The Core of Fate Core, a blog post by Fred Hicks, has some interesting stuff to me on the topic of choosing and designing skills:
> CHOOSING SKILLS:
There are any number of ways you might have characters select skills in your game. In our published games, we favor a “pyramid” or “tower” style, where slots for skills are bought at each rating level from Average on up, with requirements as to how those slots are stacked atop each other. Other implementations may favor a simple point buy approach, or something else entirely.
When setting things up for skill choice, think about two things:
* Niche protection: Offer enough skills with enough variety that each player can shine in a distinct and different way.
> DESIGNING SKILLS:
A specific game should have a customized skill list that fits the priorities of the game’s story and setting. A game where social interaction isn’t particularly important or nuanced might simply present all social skills as a single Interaction skill. When social interaction is important (and system support of that is desired), multiple skills may be warranted (such as Empathy, Rapport, Reputation, Deceit, Intimidation).
Skills are composed of one or more trappings. Broadly, a trapping is a kind of action (or family of actions) that a character can undertake using the …
The niche protection and breadth of competence are two core concerns.
And the Designing Skills section sets me up with another approach for considering what skills I might need for Fate Hack & Slash: describe the various kinds of things people need to be able to do in a Hack & Slash game, and then work out how to distribute them among skills to provide decent niche protection and breadth of confidence, whilst being careful about overlap.
(If I were modelled as a Fate Accelerated character I would have my +3 in Careful)
(or I might have something else in +3 but be constantly self-compelled to use Careful)
@doppelgreener So, what do PCs do in a hack-and-slash game?
They use a wide variety of melee and ranged weapons, usually with specialisation in a particular subset of them.
They protect themselves and each other.
They cast spells to attack and defend, and to manipulate the environment.
They use out-of-combat skills to manipulate the environment (as: finding and disarming traps, opening or barricading doors).
They encourage each other and discourage their opponents.
They solve puzzles which take the form of physical obstacles, and they solve puzzles with take the form of understanding their opponents' motivations and plans.
They topple powerful foes, by engaging in awesome combat, then get rewarded corporeally or in some other way. They will talk with people, bargain with them, threaten them, lie to them, and sometimes even be friendly with them if they actually feel comfortable that the thing in front of them is unlikely enough to eat them that they can actually let down their guard a little bit.
They'll break through doors and walls, find secrets, uncover treasure, and solve puzzles (which you mentioned).
They also fulfil quests, given to them by people or deities or so on, or chosen by themselves (but not often).
@BESW Zoom in on this! :)
They'll get hit, and hit things, and determine the best method of hitting things and not getting hit, whether that means getting out of the way or toughing it out or being clever about what they're doing or where they're standing.
They'll lure monsters into traps and ambushes
And they will face down monster after monster and somehow come through bloodsoaked and laughing triumphantly.
(Or, occasionally but not permanently, shattered and shaken.)
That means niche protection has to go hand-in-hand with needing niches.
It's not just that "I can do a thing you can't" is important: the group has to need the thing you can do which they can't.
This is probably more of a "GM advice" thing than a "designing skills" thing, but it's worth remembering because if a skill isn't necessary, maybe we should lump it into another skill or throw it out entirely.
Actually, with Notice, I think that's more a case of "We can't imagine a game working if nobody in the group is decent at this skill, so let's make it ubiquitous and focus niche protection elsewhere."
It came to mind: "Do I really need an Investigate skill? Is it worthwhile distinguishing from Notice?" I opened up ARRPG, and I see it does not have Investigate either.
I think I will do the same, and let Notice absorb it.
> Investigate is the skill you use to find things out. It’s a counterpart to Notice—whereas Notice revolves around situational alertness and surface observation, Investigate revolves around concentrated effort and in-depth scrutiny.
> Overcome: Investigate obstacles are all about information that’s hard to uncover for some reason. Analyzing a crime scene for clues, searching a cluttered room for the item you need, even poring over a musty old tome to try and find the passage that makes everything make sense.
> Investigate is probably one of the most versatile skills you can use to create an advantage. As long as you’re willing to take the time, you can find out just about anything about anyone, discover nearly any detail about a place or object, or otherwise make up aspects about nearly anything in the game world that your character could reasonably unearth.
If that sounds broad, consider the following as just a few of the possibilities for using Investigate: eavesdropping on a conversation, looking for clues at a crime scene, examining records, verifying the truth of a piece of information, …
I think I would rather just make it vanish, and make investigation something you do _other ways._ So considering its examples: Crime scenes: ... Not sure this is in scope. You can Notice clues though. Searching a cluttered room: Notice. Poring over a tomb: Lore, or some kind of skill about being Knowledgeable. Find out stuff about people: Intimidate them, threaten them, or be friendly with them and extract information.
Eavesdropping: ???. Examining records: Lore, notice. Verifying truth: That's a good blank... Conducting surveillance: Notice. Researching a cover story: ?????? what are cover stories, i don't know, maybe if we beat up enough of these [finger quotes] jorr-nail-ists they will tell us.
And here's an idea--when you get Lore in a mode, you pick a specific category like "Arcane Lore," and you get +1 on Lore rolls whenever it's within that scope.
Effectively some skills come with built-in specialisation stunts that grant +1 to all action types when that skill is focused on your area of expertise.
I think I should keep Empathy, both as a sort of being nice skill, and as a skill about reading another person's mental state. See if they're being shifty, or something. It's also a great stat for anyone interested in being psychic, because for them it means how able they are to tune into other peoples' minds.
In this game, a Fey Warlock's best stat would be Empathy.
I'd probably have something like Diplomacy wrap up all normal "good interactions with people" actions, and if you're psychic then your Psychic mode grants a unique skill to represent that.
I'm imagining maybe a dozen generic skills with some specialisation available, and some modes provide access to additional unique skills.
@BESW I was thinking it might be appropriate to give the DWARF mode a Sturdiness skill or something, which is an upgrade of something like Toughness or Constitution. (i.e. if you have anything which gives you Toughness, whether it's a better or worse mode, ceases to be Toughness and starts being Sturdiness.) Sturdiness lets you do some special things that the regular skill doesn't do.
@BESW By the way, I really like the specialisation thing. It means I can pick up Physique (Axes), and I will be the guy who's good at axes, and if I hand the archer my axe, even if he still has great Physique, he will not be as good with my axe as I am with it.
So, here's a quick sketch of a skill list and some sample modes.
> GENERAL SKILLS 0 Diplomacy (CA, O) 1 Faith (CA, O, D) 1 Intimidation (CA, O, A) 0 Lore (CA, O) 0 Mechanics (CA, O) 2 Melee (CA, O, A, D) 0 Notice (CA, O) 1 Ranged (CA, O, A) 1 Subtlety (CA, O, D) 0 Toughness (O, D)
(The numbers are how many action types beyond 2 the skills allow by default; the letters are Create Advantage, Overcome, Attack, Defend.)
> CASTER (up to 3) choose: Lore OR Faith Magic (CA, O, A, D) Notice - Choose a category of knowledge. If you chose Lore: +1 to Lore rolls to know about that subject. If you chose Faith: treat Lore as a skill in this mode when rolling to know about that subject. - Magic is a unique skill. Choose a domain over which you have control, such as Protection or Fire. You can use Magic to control this domain. Your choice may influence the kinds of actions you can take with Magic, so work with the GM to outline its capacities and limits before play.
The sums of the numbers in the list of general skills. Basically I'm counting skill points like ARRPG as a rough guide to balance.
> WILDERNESS (2) Lore Ranged Subtlety Toughness - +2 Lore to know about and get along in uncivilised places.
ROGUE (up to 3) Mechanics choose one: Melee OR Ranged Notice Subtlety - You can attack with Subtlety if your target doesn’t know you’re there.
BARD (at least 1) Diplomacy Intimidation Lore Notice - Pick one more skill and add it to this mode’s list. - You can use Diplomacy to make social attacks.
(Because Deceive just wasn't going into Intimidate with grace.)
> ELF (at least 2) Lore Notice Subtlety choose one: Melee OR Ranged - You get +1 with bows (if you chose Ranged) or light blades (if you chose melee) - You get +1 to defense rolls against mental (not social) attacks.
DWARF (1) Faith Choose one: Lore OR Mechanics Toughness - You have armor:2 against non-weapon physical attacks (poison, cave-ins, etc). - Pick a type of enemy. You get +2 on attacks against that enemy because of your clan’s ancient feud with them.
@BESW What do you mean by "Any melee weapon you have a stunt for" in Half-Orc? (Remembering that weapons worth creating extras for have their own stunts)
@doppelgreener Right now it's very open-ended because it's a prototype of an unformed system, but here's the idea: If the half-orc has sunk resources into being better with a kind of weapon, then being a half-orc makes him even more lethal with it.
@BESW And I see now. Elves get a +1, not just Weapon:1, and defence +1 to a wide variety of stuff. Dwarves get a pretty good armor:2 and an outright +2 on specific enemies. Half-Orc has more skill points, but are more constrained in their weapon bonus (and it's weapon:1 right? so it won't help them hit) and that teamwork thing is cool and substantial but uncommon.
> Devout +3, Fighter +2, Dwarf +1 Toughness +5 Faith +4 Lore +4 Melee +4 Diplomacy +3 Intimidation +2 Notice +2 Ranged +2 - +2 defending for others - +1 Big Swords - armor:2 vs non-weapon physical attacks - +2 on attacks vs cultists of the Red Hand of Ruin
Dwarfy here loves throwing himself in the way of falling rocks that are going to hit his friends.
He's only a tiny bit behind the orc in the smiting department, but he's ahead if he's fighting his favoured enemy.
GM: Oh no! A slide of boulders rushes for the elf! Dwarf: Outta the way, skinny! I'm gonna push him outta the way, I can take them! GM: [offers fate point] You're still totally drunk from this morning, you're not going to do a very good job. Dwarf: Gangwaaaayyy! Dwarf on a landslide coming throoouugh! [swept away into the Dark Cave They Were Hoping To Avoid]
I realised the other night a pithy way to describe the difference between their plantiness:
Stellata uses her self-manipulation to do things within the rules in an unusual way. (Changing the shape of her weapon, but she's still just a person with a weapon.) Doctor Light uses his mutation to break the rules completely. :)
From a different perspective: Doctor Light is a human who looks like a plant, while Stellata is a plant who looks like a human.
Actually, @trogdor, I was thinking that Light's Omega aspect might be better if it specifies why his work is so important. Partly because that gives an opportunity to make his aspects show better how he's not mad.
It also gives me more room to know how to poke that aspect.
"My work could save humanity!" means I know he'll be motivated to do things that can help save humanity, even if it's not because of his work. And he'll be moved to stop things which threaten it.
The original aspect sounds like a prioritisation of his work over a lot of things, which is bad for his mental health but good for drama, but knowing what drives him is going to be excellent.
Also I'm noticing something: unique skills aren't a very good idea unless there's a way to advance them outside of modes (like how ARRPG lets you use leftover skill points to do it). If we do that, this model is fine. If we don't, then we need to use additional trappings on existing skills instead (like instead of Magic, let Lore or Faith be a casting stat).
But for being whipped together, I think the prototype is a solid proof of concept.
The skills seem like a good starting place and shouldn't need a LOT of tweaking. The modes will need fiddling with, but the basic "skills and stunts" combo to define niches and races seems to be working in combination to define characters.
> CHEATER (1) Diplomacy Mechanics Notice Subtlety - Pick a skill and add it to this mode. - You can spend a Fate point to concede after rolling defense.
I'm imagining that if this winds up in a nice-looking PDF, the CHEATER mode should have something scribbled on it in red marker saying "+5 TO DOING ANYTHING AND STEALING THE LOOTS"
The +5 Melee wpn:1 half-orc isn't going to be caring, but the +2 Melee dwarf paladin is going to be delighted that he can use his Faith +4 to be effective in melee where he wouldn't have been otherwise.
And... here's why it's fair.
Weapons aren't the only kind of magic item.
The Holy Hammer gives the dwarf the melee-specific Attack trapping on a skill of his choice.
Then the half-orc picks up a bauble which lets him use Toughness instead of Faith to defend against mental attacks.
Or boots which let someone use their +8 Wilderness Lore check for Overcome actions to move between zones.
From a more meta-mechanical perspective: it's technically superior to put ranks into skills with more actions. This means that adding "attack" to the Faith skill is actually a balancing choice, while letting Melee attack at range is an imbalancing choice.
Allowing the paladin who dumped Melee to attack with his higher Faith skill rewards him for a sup-optimal RP choice and brings the balance between him and the half-orc who pumped Melee closer to equitable.
(This is why skill point costs are tied to how many actions a skill can be used for when you're building a mode.)
That makes sense. But also, it means that it matters what you can and can't do with each skill, and the fact you can't use Mechanics to attack is important - until you dump one of your many stunts into it.
Is there a better name for Diplomacy? The name has always sounded a bit too official for me when it's often used for friendly banter - especially here where that is what it explicitly covers.
