Author Topic: Charity Carpenter: Homemaker  (Read 9677 times)

Offline Sanctaphrax

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Re: Charity Carpenter: Homemaker
« Reply #45 on: March 17, 2012, 10:06:11 PM »
You roll Survival to survive, right? So a use of Survival might be "You're trapped in the Nevernever until the next full moon. Roll Survival, difficulty 7, take consequences to cover your margin of failure."

Knowledge skills are not weak, they just aren't significantly stronger than other skills. So splitting them would make them weak.

I see little relation between Athletics and Might and Weapons, honestly. Weightlifters don't run well, and swordsmen aren't generally great wrestlers.

But an excellent mathematician can generally handle computer science or biology. I've known a fair number of smart people, and only one or two were specialized. People rarely excel in only one subject at school.

The 5 skills to one Refresh thing is not a good ratio for upper-level characters. The Senior Council probably have 30+ Refresh each, but they definitely don't have 135 skill points apiece. See the Generic NPC thread for how I'd suggest tackling upper-level characters.

And yes, skills are inflated. Far as I'm concerned, Fantastic skills are the apex of human ability. And even "plot devices" don't go past Legendary.

Offline crusher_bob

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Re: Charity Carpenter: Homemaker
« Reply #46 on: March 18, 2012, 03:30:01 AM »
PS: Going back a bit, I think that Fists and Weapons could be merged without too much trouble. I'd regret the increased difficulty of making certain character concepts, but with a bit of aspect-based wrangling that'd be manageable.

My major complaint about the split between fists and weapons is that it makes being good at ass kicking start to take too much of your character building resources.  The only canon character that is solely defined by his combat ability is Kinkaid.  Everyone else is awesome at combat as a sideline.

Offline JoshTheValiant

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Re: Charity Carpenter: Homemaker
« Reply #47 on: March 18, 2012, 09:00:34 PM »
You roll Survival to survive, right? So a use of Survival might be "You're trapped in the Nevernever until the next full moon. Roll Survival, difficulty 7, take consequences to cover your margin of failure."

Knowledge skills are not weak, they just aren't significantly stronger than other skills. So splitting them would make them weak.

I see little relation between Athletics and Might and Weapons, honestly. Weightlifters don't run well, and swordsmen aren't generally great wrestlers.

But an excellent mathematician can generally handle computer science or biology. I've known a fair number of smart people, and only one or two were specialized. People rarely excel in only one subject at school.

See, that's my point.  In your version of Survival, you're not only abstracting away what survival actually entails, you're simply handwaving it out of existence.  I, meanwhile, would be running a stranded in the Nevernever as a significant event, possibly worth a milestone all by itself, complete with Stealth to avoid detection by predators, Craftsmanship to create shelter if you couldn't find something with your Investigation rolls, which would also be used with Lore as a limiter to find food to keep yourself fed through the night, and then likely throw in a Thaumaturgy Challenge to get the gate open at the proper window of time to get back out before the big nasty you were hiding from clues in to the scent of magic being used.  A single skill for all of that just wouldn't cut it for me.

On the other hand, a person with Might is more likely to have a higher Weapons or Fight skill than someone who has nothing.  A person with Weapons will almost certainly have both Might and Athletics at a fair level, since cardio and strength training are both explicit parts of combat training (note that I am talking about COMBAT training, not simply martial arts classes at a community college in a vaccuum of intent.  A recreational T'ai Chi practitioner MIGHT justify having a low Fists with little to no corresponding physical skills, but that'd be a stretch.)  Again, they're definitely distinct, and yet they will have a tendency to be linked.

As for smart people knowing a lot, yes, I mentioned that tendency, but I don't think that's because they simply have a high knowledge skill, especially before you get to graduate studies (which is the bare minimum I'd consider before you got to Good skill, btw), I view that as them actually investing in knowledge skills in a balanced way.  Most smart people I know I wouldn't put above Average or Fair skill.  Getting Good or higher takes some real work, which talent alone simply can not match.  I don't think it's unusual enough for someone to know more about programming than biology to make it worthy of a Stunt.  Hence the skill split.

Offline Sanctaphrax

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Re: Charity Carpenter: Homemaker
« Reply #48 on: March 19, 2012, 05:03:07 AM »
In DFRPG, most things can be represented several different way. Sometimes you'll want to run killing an army as a full combat, sometimes you can just make it a series of Weapons rolls.

Anyway, there are parts of Survival that can't be duplicated with other skills. But I really don't feel as though going into that would be productive.

What's important is what having Survival does for characters. If I want to make a D&D Ranger or just a hobbyist camper, I don't want to have to buy 3-5 skills to do that. Besides, having everyone who knows the outdoors be very intelligent would be weird.

The Survival skill covers such concepts nicely. By cutting Survival you make such characters very impractical to make.

You don't have that problem with Burglary, but you do have it in a lesser form when you merge Fists and Weapons.

PS: Scholarship is not a skill for being good at a single field. Your average graduate student has a stunt boosting his field. This is not a problem, stunts are a normal thing to have. And for those who don't have stunts, there's Aspects.

Also, it's worth noting that an average reporter or police officer has multiple Good skills. Good skills aren't that special.