Talk:Divorced Abilities and Skills (3.5e Variant Rule)

Ratings

	Tarkisflux is neutral on this article and rated it 2 of 4.
	It's an attempt at codifying alternate modifiers to skill and ability checks. It's a but "DM, May I...", but that works for a lot of groups. Not a bad alternate rule, if it's your thing.

In Short

"Roll your highest ability score along with 3+HD for any skill as long as you have enough Charisma ooc to convince the DM of whatever you want." DM fiat is bad, and this makes it almost all about that. --Ghostwheel 00:42, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

It's bad if you have a bad GM. GM fiat is always there. If a GM does not like you, he can just leave and kill the game right there. This system is really the basis for WoD converted over to D&D- Trait+Trait+-Environment. It already exists in D&D, but as it stands it is so rigid as to be inflexible. Finally, it solves the skill problem by letting player be more versatile with their skills- Str+Heal to remove and arrow, Dex+Heal to perform field surgery, Con+Heal for self medication or testing, Int+Heal to indentify a disease, Wis+Heal to notice a dog has filth fever, Cha+Heal to convince a guard that you need to be removed from the cell to avoid contamination all of his slave stock, etc.--Change=Chaos. Period. SC 00:51, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

So... by "be more versatile" you mean "try to make a character that's good at healing, but find out half the time that the DM thinks the thing you're trying to do relies on an ability score you dumped." --Foxwarrior 02:27, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

This is one of the few times I've seen something Spaz wrote that I actually think is workable. It is a little too open ended right now, but it has some potential. Here's the thing: I've used something like this as a houserule in my games for years. It can really promote good storytelling when you manage a climb check with Dex (wall kicks!) or maybe a tumble check with strength (pushing your way through).

The first problem here is that some skills should never have substituted ability scores. Knowledge (arcana), for example. Knowledge skills are supposed to mean that you either know something already or you don't. You can't argue using muscle, nimbleness, toughness or social character having anything to do with what you know. Wisdom might get a chance here with the whole "intuition" thing it has going on, but if a player wanted to use wisdom with me in that case, I'd be altering the fail responses: a fail would mean I give a false answer rather than no answer and I'd be secretly rolling the check. Because intuition can lead you wrong.

The second problem is, as Ghostwheel mentioned above, a really charismatic person out of character could probably argue their way for any situation. That can be fixed, however, by making sure players can only do the skill swap a limited number of times per day.

So here is what my group has done. We have a whole system of points players get each session that can do a bunch of things and one of them is swapping abilities for skills. If I were to decouple these points and make them only count for this houserule, it would be something like the following:

Once per day, per skill, a character can choose to swap the ability score for the skill for a single skill check (or do the ability + ability thing you described). The GM must agree that the ability being used is at least a reasonable substitution and the player should incorporate the usage of that ability in their description. --Aarnott 16:49, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree that this is a pretty workable idea. Yes, you start playing "DM May I", but that works for a lot of groups and opens up new options. There's even precedence for this sort of thing in the WotC printed attribute substitution rules. And at the end of the day, it's a small modifier to the default 3.5e skill system. I just don't care about any more breakage of that mess.

Aarnott's suggestion is a lot restricted though, more than I think necessary or even useful. About the only change I'd make would be that you didn't have to convince your DM to let you make a normal skill check with the default attribute. Then you get all the benefits of being able to stunt some attribute skill combination for a task while still being able to fall back on a clear position. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 17:19, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

It really depends on the maturity of your group. I think you are right: with a mature group, this houserule is fine with the fall back option you mentioned. --Aarnott 18:11, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

And I write for mature groups. Whether any rule works or not depends on group maturity, and much of what I write can be used as a direct borometer of group maturity.--Change=Chaos. Period. SC 19:17, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I actually want to backpedal on this one. The way my group uses it (involving what we call session points) is actually a lot different than what I suggested. I completely agree with Tarkis (note: please change the rule to at least allow the base abilities to always be available for skills). I should also mention that I particularly like the innovation of using Ability + Ability. It is something I have never thought of and is pretty clever. --Aarnott 19:55, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

It's a standby in WoD, and fits for many rolls. Take arm wrestling- D&D has it as just Strength, but it's not just muscle at work, but body stress and endurance. It works much better as Strength and Constitution.--Change=Chaos. Period. SC 20:24, 22 February 2012 (UTC)