Skill Investment

[Hathor]

As it stands, ability in a skill has more to do with gear than any investment on the part of the PC. A brand new PC with a wealthy friend, for example, can achieve far more prowess in a skill than a PC who has invested every stat, skill point and feat into a skill. That isn't true for every skill, of course--Disguise for example has no gear to assist it--but it's true for many.

For PCs who are meant to be highly focused on certain skills as part of their RP, this makes any skill rolls feel a bit meaningless, at least in my opinion. I'd personally put far more weight into a PC who has skill focus and feats dedicated to a skill, than a PC who merely has all the "required gear".

While most probably wouldn't see this as a problem, is there something that can be done to allow more RP/skill focused PCs to shine? Some ideas:

- Options of advanced skill focus that pushes the skill past its usual limits at the penalty of combat abilities, for example Saves, AB, AC, or even other skills.
- (I've seen this on another server)--feats which can be activated to provide a very brief boost to a skill
- Some combination of the above

Thank you for your consideration!

[HopeIsTheCarrot]

As it stands, ability in a skill has more to do with gear than any investment on the part of the PC. A brand new PC with a wealthy friend, for example, can achieve far more prowess in a skill than a PC who has invested every stat, skill point and feat into a skill. That isn't true for every skill, of course--Disguise for example has no gear to assist it--but it's true for many.

For PCs who are meant to be highly focused on certain skills as part of their RP, this makes any skill rolls feel a bit meaningless, at least in my opinion. I'd personally put far more weight into a PC who has skill focus and feats dedicated to a skill, than a PC who merely has all the "required gear".

While most probably wouldn't see this as a problem, is there something that can be done to allow more RP/skill focused PCs to shine? Some ideas:

- Options of advanced skill focus that pushes the skill past its usual limits at the penalty of combat abilities, for example Saves, AB, AC, or even other skills.
- (I've seen this on another server)--feats which can be activated to provide a very brief boost to a skill
- Some combination of the above

Thank you for your consideration!

I certainly see the point raised here and understand your frustration. That said, I don’t personally see a viable solution to it. While the solutions you’ve proposed seem sound on the surface, I believe both of those changes would leave room for some pretty glaring exploits when applied to certain skills. At that point you would have to offer feats/boosts that were only applicable to some skills and not others. I find that unlikely. I agree that the gear is often at an imbalance compared to skill point investment though, particularly in the cases of low level characters.

[Glass Cannon]

The DC scale on PotM has departed from the scale in DnD 3.5.  In base 3.5, a DC of 30 is a Heroic task, while a DC of 40 is nearly impossible.  Here on PotM, the higher end of the scale tends to go to 65 or even 70.  This is because the scale tends to be balanced around the large equipment bonuses that are possible.

This has the consequences that you note, and it's fair to observe that it feels a bit like the equipment tail ends up wagging the Skill rank dog, but in some ways this is a good thing, because it minimises the crappy cross-class Skill investment rules that existed in 3.5 in the first place.

To go back and address this would require a complete redesign of the server along new DC guidelines.

[SardineTheAncestor]

I don't know if the statement that gear is more important than skill ranks is true, except for a few skills.

If you are investing in Skill Focus feats, you're already doing so at the potential cost of saves, AB, AC, or combat-related skills, and there is no need to further penalise characters who are choosing these feats by reducing their other stats.

About skill rolls being meaningless: they technically are. When people roll skills they have the option of equipping any gear they want right before making the roll, even if they should be making the roll in the context of an instant reaction, and would have no time to put that equipment on IC. You basically can't stop people from doing this since there's no guarantee the other party isn't doing it. The notion that there is a lot of very valuable skill-boosting gear is ultimately correct and leads to a "flex or fail" impulse for some. And some won't respect an Influence roll whether it's 60 or it's 30, while others will allow their character to be convinced of something without an Influence roll at all. This is all completely freeform and the skill rolls usually end up being a hard-to-ignore indicator of "I am attempting to make this kind of action," rather than "I can't wait to beat you in a roll duel."

With skills, focus feats, and skill bonus feats alone, you can get 20 in most skills around mid level anyway. A level 10 character has 13 Influence, +2 from his background, +3 from skill focus, +4 from feats, for a total of 22, without having equipped any gear. He will most certainly have an edge over characters whose investment in the skill is minimal even if they have the same gear.

As far as brand new characters go? It makes sense they're not great at anything -- but they can be. At level 2, you can get all of the bonuses the level 10 character had, and invest 5 points. 5+2+3+4=14. Having a minimum roll result of 15 on any skill at level 2 is seriously good. I've posted this image in Discord before in the same context:



It comes from this blog, about low level characters, who they are, and what they're capable of. https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/587/roleplaying-games/dd-calibrating-your-expectations-2

On this server, reaching a high level is inevitable because of RP XP. Experience is normally awarded through combat in DnD, so characters who aren't combat-oriented and do not visit dungeons can still achieve high levels. You can have "hatching" characters that only RP for several levels and suddenly become powerful combatants, or you can have characters who slowly evolve into masters of artisanal crafts or professional skills, all without ninjalooting or grinding for XP, money, and gear.

It may seem irrelevant, but the real content of what I want to say is that, while a brand new character can actually be very competent (within 2 weeks reaching level 5-6 if they play actively, despite not visiting a single dungeon), they should not expect to compete with extremely wealthy, high level characters, who have magic bags full of niche equipment for every situation. But here's the thing. They might be able to, especially if they end up making friends because they've been dedicated to their RP the entire time, friends who will give them the gear they need to beat the rolls of characters many levels above them, if a roll duel is for some reason required, for the sake of some kind of IC competition.

I'm only making this post because I have a "skill monkey" character with a couple skill focus feats that can more than do their job. It's because I invested, over months and months of actively playing a character that wasn't power-built and is only marginally effective in combat. Their gear is a little bonus on the top, at most a +5 compared to their raw investment of 22 or so, things that were found or purchased one day, compared to the months and months of actively playing and interacting with dozens of people, as the character figured out what kind of profession to devote themselves to, and asked for & received assistance in getting better at it. This is a more than viable path to take and I believe wholeheartedly from my own experience that if you want your character to be good at something, you do need to invest in it, in the rare case a roll is required.

So, while you can start out with a character who possesses a respectable level of competency in a roll, I don't think it should come to any surprise that characters who have been around for months or years will demonstrate superhuman levels of capability. Gear is just one piece of the puzzle, and if you're serious about the character, they will one day be high enough level to get that gear for themselves anyway.

[Iridni Ren]

I think the discussion needs to be more specific (which skills?) to be able to evaluate because as is, yes, it would require a tremendous amount of rebalancing. I doubt all skills are identical regarding this perceived problem, and the original poster mentions disguise, for example, as being one not included.

Regarding gear, MAB has multiple times said the Devs don't like adding feat-granting gear. We don't have stats-enhancing gear. Spell-slot items are rarer and rarer. Saves have tremendous inflation already. If gear doesn't enhance skills, what's left for gear to do?

A narrower and more fruitful discussion might be in regard to particular items and the bonuses they grant.

- Options of advanced skill focus that pushes the skill past its usual limits at the penalty of combat abilities, for example Saves, AB, AC, or even other skills.
- (I've seen this on another server)--feats which can be activated to provide a very brief boost to a skill
- Some combination of the above

Generally I don't think min-maxing should be incentivized. For example, if a given lock can be opened by someone without Advanced Skill Focus, then the PC having it has wasted the feat. But if the given lock requires Advanced Skill Focus to open, then only a group with a PC having ASF has a chance at the lock.

The server is healthier IMO if most PCs have several situations they are useful in, rather than PCs who dominate in rare circumstances but are useless in the majority of situations.

[Hathor]

If you are investing in Skill Focus feats, you're already doing so at the potential cost of saves, AB, AC, or combat-related skills, and there is no need to further penalise characters who are choosing these feats by reducing their other stats.

I don't really disagree with you on any point but this, I need to clarify and point to the fact that my suggestion is to add highly focused skill feats with penalties, not to modify the existing skill feats. There is no "punishment" in the suggestion, but I would be fine for additional skill focus feats to not include penalties too.

The issue is that there really aren't many feat options to allow a character to invest in anything other than:
- Combat
- Being a jack of all trades and amazing at every skill

What I'd like to see is additional options for PCs to push a little past what is possible with gear and one skill focus feat. The archmage, for example, being able to have a higher degree of focus on spellcraft. Those of us who want to be "experts" in a particular skill really have no options for it, even if we are willing to sacrifice much. Our only options are...gear. That's underwhelming and not very RP-friendly.

I think the discussion needs to be more specific (which skills?) to be able to evaluate because as is, yes, it would require a tremendous amount of rebalancing. I doubt all skills are identical regarding this perceived problem, and the original poster mentions disguise, for example, as being one not included.

Would it actually require a tremendous amount of rebalancing, though? You state below:

Generally I don't think min-maxing should be incentivized. For example, if a given lock can be opened by someone without Advanced Skill Focus, then the PC having it has wasted the feat. But if the given lock requires Advanced Skill Focus to open, then only a group with a PC having ASF has a chance at the lock.

The server is healthier IMO if most PCs have several situations they are useful in, rather than PCs who dominate in rare circumstances but are useless in the majority of situations.

The thing is, I don't see this is an issue. The locks do not need to be rebalanced or tuned for higher skill levels. No changes need to be made to the existing locks. It simply means the PC does not need to as reliant on gear-switching. But sure, some powerful skills could be kept out of this idea.

[slash]

As it stands, ability in a skill has more to do with gear than any investment on the part of the PC. A brand new PC with a wealthy friend, for example, can achieve far more prowess in a skill than a PC who has invested every stat, skill point and feat into a skill. That isn't true for every skill, of course--Disguise for example has no gear to assist it--but it's true for many.

Not to be nitpicky, but I just thought it was important to point out the irony in this line - if anything, disguise should be heavily influenced by gear and equipment (while I recognize that a lot of falling into a role or disguise involves being able to convince other people that you are the character you are putting on, this aspect of disguise is already, for the most part, covered by Influence (which is an amalgamation of Bluff and Persuade) and Perform (which, unless I have been misinformed, is what is typically used when a character is acting). Hopefully some gear is in the works for this new skill!

As to the main point of discussion, I think part of the problem with skill bonuses from items vs skill bonuses from point investment has to do with the fact that skill bonuses are not qualified by circumstance on the server. There are a lot of items that give blanket skill bonuses even though it makes no sense for them to do so. For example, a Ceintre de Revolution (sic) gives a bonus to Antagonize because of its cultural significance, but it makes no sense that it would give a skill bonus to anyone who wasn't familiar with the revolution in Dementlieu (which is almost everyone in Ravenloft). A skill bonus that is applied generally only makes sense unless the item is either magic or if the quality of the item granting the bonus is relevant to all instances where the skill would be used (a quick example of this - while a Falkovnian Talon helmet may inspire specific fear in the hearts of the people who have met the wrath of Falkovnia, it can be argued that the helmet itself just looks kind of scary and that's why it gives a bonus to Antagonize).

Anyway, there's my two (or ten) cents on the topic.

[Hathor]

As it stands, ability in a skill has more to do with gear than any investment on the part of the PC. A brand new PC with a wealthy friend, for example, can achieve far more prowess in a skill than a PC who has invested every stat, skill point and feat into a skill. That isn't true for every skill, of course--Disguise for example has no gear to assist it--but it's true for many.

Not to be nitpicky, but I just thought it was important to point out the irony in this line - if anything, disguise should be heavily influenced by gear and equipment (while I recognize that a lot of falling into a role or disguise involves being able to convince other people that you are the character you are putting on, this aspect of disguise is already, for the most part, covered by Influence (which is an amalgamation of Bluff and Persuade) and Perform (which, unless I have been misinformed, is what is typically used when a character is acting). Hopefully some gear is in the works for this new skill!

As to the main point of discussion, I think part of the problem with skill bonuses from items vs skill bonuses from point investment has to do with the fact that skill bonuses are not qualified by circumstance on the server. There are a lot of items that give blanket skill bonuses even though it makes no sense for them to do so. For example, a Ceintre de Revolution (sic) gives a bonus to Antagonize because of its cultural significance, but it makes no sense that it would give a skill bonus to anyone who wasn't familiar with the revolution in Dementlieu (which is almost everyone in Ravenloft). A skill bonus that is applied generally only makes sense unless the item is either magic or if the quality of the item granting the bonus is relevant to all instances where the skill would be used (a quick example of this - while a Falkovnian Talon helmet may inspire specific fear in the hearts of the people who have met the wrath of Falkovnia, it can be argued that the helmet itself just looks kind of scary and that's why it gives a bonus to Antagonize).

Anyway, there's my two (or ten) cents on the topic.

I hear you on the Disguise matter. I merely picked it because I figured it was the only skill no one would get caught up on arguing "this or that gear exists, so it's unfair". Unfortunately no perfect example exists, aside from maybe Lore? Ah well

In regards to your comments on the problems with gear, I don't disagree, but I also don't think they at all remove the need for "skill experts" to be able to build more into their skills.

[Phantasia]

More times than not someone is going to out roll you or out skill you no matter what you do through mechanics alone. The reflection of your character's aptitude with 'X' skill is not solely represented through the numerical value. It's about what you pour into it with out of the box thinking and roleplay value that will dwarf any number you can roll and if people needing your character is your concern--they will likely choose you because you're more engaging and involving.

If you're worried about having the best possible rolls under the scrutiny of a DM then also keep in mind there are things you can do, also outside of the box, to reduce that skill check through roleplay. I never understood the need for egregious amounts of skill stacking other than the most obvious ones, detection/stealth/discipline (which are all handled by the engine as well as others), but that's a can of worms I have no interest in opening up fully. Any other skill is just a luxury, if you manage to crank it, but for what reason?

When are you ever going to realistically need over 80 influence? When are you ever going to realistically need over 30 lore? If you can't have the highest numbers in your niche does that suddenly make you irrelevant and invalid? I should hope not.

Again, roleplay value and outside of the box thinking trumps numbers any day for me outside of any automated counter rolls through the engine/server systems. I'd sooner take a creative reason to convince my character to go along with something with no roll, than a flimsy one with a high roll which is just a "numbers flex."

[Relapse]

This topic has been brokered and debated quite a few times. I think there is general recognition that there is a massive skill inflation especially on some skills on the server, the reality is that the skill point economy is not all that equal, combat skills tend to have moderate bonuses where the stealth, detection and social skills seems to have taken a life of their own. I've heard people say it is to flatten the curve so to speak... that the skill development from a level 10 isn't so dramatically different from a level 20.

I don't like it, that some PCs can simply throw on some items and suddenly become overwhelmingly proficient in something is unfortunate, it undermines the investment for those PCs who have taken it as a class skill, especially skills that already are under recognised like influence. It is also unfortunate there is such a meta that intricate item knowledge will give you an absolute advantage in some mechanics on the server such as stealth instead of an organic progression. I die a little on the inside everytime someone pulls me aside for a private conversation and begins pulling out ankhs and sticks, it screams meta and breaks the experience... and unfortunately it is sometimes necessary because of the stealth culture and the consequences that can come from it.

That's my take anyway, it's got a long history and not really one that can be easily solved, even if there was a desire to change it.

[Iridni Ren]

Spoiler: show

This topic has been brokered and debated quite a few times. I think there is general recognition that there is a massive skill inflation especially on some skills on the server, the reality is that the skill point economy is not all that equal, combat skills tend to have moderate bonuses where the stealth, detection and social skills seems to have taken a life of their own. I've heard people say it is to flatten the curve so to speak... that the skill development from a level 10 isn't so dramatically different from a level 20.

I don't like it, that some PCs can simply throw on some items and suddenly become overwhelmingly proficient in something is unfortunate, it undermines the investment for those PCs who have taken it as a class skill, especially skills that already are under recognised like influence. It is also unfortunate there is such a meta that intricate item knowledge will give you an absolute advantage in some mechanics on the server such as stealth instead of an organic progression. I die a little on the inside everytime someone pulls me aside for a private conversation and begins pulling out ankhs and sticks, it screams meta and breaks the experience... and unfortunately it is sometimes necessary because of the stealth culture and the consequences that can come from it.

That's my take anyway, it's got a long history and not really one that can be easily solved, even if there was a desire to change it.

I pretty much agree with all that and will add one remark: I don't like being in situations in which a DM makes me roll, and I know that I have the right gear for it but unequipped. It seems that not swapping penalizes us for not metagaming, but OTOH, why am I toting the item around all the time if I can't use it when I need it?

To be sure, in some circumstances you would not have time to change gear. But especially when successive checks are required, should the PC know to equip the gear? Probably? But I'd rather fail a roll than be fussed at.

The tendency on the server to have gear be very situational and have maluses to go along with boons presses us toward situational swapping. Which does have an immersion-breaking metagaming feel.

[SardineTheAncestor]

It depends. Sometimes it's a reactive roll, sometimes it's something you have time to equip yourself for.

Say there are boots that give discipline and boots that give perform. If someone asks you to dance and sing for them, they're probably going to give you IC time to put on your best dancing shoes if you had combat boots on. Likewise, if you expect trouble, you should probably change into something appropriate.

I die a little on the inside everytime someone pulls me aside for a private conversation and begins pulling out ankhs and sticks, it screams meta and breaks the experience... and unfortunately it is sometimes necessary because of the stealth culture and the consequences that can come from it.

Personally I'm torn on this because I think it bears repeating that equipment should matter. It would be nice if it simply gave an edge and the skill investment determined who the expert is for all skills. Some skills are like that already.