Skills - a trick
Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2020 11:19 am
Both the gaming tables I play at don't particularly like systems with Classes & levels.
We like to make characters that fit a concept then advance them organically during play.
Classes limit what your character can do. They make it so you have to choose a class then create a concept that fits - in short they limit creativity.
Levels then package up what the class says you can do and dole out predetermined parcels of it once you hit an arbitrary number of XP. - no organic advancement.
Now Earthdawn changes that up a bit by having you increase your abilities until you hit a point where your determined to be the next level, rather than giving you the increased power all at once. But its still Classes & levels.
However when the system was suggested to us we looked at it and saw the skills. Sure they were a very limited list compared to the talents & generally weaker but they seemed to represent a way to have our characters learn abilities not available to a chosen class.
So it looked like we could still grow our characters organically.
How wrong we were!
None of us looked at the advancement rules for skills so we missed the ridiculous time frames involved.
Seriously 4 weeks solid training to get Rank 4 in a skill, then longer and longer.
Assuming a party of 4 that's 3 characters standing around twiddling there thumbs? Why would they do that?
4 weeks is more than enough time to have several adventures, what possible reason would they not leave that person to train and meet up later?
So if you want to train in a skill you better hope everyone else also wants to do so as well other wise make a second char or sit out and do nothing.
Games are supposed to be fun but these training times...
We have come to the conclusion that skills only exist for 2 reasons -
1) to round out your character and represent things they learnt in the past, never to be looked at again.
2) so the GM can make non adept NPC's that are actually capable.
Yes im saying that the training times make Skills useless to PC's, unless you hand wave what the other characters do during these training times.
But if you hand wave that you should change the training times.
We like to make characters that fit a concept then advance them organically during play.
Classes limit what your character can do. They make it so you have to choose a class then create a concept that fits - in short they limit creativity.
Levels then package up what the class says you can do and dole out predetermined parcels of it once you hit an arbitrary number of XP. - no organic advancement.
Now Earthdawn changes that up a bit by having you increase your abilities until you hit a point where your determined to be the next level, rather than giving you the increased power all at once. But its still Classes & levels.
However when the system was suggested to us we looked at it and saw the skills. Sure they were a very limited list compared to the talents & generally weaker but they seemed to represent a way to have our characters learn abilities not available to a chosen class.
So it looked like we could still grow our characters organically.
How wrong we were!
None of us looked at the advancement rules for skills so we missed the ridiculous time frames involved.
Seriously 4 weeks solid training to get Rank 4 in a skill, then longer and longer.
Assuming a party of 4 that's 3 characters standing around twiddling there thumbs? Why would they do that?
4 weeks is more than enough time to have several adventures, what possible reason would they not leave that person to train and meet up later?
So if you want to train in a skill you better hope everyone else also wants to do so as well other wise make a second char or sit out and do nothing.
Games are supposed to be fun but these training times...
We have come to the conclusion that skills only exist for 2 reasons -
1) to round out your character and represent things they learnt in the past, never to be looked at again.
2) so the GM can make non adept NPC's that are actually capable.
Yes im saying that the training times make Skills useless to PC's, unless you hand wave what the other characters do during these training times.
But if you hand wave that you should change the training times.