Knowledge is Power! (Beta 4)

Further to the previous topic of skill difficulties, I've also been looking into Knowledge skills, Power Sources, and how those two things relate to each other in The Next Project.

I touched on it a little bit in a previous post -- specifically, the thought experiment of limiting playable classes based on power source, and how that might impact class design. In brief, I've decided that such limitations in this system should be done at the class slate level, rather than the power source level (I may go into this in greater detail in a future post.)

What this allows me to do is worry less about how a power source will lead to inclusion/exclusion of a class, and just use them to ascribe background details, as they are intended. With that being said, I've found that there are some tweaks that I might want to make, and that some mismatches currently exist in terms of Knowledge skills as they pertain to class design.

Having a skill like "Geography" strictly limited to Primal characters has started to seem out of place, and even though all classes get at least two power sources, Primal is more hard to come by than some others. "Streetwise" is in a similar spot, where it could/should be more broadly available without needing access to the Shadow power source. On the other side of the coin, a class like Druid not having access to some sort of medicinal (or expressly herbalist) skill kind of shows the cracks in the system.

I'm thinking the best solution to this is to first expand the number of skills on each Power Source's list; this may result in some skills appearing more often than others and leading to overlap. So, the second part of this fix is to simply allow characters to choose a number of skills from the power source lists that they qualify for. Currently, characters end up getting 5 or 6 knowledge skills, so I am leaning towards a straight "pick 5" rule for this. Since each power source will likely grow from 3 knowledge skills to 4, this would necessitate every character having skills from at least 2 power sources.

For character types that are intended to be widely knowledgeable or skillful -- such as the Sage, Bard, and Adventurer -- this can be reflected mechanically in a few ways. One option is allowing them to pick their power sources more freely; another would be letting them pick skills from more than just two power sources. I may still consider simply allowing them to gain more skills than other characters, but I think 5 is a lot to begin with, and I'd prefer to have a rule that is more uniform (particularly since "core" skills are already handled on a class-by-class basis.) Another lever that we can play around with, is granting classes Expertise on certain knowledge skills (or all of them.)

I was probably going to want to go through each of the classes and juggle or reassign power sources anyway. Now that I have a new framework in mind for their implementation, it gives an additional reason or consideration for when I set out to do the actual writing.