Skill Descriptions

From: TTrotsky_at_...
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 13:20:56 EST


Roderick:

<< If you don't like this vagueness, well, you're not alone, and I suppose
> you could always try and devise a skill list, or borrow one from another
> game. :-(
 

 Not having skill lists was a design goal. >>

     I didn't say it wasn't deliberate, I said I didn't like it ;-)

<<Look at the proliferation of skills brought into RQ after the main rulebook was written, or (for a much more extreme example) ICE's Rolemaster. No game's skill list can possibly
 match all skills that players will want their characters to have, so we did away with the concept entirely.>>

     Or 'if we can't make the skill list perfect, we may as well not bother making that aspect of the game any good at all'. OK, I realise that isn't really your thinking, but its the net effect for those of us who like skill lists (fortunately, as I've said, its a fairly easy problem to fix with house rules). There's no doubt that many people will applaud your decision, but you can't please all of the people all of the time!

Wulf:

<<well, I hope there's a decent list of the Affinities anyway, some are definitely hard to figure (what could Babeester Gor's 'Scream of Fear' or 'Shout of Pain' do, apart from let the other guy know he's got you? And Snarl Darkness is even less clear...)>>

      No, there's no description of what any of those do. In the case of the first two, I'm pretty confident they cause fear/induce pain in an enemy if you shout at them (resolve using usual contest mechanic). In the case of Snarl Darkness, and a few of the others, there's no possible way of working out what the magic does from the rulebook, and this was an intentional design goal, as far as I understand it. Compared with reasoning like that, the lack of a skill list pales into insignificance, IMO. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong, and the rules for these feats are indeed in the book somewhere I overlooked.

<<At least, are the really specialised skills ('Shamanic Escape' springs to mind) explained?>>

     Yup, that one *is* explained.

Forward the glorious Red Army!

     Trotsky

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