I wonder if anyone knows whether Jay Stratton, of Pantheon Press, has ever tried Pathfinder RPG. In my effort to find out, I looked at some Pantheon Press products, which do in fact include some Pathfinder-compatible "Nobis" products and conversions, but I'm not aware that Jay Stratton had anything to do with any of these.
What brings me to ask this question? He wrote an editorial recently.
Redundant Skills
This is an old one, but you know what really crumbles my cupcake? Redundant skills!
I make a ‘sneaky’ character in some new game. Eager to play, I zip through the creation process, find the Sneak skill, and dump points into it. I then sit down at the table with four fellow adventurers, a trusted gm, a large pizza, and off we go!
First encounter, my gang decides to spring an ambush. Perfect! I am, after all, playing ‘Captain Sneaky-Pants.’ We hunker down behind cover and when the bad guys get close, the gamemaster asks us for… wait for it… a HIDE roll.
I feel the blood drain from my face. With trembling hands, I pick up my character sheet for a closer look. Yes, there’s my Sneak skill, in which I am a relative expert. Then I see it: the Hide skill, where I still sport the meager base chance because I didn’t know the damn thing existed! I look even closer and find additional skills for shadowing, camouflage, and subterfuge.
Now, my GM is a good one and she hears my pleas. She lets me redistribute my skill points on the spot so I have a passable Hide roll for this fight, and we move on. But that’s hardly the point. How can I be so good at sneaking yet so bad at hiding? Can you imagine a member of Seal Team 6 saying, ‘Sorry guys, I can avoid detection while moving, but when I sit still, I make a lot of noise.’
Also, if I really want to be ‘Captain Sneaky Pants’, I have to dump four times as many skill points as if I want to be ‘Captain Rides a Horse’??? I mean, I don’t see the Acrobatics skill split up into summersaults, backflips, handsprings, and forward rolls! Are you telling me it’s really four times more expensive to be ‘Captain Sneaky Pants’ as ‘Captain Tumbles Around’?
And it’s not just stealth skills. Ever played a game with Spot, Notice, Listen, and Sense? What the hell?? You can’t just write Perception? I mean, picture this:
Legolas, what do your Elf eyes see?
Nothing Aragorn, I put my points in ‘Listen’ instead of ‘Spot’.
Yeah, that’s fun…
Okay, now that I’ve got the rant out of my system, here’s where redundancy actually works. If you’ve got a flexible GM, you can have lots of different social skills.
Bluff, Charm, Intimidate, Seduce – these all say different and interesting things about the character. A seducer has a totally different personality than an intimidator, and it’s fun to know and express this difference in the mechanics. But when faced with a social challenge the GM should let any of these skills come into play. A guard can be lied to, seduced, or intimidated with similar results, but the method is important for character conception.
So, yes, there’s that one exception! But otherwise, my plea to game designers everywhere: dump the redundant skills.
Is it just me, or does anyone else think this article screams "SELL ME PATHFINDER RPG!!!"
Bump.