Ok, with discussion of scaling skill feats, I have had lots of thoughts and realized that I had some consistent things that I liked about things but hadn't caught on to some of the underlying reasons why and have tried to codify them, and with that in mind think I have a paradigm that others might also appreciate.
Skill ranks provide some gating, to actions, to particular types of obstacles, and to skill feat access, all for instance.
These were all pretty obvious aspects tied into specific rules anyone would likely list. However, I liked how on the practice a trade table, in addition to the level axis, the table also had rank which impacted the income.
People were concerned about the fact that the ranks didn't do enough numerically adding to dice for checks because they wanted to compare people who didn't have a skill, or were a lower rank of the skill and compare the numbers to determine who would make the better object. I however looked at it differently. I looked at it and said, if someone Trained was being compared to someone who was Expert, if the trained person got a 15, and the expert got a 12, and both were successes. I'd presume the expert won. If the trained person got a 12 and expert got a 10 and the trained was a success and the expert got a failure, that is when the trained person wins the competition.
This is the key. Rank in my view changes what the person achieves on a success. It also improves their chance of success some, but its primary purpose is to change the result of a success to be more than it was without the rank. Getting critical successes would generally increase the result of the success to as if it were like the rank above. If nothing is specified, normally, raising a rank/getting a critical success produces double or +100% the normal effect.
So let us look at Survival, and Survive in the Wild skill use
Downtime activity
Untrained: a success should equate to subsistence for yourself
Trained: a success should equate to subsistence for yourself and another, or comfortable food and shelter for yourself.
Expert: a success should equate to subsistence for you and two others, or comfortable living for you and one other.
Master: a success should equate to subsistence for you and four others, or comfortable living for you and two others.
Legendary: a success should equate to subsistence for you and eight others, or comfortable living for you and four others.
Legendary Critical successes, double the number of others you can support in the desired standard if getting a success.
A critical success normally takes the benefit of a success of the higher rank.
Then lets look at a skill feat based on the action:
Forager
Allows an individual to have assurance, and rather than rolling, may automatically take the result from the success condition of one rank below their skill's rank.
Expert advancement: allows the survive in the wild activity to be preformed for free once a day in conjunction with other activities such as scouting, traveling, or even maintaining a wide perimeter guard. It cannot be used to get a second roll for the same action.
Master advancement: Like expert, but the free roll/activity can be stacked on another Survive in the Wild activity, giving them an additional roll. [they cannot use the assured result for the second action] The additional roll adds the number of people cared for, including the second instance of self as an additional person. Alternately, it can be used as an exploration activity usable once per day that takes an hour, if a second attempt at the activity was made in a day, it would take the remainder of 7 hours to complete, and would be the last time the activity could be done in a day.
Legendary advancement: The free roll(or use), once per day, may be made in downtime mode, only using 10 minutes. Additional rolls would require at least 1 hour to complete each if done in exploration mode. If an additional roll made is a success, they may elect to preform the action/roll again. However, the minimum DC for any subsequent next checks is must be at least the total number of people fed from that area that day. If used as a downtime action, they may keep rolling after each success as long as they make the DC of the check (potentially modified by Minimum DC).
A consequence of this sort of paradigm is it seems to me really simple to have the rank in weapon proficiency be able to then justify Expert getting a +1d damage, for instance, without having to resort to magic, giving mast +2d, and legendary +3d. Magic could be limited to fewer dice, or maybe would simply not stack damage-wise. Although +4 and +5 weapons would still be an advantage in gaining bonus to damage. Alternately, allow overlapping magic bonus to have secondary alternate bonus. (maybe each die of overlapping die damage might allow you to reroll 1 die roll of a 1 on your damage)
I looked at it and said, if someone Trained was being compared to someone who was Expert, if the trained person got a 15, and the expert got a 12, and both were successes. I'd presume the expert won. If the trained person got a 12 and expert got a 10 and the trained was a success and the expert got a failure, that is when the trained person wins the competition.
How much higher than the Expert does the Trained person need to roll (and both succeed) in order for the Trained person to "win"?
If the Expert rolls a 15, at what point does the Trained do better? 20? 25? 30? 50?
I looked at it and said, if someone Trained was being compared to someone who was Expert, if the trained person got a 15, and the expert got a 12, and both were successes. I'd presume the expert won. If the trained person got a 12 and expert got a 10 and the trained was a success and the expert got a failure, that is when the trained person wins the competition.How much higher than the Expert does the Trained person need to roll (and both succeed) in order for the Trained person to "win"?
If the Expert rolls a 15, at what point does the Trained do better? 20? 25? 30? 50?
Sounds like a trained person won't ever do better than an expert. But when they critically succeed they are equal to the expert.
The question is, how does this paradigm work with opposed rolls? Does my character that is trained in perception need to critically succeed a search to spot the expert stealthy guy?
When operating in this premise the time when a lower ranked individual would win, would be when when they attempted a challenge, the higher ranked individual failed, or critical failed, while the lower ranked individual succeeded. Alternately, if the higher ranked individual got a simple success, but the lower ranked individual got a critical success. In cases where their net result was within the same 'ranking' I could see potentially using the die roll to compare the two then, with the higher roll taking it.
In these types of contests... where they 'produce' something that is being judged, if the lower ranked individual got a higher 'die roll' that was still just a success, while the higher ranked individual got a lower die roll that was a success, the judges would likely complement the losing competitor, saying they really liked some certain aspects of it, but felt that the other individuals was more thoroughly likable or of consistent quality.
So a lower ranked individual can win a contest, without even making a critical success, but would most often be doing so when the more expert person managed to fail their roll. This actually seems quite reasonable, from a practical point. Howe often is an amateur cook going to beat out a professional cook in a cooking contest. Simply put almost never, probably when the professional was a bit cocky and tried to bite off too much and ran out or time, botching something. So fundamentally, this seems reasonable. If the DC is really had, the amateur has a hard time getting a success, but if they do succeed, they have a reasonable product in the competition, and there is a greater chance the expert might potentially fail. If the amateur managed to critically succeed, they are even more likely to level the playing field for that contest round. But certainly, the probability is the next round they may not have the same luck.
I think in most cases in direct competition, where DCs get set, there is only one roll involved. So basically, if someone has a particular skill rank, that rank's modifier affects the DC of whatever effect, along with whatever attribute and of course their level. So in that sense, if the contest is... to touch the opponent, your armor proficiency rank modifies your AC and the person's weapon proficiency rank modifies their to hit, and there is one roll made.
So no, this doesn't inherently cause the person a rank of perception lower, being unable to see the person with a rank higher in stealth. In that sort of competition, rank ends up breaking down into numeric difference, and potential cosmetic differences of. If you a Expert in perception succeeds against a trained stealth, they clearly catch sight of them. If a trained in perception individual wins the contest against an expert in stealth, they may not clearly see the individual, but catch enough of clues to know where they are and what/who they most likely are. So the flavor of how much information they get right away would be less or more based on comparing their ranks, but it would primarily be flavor, rather than purely mechanical purpose for the game.
Side topic: (my original thought)
Outside the scope of what I suggested above, I'll admit, I'd previously contemplated if someone had a higher rank in something would be given an advantage in the roll, allowing them to roll twice and take the higher result, or if at disadvantage, rolling twice taking the lower. But for obvious reasons of territory already taken by a competitor, that isn't likely to be an option. It made definitive sense to me to allow people with greater ranks in combat vs armor proficiency getting a 'reroll' to overcome the defense. For casters with greater casting proficiency, higher than the individual's save making it harder for the weaker to save significantly. Of course that makes not having options for higher light or medium armor proficiency an issue however.
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Functionally, that means that a skill rank is worth +10.
Functionally, that means that a skill rank is worth +10.
Potentially, when they succeed in their action, that would be one way to consider it. (or +1 or +2 depending on your version you are using to determine success or not, and an additional +10 per rank if it was found to be a success, if you have to think about things in the old P1 rolls being compared directly to determine which was 'better/higher')
It isn't just +10, since you can still fail, and your failure will be as bad as a non-trained person's failure.
I have been waiting on remarking until I finished my new Rewritten Snare Rules. Because in writing those rules, I discovered that scaling on proficiency rank is a useful mechanic.
My goal had been to create snare rules that fit the ranger class, because rangers are the only class that has folklore about using snares. The playtest rules had given rangers 4 snare-based feats to encourage snare use by rangers, but did nothing to alleviate the enormous expense of using snares that requires a snare kit with bulk 8, training in Crafting, and a special Snare Crafting feat. Why are snares so hard to craft that they require an additional feat like alchemical or magical items? The answer is that regular crafting takes days and snare crafting has to take minutes. That answer is based on a misconception, because setting up a snare in the wild is not crafting an object from raw materials like swords and armor are crafted. Snares take minutes to set up because they are already crafted. Setting up a snare is like putting up a tent.
Thus, I switched setting up a snare to a Survival action and dumped the Snare Crafting feat. Anyone trained in Survival can set up snares with the right parts (I dropped the weight of the snare kit, balanced by adding some separate parts for certain snares).
I still had easy-to-assemble snares, such as a Tripline Snare, and hard-to-assemble snares, such as an Arrow Snare. How do I reflect the difference? I was using the Survival modifier to determine the quality of the snare, so I did not want a Survival check to determine whether the snare was set up successfully or not. The more powerful snares were not worth learning another feat, so I could not require a feat for gating the more powerful snares. The obvious mechanic left was gating by Survival proficiency rank.
Thus, nine of my snares can be set up if the character is trained in Survival: Alarm Snare, Alchemical Bomb Snare, Dagger Snare, Deadfall Snare, Dropped Net Snare, Hunting Snare, Leg Snare, Marking Snare, and Tripline Snare. Three more snares can be set up if the character is expert in Survival: Arrow Snare, Flaming Oil Snare, and Suspended Net Snare. Two of the trained snares, Dagger Snare and Marking Snare, gain extra options when expert in Survival.
As to reviewing snares.
I would hope that you also have snares have the option to having a 'reset' cost, instead of having to pay the full price to use a snare again. Some simple physical snares should have a potentially reasonable creation cost, but an almost negligible reset cost. Others that are basically throwing alchemical vials at someone each time, you would need to replace the alchemical vials, so it could even come to where the bulk of it has to be replaced each time, making the difference between the setup and reset costs would be negligible in those cases, as most of it must be recreated.
For some reason, I have to admit that I was somehow thinking somewhere that rangers got to use snares for cheaper for some reason, but I can't find anything that would say that in reality. I think I just associated the mechanics of Alchemists and their reagents to have some sort of analog existing for the rangers, but I must have been wrong. None of the playtests I was in however, did it come up, so it isn't as surprising I missed that detail.
PS: It also occurs to me, I like the idea of Survival being able to be used for most snare setups, or even all snares, but think that Crafting should also be a valid skill which could be used for crafting/setting up snares to. So I would key things on the highest of the two skills unless for some particular snare it required something specific, such as some sort of alchemical snare that isn't just lobbing a flask of something at someone, but rather properly causing a certain type of mixture to occur and effect a target properly?
As to reviewing snares.
I would hope that you also have snares have the option to having a 'reset' cost, instead of having to pay the full price to use a snare again. Some simple physical snares should have a potentially reasonable creation cost, but an almost negligible reset cost. Others that are basically throwing alchemical vials at someone each time, you would need to replace the alchemical vials, so it could even come to where the bulk of it has to be replaced each time, making the difference between the setup and reset costs would be negligible in those cases, as most of it must be recreated.
For some reason, I have to admit that I was somehow thinking somewhere that rangers got to use snares for cheaper for some reason, but I can't find anything that would say that in reality. I think I just associated the mechanics of Alchemists and their reagents to have some sort of analog existing for the rangers, but I must have been wrong. None of the playtests I was in however, did it come up, so it isn't as surprising I missed that detail.
I provided the link the my new snare rules (link), so you can read the details yourself and comment there.
But to summarize: setting up a snare in my system is free. Some snares use durable parts, such as a Dropped Net Snare requiring a net, and other snares use consumables, such as a Alchemical Bomb Snare using Alchemist's Fire. The durable parts can be reused to set up the same snare again. However, I had not thought to reduce the time to reset up a snare, except for the Alarm Snare. Someone trained in Survival can set up a snare in an hour. Someone with the Hidden Snare feat can set up a snare in 10 minutes. A ranger with the Snare Savant feat (which I moved to 1st level), can set up a snare in 1 minute.
In contrast, page 357 of the Playtest Rulebook said, "You must have the Snare Crafting feat to create snares. You can spend 1 minute to Craft a snare at its full listed Price. If you want to Craft a snare at a discount, it still requires the usual amount of downtime indicated in the Craft activity." The usual amount of downtime is on page 148, "You need to spend 4 downtime days for an item of your level. Reduce the number of days by 1 for each level by which your level exceeds the item’s level, to a minimum of 1 day." Therefore, it is pay the full price or spend a day putting the snare in place. A 1st-level snare costs 2 gp, a 4th-level snare costs 10 gp, and an 8th-level snare costs 50 gp. The Trip Snare (page 358) describes itself as a tripwire that makes the target fall prone, but it is nevertheless a 4th-level single-use snare that costs 10 gp.
Oops, I should rewrite my Tripline Snare to be multiple use. I have overlooked the default single-use aspect.
Those timespans are too large. It does not take an hour to string a wire around the place and hang a bell on it.
(Which, for the record, is what the original Alarm spell was)
Those timespans are too large. It does not take an hour to string a wire around the place and hang a bell on it.
(Which, for the record, is what the original Alarm spell was)
I wrote a full answer at Rewritten Snare Rules comment #4. The summary is, "How about 10 minutes?"