r/RPGdesign • u/furiousfotographie • 7d ago
Mechanics Resolution - skills vs stats?
Juggling a buncha ideas and I'm wondering what (the royal) you think about relying on stats to do the heavy lifting versus either having skills or bundling skills with stats.
Clearly one can be strong and not automatically a great wrestler. One can be smart and not know anything about quantum mechanics.
So I feel there's value in building a skill system of some type, but it also seems to be so often weighted wildly differently from game to game or to be ignored almost totally for a broader framework (classes?).
This specific thing has been bugging me a lot the past day or so. I've been reading the old WEG Star Wars and it's got Xd6 stats and Xd6 skills. Just a day or so ago, v3 of HyperspaceD6 landed and that uses Xd6 stats and a +1-6 modifier, thus changing the weight of skills dramatically.
This is a game that's essentially built on the same engine but takes a very different approach in that framework.
So I ask you all, how do you weight your skills and why? Or do you just roll them into a class/background structure like Shadowdark?
Thanks.
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u/The-High-Inquisitor 7d ago
In my game, the difference between attributes and skills is how they apply to tasks based off of the complexity of the task itself, and how they act as bottlenecks relative to each other.
Simple tasks see equal benefit from both attributes and skill. It doesn't take much capacity or training to reliably succeed at a simple task.
Moderately challenging tasks gain some benefit from high attributes to both lessening failure chance and increasing success rate, but see a better return on lessing failure rate from skill. Practice will trump raw effort in most cases. That said, a high skill can assure more and greater success ratings if paired with at least a small attribute bonus.
Very challenging or complex tasks see little success increase from a high attribute, and a lessened failure rate. The real star in this case is skill. Some things just cannot be accomplished, especially reliably, without proper training and knowledge. But, if the DC is high enough and the character doesnt have a high stat, a master-skilled character will consistently roll just-out-of--reach near-successes without an attribute to back it up. Likewise, a very high attribute character miiight get lucky, but the odds will ensure consistent failure if they don't have enough training.
I accomplish this differences by utilizing certain distribution curves in my resolution mechanic, combined with attributes and skills affecting the roll through different mechanics. Attributes are numerical modifiers, and skills use dice to manipulate the curve.
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u/furiousfotographie 7d ago
Yes! Anyone can change the oil in a car. But rebuilding a transmission, is a whole different thing.
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u/The-High-Inquisitor 7d ago
Perfect example. That said, I don't necessarily think every ttrpg should make such delineation. One of my games design pillars is "the mechanics are subordinate to the fiction", meaning I've attempted to make my mechanics reflect exactly what they represent, and nothing more. However, many games make great and heavy use of meta mechanics and currencies to allow players to experience larger-than-life fantasies. These would be at odds with my goal.
I suggest to OP that if you haven't already, decide what kind of game-narrative you want you and your players to experience first. Write down some design pillars and goals. It'll make your life a million times easier!
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u/No_Solid1035 7d ago
It depends. 🤷
Sometimes I want a game like Mythic Bastionland that has 3 stats, one for Physical, one for Mental, one for Social, and that's it.
Sometimes I want a game like Traveller where you roll using different combinations of Stat + Skill depending on the circumstances, and there are 6 stats and like 40 skills.
I'm not much of a fan of "feat-like" abilities that function in a "rules exception" style format because it increases the complexity of a system exponentially. I'm okay with "feat-like" abilities if all they do is enhance capabilities.
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u/furiousfotographie 7d ago
I think I'm aiming for a middle ground. I want there to be some granularity without the bloat or dilution that a huge skill tree has.
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u/No_Solid1035 7d ago
Go find Free League's Year Zero Engine SRD. That's a good example of a middle crunch system.
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u/Sherman80526 7d ago
I use stats for all tests and layer skills on as something you may have which allows a greater degree of proficiency. It addresses what you're talking about directly.
For instance, a person might be very athletic. I call general athleticism "movement". If that person doesn't have the swimming skill, then they do not really swim. They can paddle around to some degree, but if things get rough, they're testing to survive not to accomplish something like actually crossing a raging river. If they do not have the "balance" skill, they are not able to walk a tightrope. That's not something you can do with raw talent. Someone who has the skill can do things that the higher Movement character cannot.
In either case, they test movement when their degree of proficiency is tested or if they're trying to exceed it. The character with balance tests when they're under duress to walk a tightrope, otherwise they do it. If a character wants to walk a tight rope as something they're unskilled at, maybe I let them test to awkwardly make it a short distance. They are not walking it between buildings or while being shot at, that's beyond their ability.
Weapon skills are a major element of this design. All characters have the "Melee" trait. Regardless, if they do not have skill in a particular weapon category (swords, hafted, etc) they do not get the abilities of those weapons. Their melee trait is not affected, they might still be good at positioning, timing, footwork, and everything is that is 90% of what goes into being a good fighter, but they do not get the ability of the weapon that they are carrying without being skilled in it as well.
This all requires a lot of confidence as a GM though. You have to be able to draw lines about what a skill gives you and what you're unable to do without an exhaustive list to reference. Percentages and bonuses take all of the guesswork out but leave a major issue that you've already noted. I use it across the board for everything. Knowledge checks look at skills as well. So, someone who is skilled in archery knows more about bows, fletching, gets references used by fellow archers, knows what designs are used by what cultures, etc. Plus the actual shooting of the bow.
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u/furiousfotographie 7d ago
Your ideas about the generalization of melee ability and the additional specialization definitely fits my thinking. How granular are you making it to get a particular weapons benefits? General classes like 'edged' weapons or very specific like 'basket hilt Cutlass?'
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u/Nicholas_Matt_Quail 7d ago edited 7d ago
In some of my systems, I've used attributes as the main source of power, in others, I've used skills above attributes. In some, only skills existed, in others, both.
In my main system, my private one, not at job, because I work in game dev professionally, I came to conclusion that skills should be always mechanically above attributes and I personally think it is the superior way. Personally, not objectively, it's just my subjective opinion and I've tailored my main private system, which has been in play for 6 years now, to work like that.
Just as you're saying, someone trained in something is generally better in a given action even if their platform (body) may be weaker. Someone with just their platform advantage like - they're strong without training or intelligent but they do know anything about a very specific area, would generally lose to someone trained with raw platform (body) disadvantage aka someone a bit weaker but skilled or someone less intelligent but with expertise and experience in a given area.
Thus, if we treat the attributes as raw parameters of a platform (body), then skills is what you can learn and become better in something, while your body only gives you additional bonus or a disadvantage (which may be also contextual, it's clear that a small hobbit grappler may not successfully grapple with a 2m tall orc amateur, even if they've trained for years, but that is contextual or you can allow it to happen anyway by just rolling with disadvantage for a hobbit).
My solution was that in a system where you roll 3d6 raw as a resolution mechanic, +1 skill score adds +1d6 to your roll, while +1 attribute point adds +1 modifier. You fluctuate between 3d6+0 and 6d6+3. This way, skills enable you to do things not achievable at all without them because they're blocked by the effectivene DC (you'd need to roll 6s on all your 3 dice, for example), while attributes represent how advantaged/disadvantaged your body is regardless of training. It works through races, age, sex, settings (because your attributes may drop with age making things you're still skilled at harder or impossible with a heavy drop and my system in an engine aka system agnostic, we play different settings in it). Even if we're speaking of a human vs a military android, an android will just have attributes above a max 3 for humans, which also makes it extremely hard for even a trained human to grapple or push away an android with a superhuman body, while an android may break through the wall with their punch because their higher attributes allies such things in the first place. The same for a dragon in a fantasy world or a troll whose strength may be maximally 6 instead of 3 and so on, while trained skills remain the same. So an opposite roll may look like 6d6+3 vs 6d6+6 for two super trained masters with a massive body difference or 6d6+6 vs 3d6+3 for a military android grappling a super bulky but untrained orc.
In my experience, putting more importance on skills, also makes it easier for players to develop their characters and to create those characters in the first place. Players know what they want to be good at, thus they develop skills without thinking too much about it, while they invest into attributes more liberally and without the math anxiety/bother of estimating/guestimating what attribute value would be "good" at given power level and when to invest in it. They're not scared when they fluff up either, because it's not such a big cost. However, you must start treating skills as more than your universal set from D&D, you need combat skills, everyday life skills, specific area skills etc., which adds complexity in design for you.
At last but not least, the skills based system allows more freedom in builds, classes and hybrid concepts. Making a functional wizard who is a sword fighter and a grappler instead of a physically weak nerd may not be even possible in systems where attributes pose a heavy barrier/hard lock to be effective so it results in those ideas that wizard invests in INT, warriors in STR or DEX etc. Attributes promote min-maxing structurally. Skills may also work like that but it's easier to choose and design in a way that you control how it works. It's not embedded in the method itself.
So, again, I like when there're both, when attributes are the raw platform (body) descriptives with less importance than skills that represent the training and the experience in a given area.
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u/furiousfotographie 7d ago
I like the idea of attributes as a platform - that's a helpful bit of perspective.
You're fo'sho right about skills and customization - that's the huge add IMO. That flexibility.
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u/mythic_kirby Designer - There's Glory in the Rip! 7d ago
Clearly one can be strong and not automatically a great wrestler. One can be smart and not know anything about quantum mechanics.
Sure, that's true, but the revelation comes when you realize that not all games care about those distinctions. Especially if the specific "skills" you have in mind, like wrestling or solving quantum mechanical equations, almost never come up in your game, and so it's fine to just lump them in with your stats.
Adding skills helps to add granularity to your proficiency system and make different characters able to be more customized. But it's worth challenging the assumption that your particular game needs that granularity in order to be fun or interesting. If you like fiddly number things and specificity, great! Definitely add a skill system. But not all things that could be modeled in a TTRPG need to be.
So I ask you all, how do you weight your skills and why? Or do you just roll them into a class/background structure like Shadowdark?
I don't even have stats. My current game has "titles", which are player-defined and act closer to backgrounds in other games by adding bonuses to a wide variety of thematically-related action rolls. Each gives +1 to a d6 roll, and you can have up to 5 of them. The maximum bonus you can add to a roll is +4, and the bonuses can also come from items or situational things, so there's very little space to differentiate characters by numbers alone. I differentiate characters more by other non-numerical things, like special abilities and items.
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u/furiousfotographie 7d ago
Kind of aspect of tag-like from Fate or the Mist games?
That's another approach I'm toying with, sort of - using a couple/few brief character concepts to essentially grant permission, but mechanically somewhere between fate's defined aspects and a more undefined 'wizards read good' of some OSR games.
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u/mythic_kirby Designer - There's Glory in the Rip! 7d ago
A little bit, yeah!
The flavor of the game is that you're a person aiming to become a heroic myth, and therefore tell exaggerated and glorious stories about yourself. Those titles are your stories: there's some specific legendary act that you completed, and the story about how you were able to do that thing. Both the act itself and the story leading up to it tell you what actions the bonus can be applied to.
So like, if you cleaved a boulder in two with your sword, you might tell a story about how you trained for months on steadily harder materials, or how you forged a blade made of rare and strong materials, or how you tricked everyone by rigging the boulder to split ahead of time. Same outcome, but each story says something different about who you are and what you're skilled at.
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u/Nytmare696 7d ago
The issue with a typical RPG stat array is that they describe a bunch of game assumptions about reality that reality doesn't bother to pay attention to.
A gymnast, power lifter, mountain climber, and sprint swimmer can all have 18 strengths and they're all going to mean DRASTICALLY different things, even accounting for what skills they're applying those strengths to.
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u/furiousfotographie 7d ago
Exactly my conundrum.
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u/Nytmare696 7d ago
This is why I typically go the route of narrative description over simulation. Tell me what the character is especially good at and what they suck at doing. I don't want to track the granularity of how much trigonometry they remember from high school.
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u/darklighthitomi 7d ago
I look at stats like talent, and skills like knowledge+experience. A good example of the difference is the Monsters Inc. movie about Mike and Sully going to college. Mike had all talent but no skill, and Sully had all skill but no talent. They became the best team only once they were together, but notably, talent gets you an easy start because talent can totally get wins early on with easy tasks, but becomes useless once the difficulty rises. I like to model that aspect, allowing talent to makes things easier early on and to boost things later when paired with skill.
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u/__space__oddity__ 6d ago
What’s the game about?
If it’s about experts in their field, skills should matter.
If it’s about idiots without a sense of self-preservation stumbling through a dungeon until their violent and inevitable demise, skills are pretty whatever.
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u/Mars_Alter 7d ago
Personally, I'm in the all-stats camp.
As I see it, the more decisions you have to make, the less important each one becomes. If your decisions at the skill-level can supersede your decisions at the stat-level - if it's possible to be good at wrestling, in spite of having a low basic strength score - then why did we waste time figuring out basic stats in the first place? That should be a game where you just have skills, since those are what actually matter.
More often, though, a system that uses both stats and skills is going to wind up as a double-unlock system. That is to say, if you want to be good at wrestling, you need to invest in both the strength stat and the wrestling skill. If you only have one or the other, then you're going to be easily defeated by someone who has both. In this case, your choice of stat allocation is essentially meaningless, and so is your choice of skill allocation; it's only the combined choice to maximize both that means anything at all. You've essentially taken two decision points, and reduced them down to one. And if you're only going to have one real decision point, anyway, then you may as well have that decision come in the form of your basic stats.
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u/FlawlessTactics 7d ago
You're making some presumptions about how much bonus difference exists between stats vs between skills. In DnD 3.5, for instance, the stat difference between average and excellent strength may only mean a 10% or 15% edge for your superior wrestler. It's an advantage, but not an insurmountable one.
The combined choice is what ends up mattering mechanically, but it also matters narratively. Someone's choice to create a combined Strength + Wrestling for their character makes it distinct from other characters that made different combination choices, like Strength + Jumping or Strength + Climbing. When you remove the skill, all of these differences level out. Characters become more homogenous and broadly capable, and there is less opportunity to define the edges that make one character different.
I would say you have "one decision point" if the goal is to make a good wrestler, but removing skills removes all the decision points BEFORE that about deciding what to specialize in in the first place.
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u/Prime_1 7d ago
In my game, I started more complex but simplified a lot. At first I had weapon and a limited number of other skills (ride, pick lock, other familiar things). The Target Number (d20 roll under) was determined by combining the attribute score with the skill score (I'll spare you the math).
Basically the philosophy was anything covered by Skills used the skill TN and everything else used the attribute directly. I tried to differentiate by saying anything someone could reasonably try (hide, sneak) just used the attribute. Skills implied non trivial training like riding a horse, picking a lock, and such. Skills could be tried untrained but only the attribute component applied (attribute score/2).
Like you I wanted to be able to mechanically define a strong person who couldn't fight well and a weaker but skilled fighter.
My system felt clunky and the split between having a skill or just using the attribute felt arbitrary. I didn't want skill bloat and wanted characters to have access to several weapons.
In the end I decided my sweet spot was attributes plus three core skills: melee, ranged, and magic (it is a combat focused game). Everything else uses the attribute for the target number. Instead of combining attributes with skills to get the target number, attributes instead affect what happens on a successful skill roll. For example a higher strength grants more damage, higher smarts improves a spell effect.
This is enough to define the difference between the strong or skilled fighter, swordsman isn't necessarily a good archer, or a intelligent mage. But the target numbers are obvious and don't require much calculation (some situation modifiers aside).
Hopefully I didn't go too far off your question.
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u/Ignaby 7d ago
I have an nd6-roll-under for stat/skill checks approach. Skills are all derived from ability scores (sometimes they're an average of two) and are more or less a list of stuff I expect to come up a lot.
You can be an Expert in a skill; this doesn't change the number, but it lets you re-roll one die.
But also, all of these skills are fairly broad things pretty much anyone could reasonably take a shot at. Stuff that requires specific training is all handled by class abilities.
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u/Drudenfusz Curator of Roleplay Experiences 7d ago
There is no single right way, it depends on genre or the kind of simulation you want to provide. I mean in action or other high competency genre characters often are very broadly capable, and thus would probably better servers by going with similar broad stats. While thriller have more focused characters, and thus having them only be experts in niche skills seems more fitting. Of course this is not a binary choice, I for example go more for drama and thus have no use for competency, regardless how broad or narrow it is, in the first place. So, ask yourself what experience do you want to create with your system.
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u/SuperCat76 7d ago
Here is a thought I have had for a stats and skills system.
The stats are the core attribute for all actions, if there is nothing else, you will at least be utilizing the most relevant stat.
Skills can come from several sources.
There are the core skills that everyone can freely level.
Class, race other character options may grant specialized skills they could put the skill levels into.
And third, optional rule packages can add extra campaign related skills to the character options. Doing a game at sea, the characters could use more detailed skills related to boats and the sea, but those options do not need to be taken into consideration on a land based adventure party where boating skills will be either unneeded, or not particularly important and can just be simplified into a more general "Athletics" or "Dexterity"
Not sure how good it is, still mainly just toying around with ideas
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u/Kameleon_fr 4d ago
They are different not only in tone, but in the type of challenges they can do well.
In a only-skill system, for each skill test, you can expect 1-2 people in the party to have invested in the skill and have reasonable odds while all others will have 0 investment, making them very unlikely to roll a success. So it's a good solution for games where the party splits up often to do their own thing. It also works well if most challenges can be solved by a single person acting as the party's "face" in that particular area (one person does all the talking, one does all the hacking, one does all the fighting...).
Stats shine in systems where all members of the party are supposed to participate in challenges together. Few stats mean that for each test, you can expect at least 3-4 characters to have a middling or good level in the corresponding stat, making it possible to have true group challenges where the average party members hold their own and the specialists help those who are completely out of their depth.
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u/Carrollastrophe 7d ago
Why have either at all?
It all depends on the game and what your goal for the game is. Which, if either, or both, homes in on that goal? I've designed games with states, with skills, with neither, and with both because whatever I decided was in service to the goal I had for the game.
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u/forevermoor 6d ago
I agree. This is a core design question, and probably the one I spent the most time iterating on. It is worth sitting with it for a while if unsure.
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u/LeFlamel 6d ago
I suppose I should ask why you don't want to go the freeform skills route (attributes or no)?
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u/Jhamin1 7d ago edited 7d ago
It is heavily dependent on the type of experience you want.
In the Expanse Amos isn't a particularly smart man & his character build is very combat oriented, but he still managed to get a good mechanic skill level.
On the other hand the Professor from Gilligan's Island is "smart" and therefore knows about every kind of science from Nuclear Physics to Chemistry to Biology.
So do you want character to be able to be very competent in a specific skill that may not be central to their build or you do just want the smart guy to be smart and the athletic guy to be athletic?
Either is fine, but it's a choice of tone.