: Climb that tree/lamp post/building that will get me the vantage point to figure out who is in that painting.

Wisdom: Who is the most likely person to know the information I need?

Charisma: Charm the information out of the professor over a coffee.

Not every situation is going to allow for every ability score to be used. I can’t think of a way Wisdom or Charisma could help to climb a sheer wall when running away from some monsters, for example. What I love about this idea, though, is that it gives players the freedom to try. What I also love about this idea is that it frees up the Referee to simply allow the PCs to succeed when they come up with good cinematic ways to use skills, or to levy what they see as reasonable DCs for ideas that are just outside the box.

I will also grant that some of the above descriptions better fit other skills; however, that is an exercise in telling players what they can't do, and that is exactly what I don't want a skill system to do.

Proficiency then, rather than being simply a bonus to a roll, is permission to be truly heroic in the ways that that skill gets used. Think Jeff Goldblum’s character in Independence Day. There is no way anyone should be able to write a virus that crashes the alien’s computer system. Yet, he does and we go along for the ride because it is so much fun.

SF + SWL Mash-Up Part 3

Crunch

Now that we have established the proto-skill system of AoEs, we need to have a means of determining what happens when Joe or Jane Player can’t quite convince the Referee that their Space Specialization should let them know if a local plant is poisonous.

Over at Delta’s D&D Hotspot you will find one of my favorite formulas for attack rolls:

d20+HD+AC ≥ 20

I want to incorporate the basic gist of this idea. When making any kind of roll involving what RPGs generally call a “skill,” including combat, a character succeeds when the player rolls a d20 adds their bonuses and arrives at a total of 20 or more.

This necessitates determining what a base success looks like. In SWL there are three places where we can start to get an idea of how often a player can expect to succeed: Combat, Turning Undead and Thief Skills.

• The average AAC of all the monsters in SWL is 13.
• A 1st level cleric needs a 10+ on 3d6 to Turn a Skeleton, a 13+ to Turn Ghouls & Zombies, a 15+ to Turn Shadows & Wights and a 17+ to Turn a Wraith.
• A Thief has a 1 in 6 chance for most skills, the exceptions being Hear Noise (3 in 6), Read Languages (4 in 6) and Climb Walls (5 in 6). Demi-human Thieves have some skills at 2 in 6. 

Thus, there is an average 40% chance to hit in combat, and average of 25% chance to Turn all undead and most Thief Skills have a 16.7% chance of success. The average of all of these is approximately 27%. Bump that up a little due to the various other Thief Skills and we are rather close to the 2 in 6 (32%) chance that feels very familiar to those who have played older versions of D&D.

Translating that into a d20 roll means a 14 or a 15 + bonuses to arrive at 20+ in our formula.

This means I have wiggle room to assign variable “Base Action Bonuses” to each class:

• Fighter +7
• Cleric +6
• Magic-user +5

This means that Fighters will be the “skill” class. I justify this because there really isn’t any justification for limiting clerics to blunt weapons or magic-users to staffs and daggers when weapons are described as laser, sonic and conventional as I plan to do. Thus all three classes will be able to use any weapon.

In addition, I am toying with the idea of allowing the spell-casters to use their spells multiple times per day with two different options:

• To use a spell immediately requires a successful roll.
• To use a spell that will automatically succeed requires 10 minutes to cast.

Therefore, Fighters get that extra bonus when trying to do the “impossible” stuff.

To sum up, everything in this SWL + SF mash-up will rely on the following formula:

Success = d20 + Base Action Bonus + Situational Bonuses/Penalties ≥ 20.

This also opens the door to this formula:

Critical Success =  d20 + Base Action Bonus + Situational Bonuses/Penalties ≥ 30.

Meditating on 5e: LBBs + LBBs

One of the things I really like about 5e is the whole concept of Backgrounds. It immediately adds flavor to a character and gives a good Referee hooks for adventures. In a way, it reminds me a lot of one of my favorite mini-games of all time: the character creation in Classic Traveller. There is an assumption that your character comes from somewhere and that background defines who you are and what you can do. It also implies the kinds of connections your character has and what influence those connections have.

Another reason I like the Background system of 5e is that it mitigates the need for the Rogue/Thief class. Since various backgrounds grant characters skills that normally are filled by the thief, the class has become redundant. This got me thinking about what other classes might be made redundant and I came to an interesting conclusion: it is possible to get rid of all of the classes except for the original three and express them all with Backgrounds.

This, of course, necessitates doing something with the 5e skill system, which I have said before is not something that is necessary to interpret as a pure skill system. I propose that these “skills” are actually broad Areas Of Expertise (AOE). Rather than telling players what their character can’t do (as I would argue a traditional skill system does, even the Thief skills from early editions of D&D), these suggest to players what their characters can do.

Here is the difference: a skill system defines what each skill is and then tells players when they can’t do something (when they fail a roll or fail to have the proper skill). An AOE, as I envision it, is a means for a player to argue that their character should succeed at a particular task.

For example: a character with Survival finds himself on a ship needing to lash down the sails in preparation for a storm. The player can then come up with some story from their character’s previous life that would justify saying Survival allows his character to succeed:

There was this time during a bad rainstorm that Bessie got caught in a gulley underneath a fallen tree branch. I’m gonna use the same knots that we used to pull that branch up to lash down the sails.

If the story or the reasoning is sound, no dice need to be rolled and yet another layer is added to the history of the character.

I am thinking of giving every character four AOEs: two based on their character class and two based on their backgrounds. This allows me to break up the skills of 5e into three categories: Class Skills, Non-Class Skills and Tool Skills.

Each class would have four skills that are not available to the other two classes:

• Cleric: Insight, Medicine, Persuasion, Religion
• Fighter: Athletics, Animal Handling, Intimidation, Perception
• Magic-user: Arcana, History, Investigation, Nature

This leaves six skills and nine tool skills that are only available through a background. Thus, it would make sense to have nine backgrounds that would allow a character access to two Non-Class Skills and one Tool Skill as well as one extra Class Skill. I named these nine Backgrounds after various classes that have popped up in D&D throughout the years:

• Assassin: Poison (Tool Skill), Deception & Stealth (Non-Class Skills), Investigation (Class Skill)
• Barbarian: Gaming (Tool Skill), Performance & Survival (Non-Class Skills), Insight (Class Skill)
• Bard: Instrument (Tool Skill), Acrobatics & Performance (Non-Class Skills), History (Class Skill)
• Druid: Herbalism (Tool Skill), Deception & Sleight of Hand (Non-Class Skills), Animal Handling (Class Skill)
• Illusionist: Forgery (Tool Skill), Acrobatics & Deception (Non-Class Skills), Persuasion (Class Skill)
• Monk: Navigation (Tool Skill), Acrobatics & Sleight of Hand (Non-Class Skills), Athletics (Class Skill)
• Paladin: Artisan (Tool Skill), Performance & Survival (Non-Class Skills), Religion (Class Skill)
• Ranger: Disguise (Tool Skill), Stealth & Survival (Non-Class Skills), Nature (Class Skill)
• Thief: Thieves’ Tools (Tool Skill), Stealth & Sleight of Hand (Non-Class Skills), Intimidation (Class Skill)

Note: This leaves three skills that are class specific: Medicine (Cleric), Perception (Fighter) and Arcana (Magic-user).

Also note: All of these categories are intended to be very broad, and thus while some AOEs don’t seem to fit, they can easily be explained by moving slightly beyond the old D&D class title. For example: Deception and Sleight of Hand don’t seem to go with Druid very well; however, if you understand the Druid to be akin to a faith-healer, hedge-mage or veterinarian these things begin to make sense. Deception can be useful when someone who needs to hear good news in a time of disease and epidemic. Sleight of Hand can be used to describe a surgeon’s hands as well as a pick-pocket’s.

To round things off, each background would come with it a type of contact that a character could reach out to in times of need.

If one wanted to go full-on Classic Traveller, it would be a simple matter to create a table to randomize both the Background (a d10 where a ‘0’ represents Player/Referee choice) as well as the skills. A d6 can be used to determine two skills at once with the following pattern where A, B, C and D represent the four skills associated with a Class or a Background:

1: A + B
2: A + C
3: A + D
4: B + C
5: B + D
6: C + D

This would result in some really weird combinations that would force players to be creative, so I would love to use it myself, but I expect most players would prefer to just choose.

Playing with Skills and Proficiencies (5e and BX)

Historically, I have never been a big fan of skill systems in RPGs because they tend to describe what a character cannot do rather than what they can. One of the reasons I don’t really mind the skill/proficiency system of 5e is that it really isn’t a skill system. Rather, it helps describe where a character comes from and the areas of expertise that they can bring to the table. Therefore, the system assumes that anyone can try to do anything, but if a character has a skill, they have a better chance at doing a particular thing. Personally, I would go further and say that, as long as a skill isn’t contested by another skill, the only limiting factors in whether or not a character with a relevant skill succeeds are time and money.

In other words, let’s pretend that a character has the skill Artisan. That means that whenever that character sets about creating something, they will succeed. The variables are how much time and money the character wants to put into the project. The less time and money, the lower the quality but the character will always produce the desired item.

For another example, a character with Pick Locks will always succeed in picking a non-magical lock; however, the more complex a lock, the more time it will take to pick. Therefore, one could simply label locks in a dungeon with the number of Wandering Monster checks associated with each. Someone with Pick Locks would be able to understand how long it would take (the number of checks necessary to endure to unlock the lock) and decide whether or not the effort is worth the risk.

I very much like this approach, especially when coupled with the Background system of 5e. It tells a player what their character is capable of doing rather than telling them what their character cannot do. As such, I think it worthy of hacking into BX.

The problem I have with the 5e system, however, is that it is rather unbalanced. INT, WIS and CHA have a disproportionate amount of skills associated with them and CON has no skills at all. BX is, in its own simple way, very elegant and hacking the skills as is from 5e seems a bit too clunky for my tastes. Besides which, there are some skills and tool proficiencies that are redundant (Performance and Musical Instrument, for example) and others that are already hardwired into BX (Perception). Thus, a little rethinking and reorganizing are called for.

For the purposes of this exercise, I’ve arbitrarily decided that each ability score will have three skills associated with it. Some of these associations require a explanation:

STR

• Athletics (which also includes Acrobatics)
• Intimidation (Intimidation happens because somebody has enough power to throw around. Normally, this power is pure physical strength. While a small, physically weak person can be intimidating, the power they have is political, economic, etc. In this context, that power would be expressed by experience level.)
• Investigation (This is a bit of a stretch, but historically the folks who do investigation are fighter types: police, spy, soldier, etc.)

DEX

• Pick Locks (aka Thieve’s Tools)
• Sleight of Hand
• Stealth (which encompasses both Hide is Shadows and Move Silently)

CON

• Survival (because actually being out in the wilderness is about staying healthy and stamina)
• Nature (one of the ways 5e describes CON is “vital force” which could be described as something that clues us into the “vital forces” of other living things and the places where they live)
• Animal Handling (another way the “vital force” can be expressed. In addition, it takes a lot of patience, aka stamina, to train an animal, especially a wild one)

INT

• Arcana (which includes parts of Religion)
• History (which also includes parts of Religion)
• Navigation

WIS

• Insight
• Medicine
• Artisan (because beauty is understood better by that part of the human mind described by WIS than the ability to reason as represented by INT)

CHA

• Deception (which includes Disguise, Forgery and Gaming)
• Performance (which Musical Instruments)
• Persuasion

Characters would end up with four skills: two from their Class and two from their Backgrounds. Right now, I am operating on the assumption that each of the three core classes will have Saving Throw proficiencies in two abilities so that all six are used uniquely by the three classes:

• Clerics: WIS, CHA
• Fighters: STR, CON
• Magic-users: INT, DEX

This becomes important because the two class skills they can choose from are based on the Saving Throw proficiencies. This does have some interesting implications: your average magic-user is more likely to be the party “thief” and the cleric is more likely to be the party “bard” and the fighter to be the “ranger.”

Of course, these tenancies can be completely upturned by choosing a background that flavors the character in a completely different way. This is why I think the Background system of 5e is probably my favorite aspect of the entire game.

Also note: these categories are wide open enough that players can make the argument to accomplish all kinds of tasks with their skills. For example: a player could argue that they could try to track that war party of orcs with either Navigation or Nature. Again, this system is about encouraging players to do stuff, not about telling them what they can’t do.

Just Say No to Skill Checks

I have stated before that I don't really care for systems that use skills. It wasn't until recently, however, that I came to understand, in a succinct way, why I despise them so much. It comes down to this:

Skills and skill-like mechanisms primarily do not describe what a character can do, rather they describe what a player, especially a Referee, cannot do.

The Thief of D&D is an excellent example of this axiom. I have never been fond of thieves. Apart from my discomfort at their explicit association with illegal activities, I have played in too many campaigns where players with thief characters felt that they needed to break the law. Too many times has party cohesion been damaged by players who try to use their thief skills on other party members. Too many times have I been forced to kill entire parties because a thief dragged everyone into a fight with the city guard over a failed pick pocket attempt. But I digress.

The thief class is defined by their ability to use skills — Open Locks, Remove Traps, Climb Walls, Pick Pockets Hear Noise, Move Silently and Hide in Shadows. As a result these skills tended to become explicitly Thief skills — everyone else at the table was no longer able to use those skills. In other words, the thief class defines what every other player cannot do. It doesn't matter how well anyone describes how their magic user is going to disarm a trap, with the thief and his skills in the game, magic users aren't allowed to disarm the trap — they don't have the skill, so they can't roll for it. Ultimately, this kills creativity. Why bother to describe a creative way for anybody to disarm a trap when the rules will determine that you fail anyway? It doesn't matter if I have a degree in mechanical engineering and can describe exactly the way a trap might function, and exactly how to destroy or stop that mechanism. If my character doesn't have the skill, I am not allowed to disarm that trap. Mechanics start to define the character instead of the player.

There is a way to beat the system, however. Let me begin by giving an example of a great rule:

Love your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and all your strength . . . and love your neighbor as yourself. — Mark 12:30-31

When Christ gives us these two commandments, He sets up boundaries beyond which we should not pass; however, within those boundaries we are allowed complete freedom. In other words, good rules don't limit freedom.

Skills can be used in a way that they don't limit what players, especially referees, can do. The key is to understand that you have the power to say no to the skill check. If a player successfully describes how to accomplish something they should be rewarded with success no matter what skills their character has. Don't force them to roll the die — don't kill the creativity.

To give a concrete example, let us look at the D&D thief again. One way to describe this mindset is to understand the thief skills as abilities, not skills. In other words, they are things every one can do, the thief is just able to do them above and beyond the normal adventurer. Thus, every other class can hide, move silently, etc. The thief is just better at it — if he fails to successfully describe how to accomplish a task — using the same criteria as everyone else — he gets a "save," as it were, by rolling the die to use his Thief skills. As abilities, as opposed to skills, they no longer determine what players cannot do.

Don't kill the creativity at your table. Just say no to the skill check.