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We recently had a pretty good discussion on skill mechanics in RPGs. The D&D team at WotC has clearly been having a similar conversation as they churn out play test materials.

The August play test packet pulled out the skill system in favor of ability checks a la D&D Basic. I thought it was a great idea, especially as supplemented by the Backgrounds/Fields of Lore mechanics. But now skills are back again ... with the caveat that abilities are the centerpiece while skills are for customization. That sounds theoretically good but also problematic right off the bat to me, given that customization (conceptually speaking) is mechanically what makes your character, er, your character. Mr. Mearls also says that skills should be a true bonus rather than a necessary requirement ... again, sounds great -- but in practice, I can imagine skills swallowing up ability checks, the same problem "new school" players have with "old school" rules like the thief's percentage-based skills in Basic.

On the other hand, skills really are taking a back seat. Instead of rolling a climb skill check to climb a wall, there are rules that everyone uses for climbing. Here's the design goal summed up into an example:

Mike Mearls wrote:Personally, I like skills as a tool to customize my character. I like that I can create a cleric with a high Dexterity, pick leather armor and a ranged weapon, take skills that improve checks dealing with stealth, survival, and perception, and play an outdoorsy tracker and hunter who feels much different compared to a traditional, mace and chainmail cleric.

That sounds great to me. And I guess skills still factor in by giving you bonuses? But that kind of gets us back to the issue above ... I'm thinking "min/max ahoy!"

Take a look at Mike Mearls's update article here:

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20130916

It's an interesting read but I'm very hesitant to make up my mind on what I ultimately think of it without trying it out in person (I liked 4e in theory from previews but disliked it in practice). I did *NOT* like percentage based skills in 2e but that doesn't seem to be the case as the article implies from the bonuses a "traditionial" 3e+ d20 roll instead.

That said... the most surprising thing is that you in certain cases are no longer proficient in a skill but rather in the use of a particular piece of equipment.

"We have a fairly compact skill list, both because feedback showed people liked broader skills and because some skills can migrate over to tool proficiency. In place of a blacksmith skill, you take proficiency with a blacksmith's tools. The same applies to thieves' tools and picking locks or disabling traps."

I was more surprised by the mix'n'match relationship between abilities and skills, which reminds me of Traveller. I really, really like that.

I do like the tool proficiency idea. Back in 3.5, there was this expectation that tools just provided a bonus to the check. So you could be standing in the middle of the woods and say "I want to try to build a boat" and point to Craft (boat building) on your character sheet. A good DM would say "okay, what will you use for tools?" but you know how we RPGers get ... instead of taking the hint, we start describing how we make saws from rocks. Ugh. In this system, you don't know how to make a boat; rather, you know how to use boat making tools to make a boat.

Skill based? How close is this to the old Dangerous Journeys they got from the whole TSR v Gygax fiasco?

How'd you get that it was skill-based? You make an ability check and add a bonus for proficiency/expertise.

I finally got around to reading the Playtest materials (the October 2013 ones).

Skills seem to be a way to allow characters who should be good at a specific thing (for example, climbing) to excel while the others can still get by with ability checks. Because the proficiency bonus is not huge, it allows some differentiation between players without dominating. We're talking much smaller numbers here than before- the range is -1 to +11 pretty much for 1st level pansies who are not proficient to 20th level hercules types who have trained in climbing. The system seems to base itself less on the "challenge by level" philosophy of 4th, which scaled up the difficulty with level, and more with a real world simulation approach where things are generally a set difficulty. On first glance, having played a lot of 3.5, 3.75 and 4th, it seems closer to 3.5 while limiting the potential for players to build characters that never fail a normal skill check (look at how easy it is to break Perception in Pathfinder for example). This is a good thing I think because the more "gamey" 4th edition method broke immersion and took away any feeling of progress. Pointlessly large numbers for the sake of pointlessly large numbers is how I would describe the failings of the 4th edition system. They seem to have totally pulled away from that with Next. We'll see if that works out well for them.