Maybe I just want to be different, maybe I just don't like them, but the more I worked dice into the system, the less I liked skills. I've got some players telling me you need to have them in order to differentiate characters, but I'm not sold on that idea. More than that, I dislike how skill dice are working for this system. They're d6s that don't soak damage. So basically, they're mediocre action dice that are going to eventually be overshadowed and more get in the way later on than anything else. They don't feel right.
As a result I've decided to go back to a principle I had at the beginning of this entire project. Everything's going to be about The Pool. It gives you dice, and it's your health meter, and that's not changed, but now it's the only resource for dice. There's nothing else in the game that gives you dice. If you want dice, you push your Pool to get it. That doesn't limit you to 10 dice, by the way. That's your baseline, but endangering your hopes and calling on moments of destiny can still push you above the 10 limit, and I'm still keeping the idea that the more destiny you spend the more you get, so there's that too.
But skills are gone. Kaput. They weren't working well, and historical design is no reason to keep them. Bye bye.
I commend your willingness to remove skills from your game. It's not an easy decision and these days it seems to be counterculture to do so.
ReplyDeleteBut don't let those players who contend that skills are a necessary discriminator of character A vs. character B sell you on this bill of goods. Too often what I've experienced is a character paralysis brought on by the lack of a skill identified on a character sheet.
Skill removal opens up a system more than skill inclusion fosters character definition.