Defaulting Skills by Attribute

[Mamatried]

I was on face Book, where the question came up about how attributes worked and so on.

In the discussion the defaulting of skills came up, and someone poseted a very good argument imo on adding difficulties to those defaulted skill rolls.

As I understood this, it would work something like this:

Mechanical 3D+2

The character is NOT trained in Capital ship piloting, but has the default 3D+2.
IMO I find it fair to here add a difficulty to the task +5/+10 even more.
I find this to match a little bit in what is "said" in the movies, where you hear someone say they are not trained or don't know how to pilot something, yet the rules allow them to default this, and if the attribute is high enough, the "training" will not matter.

So I am thinking that any skill NOT listed on the character template, and or raised by dice or pip would require a higher difficulty to complete, thus increasin the risk of failing.

I can not use a blaster, I have a difficulty of 15 to hit the target, I default the roll with my 4D dexterity rolling 4D unmodified to beat 15.....failry easy.

however I find it more reasonably that if I am untrained with the blaster I now have to roll 20 or higher to succeed in the same task.

now I have a much higher chance of failure, BUT I can still defualt the skill.

I think this is a great way to distinguish between traning and non traaning in skills.

lets look at a "pilot" template, these have 4D in mechanical, but if this is fighter pilot, I find it at best unlikly that he is "just as skilled" and trained to a professional (4D) level in capital ship piloting, or jet pack operation.

and while the natural ability can give him a fair chancee to succeed, he is not tranied in the skill and imo should have greater difficulty in succeeding and thus a higher chance of failing.

Any thoughts?

[CRMcNeill]

A simpler version would be to go through and pick which skills are "must be trained", designate them as such, then apply a -1D penalty to the Attribute if it is used for that particular skill.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[Mamatried]

Yeah, I was also thinking using the wild dice to distingush between trained and untrained.

Basically the wild dice 6 does not "eplode" upwards, but a wild dice roll of 1 would explode downwards, basically if you roll 1 on wild dice you roll again and subtract from the total.

But yeah assigne skills as trained only is something that sounds very good to me.

[CRMcNeill]

The importance of the KISS Principle cannot be understated.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[garhkal]

[MrNexx]

Personally, I prefer not to include this.

I tend to view it as "Star Wars Technology is largely made to be incredibly user friendly, with a lot of common layouts due to the breadth of galactic culture", so, if I'm relatively competent (i.e. have a moderately high Mechanical attribute), I'm going to be able to figure out a lot of, say, Capital Ship Shields, just because it pretty much works like any other thing. Sort of how someone who knows computers well can sit down at an unfamiliar programs and start getting it to do stuff, just because many programs have similar internal languages, icongraphy, and layouts.

The attributes represent some pretty broad categories of knowledge, but they're still relatively compact... there are relatively few odd tendrils where you can't see why a given skill is covered by a given attribute.
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[Mamatried]

[Whill]

D6 Space includes the optional rule of untrained skill use being penalized through higher difficulty. Some GMs like it. Some don't.

I'm with Nexx on this. I'd like to hear some non-DT examples of film characters saying they can't fly a ship or shoot a blaster. I'm drawing a blank on that. And even if there are a few, what you're saying isn't an absolute prohibition from doing it, just doing it with a penalty. In this non-cinematic reality I live in, me saying I can't do something isn't an absolute. I could be speaking to my confidence level when faced with a challenge. I have found that things aren't always impossible or as hard as they seem once I try it, so something I don't think I can do sometimes ends up being something I can do. In those cases me saying I can't do something sometimes ends up being an incorrect correct statement. Like Nexx said, in Star Wars technology is ubiquitous. It's actually part of the thematic element of the genre: Star Wars is a a very live-in universe.

In 1e, the very premise of the D6 system includes skills defaulting to attributes. It's cinematic. 2e RAW does already differentiate skills that default to attributes and ones that don't. Normal skills do and advanced skills don't. You can even still attempt one use of medicine without the skill, like bacta tank usage. You instead use first aid at a higher difficulty. 2e RAW also has skill specializations. Further categorizing normal skills as ones that default and ones that suffer an untrained penalty is adding another layer of complexity that I don't care for. It would make more sense in D6 Space which doesn't have advanced skills (or skill specializations beyond a Trademark Specialization advantage).

2e RAW still has the skills defaulting to attributes of 1e, and the only reason advanced skills don't is because they start off at 1D and they have no attribute. I like it. When possible I prefer to house rule using existing mechanics instead of inventing new ones. How I dealt with capital ship piloting is making it an advanced skill, so it does not default to attribute. But I think a Brash Pilot without the the jump packs skill should be able to use to default to attribute without penalty. The same as any character.

What I like better than trained/untrained skill categorization is a simple familiarity mechanic. When deemed applicable by the GM, a skill user may experience a short term penalty when first attempting to do something they have no experience with, but after they do it a bit the lack of familiarity penalty lessens until it disappears. The character may not end up improving the skill, but they still have the familiarity for unpenalized default. I've done that.
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[garhkal]

[The Bissler]

Personally, I tend to add a flat 5 to difficulty when my players use a skill they don't have. It doesn't stop them doing something they don't have in their skill list, just makes it trickier to do which I think is fair. After the adventure they can add it to their skill list if they spend the Character Points to properly learn it.

Part of the reason I like doing this is that I want the characters to play to their strengths to encourage team play rather than everyone being capable of the same things with the same ease. I also wonder what the point of skill lists are at all if everyone can do everything with equal ease (yes, I know the base attributes can vary, but still).

[MrNexx]

[CRMcNeill]

I tend to agree. If you want a skill to be something that characters can't use unless they're trained at it, make it an Advanced Skill, as there is already precedent in the RAW for this, as well as for different Difficulties depending on whether the character is trained or untrained (see the rules for Bacta Tanks).
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[Mamatried]

[CRMcNeill]

[MrNexx]