[Shujin]

I could probably make a suggestion about this, but I honestly do not have a good enough idea on what people would like to see, nor on how I would fully implement such a thing. Just rough ideas and the reasons why I would like to see them. Maybe other people have better ideas or can refine on my random uncollected thoughts.

TO PREFACE THIS, THESE ARE NOT MEANT AS A BE ALL-END ALL SOLUTION, BUT AS ALTERNATIVES TO ENHANCE ROLEPLAY AND NOT DICTATE IT.


Alright, with that out of the way, I would like for us to have an entirely new Skill-Tree with different altogether new points to invest in. Something for those that know, akin to SL1 yet a little more in depth.

the tree would have different archetype skills in them, some of which are directly opposed to another, others would simply be stuff like Strength or Dexterity checks, where you can press a boutton next to it and it would roll on screen for everyone 
Roll (Might) 1d20 + X (X being your investment)

These things could be used in everyday roleplay, and would better represent your character and how you have build them over Gentlemans agreement. Reason why not "Just roll a d20 fivehead" is that I hate rolling a d20 to decide on IC situations. Its just a coinflip, it has nothing to do with your characters and what they are supposedly excel at..For Example:

Peter is 14 years old level one Soldier and wears a heavy selfmade armor, with christmas light ornaments and serval bells! He has no idea what he is doing but he sneaks up on Laura!
Rolls a 8! Laura rolled an 6 for perception! Peter succeeds!
Himothy is a Legendary level 120 Assassin, wearing a cloak of concealment, boots of silent steps and casts an illusional veil upon himself to further blend in! He sneaks up on Laura too for some raisin.
Rolls a 2! Laura instantly notices that pleb of an assassin! Assassin? More like fat nerd!

Exaggerated, but it should get my point across. Rolling non-weighted dice in certain situations make just no sense what-so-ever. It breaks immersion to me, because it makes ne sense for a master of something to have the exact same chance at something as a completely untrained person. It would be nice to be able to build a set of Skills, that are on a sheet in game and everyone is referring to, and able to access from the game.



Thats just the roleplay aspect of it however, I would personally go a step further beyond that and tying back to SL1, which I personally think was one of the coolest things about it.

Having Skills like Sneaking or Perception that directly go against each other would be cool, to have more ways of interacting with the world. Let me just randomly throw some examples into this so you see what I mean. I probably work on a d100 system, as most in SL2 does. can be translated to a d20 system easy enough.

Stealth:
Stealth is everything from hiding yourself or items or generally trying to do something someone else is not supposed to notice.

base chance versus perception: 50% +5% per level in Stealth
Other Modification: -25%(+weight of armor) for Heavy armor, -15% during the day, +15% during the night +10% if umbral race, +25%(-weight of armor), +Concealment rank, Guile bonus? (all just example but I like it when things like race, your traits, talents and build matter for these things)

Grants active out of Combat Skill: Hide Presence: You player icon turns into a Generic black shadowy figure, for all people that did not succeed a Perception check against them. People hiding their presence can not be examined or their profile looked at (or get a generic profile with no flavour text).
Its enough for one person of a Party to perceive you, for everyone in that party to see you! Its enough for one member of your party to be perceived for the whole party to be visible!
If you start a PVP battle while hiding your presence, against someone unaware off you get the Option to "Assassinate!" which starts the battle giving you a back attack round. 
PvE mobs also take longer to aggro against you, while you hide your presence.


Perception:
Perception is your abillity to perceive things or generally notice things in your surroundings and general awareness of things that might be hidden to others.

Base Chance versus Stealth: 50%+5 per level in Perception
Other Modification: Traits such as Keen eyes, Scout talent, (day and night time are already covered in Stealth aswell as armors),Skill bonus?
Grants Passive Skill: Abillity to roll against people trying to hide their presence via Stealth, every person rolls once against a person. Only one person in a party much succeed the check for the rest to also perceive the hiding person.

Grants Active out of combat Skill: Scavenging/Hunting. While in the wilds you can searach for materials or something to hunt. it costs physical stamina but you can find things based on your Perception, maybe even tie it to a minigame like the archery minigame for hunting? Its mostly for fun and to have more ways to gain certain Materials.
One thing I dislike about current SL2, is the scarcity of certain very important crafting items. Gunpower is one of the main offenders, being used in Alchemy and for bombs, and bombs specifically being extremly useful for high level content for dodgies. But I rarely use them, because I rather save them for actually dangerous situations.

Eiter a new archetype skill or part of perception: Investigation: This skill alows you to use Detective mode! PvP Battle Symbols leave scars behind only visible to you, clicking the scar allows you to determine who participated in a fight and if successful, see footprints of the people that you can follow! You roll against the peoples Stealth and can only follow the footsteps of those you succeeded the roll against. (Could also have like an arrow pointing in the general direction of a person.) The time you can see the scars and footprint depends on your invastigation skill.


outside of that we could have general adventuerer Skills. Swimming, diving, climbing, acrobatics, performance or what have you. certain races could get advantage on there, like thenos for water related skill checks, herons for musical, shaitans for strength, etc.
These would be used to traverse difficult terrain in dungeons, giving more depth to them, reach areas that are otherwise hidden, exmaple: Dive in a specific pond, reach some underwater cave? Performance would basically allow you to play songs that you want, or learn new ones, certain songs could be used for World Puzzles, etc.

Just things that could enhance the exploring bit. Have your character able to reach certain spots that others might not, have failed skill checks damage you or cost mental or physical stamina, etc. things to just have more interactions with the world.

I'd probably seperate the things between core stats, that are difned by your actual build stats and then proficency in certain tasks you are good at, and have maybe some stats give boons to the Adventerer skills, roughly like that with not specifically thought out skills and just quickly thrown together for visualization.

Evasion could be something like general roleplay purpose die roll, but in the world it could be whats rolled when you step in a trap, or have a "Quick-time" event sort of dodge, like falling rockslide. Like I said, just random ideas thrown in, but I always thought that our traps in the game are kinda a joke.

There could be rare, random event nodes in dungeons, that open a Adventure style narrative and present you with options on what you could attempt to do, and be rewarded/Punished if you succeed, with a difficulty shown while showing your party members and how good they are at something..Somethings would only need one party members, others might effect everyone. 

Alot of random thoughts thrown in, but I wonder what other people here think of the game possibly having such things. obviously with a little more thought put into it and progressively added to the game.

P.S. I cleary had too much time today.

[Turadis]

I like this! Although I mostly like it for the sake of getting more detailed expressions of a character for event and IC conflict stuff. I can take or leave the extra exploration mechanics, personally.

Some people like dice for events, some people dislike them. I do like them, but I agree that them feeling too 'swingy' is pretty disappointing. It can be solved by only letting people with reasonably justifiable proficiency roll at all, but then for things like perception, everybody has senses. So it's not a one size fits all solution. All that said, I don't necessarily want to see a system like this become the only accepted standard--But options are nice.

Due to the influence of D&D and similar d20 RPG systems, the standard of d20+Skill Modifier has been widely accepted as a default means of handling dice based skill checks. There are multiple alternatives I'd like to put forward, since as a big RPG guy, it's a subject I've given a lot of thought. I don't regard any of these as 'best', since what's best for a system is entirely dependent on it's design goals, and the fiction you want the dice to convey.

(Rank) dice pool: Rather than getting a bigger modifier for more skill investment, you roll more dice; usually d6s or d4s, and calculate the sum to get your check result. Multiple dice have a weighted distribution towards averages, leading to far more consistant results. This can be desirable if avoiding 'swinginess' is a priority, and if you want characters with greater skill investment to beat characters with lesser investment very reliably but not with total certainty. Dice pools aiming to get a certain number of 'successes' (by counting how many dice roll over a target number) tend to also have a similar distribution, but are more likely to result in a tie in an opposed check. Depending on how ties are resolved, that might be desirable.

d20+Mod (Flat): The d20 style most people experienced with D&D 5e would be familiar with. It's simple d20+Mod, but where the mod number usually ranges around 1 to 10. As a result, even completely untrained characters can still beat masters relatively often, while the odds are still firmly in the master's favor. It's ideal if you want to always give characters a chance to contribute or provide upsets while still rewarding skill investment.

d20+Mod (Tall): d20+Mod, but where skill investment can lead to very large modifiers, as seen in earlier editions of D&D and Pathfinder. Mods can easily be higher than +10, and highly invested characters may start looking at mods in the high +20s and +30s. This leads to a scenario where untrained characters have effectively no chance against masters, but where swingy results less likely to result in ties can still happen in contests between equally invested characters.

There are definitely others I could go on about, with many weird distributions. The big advantage of using digital dice is that you don't need to be too concerned with doing the math in your head, so you can work with weirdly specific or elaborate systems. Most types revolve around a certain relationship with the idea of consistency, though.

Consistency is a good design goal to aim for when you're looking to avoid most scenarioes where people are frustrated by being outperformed by obviously less skilled characters in opposed checks ( If failure in a non-opposed check is either unreasonable or uninteresting, they probably shouldn't be rolling to begin with. ) But once that becomes a desirable goal, it's also probably time to think seriously on if you want randomness to be a factor at all. Swinginess and random failure chance is generally viewed negatively, but it's also the reason that dice are used in RPGs to begin with. An underdog upset is a memorable moment for heroic fantasy--And letting an objective mediator like luck decide contests helps to curtail arguments about conflict resolution, and generally results in much faster play. 

I see dice systems with skill modifiers as a helpful middle ground between the two concerns. They offer both the opportunity for mostly consistant results, while still allowing the opportunity for dramatic swings in the plot alongside generally expidating gameplay.

All of this is mostly just one semi-tangential element to the main post that I felt inspired to talk about. I might come back and talk more about skill concepts another time.

[Snake]

Out of everything suggested, it'd be fun if we could run stat-based dices. It would be a positive addition to the game that doesn't take a lot of effort, and of course, can be optional.

A simple "STR-based Dice", or "CEL-based Dice", or "DEF-based Dice" (you get my hitch) for specific situations would make a lot, LOT of events more fun, and draw all players to a standard which is the game's very own mechanics, rather than having to adhere to different eventmin/player rulebooks.

We already have the stat distribution things set, so it'd be wise to use it.

[Poruku]

Yo this sounds so fucking rad. Having skills for rolls would make events so much more fun!

[Blissey]

Out of everything suggested, it'd be fun if we could run stat-based dices. It would be a positive addition to the game that doesn't take a lot of effort, and of course, can be optional.

A simple "STR-based Dice", or "CEL-based Dice", or "DEF-based Dice" (you get my hitch) for specific situations would make a lot, LOT of events more fun, and draw all players to a standard which is the game's very own mechanics, rather than having to adhere to different eventmin/player rulebooks.

We already have the stat distribution things set, so it'd be wise to use it.

yeah i stan this.

---

I like this! Although I mostly like it for the sake of getting more detailed expressions of a character for event and IC conflict stuff. I can take or leave the extra exploration mechanics, personally.

Some people like dice for events, some people dislike them. I do like them, but I agree that them feeling too 'swingy' is pretty disappointing. It can be solved by only letting people with reasonably justifiable proficiency roll at all, but then for things like perception, everybody has senses. So it's not a one size fits all solution. All that said, I don't necessarily want to see a system like this become the only accepted standard--But options are nice.

Due to the influence of D&D and similar d20 RPG systems, the standard of d20+Skill Modifier has been widely accepted as a default means of handling dice based skill checks. There are multiple alternatives I'd like to put forward, since as a big RPG guy, it's a subject I've given a lot of thought. I don't regard any of these as 'best', since what's best for a system is entirely dependent on it's design goals, and the fiction you want the dice to convey.

(Rank) dice pool: Rather than getting a bigger modifier for more skill investment, you roll more dice; usually d6s or d4s, and calculate the sum to get your check result. Multiple dice have a weighted distribution towards averages, leading to far more consistant results. This can be desirable if avoiding 'swinginess' is a priority, and if you want characters with greater skill investment to beat characters with lesser investment very reliably but not with total certainty. Dice pools aiming to get a certain number of 'successes' (by counting how many dice roll over a target number) tend to also have a similar distribution, but are more likely to result in a tie in an opposed check. Depending on how ties are resolved, that might be desirable.

d20+Mod (Flat): The d20 style most people experienced with D&D 5e would be familiar with. It's simple d20+Mod, but where the mod number usually ranges around 1 to 10. As a result, even completely untrained characters can still beat masters relatively often, while the odds are still firmly in the master's favor. It's ideal if you want to always give characters a chance to contribute or provide upsets while still rewarding skill investment.

d20+Mod (Tall): d20+Mod, but where skill investment can lead to very large modifiers, as seen in earlier editions of D&D and Pathfinder. Mods can easily be higher than +10, and highly invested characters may start looking at mods in the high +20s and +30s. This leads to a scenario where untrained characters have effectively no chance against masters, but where swingy results less likely to result in ties can still happen in contests between equally invested characters.

There are definitely others I could go on about, with many weird distributions. The big advantage of using digital dice is that you don't need to be too concerned with doing the math in your head, so you can work with weirdly specific or elaborate systems. Most types revolve around a certain relationship with the idea of consistency, though.

Consistency is a good design goal to aim for when you're looking to avoid most scenarioes where people are frustrated by being outperformed by obviously less skilled characters in opposed checks ( If failure in a non-opposed check is either unreasonable or uninteresting, they probably shouldn't be rolling to begin with. ) But once that becomes a desirable goal, it's also probably time to think seriously on if you want randomness to be a factor at all. Swinginess and random failure chance is generally viewed negatively, but it's also the reason that dice are used in RPGs to begin with. An underdog upset is a memorable moment for heroic fantasy--And letting an objective mediator like luck decide contests helps to curtail arguments about conflict resolution, and generally results in much faster play. 

I see dice systems with skill modifiers as a helpful middle ground between the two concerns. They offer both the opportunity for mostly consistant results, while still allowing the opportunity for dramatic swings in the plot alongside generally expidating gameplay.

All of this is mostly just one semi-tangential element to the main post that I felt inspired to talk about. I might come back and talk more about skill concepts another time.

i also stan this