Giving Primacy Back To The Skills
Aug 3, 2017 1:07:37 GMT -8
Post by Deleted on Aug 3, 2017 1:07:37 GMT -8
Roll and keep has its pros and cons. The bigggest con in my book is how little skills matter compared to traits (at least in the current edition). It didn't always used to be this way though. Back in 2nd edition your skill was your kept die, but this had a problem: If you had no skill you kept no dice! In a game where every art, game, and performance is its own skill; that just wasn't tenable. Hence by making your trait your kept die you give everyone a baseline which was sorely needed. But what if you could have both? Well I think you can!
The solution comes out of games like FFG's edge of the empire. You take the bigger of the two as your kept dice and use the smaller as the additional rolled dice. Since all traits begin at a rating of 2, this means your minimum pool will always be 2k2. If you leave your trait at two, your skill will become the kept die once it reaches 3+. Easy right?
"But why do this?", you ask. Good question. In 4th edition L5R, skills quickly get expensive (due to increasing cost per rank), but feel like they have a relatively small reward. Give a couple of skills based on the same trait, it can be cheaper (and way more effective) to raise your traits and neglect your skills. Thus your character is more likely to be extremely agile than a master swordsman if you were to build a character based on being a good swordsman. That just doesn't feel right to me. It promotes powergaming (by making it easy to be good at lots of things with little specific investment in them) and discourages players from making diverse characters (because raising traits costs the same no matter how few skills you have that use it).
Maybe raw talent should carry you when you are new at something (represented by traits being kept if larger than skills), but eventually skill should take over with raw talent being a cherry on top. Let's look at a sample master swordsman and compare how they operate under both systems.
Our master has an agility of 3 and kenjutsu of 5 (with emphasis in katan). He's above average physically and a master of the blade. In 4th ed L5R he would have a roll of 8k3. That roll eight dice and keep the highest three. In my version he'd also roll eight dice, but he keeps five. Thus my version has 8k5. That give him an average result of 30 in 4th edition and 42 in mine. Let's compare those numbers to a sample bushi. Our sample bushi is above average in his defense (he has an air ring of 3). Wearing his light armor this gives him a TN of 25 to be hit. Thus our 'master' swordsman from 4th edition can only call a single raise on average (and that will likely mean he fails some rolls he would have passed). My version would be able to call 3 raises and still hit on average (though he might fail some rolls he would have hit if he hadn't called so many raises).
A 'Master' character should be calling raises, not holding back because they might miss if they do. Requiring high traits means characters end up hyper focused on one type of trait or require massive amounts of XP to reach this plateu (often both). Many bushi get Agi 3 as a result of school or family (it would cost 12 xp otherwise). Rank 5 in a skill (assuming you got one rank for free as a class skill) would cost you 14 points. So for 14-27 XP any character could become a 'master' at one skill. For 36 points a character who already has 3 Agi from family or school can buy Agility 5, thus making them roll 5k5 for all agility related skills. So traits would still be strong, but skills would offer a way for a character to specialize in an area outside their general area of competence (so a lion bushi might have really good knowledge history even though his intelligence overall isn't stellar).
What do you all think?
The solution comes out of games like FFG's edge of the empire. You take the bigger of the two as your kept dice and use the smaller as the additional rolled dice. Since all traits begin at a rating of 2, this means your minimum pool will always be 2k2. If you leave your trait at two, your skill will become the kept die once it reaches 3+. Easy right?
"But why do this?", you ask. Good question. In 4th edition L5R, skills quickly get expensive (due to increasing cost per rank), but feel like they have a relatively small reward. Give a couple of skills based on the same trait, it can be cheaper (and way more effective) to raise your traits and neglect your skills. Thus your character is more likely to be extremely agile than a master swordsman if you were to build a character based on being a good swordsman. That just doesn't feel right to me. It promotes powergaming (by making it easy to be good at lots of things with little specific investment in them) and discourages players from making diverse characters (because raising traits costs the same no matter how few skills you have that use it).
Maybe raw talent should carry you when you are new at something (represented by traits being kept if larger than skills), but eventually skill should take over with raw talent being a cherry on top. Let's look at a sample master swordsman and compare how they operate under both systems.
Our master has an agility of 3 and kenjutsu of 5 (with emphasis in katan). He's above average physically and a master of the blade. In 4th ed L5R he would have a roll of 8k3. That roll eight dice and keep the highest three. In my version he'd also roll eight dice, but he keeps five. Thus my version has 8k5. That give him an average result of 30 in 4th edition and 42 in mine. Let's compare those numbers to a sample bushi. Our sample bushi is above average in his defense (he has an air ring of 3). Wearing his light armor this gives him a TN of 25 to be hit. Thus our 'master' swordsman from 4th edition can only call a single raise on average (and that will likely mean he fails some rolls he would have passed). My version would be able to call 3 raises and still hit on average (though he might fail some rolls he would have hit if he hadn't called so many raises).
A 'Master' character should be calling raises, not holding back because they might miss if they do. Requiring high traits means characters end up hyper focused on one type of trait or require massive amounts of XP to reach this plateu (often both). Many bushi get Agi 3 as a result of school or family (it would cost 12 xp otherwise). Rank 5 in a skill (assuming you got one rank for free as a class skill) would cost you 14 points. So for 14-27 XP any character could become a 'master' at one skill. For 36 points a character who already has 3 Agi from family or school can buy Agility 5, thus making them roll 5k5 for all agility related skills. So traits would still be strong, but skills would offer a way for a character to specialize in an area outside their general area of competence (so a lion bushi might have really good knowledge history even though his intelligence overall isn't stellar).
What do you all think?