Skills? What Skills?

In my quest for a simpler version of D&D 3.5, I have been thinking about skills. Skills in 3.5 are cool. But really there is a lot of complication in them when you think about it. Class skills, cross-class skills, synergy bonuses, maximum ranks, taking 10, taking 20, etc. It is something that has been difficult for me to explain to new players in the past. Unlike the relatively simple skill system used in Palladium games (which I only use as a comparison because I know it well), learning the ins and outs of the D&D 3.5 skill system is something that can truly take years to master. This is just a game for goodness sakes! While I appreciate the realism that complexity can simulate, I am finding myself more and more attracted to simple fun. So what can be done to make skills simpler? Getting rid of them would be a start. This is the just the beginning of the genesis of an idea so bear with me. I hope to develop this out a little more thoroughly over time.

As I discussed in Featless?, sometimes the simplest way to deal with a complex system is to just get rid of it. If you can find a way to do so while preserving the balance of the game and not requiring a massive re-write of the entire 3.5 library, then I think that is the ideal. Now when I say get rid of of skills, what I am really talking about is the fiddly bits, namely the stuff it takes to figure out what your bonus is, i.e. the math. I think it would be nice to be able to quickly calculate your character's bonus for something that could be considered a skill without needing half your character sheet to show all your math. So join me in a little thought experiment. What if there were only six skills and each of them corresponded to an ability score?

The Strength skill would encompass climbing, jumping, swimming, breaking down doors, bending open bars, and anything of that nature. The Dexterity skill would involve sneaking around, picking locks, balancing on precarious surfaces, tumbling past your opponents, and so on. Constitution would include not just the Concentration skill (which you might be surprised to learn comes into play for more characters than just spellcasters), but also checks against fatigue as well as starvation and thirst. You get the picture. As a rule of thumb, use the ability score associated with the 3.5 skill list as a guideline for what skill belongs where. If a skill is associated with an ability score, it falls under that ability score's skill.

So how would we determine what skills your character has and what your bonus is? This part is a little trickier if you want to preserve balance and probably requires some thought, but I think a good way to determine how many skills your character has would be to take the base number of skill points received at each level and divide by two. Thus a fighter would receive one skill, a druid would receive two, a ranger three, a rogue four, and so on. What about bonus skills for a high Intelligence? Well I haven't thought that far ahead yet, but for now let's work on the assumption that Intelligence is its own reward and not worry about that (perhaps a topic for a future blog post).

I can hear the arguments against this now. "Way overpowered!" Well maybe. But let's consider that there has been a general trend in the d20-based gaming market recently towards hefty consolidation of skills. Pathfinder and 4th edition both have considerably smaller lists of skills than 3.5, and many people like those skill systems quite a lot for this very reason. Does this go too far? I don't know. As I said this is just the beginning of an idea. We'll see where it goes.

-Marionnen