Plundering some of the ideas in Brave Halfling’s Delving Deeper — Skills and from Raggi’s LOTFP:WF rules, I’ll be using a stripped down skill system in the Telengard campaign.
- All skills will use a simple d6 roll — roll your number or under to succeed (some rolls will be made by the GM for suspense, like Find Traps)
- The skills will consist of the following (available to all characters): Climb/Swim, Search, Find Secret Doors, Find Traps, Survival, Read Languages, Sleight of Hand, Stealth, and Tinkering. All characters begin with a 1 in 6 chance to succeed at each of these, except Elves and dwarfs get a 2 on Secret doors.
- Additional skill-like abilities reserved for specific classes/races will be: Find Stonework Traps (Dwarfs get a 2), Detect Depth/Slope/New Construction (Dwarfs get a 2), Disappear Indoors (Halflings get a 4), Disappear Outdoors (Halflings get a 5), Sneak Attack (all default to zero, but Thieves can increase it exactly as per LOTFP:WF), Surprise Chance (2 for all but elves, who have a 1).
- All characters get one more point to assign to any skill (not abilities) & should explain this as part of their background. They may propose a new skill of similar utility instead and get a skill of 1 (in some cases maybe more). Thieves get three more points at first level (so a total of 4) and two at each level thereafter.
- Higher attributes and levels don’t affect the skills (apart from Thieves gaining points with levels).
- There will occasionally be opportunities to learn new skills or get an additional point on one from training, but these will be infrequent.
Sounds good to me! Couple of questions / thoughts
Search vs Find Secrete doors, whats the difference?
Add hear noise to the everyone list and give all demi humans 2 and human 1. Only thieves could improve.
Surprise give halflings a 2 too
Good catch! Definitely add Hear Noise. Maybe there is no need for Search then. I can’t remember what how it’s described in LOTFP but that is probably where it came from.
I may split Tracking off from Survival, not sure. There is no Ranger class yet anyway.
I would leave them combined (survival and tracking)
Also I would disallow anyone haveing more pips on a skill than levels. ie no 2 level thief with 5 sneak attack.
Found some one else Ideas… They look good I would add Survival and keep your progression
http://robertsongames.com/dnd/skill-checks-classic-dnd
Skill Checks – d6
All Classes
Hear Noises, Find Secret Doors, Find Traps: 1
Dwarf
Find Secret Doors, Find Traps: 2
Elf
Hear Noises, Find Secret Doors: 2
Hobbit
Hear Noises, Hide: 2 (5 for Hiding in Woodlands)
Thief
Hear Noises, Pick Pockets, Move Silently: 2 (+1 at Levels 4,6,8)
Find/Remove Traps, Hide in Shadows, Pick Locks: 1 (+1 at Levels 3,5,7,9)
Climb walls: 5
That’s a great system too. Clearly great minds think alike (or small minds run in the same gutters?).