Tagging skills

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Slimcreeper
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Tagging skills

Post by Slimcreeper » Mon Dec 10, 2018 2:29 am

Hey - just to check - you tag a skill whenever it is used, whether or not it is successful?

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Andrew1879
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Re: Tagging skills

Post by Andrew1879 » Mon Dec 10, 2018 12:30 pm

You tag a Skill whenever it's used in a significant way, whether or not it's successful. The Skill use has to be meaningful to the scene, not a throwaway Test for the purpose of tagging. And yes, you learn from failure as well as success. You can also only tag a Skill once per scene. If you use Firearms fourteen times in a combat scene, you only get to tag it once.

Slimcreeper
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Re: Tagging skills

Post by Slimcreeper » Mon Dec 10, 2018 4:17 pm

So tag it before you roll it.

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Andrew1879
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Re: Tagging skills

Post by Andrew1879 » Mon Dec 10, 2018 7:52 pm

Tag it once the roll is allowed, either before or after the dice are rolled. The die roll is not important to the tag, the attempt at using the Skill to be effective in the scene is.

ChrisDDickey
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Re: Tagging skills

Post by ChrisDDickey » Wed Mar 27, 2019 7:33 am

I remember back with Earthdawn 1st edition they had the rule that a talent had to be used at least once in order to advance. And there was discussion about Life Check. How having to almost die between every circle advancement seemed like a bad rule.

So now with the tagging rules it is more dire. As I understand it, an Explorer with the core skill life check needs to almost die twice before she can tag the skill twice and advance life check to rank 2? And needs to have almost died at least 14 times before she can advance life check to rank 5?
Shouldn't there be a comment in the description of Life Check that it is exempt from the tagging rules? Kind of like Durability has it's own special rules that don't include tagging but instead have a cooldown period?
Or if not, how do people really anticipate skills like Life Check really working? I mean you don't really want to ever have to use it. But it is almost totally useless at low ranking. So if you get it, you want to get the rank up high as quickly as possible.
How is life check supposed to get tagged enough to be raised to useful levels?

I am looking over the character sheet of an Earthdawn 10th circle Sky Raider that I have. He has Iron Constitution at rank 10. But I think that if using the tagging rules, Iron C would only have been tagged 3 or 4 times (not counting silly drinking bets). Now the last time he used it he was fighting a lot of giant spiders and I needed to use it about 10 times! So I was very glad to have increased it to high rank. Is an Explorer with Stout Constitution supposed to arrange to regularly get poisoned so that she can tag it? And I don't think alcohol poisoning counts unless it is significant. So how?

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Andrew1879
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Re: Tagging skills

Post by Andrew1879 » Wed Mar 27, 2019 2:13 pm

Dang it, I forgot about the Life Check fiasco. There's always that one item that breaks the mechanic. Let me think about that one, and about how to allow tagging without risking a blank character sheet or breaking the mechanic entirely. *walks away grumbling* Brad! Where's my rules mechanic?

ChrisDDickey
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Re: Tagging skills

Post by ChrisDDickey » Wed Mar 27, 2019 3:49 pm

Life Check is the worst problem, but there are others. I mean there are some skills that are used a dozen times in every session, and there are others that you can go a long time without them coming up.

I just pity the poor Journeyman Explorer. 3 of her Journeyman Core skills are Danger Sense, Life Check and Stout Constitution. A really great day for her is when she fails her Danger Sense roll, and a trap poisons her, then she fails her Stout Constitution roll, so slightly dies. She gets to tag three of her hard to tag core skills! Do that 20 more times and they are all up to rank 6!

You also have the problem of Skills that are often used "off camera". For example I have never seen a GM bother with more than 2 Animal Bond tests. Day one, you succeed, the animal is neutral to you. The next day it is Friendly. Over the next few weeks it eventually becomes Loyal. How many times was it tagged?
Animal Training is also usually done during downtime. How many times does it get to be tagged in a week of downtime?
Animal Handling and Equestrian might be used every day for important activities, but only rarely will the GM require a roll.
Call Animal Companion, at rank 1 only functions for 100 yards. That means that it is almost impossible to use not trivially.
Etc. Etc. Etc.

You might consider a mechanic such as dividing the skills into 3 lists.
No Tagging: Uses Durability rules. Durability and Life Check.
Tag Once: Skill must be used once before it can be raised. Danger Sense, Stout Constitution, and a dozen others.
Tag new Rank times. Standard rules.
And still you are going to have a bunch of people bribing and Air Speaking for no other reason than to get them tagged.
Another option would be that Journeyman skills don't need to be tagged until they reach rank 5, and Warden skills don't need to be tagged until they reach rank 9. Lots of good options.

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Andrew1879
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Re: Tagging skills

Post by Andrew1879 » Wed Mar 27, 2019 5:59 pm

Okay, I need to pull the Players Guide off the market and re-engineer the entire Skill Advancement system. This goes way beyond errata to a system that is completely broken and needs a major overhaul.

Slimcreeper
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Re: Tagging skills

Post by Slimcreeper » Wed Mar 27, 2019 6:30 pm

I’ve already got my house rule fix on this. I’m not home, so this may not be the exactly right and it’s not completely done, but: You can also get a tag by training a number of days (or was it weeks?) equal to the number of tags you’re trying to get. Trying to get your third tag: train three days. You can still get a tag by using it in play.

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Andrew1879
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Re: Tagging skills

Post by Andrew1879 » Wed Mar 27, 2019 8:37 pm

Earthdawn dropped the "use it to advance it" rule in Third Edition. Either this got left out of the CoreStep SRD that I developed 1879 from, or I missed it. Either way, now I have a huge mess to clean up. Excuse me if I'm seriously frustrated over something that Earthdawn resolved two editions ago and I managed to dig back up.

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