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Jedi Skyler
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 Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2006 11:48 am Post subject: |
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garhkal
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| Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2014 2:47 pm Post subject: |
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Bringing this back to the forefront to see how our new folks feel.
Should there be certain skills that you should NOT be able to default to the base attribute for?
Should you always get to default, but with a penalty?
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jmanski
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| Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2014 4:31 pm Post subject: |
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But isn't that what the attribute is for?
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griff
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| Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2014 5:56 am Post subject: |
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I always took the default to the attribute to mean that the character has seen enough of the galaxy even if it was through holovids, stories told by freighter pilots in the cantina, to out right experience that the attribute is a good base of the skills listed under them, not all skills. I think that there is a penalty for a character trying to use their attribute with an unlisted skill.
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Fallon Kell
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| Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2014 7:08 am Post subject: |
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Yes. Those skills all start with (A).
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2014 2:18 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | Bringing this back to the forefront to see how our new folks feel.
Should there be certain skills that you should NOT be able to default to the base attribute for? |
Probably. But it seems contrary to the way the game works. Case in point Languages. Realistically people have no chance of speaking/comprehending a new language. Now if they know a related language that's one thing, but something completely new should be unknown. Yet the RPG uses languages as a meta-skill and allows PCs to have a chance of speaking virtually anything.
And realistically, how many beings from a primitive culture have a chance of using most TECH skills? Yet the RPG give an Ewok a default for repair a droid or hyperdrive.
| Quote: |
Should you always get to default, but with a penalty? |
Probably not, but that seems to be how the game works. Advanced skills might be the exception but there aren't that many of those. Something like 3 total, six if you consider Force skills to be a type of advanced skill. |
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garhkal
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| Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2014 4:12 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Probably. But it seems contrary to the way the game works. |
Which is why i created this thread. As the game works as is, someone fresh out of the academy, or that street kid who's never been schooled, to that escaped prisoner who was born in said prison (all concepts i have had for characters in the past) can all attempt to roll for skills they may not have even knew existed, let alone experienced, by defaulting to their attribute.
BUT i am proposing that perhaps they should not for certain ones (mostly thinking of tech and know here)..
I mean, lets take our current tax forms (not just the 1040ez). Look at how many people screw them up bureaucracy even though they work with paperwork day in and day out at their desk job.
Or like you were showing, Ewoks, a primative race from a planet where tech only exists in the form of stuff other species bring to it, but due to having a 1d+2 tech skill, they can still try to fix anything and everything.
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Fallon Kell
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| Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2014 5:50 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | I mean, lets take our current tax forms (not just the 1040ez). Look at how many people screw them up bureaucracy even though they work with paperwork day in and day out at their desk job. |
Well the difficulty for the check is at least Heroic+30...
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griff
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| Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2014 11:32 pm Post subject: |
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I have once explained the attributes also in terms of a learning curve. Ewoks have a max species mechanical of 3D+2, while he can't fly an X-wing day one off Endor, he would be able to pick up the concept of piloting after seeing it done. But with the species minimum of 1D+2 that ewok wouldn't pick up flying as quickly or at all even after someone explaining it to him. So I allow default rolls within reason, even with primitive characters. Especially if it hasn't been the character's "first rodeo".
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garhkal
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| Posted: Mon Jan 27, 2014 5:25 pm Post subject: |
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| Fallon Kell wrote: | | garhkal wrote: | | I mean, lets take our current tax forms (not just the 1040ez). Look at how many people screw them up bureaucracy even though they work with paperwork day in and day out at their desk job. |
Well the difficulty for the check is at least Heroic+30... |
Which must mean my HR-block tax lady has at least 12d in tax returns!
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Fallon Kell
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| Posted: Mon Jan 27, 2014 5:40 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | Fallon Kell wrote: | | garhkal wrote: | | I mean, lets take our current tax forms (not just the 1040ez). Look at how many people screw them up bureaucracy even though they work with paperwork day in and day out at their desk job. |
Well the difficulty for the check is at least Heroic+30... |
Which must mean my HR-block tax lady has at least 12d in tax returns! |
Not really. It just means they're wrong, but no one has the skill to tell for sure. Basically it's like a forgery roll... 
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Tinman
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| Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2014 3:22 pm Post subject: |
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We just use the rules as they're written when it comes to things like this. That said, players almost always role play these situations appropriately. Characters will remark that they don't know anything about such-and-such if forced to try to (for instance) repair something they have no skill with, act appropriately surprised if they actually manage to pull it off, and unsurprised if they fail or botch it. ("There, happy now?!") Description tends to be tailored too. "The panel belches smoke and wires spark, but whatever you did causes the door to open."
Last edited by Tinman on Sun May 29, 2016 6:03 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Whill
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Joined: 14 Apr 2008
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Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2014 1:23 am Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | Should there be certain skills that you should NOT be able to default to the base attribute for? |
| Fallon Kell wrote: | | Yes. Those skills all start with (A). |
| atgxtg wrote: | | Probably. But it seems contrary to the way the game works. |
Right. Some D6 games have the option of using skills "unskilled" being an added difficulty. As GMs, we each have our own tolerance levels for realism in our games, but as much as possible I try to keep in mind that D6 was created for cinematic realities such as the Star Wars universe. IMO skill use with the skill defaulting a base attribute is a basic fundamental of the Star Wars RPG that I am unwilling to change. No, it may not be completely realistic when compared to real life, but Star Wars is not real life. Did Luke ever even fly a starship before the battle in which he destroyed the Death Star?
| garhkal wrote: | | Should you always get to default, but with a penalty? |
| atgxtg wrote: | | Probably not, but that seems to be how the game works. Advanced skills might be the exception but there aren't that many of those. Something like 3 total, six if you consider Force skills to be a type of advanced skill. |
Right. If a skill is too complicated for characters to use without training, then I make that an advanced skill. My balance with realism is that I have made some normal skills into advanced skills, such as Astrogation, Lightsaber, Swoop Operation and Capital Ship skills.
| atgxtg wrote: | | And realistically, how many beings from a primitive culture have a chance of using most TECH skills? Yet the RPG give an Ewok a default for repair a droid or hyperdrive. |
Good point. The system of normal skills defaulting to the attribute does presume that PCs have a basic familiarity with galactic society and technology. This is a society that has had FTL for well over 25,000 years. What about primitive characters that shouldn't even have a base attribute's worth of a chance to succeed? Realistically Ewoks may have some Knowledge skills, but KNO and TEC attributes should be 0D, and the system seems to break down. The system just doesn't work for primitive PCs and having any kind of game balance. The only way I would allow an Ewok PC is by having a background that says he has been taken from Endor many years ago and has had time to become more acclimated to galactic society. As far as Primitive NPCs go, you technically could roll 0D for wild die results only: a result of 2-5 is just 0, a result of 1 is 0 with a complication, and a result of 6 is 0 but explodes and any further dice are added up normally.
| atgxtg wrote: | | Case in point Languages. Realistically people have no chance of speaking/comprehending a new language. Now if they know a related language that's one thing, but something completely new should be unknown. Yet the RPG uses languages as a meta-skill and allows PCs to have a chance of speaking virtually anything. |
I do see your point. But in defense of the Language skill, there has been a galactic society for over 25,000 years. There is no doubt that common languages have influenced each other over the millennia, so languages like Basic, Bocce and Huttese may now have a lot of things in common despite having different planets of origins. Of course Threepio still picked up Ewokese pretty quickly which could mean that the language may have been influenced by or have influenced some other galactic language, perhaps from some Endor moon natives with a related language leaving Endor, being visited by galactic travellers, or most likely, being influenced by galactic travellers who were stranded there at some point in the past.
However in additional to all that, I just hand-wave that the language centers in the brains of humans and other sentients in the SW galaxy are more evolved and superior to Earth humans, giving them all a greater ability to understand or communicate with someone who speaks a language you're not fluent in, but as in RAW the difficulty of the attempt is based on how related the language is to any languages you are fluent in and the difficulty level of what is being communicated.
To further represent this idea in regards to language fluencies, all of my starting PCs are fluent in Basic for free, plus a number of other languages equal to the number in front of the D of the PC's Language skill. So a PC with only 2D skill is fluent in 3 languages total (Basic plus 2 others). NPCs don't go by this formula and are fluent is an many or few languages are I see fit for the character. I like PCs understanding a lot of languages like the film characters. In my original setting the Whills Nebula, humans are a minority and the common language is Bocci instead of Basic, each system has its own languages too.
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DougRed4
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| Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2014 2:31 pm Post subject: |
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I haven't worried about languages in my game. When my PCs aided the native Sesseshellah against the Empire, I had them speak in grunts and growls; a primitive tongue that the PCs couldn't understand.
But, one of the PCs went out of his way to interact heavily with them, attempting to learn bits about their language. So I allowed him to understand some of the basics and dialogue a little bit.
In my supers game, one GM ended up giving all of the PCs nanites (during one interstellar adventure) that flushed from their brains and gave each of the PCs the equivalent of a 'universal translator'. This ended up being problematic a number of times, and after years of use he finally (after discussion) ended up running a story that ended up reversing things (and removing them).
Point being that one could rationalize that basic SW tech has some sort of universal translator built-in (say, to comlinks), if a GM wanted to hand wave away language issues.
Me, I just try to keep things more cinematic, so don't really deal much with languages. Most aliens speak at least a little bit of Basic, and even strange aliens (like Sullustans and Duros) seem to speak some sort of 'blubbery' common tongue that others can recognize.
I might end up using Whill's idea though for languages based on the number before the D. I've done something extremely similar in other games, and it might be fun for players to pick a couple of other languages that otherwise would end up being subtitled (like Huttese, or Rodian, or Wookiee).
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garhkal
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| Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2014 5:46 pm Post subject: |
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It seems like alignments and encumbrance, languages is the most often glossed over part of RPGs. Too many gamers think they are not worth the bother. If you are going to do away with it, why not just go all the way and say ALL races speak basic, and get rid of languages entirely?
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