Topic: A Thought on Skill Costs

[David Johansen]

I've always been extremely opposed to costing skills individually.  It's one of the many things that makes RM2 so completely unpalatable to me.  Anyhow, I got to thinking today and I may have a solution to the problem as I see it.  A little background first, according to the Spacemaster Datanet professions are designed by listing all the possible skill costs and then listing the professions in order from best at the skill to worst and pairing up the costs and professions.

It occurs to me that part of the problem is the role of the professions in the costing of skills.

Consider for a moment the following cost list:

Occupational 1/2 (the skill which is absolutely core to one's profession)
Everyman 1/3 (skills directly relating to one's profession)
General 2/5 (skills that are commonly available and relatively simple)
Professional 3/6 (skills that require training)
Specialized 3/8 (skills that require extensive training)
Restricted 12 (skills that aren't even found in your culture)

Really that's about half as many cost levels as you'd want and doesn't really cover the range of costs but it gives the general idea.

Professions would then have a short list of skills that they convert to Occupational and everyman and not a cost for every skill or even every category.  Skill categories could contain skills with different costs.  It would be easier to memorize and thus create characters without a rule book.  And most of all, it would be easy and reasonable to add new skills and professions to the game which has always been a huge sticking point for me when it came to RM2.

[David Johansen]

Another advantage occurs to me.  Training package costs would only have to be modified slightly from the base cost to tailor them to specific professions.

[Erik Sharma]

Why not got the HARP way, find it very easy.
Group the skills into Categories and give each profession a couple of categories that have a fixed cost and all the other categories cost the double.
Then you would only have 2 different costs, but then again maybe you should play HARP instead if you want to make it that easy. 

[Arioch]

I'm not sure if I've understood it correctly, skills would have a fixed cost each, based on difficulty, and then each profession would have some skills discounted to Occupational/Everyman?

[Erik Sharma]

Something like that!
Although in HARP for the example non-favoured categories have a skill cost of 4 dps, and the favoured categories have a cost of 2 dps for each rank. I'm pretty sure it's a viable option that you could work into RM with some tweaking, and especially if you wanna remove the profession bonuses and instead give a discount on the skills. I just brought it up since I thought you wanted to reduce the different amount of skill costs and making it as easy to keep track of the costs as possible. HARP only have 2 skill costs and thats 2dps or 4 dps not sure how easy it would be to incorporate this into RM but you could probably come up with something workable. And this way you could probably remove  profession bonuses to reduce book keeping.

For example I take a fighter:
Favoured Categories would probably be something like this making those skill cheaper.
* Armor
* Body Dev
* Combat Man.
* Outdoor
* Weapon

At first it was only a lame attempt to lure you into HARP but the more I think about it you could probably work something similar into RM. There is so much more to keep track of in RM so not sure how much work it would take to do that though, prolly pretty easy to do for RMC not sure about RMFRP though since then you would have to take into account the standard progressions, combined progression and stuff like that.

[Winterknight]

Unfortunately, switching to a HARP-style system would cause problems with some of the current built-in limitations, particularly regarding spell development.  The biggest distinction currently between the different categories of spell-users (pure, hybrid, semi- and non-) is the cost to develop spell lists.  For that matter, there are variable costs based on realm-crossing, whether the list is open or closed, etc.

Another problem I would have with a HARP-style cost is dealing with the combat styles in the Combat Companion.  That system allows you to build stronger styles by increasing the cost to develop them, showing a relative difficulty increase in the DP expenditure.

However, I do like (and have toyed with) the original posted idea of having a baseline Profession by category, and then tweaking it for customization.   It works well if you have the time to deal with something like that, but it isn't for everyone. 

For the most part, a balance could be struck for arms professions, but then someone like the Warrior Monk is actually out of whack underpowered, given his greatly increased armor costs, and relatively soft combat skill benefits. 

Spell users are easier, since much of their distinction comes from the spells, rather than the cost of the skills.

[Justin]

I'm fine with individual costs of skills. Is it the individual costs of skills or the number of skills you have individual costs for really the issue?  (ah man, that's a horrible sentence to try and read.)

[Erik Sharma]

I'm not saying it would be painless, but could probably be done. Although I'm in favor of that you should completely switch to HARP if you want simplicity. Why change something when something is already out there and done the job for ya. Anyway after all it was just an idea with not much thought behind it.

But thats just me I love both RM and HARP, we have been running a freshly started RM campaign but I recently stumbled upon HARP and realised it would suit my campaign even better so after the current adventure we are gonna rework the RM characters into HARP characters, funny enough the redesigning of the characters even suits the adventure that even suggest that you give the players the opportunity to do some minor redesigning of the characters to correct any mistakes they made.  They are kind of taking the time to train in the areas they are lacking but in progress they loose some expertise in other areas. But in reality we are rebuilding the characters in a similiar way using the new system.

[David Johansen]

See, I'm not what you'd call a HARP fan.

Anyhow, Arioch, you've got the gist of it.  Professions give a discount rate on a set of skills.  I'd probably let them shift skills a number of places instead of just giving them the occupational and everyman costs.  If you want a restricted skill at occupational prices it'll set you back a lot.

Justin, I'm afraid I like 600+ skills, one more thing that makes RMSS the best version IMO.  Not that there aren't some skills that shouldn't be in there (Spell Mastery...) but I like the scope of the system very much.

Even so.  You shouldn't have to create a chart every time you need to add a skill to a game.

[GrumpyOldFart]

See, I'm not what you'd call a HARP fan.

I don't know the system well enough to have an opinion.

Professions give a discount rate on a set of skills.  I'd probably let them shift skills a number of places instead of just giving them the occupational and everyman costs.  If you want a restricted skill at occupational prices it'll set you back a lot.

This I like. If possible, standardize it, so every profession gets x advantage in y categories and z skills. That way when one of your oldest and best gamers wants to invent a character there is simply no precedent for, it's no big deal. He gets x advantage in y categories and z skills, just like everybody else, he just focuses in different areas. That way minmaxing becomes largely pointless other than for defining the character concept. If you can figure a way to standardize it across arms user/semi caster/spellcaster lines, you'll also solve the power balance issues between arms users and spellcasters.

Justin, I'm afraid I like 600+ skills, one more thing that makes RMSS the best version IMO.  Not that there aren't some skills that shouldn't be in there (Spell Mastery...) but I like the scope of the system very much.

Me too. The broader array of skills there is, the more the characters become individuals. And every added skill is an added clue to the GM on where and how he can add depth to his game.
For example, I had a magician character who came up with the idea of using carefully placed vacuum spells as flight aids. Spell Mastery was his friend. Needless to say, if your setting or tastes cause you not to use a particular skill, big deal, don't use it. No harm no foul. But better to have skills you'll never use than not have skills you need.

Even so.  You shouldn't have to create a chart every time you need to add a skill to a game.

Once you figure out what skill *category* it's in, the rest should be standard and obvious, I'd think. It'd probably be a good idea to have standard rules for adding new categories as well, too. Neither a GM nor an RPG author can draw a box so big that a party of gamers can't figure out how to escape it, often unintentionally.

[Arioch]

Anyhow, Arioch, you've got the gist of it.  Professions give a discount rate on a set of skills.  I'd probably let them shift skills a number of places instead of just giving them the occupational and everyman costs.  If you want a restricted skill at occupational prices it'll set you back a lot.

I like the concept, maybe it would be even better making Restricted cost the "default" cost for any skill. Then to create a profession you receive a given number of "shift backs" to make basic skills for that profession cheaper.
You can create basic professions (fighter, thief, mage...) as templates, and then give rules for profession creation so that GMs can make those needed for their setting.

[David Johansen]

Well, I want to be able to make being a physician harder than learning to ride a bicycle.  But I'm thinking it would be better to have restricted be a level that you shift things to instead.  I'd also need to introduce some three ranks per level scale stuff for spells, armour, and languages so there'd likely be a branching in the cost scheme.

[GrumpyOldFart]

Well, I want to be able to make being a physician harder than learning to ride a bicycle.

Yes, but do you want to make it harder than training to try out for the olympic bicycling team? Being a physician is not just one skill. And I don't see why learning to ride a bicycle would be any harder than, say, cutting accurately with a scalpel.

[thrud]

This thread makes my skin crawl. S0rry, but these skill diskussions most often point in the wrong direction imho.

[Arioch]

Well, I want to be able to make being a physician harder than learning to ride a bicycle.

Yes, but do you want to make it harder than training to try out for the olympic bicycling team? Being a physician is not just one skill. And I don't see why learning to ride a bicycle would be any harder than, say, cutting accurately with a scalpel.

Totally agree with Grumpy on this.

[David Johansen]

Yes, it can be done that way but that means breaking down big skills into smaller ones and exacerbates skill bloat.  In some cases I'm not sure it's worth it.  Take, philosophy, in the real world it's a huge field that can be divided into ethics and extisentialism, and theology, and ad nausium.  But I'm not sure any benefit is gained from doing so in an RPG.

One possiblity would be cost folding.

Philosophy costs 4/12, but you can unfold that into four 1/3 skills.  I'm not sure if building something like this in wouldn't bee beyond the pale in terms of complexity.

[yammahoper]

Options could include spending dev to move a skill into a lower skill cost catagory.  A use for training packages?

[David Johansen]

Ideally I'd like professions to be the only factor effecting skill costs.

Talents give bonuses.  Training packages give ranks.

To my mind if there is a flaw in RMSS it's opperational overlaps.

[GrumpyOldFart]

Ideally I'd like professions to be the only factor effecting skill costs.

Talents give bonuses.  Training packages give ranks.

To my mind if there is a flaw in RMSS it's opperational overlaps.

Yeah, I gotta agree with that one.

Yes, it can be done that way but that means breaking down big skills into smaller ones and exacerbates skill bloat.

Wait, what? What can be done what way? I'm for making the actual game mechanic as simple and standard as you possibly can, so you can *afford* to make the skill set it represents as complex as you need to in order to immerse your players in what they're doing.
I was just trying to point out that "being a physician" is harder than learning to ride a bicycle because *it is several skills.* It's diagnostics, 1st/2nd aid, biochemistry (pharmacology), surgery, etc., etc....
As opposed to "Operate machinery/piloting (bicycle)".

See what I mean?

And besides, I can be almost-but-not-quite-competent as a horseman or a locksmith, and no one minds letting me get up there and break my fool neck or make myself look stupid. But if I'm an almost-but-not-quite-competent physician, are YOU gonna bet your life on my skills?

[GrumpyOldFart]

Granted, I can see the point of "being a physician" being harder than "being a fighter". But I think that's because most of us, myself included, tend to underdefine "fighter".
I started a short, off the top of my head list above (diagnostics, 1st/2nd aid, biochemistry (pharmacology), surgery, etc., etc...). After some thought, it occurs to me that if you expected "a fighter" to be fairly well perfect EVERY TIME on tactics, logistics, grand strategy, psychology, games theory, leadership, etc, etc... in other words if you expected him to be to military matters as physicians are expected to be concerning healing....

....yeah, I could see it being about the same difficulty, and about the same time spent. The only difference between learning the two professions is who dies when the student gets it wrong.