Skill Layout (2024)

One topic that's been on my mind lately, is how the skills should be laid out, vis-a-vis some sort of character sheet format. The way that upgrades are given to skills in TNP makes this sort of thing hard to map; this is why (if I design a followup game) I'm considering other possibilities -- such as training only being applied to skillsets, and ranks only being derived from attributes.

To wit, TNP has 20 "core" skills and 10 "knowledge" skills; the closest comparison would be D&D 3.5, with 35 and 10, respectively. The question in mind is whether the character sheet should simply list bonuses by attribute and by skillset, which would then be hashed out using a player aid, such as this one -- something designed to be read (somewhat) easily either vertically or horizontally. The alternative is to simply list all 30 skills, and do something akin to World of Darkness -- with either one or two training 'dots' and two rank 'dots' to fill in, for each skill, corresponding to attributes and skillsets.

Basically, the intent with the mechanics (as discussed more thoroughly in this post) is to cover as much of the spectrum of those typical adventuring skills, without having to track different skill points for 35+ distinct line entries. By having an overlapping system of 5 skillsets and 5 attributes, the whole process can be simplified. Also, the intention was to build in a system of diminishing returns, so as to encourage branching out, rather than overspecialization; I also didn't want training to stack, in order to avoid the kind of numbers bloat I would associate with skills in 4th Edition D&D.
For example, training in 4e would give you a +5 to a skill, and your ability modifier in your main stat could easily start as high as +5 -- meaning it was impossible to fail a DC10 with your main skills, while a skill with a +0 bonus was effectively a coin-flip. What TNP essentially does, it make it so you can get that +5 from your attribute or from your skillet, but not both; you can have training in both, but then the diminishing returns kick in.

The other reason that the skill mechanics now use the 1d10+1d6 system, is that there was some rumbling about a desire to have a greater variety of skill gradations. Under the d20 system, there was effectively only 4 skill levels, and the numerical jumps in between them were not very smooth. With the current mechanics, a skill check can be made with or without training, or with training + mastery, as well as applying 1, 2, or 3 skill ranks (potentially more, but rarely more than 4.) This means a total of 9 possible combinations, however this is all kept neat and streamlined by the "skill grid" of attributes and skillsets.

Now, knowledge skills function a little differently than "core" skills, in two ways:

• they can potentially gain mastery without training
  
• they can more easily exceed 3 ranks in a given skill

Much like how an attribute or skillset is a suite of core skills, a power source is essentially a suite of knowledge skills; when you gain a power source, you either gain training with 2 of its 3 associated knowledge skills, or training with 1, but mastery with all 3. Since every power source shares 2 of its skills with other powers sources, and because most character classes should be able to get at least 2 power sources, this gives some amount of flexibility to branch out or to specialize. Since knowledge skill ranks are part of character progression and/or class category progression, you also have a lot of latitude in how you scale up these skills, regardless of the power source you start with.

The question then is, since half of the knowledge skills are associated with more than one power source, should the character sheet list each of these skills twice? Or would that cause too much confusion? It seems like it'd be easier to just list all 10 knowledge skills (than it would be for all 20 core skills) with 'dots' for training and ranks -- mention of power source in that mix might not even be entirely necessary, come to think of it... perhaps you could have the knowledge skills split between those that are unique to one power source, and those that are shared.

I wonder if the tack to take with skills more generally is to only write the ones you have training/mastery/bonus ranks with, onto your character sheet. I actually tend to write my 5e characters out by hand (on lined paper) and this is the way I do my skills, within that ethos. Since the baseline assumption in TNP is that a skill check is 1d10+1d6, you only really need to make note of the skills with which you would roll something other than that. You could have a set of blank lines where you fill in your specialized skills, with spaces beside each to write in the relevant attribute or skillset, and beside that, additional space for noting training/mastery/bonus ranks -- possibly using some kind of a 'dot' system.
(One other thing to mention is that since 1 or 2 skills can exist at the intersection of any given attribute or skillset, while TNP has 20 core skills, there are actually only 15 such intersection points -- further shortening the list. For example, Brawl and Climb both fall under Strength and under Athletics, so their bonuses will always be the same as each other -- no need for separate line entries, despite being two different skills.)

So how would you like to see the skill layout handled, for TNP characters?
Let me know in the comments below.
Next blog post is due up on February 22nd, so make sure to check back then.