11 hours ago, False God said:

Harkening back to my original post, although I'm keeping the cap at 6 (with cybers, GMOs and temporary enhancements breaking that to 7 and that being the full stop hard cap), I decided to add a 6th "capstone" rank to skills. Something simple, something sweet, not skill specific.

...and then, the opposite happened.

Them's a lot of rules for a thin slice of pie. Who wants to track all those "Once a Day"s? If you lift the cap, most of those are likely anyway on every roll , which kind of makes once-a-day moot. Eg: by the time you're rolling 6 yellows, your odds of a Triumph approach 50%. As a player, I'd get far better results just rolling than settling for 1 measly Triumph or a tepid "auto success".

13 hours ago, False God said:

Harkening back to my original post, although I'm keeping the cap at 6 (with cybers, GMOs and temporary enhancements breaking that to 7 and that being the full stop hard cap), I decided to add a 6th "capstone" rank to skills. Something simple, something sweet, not skill specific.

50xp: Character may purchase one capstone ability effect to add to any one skill they have as a class skill and have 5 ranks in. This capstone is treated as a rank in this skill so upgrades checks in this skill by 1, in addition to one other effect chosen at purchase:

Success: Once per day a character may choose to auto-succeed on a skill check in this skill as though they had generated 1 success and nothing else. They generate no advantage, threat, despair, triumph or additional successes through this effect, and successes, threats, advantages and despairs cannot be added to this check by other effects.

Ambition: May upgrade checks they make with this skill by an additional 1.

Artisan: May add 1 Triumph to all checks they make in this skill.

Performance: Once per day, before the outcome of a check is determined, the character may add 3 successes or 3 advantages to a check made in this skill.

Aptitude: Add 3 boost die to all checks you make with this skill, but you cannot benefit from assistance when making checks in this skill. However when assisting others with this skill, you grant them 3 boost dice instead of 1, but they cannot benefit from any other assistance.*
*I allow multiple people to assist on checks, but restrict assistance to those who have at least 1 rank in the matching skill.

I have some players who like the surety of success, and others who like randomness. I tried to keep them both in mind, though I would have liked to come up with a 6th idea to keep with the 6-6-6 theme. I know some folks would rather keep things lower, but I already have players with a couple skills at 5 ranks, and honestly, they pass almost everything anyway, so none of this really changes anything for me. It just gives them a cool capstone to their skill.

Thoughts:

I like the idea of a Capstone Skill very much. There are people that have just an astounding amount of skill with something. Often, however, that skill is combined with fantastic aptitude, so perhaps requiring a stat of 5+ in the related stat would help explain how their combination of ability and skill provides them this great advantage. Also I tend to agree with P-47 that it might be best to not have it count as an actual skill rank. At 50 XP I am comparing to two level 5 Talents, and I think they compare mostly favorably. Adding this into an existing game where PCs have 1000 XP wouldn't likely be balance altering. However for a game just starting I'd have to consider if it would be altering if someone made a beeline to it. Naturally PCs can make a beeline to many Talents that are powerful also, but it would be something I would have to consider.

Success: This would seem to only be useful if the result is in doubt, meaning that the opposing difficulty would be extreme. For that reason I would like to see a DP need to be used.

Ambition: The weakest of them to me, no recommendation.

Artisan: While very powerful, it does make a lot of sense to me for a true Master Artisan to have a skill like this. For balance, however, requiring a DP and/or a Once per Session limit might be good.

Performance: Suggest requiring DP.

Aptitude: Does seem to have the potential to be very powerful. Definitely requires a DP to me.

4 hours ago, whafrog said:

...and then, the opposite happened.

Them's a lot of rules for a thin slice of pie. Who wants to track all those "Once a Day"s? If you lift the cap, most of those are likely anyway on every roll , which kind of makes once-a-day moot. Eg: by the time you're rolling 6 yellows, your odds of a Triumph approach 50%. As a player, I'd get far better results just rolling than settling for 1 measly Triumph or a tepid "auto success".

I have a couple players who'd honestly rather settle for 1 Triumph or an "auto success". I think the dice gods just hate one of them. I've honestly seen him roll 4 yellow against a difficulty 2 check and fail on a regular basis.

2 hours ago, RickInVA said:

Thoughts:

I like the idea of a Capstone Skill very much. There are people that have just an astounding amount of skill with something. Often, however, that skill is combined with fantastic aptitude, so perhaps requiring a stat of 5+ in the related stat would help explain how their combination of ability and skill provides them this great advantage. Also I tend to agree with P-47 that it might be best to not have it count as an actual skill rank. At 50 XP I am comparing to two level 5 Talents, and I think they compare mostly favorably. Adding this into an existing game where PCs have 1000 XP wouldn't likely be balance altering. However for a game just starting I'd have to consider if it would be altering if someone made a beeline to it. Naturally PCs can make a beeline to many Talents that are powerful also, but it would be something I would have to consider.

Success: This would seem to only be useful if the result is in doubt, meaning that the opposing difficulty would be extreme. For that reason I would like to see a DP need to be used.

Ambition: The weakest of them to me, no recommendation.

Artisan: While very powerful, it does make a lot of sense to me for a true Master Artisan to have a skill like this. For balance, however, requiring a DP and/or a Once per Session limit might be good.

Performance: Suggest requiring DP.

Aptitude: Does seem to have the potential to be very powerful. Definitely requires a DP to me.

Perhaps simply a DP requirement on all of them. That would naturally limit them based on the amount of DP in the pool.