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Re: Skills Opinions!

Posted: Sun 08 Oct 2017, 14:00
by Fragpuss
Having had time to cogitate while preparing lunch, I'm now going to pick a hole in my own idea.

The, e.g. +2 to the dice pool could in theory lead to a situation where you've got skill scores over 5 and you then have to scrabble around to find more red/green/black dice so maybe specialisation should allow you to sub in that special, shiny new d8 for one of your d6s instead?

As to what the talents are called on the character sheet, I'd leave that to the player. When the he comes to me saying - 'this is how I see my character developing, I want him to become an expert in X...' that for me is his part to play in the narrative and how he wants his character to portray himself to the world. As long a we're both agreed that the scope and mechanical effect is fair - then 'a rose by any other name...'. If he wants to tell everyone he's the 'King of Swordsmen' or 'The Horse Whisperer', that's great - it doesn't make it so, of course...

Re: Skills Opinions!

Posted: Sun 08 Oct 2017, 14:10
by Tomas
I like a short list of skills - and 16 is a rather short list to me ;) - but I would like to have many talents. The reason behind this is that I want options that are already developed and thought through. And as the talents came in tiers and every talent  consist of three tiers (I think this is correct) there should be enough options. With talents you can individualise  your character.
Yes, exactly this is the plan. The skills will be (fairly) broad and few, but the tiered talents will create unique and specific combinations.

Re: Skills Opinions!

Posted: Sun 08 Oct 2017, 14:49
by Fragpuss
A couple of thoughts occurred to me while reading through the thread again this morning:

Resolving the wits vs. charisma (empathy?) conundrum for healing - why not have it 'float' ,e.g. use wits for physical healing and empathy for helping people recover from shock/trauma? I'm assuming here of course that mind points will be a feature of the system as they are in Coriolis? I'm all for anchoring skills to specific attributes, but there are going to be situations where mixing them up will make more sense - Agility for close combat with a dagger / rapier vs. strength for a club, anyone? One of the wits-type skills like 'Insight' could easily float the other way - one aspect for understanding 'things', one for understanding people...

Going waaaay back to the specialisation debate that started around page 2, I find myself in the 'Talent' camp.  I like the idea of specialisation, I think it's a good way of discriminating characters and adding a bit of flavour, but I also don't like long lists (of skills or anything else for that matter). I played a game called 'The Void' about 18 months ago which has a similar dice pool mechanic, but it had, I kid you not, over 100 skills, including 3 different boating skills - in a SciFi Survival Horror game! It also had a monstrously long list of talents and disadvantages, which felt way overdone.

To that end, how would people feel about a single talent called 'Specialisation' or, hang on...'Mastery' that you could take to give you, e.g. a +2 to a specific aspect of a skill, e.g. Axes or Surgery? Having it as a talent, so you have to invest the XP, I think gives some reflection of the time and focus needed to hone skills in specific areas. You just pick it every time you want to specialise in something and agree what aspect of the skill it influences with your friendly GM.
Well it doesn't have a long list of skills, you get to create your own, that way you get the range of a long list, and uniqueness of options, while keeping it simple,
The only long list I want to see is of monsters, not skills, not focused sub skills, nor talents (because that just trades one list for another),
I think we're in violent agreement here - neither your free-form list of skills, nor my generic 'Mastery' need introduce 'bloat', which I think everyone on this forum seems to agree is the common enemy. 
The one aspect of your model that I'm not keen on, and one reason I sit firmly in the 'Talent Camp' on this subject, is the part where you suggest introducing both sub-skills and sub-attributes (if I recall your proposal correctly). Could it work? Yes. My concern is that it's too fundamental a change - there seems to be a common core to all the FL games, although each has it's own unique mechanics (Praying to the Icons, Pushing, etc.). It's not that it's massively complicated, but it is more complicated. For me, this has the potential to add complexity to character generation as well and perhaps strays too close to creating a different game. I believe the Talent option stays closer to the 'spirit' of the core and would prefer to stick to a tighter list of attributes.
Each to his own though - once we get it back to our respective tables, it's our game - I'm pretty sure Fria Ligan won't send someone round to confiscate the rulebook if they think I'm doing it wrong  :?

Re: Skills Opinions!

Posted: Sun 08 Oct 2017, 15:31
by Harper
The only long list I want to see is of monsters, not skills, not focused sub skills, nor talents (because that just trades one list for another),
I so much agree with this! KISS is the rule of thumb. Few, but broad, skills; maybe twice as many talents as skills, that add to skills instead of narrowing them. I'd like something like twice as many talents as skills.
Nope. I don't want a long list of either of those, 
The open ended skill focus would give enough freedom to customise and its a lot more simple than a long talent list,

Re: Skills Opinions!

Posted: Sun 08 Oct 2017, 23:32
by 9littlebees
I like a short list of skills - and 16 is a rather short list to me ;) - but I would like to have many talents. The reason behind this is that I want options that are already developed and thought through. And as the talents came in tiers and every talent  consist of three tiers (I think this is correct) there should be enough options. With talents you can individualise  your character.
Yes, exactly this is the plan. The skills will be (fairly) broad and few, but the tiered talents will create unique and specific combinations.
Hi Tomas, any chance you can give us an updated list of the preferred Skills over at Fria Ligan based on the discussion here and other places?

Re: Skills Opinions!

Posted: Sun 08 Oct 2017, 23:36
by 9littlebees
[EDIT] Never mind, reread the talent from another game I was referencing, and had been using it wrong.  It will no longer play well with Forbidden Lands, especially with the new combat options.

Re: Skills Opinions!

Posted: Mon 09 Oct 2017, 00:40
by King_Kull
Also, on the subject of talents, I've been impressed with an implementation in FFG Star Wars (the game I'm currently GMing).

For NPC's, there is an "Adversary X" talent, where NPC's with this talent basically get an upgrade to any rolls which should be affected by them being big foes.  This could easily be implemented in Forbidden Lands with extra dice in their pools.

So for example, a Bandit Leader might have a list of Attributes and Skills as normal, but a single Talent called "Adversary 1".  This means he (or she) builds his dice pool as normal, but then any action which should get a little bump due to him being a better-than-average adversary gets one extra dice.

This is only used for big foes (nemeses), and can get scaled up accordingly.  So a dragon (can't remember if they are in this setting?) might get an "Adversary 3" talent, meaning some (not all!) rolls can get a +3 bonus.

What I really like about this in FFG Star Wars, is that as a GM, I'm not necessarily tracking a big list of Talents for my bigger foes, I simply have the freedom to upgrade their attacks based on this single one.

Sure, I can just do this anyway without a rule, but it's quite nice having it in the rules, so I don't have to hide from my players how I'm building the dice pool, and don't have to explain that I'm making a foe stronger because "I think his stats aren't good enough".

Anyway, just a thought.  What do you all think?
Hm, not so keen about it... A good opponent, a nemesis especially, has to be built like a character so he can have as many facets than a PC. But this is my taste. Your suggestion would make it very easy to build a big bad guy. That’s definitely so and it will it easy to keep track about the abilities of the opponents. But as written above it‘s not my style.

Re: Skills Opinions!

Posted: Mon 09 Oct 2017, 01:00
by 9littlebees
[EDIT] More nattering on incorrectly about the talent.  :P

Re: Skills Opinions!

Posted: Mon 09 Oct 2017, 01:05
by 9littlebees
Lol, looks like I've been doing this completely wrong.  Just reread the Adversary talent and it says (for an Assassin Nemesis with "Adversary 3" in this example):

Upgrade difficulty of all combat checks against this target three times.
So the talent is actually only applicable in combat, essentially making the Adversary harder to hit.  There are also 2 other talents listed for this NPC ("Deadly Accuracy" and "Lethal Blows 2").

So yeah, not nearly as all-encompassing as I was making out, and looks like I've been playing that talent wrong in my campaign!  Thankfully I've not thrown many Nemeses at them yet, so no real harm done!   :P

Re: Skills Opinions!

Posted: Mon 09 Oct 2017, 08:25
by King_Kull
Lol, looks like I've been doing this completely wrong.  Just reread the Adversary talent and it says (for an Assassin Nemesis with "Adversary 3" in this example):

Upgrade difficulty of all combat checks against this target three times.
So the talent is actually only applicable in combat, essentially making the Adversary harder to hit.  There are also 2 other talents listed for this NPC ("Deadly Accuracy" and "Lethal Blows 2").

So yeah, not nearly as all-encompassing as I was making out, and looks like I've been playing that talent wrong in my campaign!  Thankfully I've not thrown many Nemeses at them yet, so no real harm done!   :P
:)