Should skills/non-weapon proficiencies improve with level?

Here is a basic history of skills in D&D as I understand it:

Earliest editions: no skill system existed, characters were assumed to be broadly competent.

Thief introduced: the thief had quantified skills.  This implied that other characters are worse at those skills, and possibly unable to use them at all.  Thief skills started out very poor, so that the character could advance with levels.

AD&D non-weapon proficiency system: this was a very detailed and flavorful system, but poorly implemented.  There were so many proficienies competing for a small number of slots.  Again, the implication is that you can't do much of anything because there are so many proficienies that you did not take.  Skill levels did not improve with level, but you could occasionally get a new proficiency as you leveled.  Even though we used the system, my group mostly ignored it in practice - we picked our proficienies but assumed broad competence; I never denied my players a fire because none of them was proficient in fire-building.

3.0 skill system: proficiencies and thief skills unified into one system.  Coming from 2e to 3e this was an amazing reform.  The number of skills was slimmed down considerably, down from the hundreds of non-weapon proficienies found in 2e, so some of the flavor was lost.  For example, the all-purpose "survival" skill replaces dozens of 2e proficiencies: fire-building, weather sense, tracking, water finding, etc...  The huge downside of the 3e system is that you end up with amazing abilities in a few skills, and essentially useless in others.  This led to arms races (such as hide vs spot), and anyone who didn't max those skills was hopeless against someone who did.

Later developments: skill lists continue to trend towards consolidation, in order to make all skills balanced with each other.  Skills need to be balanced with each other, because you only have a set number of points to spend.  The difference between high and low level characters is reduced, but still exists.

Alternate games: some use a background system, that gives you your skills.  2e had this as an option, but it was rarely used.  The nice thing about backgrounds is that they give you broad capabilities, but they can also be kind of wishy-washy about what you can do.  Some players will argue that their backgrounds give them certain capabilities, while other players won't try to expand their roles in this way.  Even though background skills have no reason to be tied to you level, some game designers cann't help themselves.  In 13th Age not only can you improve your backgrounds, but you can get new ones!

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I really think that this is all too complicated and counterproductive.  Here is my proposal:

There are three task difficulties: easy, medium, and hard.

Easy: everyone succeeds, no roll required.

Medium: untrained people succeed if they roll under the stat, trained people automatically succeed.

Hard: untrained people fail automatically, trained people succeed if they roll under the stat.

By rolling under the stat, I am talking about rolling a d20 vs your full stat; this system would not use stat modifiers.

Then each character would be trained in 5-10 skills, depending on background.  Your background would take the place of your 2e kit.  It would provide skills, weapon proficiencies, an ability score boost, and most of your starting equipment.  Since skills aren't selected individually, they don't need to be balanced with each other.

"Thief" would be a background, rather than a class.

Wall of text coming down to a shit idea on the ground that the alternative is "too complicated", nothing to see here.

Have a class system, or a skill system, as you see fit.

Mixing them together is usually messy and overly-complicated.

I thought lamentations pulled off a nice simple skills system.
I think 5e skills work nicely.
Then again I played a lot of RuneQuest and Harnmaster and don't hate skills so maybe I'm bias that way.

Go re-read the NWP section: they are professional level of that skill. Your suggestion is essentially what NWP was, ironically enough. Further yes, you can improve your NWP by using another NWP on the same skill to increase the probability on "hard even for professionals" tasks. This might have been further elaborated elsewhere, be it DMG, CH:F, or PO:S&P... I'm old now and gladly wallowing in my fading memory. 

Anyway, 2e had essentially three optional skill systems (and by core it was assumed not needed as you were to be competent adventurers): a) skill yourself onto your PC, b) pick a profession and the skills that'd go with it, & c) a la carte NWPs for ultimate customization. Trying to systematize unnecessary things with ever increasing granularity is...  sometimes fun, but! on the whole more fuss and overthinking than needed.

Don't expect tacked-on suggestions to be playtested core resolutions on the game chassis.  Enjoy the moment for what it is and what your table wants to emulate.

It is a matter of taste.

For me, yes, the 20th-level mage knows more lore than the 1st-level one, and the 20th-level ranger is sneakier and more perceptive.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron on April 01, 2024, 02:41:49 AM
Have a class system, or a skill system, as you see fit.

Mixing them together is usually messy and overly-complicated.

This x100. A rules system shouldn't have classes if it features skills and vive versa. There is nothing wrong with a little background flavor such being an apprentice smith before becoming a fighter or something like that but tracking skills and leveling them up should only be for classless games.

Quote from: Opaopajr on April 01, 2024, 10:20:56 AM
Go re-read the NWP section: they are professional level of that skill. Your suggestion is essentially what NWP was, ironically enough. Further yes, you can improve your NWP by using another NWP on the same skill to increase the probability on "hard even for professionals" tasks. This might have been further elaborated elsewhere, be it DMG, CH:F, or PO:S&P... I'm old now and gladly wallowing in my fading memory. 

Huh, you are right about my suggestion being essentially the same.  While you are right that you could theoretically improve your NWP in 2e, no one would spend a whole slot to get a +1.  Skills and Powers made getting that +1 a relatively better deal, but I don't have much experience with that.

For me, the most frustrating thing about 2e proficiencies was just how few you had; you were putting so much effort into selecting them, but got nothing out of it.

The secondary skills system presented in 2e was too sparse.  I guess what I am looking for is a fusion of the two: a bit like the NWP system but without the slots.

Yes.

See Castles and Crusades how to do it.

The thing that's missing in your alternative, the skill list itself. A skill system is always inexorably tied to how broad or narrow individual skills are. As for your saying the skills don't need to be balanced against each other because they're not chosen individually, that puts a lot of onus on you the designed to have a good selection of backgrounds, and balancing them against each other will be harder than balancing skills.

I like your take on the difficulty ladder, I'd throw in maybe an advantage/disadvantage system or something so that there's more than just two levels. (Easy doesn't count in your example, "not a check" isn't a difficulty, it's no check.)

But I'm not sure that your system needs a skill list in the first place. If the only purpose of the skill system is "able to pass skill checks" and the purpose of the background is "able to do the kinds of things a baker or whatever would do" then having a list that backgrounds pick from is a whole extra step you don't need. It the difference between, "I'm a baker so I can *checks background description* do X" and "I'm a baker so I have *checks background skill list) Y skill so I can *checks skill description* do X".

Additionally, if the background is just a bundle of skills, then your constraining what a background can do to the confines of a generic skill list. Alternatively, if you just have background descriptions, you're encouraging player creativity in the form of "How could I use my skills as a baker to the situation" instead of just "how can I apply my athletics skill to the situation".

The biggest problem I see with the just professions approach are the "basically nothing" backgrounds like baker that seem like they wouldn't have any application, so the addition of some generically useful skills like perception or whatever can make those kinds of backgrounds more appealing. My answer to that though, is better profession descriptions that give examples of applications of a profession's skill to adventuring scenarios.

Quote from: Glak on April 02, 2024, 12:56:59 AM

Quote from: Opaopajr on April 01, 2024, 10:20:56 AM
Go re-read the NWP section: they are professional level of that skill. Your suggestion is essentially what NWP was, ironically enough. Further yes, you can improve your NWP by using another NWP on the same skill to increase the probability on "hard even for professionals" tasks. This might have been further elaborated elsewhere, be it DMG, CH:F, or PO:S&P... I'm old now and gladly wallowing in my fading memory. 

Huh, you are right about my suggestion being essentially the same.  While you are right that you could theoretically improve your NWP in 2e, no one would spend a whole slot to get a +1.  Skills and Powers made getting that +1 a relatively better deal, but I don't have much experience with that.

For me, the most frustrating thing about 2e proficiencies was just how few you had; you were putting so much effort into selecting them, but got nothing out of it.

The secondary skills system presented in 2e was too sparse.  I guess what I am looking for is a fusion of the two: a bit like the NWP system but without the slots.

I agree, next to no one is going to spend a very rare NWP for a mere +1. It's for those games and gamers that are deeply up the Org Play, Living Campaign RPGA 2e world (like "Raven's Bluff").

I dunno if I feel the same about 2e lacking proficiencies. There's literally like a gross (twenty) Generic NWPs and like a dozen (twelve) or more per Big Four Archetype. These are pro skills that allow to often outright ignore most stressful situations.

(Granted some were written a bit weak sauce, like a permission slip to even try, like Navigation or Direction Sense. But then given how some things like Reading/Writing per Language make sense not being permissible without real lengthy training, I get it. Learning a language's script was a lifetime education (roughly 7 years) for us as children that we take for granted, so I guess it makes sense given the slow rate of NWP gain. Same would apply to Astrology, Astronomy, Religion or Ancient History at a can-be-paid-to-make-a-living-on-it level, so it doesn't bug me much.)

I also believe there's quite a lot more NWPs created over the lifetime of AD&D 2e... I think some product compiled it across the edition's life and it was well over 100 NWPs, IIRC (if I remember correctly). Further they said it's perfectly fine to create more if your campaign needs it.

What exactly are you needing at a professional level for your campaign?