Skill system general thread, feel free to add your own thoughts.

I really, really like the new skill system. While I kinda like granularity with skills, DH was maybe a bit too much with its intermixing of skills and talents in the various rank tables. (Although part of the fun was trying to find hidden nuggets, good and fun combinations.)

And the classifications make sense overall with a few debatable exceptions.

Most notably:

Evade includes mental defense (Deny the Witch)? Really? That is just implausible. I put a rank in it and can better dodge and evade mental attacks? The main criteria for grouping former seperate skills together has to be that it is sufficiently conceivable that if you improve in one Skill Use, you also improve in the others.

I get better at inquiring people? Okay, I wont necessarily get better at investigating the books but it's imaginable. Sufficiently plausible.

But do inquisitorial training programs really tie dodging with mental resistance? I'd like to urge you to take the Skill Use Deny the Witch out of it and make it (with another Skill Use) a skill of its own. Or better yet: make it a talent.

Alex

I absolutely agree that Evade should not include mental defense; not only from a common sense perspective (why would being dexterous effect psychic attacks? what is Willpower if not the basis for mental defenses?), but because too many Skills/Talents trigger off of Agility, in my opinion, making it disproportionately advantageous compared to other Characteristics.

Relating to that, I also dislike Medicae being Agility-based now. The logic is that fine surgery requires dexterity, I suppose, but fine surgery will be a minority of the applications of this skill in-game. The most common use by far will be basic first aid (which requires specific knowledge and training, i.e. Intelligence), with forensic applications ("What did he die of...?") probably coming in second; full-on surgery will be, at best, a distant third.

Another gripe I have with the new Skills: while I agree that the old Lore system was a jumbled mess, I'm not a fan of Rememberancer. Ignoring the fact that 'rememberancer' is a specific occupation in the Horus Heresy novels and not the name of a generic skill, there is the fact that I don't think everyone should have a chance to know everything . In the 40Kverse , there is an old saying: "Knowledge is power- guard it carefully." Ignorance is the rule, not the exception; how can you reconcile that with a rule that allows an illiterate Feral Worlder to have a chance to 'just know' the inner workings of the Administratum, for instance? Yes, I know the rules say the GM can choose to rule otherwise, but that just feels like a haphazard stop-gap measure to me, not a well-thought-out system...

I absolutely agree that Evade should not include mental defense; not only from a common sense perspective (why would being dexterous effect psychic attacks? what is Willpower if not the basis for mental defenses?), but because too many Skills/Talents trigger off of Agility, in my opinion, making it disproportionately advantageous compared to other Characteristics.

Uh, Deny the Witch does use Willpower. Did you not realise that? Or am I misreading you?

Ignorance is the rule, not the exception; how can you reconcile that with a rule that allows an illiterate Feral Worlder to have a chance to 'just know' the inner workings of the Administratum, for instance? Yes, I know the rules say the GM can choose to rule otherwise, but that just feels like a haphazard stop-gap measure to me, not a well-thought-out system...

How would you stop this with an open ended system, though? Returning to the old fashioned way of doing lore would just mean the Feral Worlder would have to buy a few Lore advances instead of one catch-all talent. It doesn't change the issue.

Uh, Deny the Witch does use Willpower. Did you not realise that? Or am I misreading you?

Oops- I was just responding to ak-73 's initial post; I didn't double-check it for accuracy first...

Agreeing with Adeptus-B about the remembrancer, it pretty much makes it a deus ex machina as far as knowledge is concerned. Also, it's very lazy to just throw everything over to the GM in terms of what a player knows and doesn't.

In terms of remembrance I'm not sure I agree. Unless I'm reading the rules wrong the specialisation talent is used to determine what the character knows about, and remembrance is for their ability to remember things. So in this regard the system is very similar to the old one, just a bit simplified.

Although it's not the case here, I generally don't disagree with passing a lot of the details over to the GM when it's simple enough stuff that he/she can come up with it on the fly. I think you'll find that GMs are generally quiet dynamic and imaginative people, capable of coming up solutions and interesting little sub-plots on the fly. Passing a certain amount of control over to them allows them to subtly push the campaign in the direction they want without dice fudging.

I put the increased amount of GM decides rules in DH2 as a definite pro.

The concept of general knowledge is quite old and nothing to shake one's stick at. It doesnt have to be deus ex machina... it's just a measurement of how much a character knows in general. The fine tuning happens through talents.

My concern would rather be about inexperienced GMs having trouble to come up with appropriate modifiers out of thin air.

Let me point it out: Remembrancer initially only grants you all Common Lores , modified by GM's discretion - sensible. You can attain more specialist knowledge through talents later. Sensible too. However, once you pick a talent, you are as knowledgeable in it as in all other lores. Example: You pick Specialist(Adeptus Mechanicus) early on. Thenyou raise your Remembrancer skill to absurd levels. Then you pick up Specialist (Daemons) and are suddenly as knowledgeable about it as in all other lores? Please tell me that I am reading this wrong.

Maybe one should keep a track of how much the skill had already been raised at the time this was bought and apply it as a permanent negative modifier. But then you can never... make up for it.

Alex

Knowledge is always one of the most difficult things to judge in a game. If it takes up valuable "slots" in a character's progression, they will see too little use, as players don't want to give something up to gain them (D&D is probably one that suffers for this. Characters that are short of skill points just end up not knowing stuff they should do). On the other hand, make them too broad, and 1) there can be no point to them (Yay! Everybody knows Everything at +50), or 2) you don't do the idea of specialist knowlede justice. Now, the latter only matters in certain games, but in a game like Dark Heresy where forbidden and controlled knowledge is going to be a key part of the theme of the setting, you do have to try.

To me it sounds like at the moment things are too broad.

An investigation based game has players with knowledge going unused? Honestly, that sounds like bad GM'ing. It's not that the GM gets it in his hands problem, it's that it's all thrown at him. Either he has to have complete knowledge of every characters backstory, or there is very little backstory and the player doesn't know what his character is supposed to know or not. With the old lores my players at least had a firm grasp about what kind of information their character should or shouldn't know. This system I see alot of problems with players not understanding why they can't use "remembrancer" in alot of instances.

An investigation based game has players with knowledge going unused?

The problem is that specific knowledge skills can go unused. For example, if the players are investigating a daemonic cult, I can easily see how nobody will be asked to roll forbidden lore (xenos). So should the GM heavily alter the details of the mystery to include the lore skill ?

Should the GM tell people that it won't come up, thus telling the players that they aren't investigating xenos ?

Or do you leave the player unhappy that they spent XP on something that never comes up, thus encouraging them to not purchase the skill until after they know it will be useful ?

The more generic the lore skill, the less of a problem this will cause.

I think it'd help things to make specialties more indepth than just one talent you take. Maybe have broad areas of knowledge like Chaos, Xenos, Imperium and Heretics as prerequisites for the more specific knowledges like Adeptus Astartes, Daemons, Orks, etc.

Even from my side, thumbs up this time.

I really like the new skill system.

Not much complaints here.

Remembrance denotes how good a character is at retaining and recalling information, using various mnemonic techniques or whatever. Specialist (X) denotes that the character has a background in the field of X, or has studied X. It stands to reason that someone trained in the art of remembrance would be better able to commit information to memory when learning a new Specialist talent.

An investigation based game has players with knowledge going unused?

The problem is that specific knowledge skills can go unused. For example, if the players are investigating a daemonic cult, I can easily see how nobody will be asked to roll forbidden lore (xenos). So should the GM heavily alter the details of the mystery to include the lore skill ?

Should the GM tell people that it won't come up, thus telling the players that they aren't investigating xenos ?

Or do you leave the player unhappy that they spent XP on something that never comes up, thus encouraging them to not purchase the skill until after they know it will be useful ?

The more generic the lore skill, the less of a problem this will cause.

If the GM doesn't make an adventure tailored somewhat to the players I will call him a crappy GM, simple as that. When I GM I do tailor it somewhat. Yeah, lore isn't used every adventure, but I never let them go unused. It's the same as giving no combat when someone has a combat sentric character, leaving him useless.

I like the simplification ALOT, as there's alot of bloat in the old rules even though they have been trimmed between each iteration of the rules. I just don't like how Remembrancer removes some control from the player and gives it to the GM, when it comes to the character itself. Maybe it's because I play with a mix of warhammer veterans and newbies.

An investigation based game has players with knowledge going unused?

The problem is that specific knowledge skills can go unused. For example, if the players are investigating a daemonic cult, I can easily see how nobody will be asked to roll forbidden lore (xenos). So should the GM heavily alter the details of the mystery to include the lore skill ?

Should the GM tell people that it won't come up, thus telling the players that they aren't investigating xenos ?

Or do you leave the player unhappy that they spent XP on something that never comes up, thus encouraging them to not purchase the skill until after they know it will be useful ?

The more generic the lore skill, the less of a problem this will cause.

If the GM doesn't make an adventure tailored somewhat to the players I will call him a crappy GM, simple as that. When I GM I do tailor it somewhat. Yeah, lore isn't used every adventure, but I never let them go unused. It's the same as giving no combat when someone has a combat sentric character, leaving him useless.

I like the simplification ALOT, as there's alot of bloat in the old rules even though they have been trimmed between each iteration of the rules. I just don't like how Remembrancer removes some control from the player and gives it to the GM, when it comes to the character itself. Maybe it's because I play with a mix of warhammer veterans and newbies.

Yeah, not my playing style. I dont look for feel-good experiences in RPG sessions where the GM feels the need to make me feel happy because I get to use every odd skill selection I have taken. What's the point? "Yay, Lore(Garbage Collectors) is useful!"

It's far more rewarding if happens to turn out that I did choose wisely in my selection of skills after all. That is kinda part of the thrill of character generation/leveling: picking out useful skills and talents.

Alex

*Shrug* You call it feel good I call it diverse gameplay. If my players avoid getting any driving skills I present them with options where it would be useful. If they're serving an Ordo Hereticus inquisitor they'll need lores regarding heretics and the like. If it's hereteks they'll also need mechanicus and whatnot.

I'm not saying a person picking "scholastic lore: philosophy" will have use for it tracking down smugglers dealing with xeno tech but I HATE when people make the same bland characters time and time again, which DH1 often made. The new system is more open and solves that, but I often find players avoid certain skills or talents and I tend to try to make those useful in order to promote their use and not pidgeon hole everyone into the same skillset.

Yeah, not my playing style. I dont look for feel-good experiences in RPG sessions where the GM feels the need to make me feel happy because I get to use every odd skill selection I have taken. What's the point? "Yay, Lore(Garbage Collectors) is useful!"

It's far more rewarding if happens to turn out that I did choose wisely in my selection of skills after all. That is kinda part of the thrill of character generation/leveling: picking out useful skills and talents.

Alex

This is a dangerous slope, too, that can lead to powergaming or min-maxing (not that I'm accusing you of this). Ideally, a balance should be struck between your "useful" skills and talents, and those that fit the character from a ropeplay perspective.

I fully agree with Ghaundan that a good GM should tailor adventures, at least partly, to allow their players to work within their character ideas.

This is a dangerous slope, too, that can lead to powergaming or min-maxing (not that I'm accusing you of this). Ideally, a balance should be struck between your "useful" skills and talents, and those that fit the character from a ropeplay perspective.

I fully agree with Ghaundan that a good GM should tailor adventures, at least partly, to allow their players to work within their character ideas.

It depends. When I as GM write a specific campaign, then it's the players who have to make an effort to create characters that fit the theme of the campaign.

Anyway, with skills such as Lores it's always a bit of a guessing game.

Alex

DH1 and all of the follow-ons had the same problem with the Tech use skill. It covered a ridiculously broad array of skills from simple wrench twisting to mechanics to construction and repair of warp drives! I thought that was kind of silly and that opinion hasn't changed here. Lore skills cover a wide variety of entirely unrelated subjects. To suggest that one skill basically covers them all defies credulity! Additionally, the bit about medicae being an agility skill has been brought up before. I have to say that I'm in the intelligence camp myself! Even during full-on surgery it is far more important to know what you are cutting than being able to put on a Hibachi table show during the procedure!

DH1 and all of the follow-ons had the same problem with the Tech use skill. It covered a ridiculously broad array of skills from simple wrench twisting to mechanics to construction and repair of warp drives! I thought that was kind of silly and that opinion hasn't changed here. Lore skills cover a wide variety of entirely unrelated subjects. To suggest that one skill basically covers them all defies credulity! Additionally, the bit about medicae being an agility skill has been brought up before. I have to say that I'm in the intelligence camp myself! Even during full-on surgery it is far more important to know what you are cutting than being able to put on a Hibachi table show during the procedure!

In a setting where machines are maintained and operated through ritual rather than understanding, I wouldn't be surprised if the same practice was applied to medicine.

DH1 and all of the follow-ons had the same problem with the Tech use skill. It covered a ridiculously broad array of skills from simple wrench twisting to mechanics to construction and repair of warp drives! I thought that was kind of silly and that opinion hasn't changed here. Lore skills cover a wide variety of entirely unrelated subjects. To suggest that one skill basically covers them all defies credulity! Additionally, the bit about medicae being an agility skill has been brought up before. I have to say that I'm in the intelligence camp myself! Even during full-on surgery it is far more important to know what you are cutting than being able to put on a Hibachi table show during the procedure!

In a setting where machines are maintained and operated through ritual rather than understanding, I wouldn't be surprised if the same practice was applied to medicine.

Perhaps so! But that still makes Medicae an Intelligence based skill rather than AG. (Memory being tied to intelligence in these systems.)