About MysteriousMaker
I don't want to rewrite this, but I can't seem to make a thread for it right now.
One thing I notice about skills that is not represented well is that skills often have two aspects to improve. You can improve the ability to perform a skill, or you can learn to perform more complex and advanced techniques.
Take math for example, you can learn basic arithmetic. Then you can improve your math skills in two ways. You could practice addition and multiplication until you can do 10-digit multiplication in your head wuth ease, but this high level of ability does not automatically grant the ability to perform calculus, nor does learning calculus grant the ability to easily perform large multiplication problems in your head.
For me, I've always seen gaining skill ranks as progressing the skill to more advanced techniques and uses.
Well, I wanted to model an NPC once as having practiced extensively with a low level of skill to perform the basics at a superior level to others, but lacking the education to know anything about more advanced uses of the skill. I realized that I had no way to model this.
The biggest part of this though, is to improve the capacity to do a task without increasing the achievable difficulty of task.
Thus I had the idea for familiarity. It has two parts, the first is basically a variable sized advantage die, and the second is less mechanical but basically gives a bonus to the speed and efficiency of performing a skill.
So, a character that can perform a particular use of a skill that they could complete successfully with taking 10, they could learn familiarity for that particular use.
Familiarity comes in different ranks. At first rank, the character gets to roll a d4 with the d20, and take the higher die (effectively making really low rolls less likely. Admittedly, at low ranks, this works better with 3d6 variant rules). Additional ranks in familiarity increases the d4 to d6 then d8 and so on.
This makes higher results more likely without increasing the maximum achievable result.
As for increasing speed and efficiency, I generally just adjudicate speed increases, but sone skills like crafting actually have mechanical speed. Crafting speed is in part according to the total roll result, so while the check for success might take the higher of rolled dice like advantage, when it comes to calculating progress towards completion, it actually adds the familiarity die to the other dice, improving the progress speed. And for efficiency, looking at exclusively the familiarity die, every four points rolled reduces the cost in materials used by 5% (note for really high familiarity, for every 25%, count only half the remaining materials. For example, if a character can reduce materials cost by 35%, and the base materials cost is 100gp, they subtract 25% of the base price for 75gp, then this reduced price is further decreased by 10% of this reduced priced, 100gp -> 75gp (-25% of 100) -> 71.25gp (-10% of 75/2 = 37.5gp). This means demigod characters can craft with amazingly small amounts of materials but they'll never truly reduce materials to nothing. Going into epic levels, 33 levels of familiarity decreases cost by about 50%, 50 levels of familiarity reduces cost by about 61.5%, of course, that's getting maximum rolls of the familiarity dice.)
Maximum rank of familiarity is equal to character level.
In any case, at low to mid levels, this can work as a good way to reward rp. For example, if a player finds out the specific monster they face ahead of time and really researches it to become truly familiar with the available research, the gm can reward them with familiarity, which won't increase the level of information they discover but can increase the amount of information they discover at that level and below (if their knowledge check was 18 but with high roll of familiarity, they wouldn't find out dc 20 info but they would find out more of the dc 15 or less info), and may even include stories and reports of tactics and strategies used by others against similar monsters.
The progression of familiarity can be primarily rp driven rather than purely by leveling, giving a reward for players to do things in the world.
