I am trying to keep them fairly broad in order to hopefully keep things a bit simpler and to focus on the options most people pick.   For Destroy All Evil, here are how all of the skills are divided.  In DAE!, the attribute set the maximum limit on how a skill can go.  I.e., if the phyiscal stat is a four, then the highest any skill can be under the phyiscal list is four.   Additionally, under profession, the player can three important aspects which cover it.  For instance, one person's profession criminal can be safecracking, security system disarming, and lockpicking while another one can be check forging, identity stealing and online fraud.

Yes, I am purposely letting the profession trait go like this to give characters more power and uniqueness.  There are other empty spaces for a few skills but it should be easy to tell what can fill in the blank.  Any comments, complaints, or praise will be accepted here.

Finally, if skill definition are warranted, I will be put them back in since I was trying to shorten this thread a bit.

Physical:

Athletics:
Close Combat:
Pilot (vehicle type):  
Ranged Combat:  
Stealth
Profession (                      ):  

Mental:

Academia (        ):  
Appraisal:  
Lore:  
Stewardship:  
Perception:  
Profession (                      ):  

Spiritual:

Communication:  
Empathy:  
Corruption*:  
Magic*:  
Profession (                      ):  
Subterfuge:

In general I am not in favour of attributes limiting stats. How do you then explain the old martial arts master? Or the sports coach? Or the person with poor general knowledge, but an exceptional specialised skill?

Here's how I split skills up for the sixlettersystem. I based it on S John Ross' twelve things that adventurers do (Risus Companion)

Athletic
 Acrobatics
 Climbing
 Swimming
 
 Combat
 Brawling
 Fire
 Melee
 
 Communicaton
 Languages
 Speech
 Writing
 
 Detection
 Interview
 Search
 Tracking
 
 Driving
 Aircraft
 Landcraft
 Seacraft
 
 
 Gadgeteering
 Engineering
 Handicrafts
 Technician
 
 Intrusion
 Burglary
 Deceit
 Stealth
 
 Magic or Psi
 Body Psi
 Elements Psi
 Mind Psi
 
 Medical
 Physician
 Psychology
 Veterinary
 
 Persuading
 Acting
 Diplomacy
 Intimidation
 
 Scholarship
 Liberal Arts
 Law & Society
 Sciences
 
 Wilderness
 Hunting
 Navigation
 Survival

What do the asterisks mean?

The asterisks are skills that have additional rules but weren't connected directly to this question.

Kyle,

What is the role of attributes, if any, then?  I am amiable to suggestions.

Quote from: ancientgamer;224041What is the role of attributes, if any, then?  I am amiable to suggestions.

There are lots of ways to handle it, it also depends on the dice mechanic you want.

Some variations,

• attribute + skill + dice, roll over target number
• attribute bonus + skill + dice, roll over target number
  
• either of the first two, but roll under attribute (bonus) + skill total
  
• a particular attribute may be permanently tied to the skill, eg Agility always helps Sword
• attributes and skills may be added, but are not paired up, eg "how good is the guy I'm going to fight?" "Well you've seen him in practice, make a Perception plus Sword roll to figure it out."

Roll over tends to work better with additive dice (eg 2d10, d4-d4, etc), and roll under with single dice (eg 1d20, 1d10 etc). This is because additive dice give results clustered around one number, for example having a roll be 2d6 + attribute + skill clusters around 7, so 2d6 + attr + skill vs (say) 10 is much easier to succeed at than 1d12 + attribute + skill vs 10; if the 2d6 is roll under, then the clustered results will annoy players, since players tend to focus on their chances of failure.

When attributes and skills are not paired, this gives the advantage of letting the GM sometimes call for a skill + skill, or attribute + attribute roll, eg "Well figuring out this alien engine design is not really a matter of your Education, because it's alien, so let's have Engineering and Technician to figure it out" or "you want to run really fast? That's Agility and Strength." But it gives the disadvantage of sometimes unintuitive results, like someone with a very poor Education who could be a PhD in half a dozen subjects.

There's also the question of how important attributes are relative to skills. The real question here is whether you think inborn talent is more or less important than learned skills.

If your attributes are on the same scale as your skills, or larger, and it's just attribute + skill + dice, then attributes become very important, and you're saying that inborn talent counts for more than learned skill. For example in EABAnywhere, attributes are 1-5 and skills are 0-3. But in another system though attributes vary 3-18, you just use their bonus with the skill which is -3 to +3, and the skills are 1-20, so that talent is important when you have little skill, but afterwards skill is much more important.

In the relative weight of attribute and skill, you also have to consider whether there are some skills which you can give a go without having learned them, and some which you have no hope without training. Many systems have some division like this, so that things like hitting someone with a piece of wood anyone can do, but things like operating an MRI and interpreting its results require learning.

If you have a few very general skills - as in the SixLetterSystem - then you can say that everyone has level 0 in them, and then the GM just applies a malus to the rolls for more fancy stuff. For example Technician is to use machines, so with no learning anyone can use a computer at +/-0, but the MRI scan might have a -6 to the roll. But if you have lots of very specific skills - like in GURPS - then you have to at least go through and say "can be done trained" or "cannot" for each, or perhaps even say "can be done at Brains -3" or "Brains -5" for their relative difficulty and obscurity.

I figured I didn't put enough information into my initial statement.   At the moment, I am looking at using a counting system for the dice mechanic and task resolution like d6 legends as an initial base.  My problems with it are the ways attributes are done, too many fiddly bits, and trying to decide what difficulty to assign.  However, I like the potentially simple elegance of just saying roll xd6 in skill A and just get X successes or fail.  In their case, the attribute added to the skill dice total and I believe it had some derived attributes come the primary ones.  

Anyway, the above is what I am working with at the moment.

Tangent:  As I see it, the attribute can either derive, limit or supplement.  As I see it, there are potential problems with all three.  Anyway, I am not looking at dice mechanic in the statements below.

Derive:  Looking at 3rd edition D@D as an example, Strength was there just to give out a damage bonus, a limit to lifting and a bonus to certain skills.  The other five performed similar functions.  My view would be just to have damage bonus = 0, lift = 50 lbs, and skill points as normal.  Then, have a certain amount free points be used to raise damage points and to increase lift by x pounds for every point spent.  Anyway, the point is that I don't want strength per se, I want damage and lift as the true stats that I use.  Strength just gets in the way of what I really want.  **I could go with the other five but I think the point is made.  I have played D@D and liked it but that is another thread**

Limit - As expressed in above posts, this is used as an attempt to state that mastery has a limit based on inborn limitations.  The athletic guy has the potential to be better at gymnastics but he would have to practice in order to achieve true potential.  There are inconsistencies which are hard to explain.  The old martial artist could be using a spirit based trait since his moves are based on chi.  The sports coach might be out of shape but he knows about sports while not being able to play them with any real skill.  The guy with poor education but specialized skill might, in rpg rule terms, be allowed to have the skill but it cost a hell of a lot more skill points (to account for more trial and error than necessary) than if he was smart to begin with.  However, why make it hard to try and cover it up?

Supplement - the inborn talent and abilities contribute to skill use but it varies according to the philosophy of the designer.  In some way or manner, it used along with skill and dice to determine success or failure.  Couldn't the designer just say that the rating includes inborn ability and learning and bypass the attribute and then hand out a few more skill points?

Well, some systems split the attributes from the stats entirely. You just have Sword 6, whether you have Agility 1 or Agility 20 is irrelevant to it.

It's quite possible to have a system where everything's treated as a skill or whatever, and the PC just has certain levels in each trait, they can say it's natural or learned as they wish.

My own d4-d4 does something like that, there are no attributes, skills and dis/advantages, they're all just "traits", and you just write down whatever is better or worse than "ordinary". Everyone has an ordinary amount of enemies, allies, strength, knowledge of brawling, etc, unless they note otherwise.

But to avoid the silliness of someone with terrible agility being a master acrobat, I say that certain traits have others as prerequisites, you have to have it within three levels. So you can have (say) Agility 1 and Acrobatics 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4, but cannot have Agility 1 and Acrobatics 10 or 12.

If you treat them all as "traits", then it's good to have rules for "complementary" traits. So if a player says, "hey I have this Agility 20, doesn't that help my Sword 2?" the GM can say, "sure, roll to bring your agility into, you're attempting to do something fancy a bit outisde the strict sword training." Or maybe physics can help engineering, or whatever.