| Elizabeth Blackson |
So, we will eventually need to have NPCs helping us run our Kingdom. I would personally like a meritocracy, and put the most able people into the open positions.
That means testing their relevant abilities.
Testing someone's Strength is very simple: Give them heavy things to lift.
It turns out that if you're a Wizard, testing someone's INT is as simple as casting 'Detect Thoughts'.
I'm a bit hard-pressed to come up with decent ways to test someone's Wisdom or Charisma accurately.
I suppose having people attempt untrained skill checks linked to the relevant Ability might work, and have a best-of-twenty-attempts type score, to decrease the random success/failure factor.
Anyone come up with a good solution?
As a personal real-life experience: at a party, I was standing in a circle of people. Into the circle was introduced a bottle of nasty liquor of some kind. The first person tasted it: "Ugg, this stuff is aweful. Here, try it." and they passed it onto the next person... who tried it, and passed it on. And so on. Every single person tasting it, until it got to me. I passed. Successful Wis check. :)
| Elizabeth Blackson |
do you need fluff ways or crunch ways?
I'm not sure of your exact meaning. The end result needs to be people with high modifiers in leadership positions in the kingdom, which is crunch. Whether it's done via crunch or fluff, or in-game flavor, or whatever doesn't matter. It's just less stress 'selling' the notion to the GM if I can say 'I cast "Read Stat Block"'. LOL
In any case, whatever skill is tested needs to be untrained if that's the route I go. I don't care about skill mods, which can be affected by level, training, skill focus, etc. I just want Ability mods.
EDIT: Also, I should note that not being able to use Diplomacy skill in certain jobs of leadership is ... odd....