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In the thread about the new Savage Worlds Rifts Kickstarter I started to go off-topic and talk about my experience with posting on the official SW forums re: House Rule ideas for getting Abilities to impact Skill rolls. In my experience, the SW forumites were not vert open to discussing rules tinkering as the SW game was perfect as it was, bla bla bla. Anyways, theRPGsite denizens tenbones and Brand55 suggested I start a new thread on the topic so here it is.

Over the years i've collected a bunch of notes and ideas from various forums, webpages and blogs on how to implement a House Rule to make SW Abilities have a direct impact on SW Skill rolls. I'll paste all my random stream of consciousness notes below and hopefully this will spark some critique and discussion.

• These ideas are for Wildcards only, Mooks use the Rules as Written
• If you implement any of these house rule ides, you should probably remove/ban the “Master” edge from the game.
• If any of the below comes off as convoluted or discombobulated that is because these ideas come from notes i’ve copy/pasted off the weeb over several years. And their original context, source or posters name have been lost.

In the Savage Worlds RAW (Rules as Written)
The only advantage an Ability bestows upon a Skill is that it is cheaper to raise a Skill die that is lower than it’s associated Ability die. Once it becomes equal to or higher than the associated Ability it becomes more expensive to raise said Skill die



* In this option, you replace the Wildcard die with a related/relevant Ability die.

This one ties into the idea “Brand55” raised, that is pick an Ability that is related (within reason) to the Skill roll  you are about to make. That is say you need to plan out your team’s climb up the back side cliffs of Castle Wolfenstein.

For this you’d use SMARTS + CLIMBING to find the best route up the cliffs (say a success would lower the difficulty level of the climb by one). Then for the climb itself you’d use STRENGTH + CLIMBING for the actual ascent.

If this seems to powerful or wonks the math to much you could raise the success target number by 1 or 2 points (from a 4 to a 5 say)

* A variant of this swaps out the Ability die with a bonus to the skill roll

Choose a related Ability to a particular Skill (has to be a logical connection), Say STR to Climbing. Then you add a bonus to the Climbing skill roll based on the die type of the Ability in question

d4 = -1 (Below average Human)
d6 =  0 (Average Human)
d8 = +1
d10 = +2
d12 = +3

* In this option the related Attribute Die gives a flat +1 bonus to the skill roll as long as it is higher (not equal to, must be higher) than the related Skill Die.

So you do not swap out the Wildcard Die for a related Attribute Die in this option. You keep the d6 Wildcard Die and roll as normal in the RAW.

Example. Throg the Barbarian wants to climb a vertical cliff face to get at the Wizards tower which rests at the top of the cliff. Throg has a STR of d12, and a Climbing of d6. So to see if Throg succeeds he would roll.

D6 Wildcard die + d6 Climbing die +1 Ability bonus (because Throg’s STR is greater than his Skill Die).

* A minor variant of the above house rule has the Attribute Die still give a +1 bonus to the roll, but only as  long as the Ability Die is equal to or greater than the Skill die (instead of only when it’s greater than and not equal to the Skill die)

* In this option the Ability Die is added to the Wildcard Die and the Skill die. All 3 are roll and you drop the lowest result.

Just as the title states. Roll the 3 dies and drop the lowest result.

* A variant of the above has you roll the Skill die, the d6 Wildcard die + the relevant Ability Die, then drop the lowest of the Wildcard or Ability dice. So in this version the Skill die is always kept.

Best to use a different coloured dice for the Skill die to help keep it separate from the Wildcard and Ability dice roll results.

I also complied a bunch of Criticisms of (some with good points) changing the Abilities & Skills system. Most have to do with how adding in Attributes negatively impacts the SW Game systems delicate math.


Those who first play the game tend to have that complaint, so you are not alone. But I urge you to play the game for a while and not tinker. There is a ton of elegance in the system and making that change has a cascading effect.

High abilities are reflected in that it’s easier to learn an associated skill (you learn at half cost). Also, it’s cheaper to pick up a skill at character creation than later (so if you think you will eventually use Shooting, pick it up at creation and increase it later when you want).

Untrained means you have no idea what you are doing. Let’s take fighting - I am sure the first time someone steps into the boxing ring with someone who knows what they are doing will get their clock cleaned (d4-2). Now, you might learn quick if you have natural ability, but it is a skill, and it must be learned (just like D&D must be Un Learned). Let take it to another skill - survival (Smarts). If you have no basic survival training, you are not going to survive if you get dumped in the desert. Being Smart allows you to learn, but it does not magically give you all the options.

Plus, you will find them d4's Ace a lot in critical situations. That is a great representation of beginners luck.

Finally, the ability scores in Savage Worlds are much more important than in (say) D&D. Agility tricks, Smarts Tricks, Vigor rolls (Soaking damage), Spirit to come off Shaken, and Str for damage. Making them even more important will really skew the game in favor of Ability scores (which pulls people away from taking cool stuff like Edges or Skills when they get an Advance).

(also doing it like Cortex is a huge shift in concept - like saying 3d6 to roll to hit for D&D instead of d20 - it’s a much different game despite the similarities on the surface).

You should pop over to PEG's website. Clint Black, the official question answer can give you much more information about this is a much more eloquent way than I just laid out.

an aside - for a Wild Card, you have a flat 35% of succeeding if my quick math works - a .1875 chance to get an ace and more than 1 on a d4 plus a .01667 chance to get a 6 on the d6. That ain't bad for a not knowing what you are doing.
 
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If you want a character better at skills, put the points into skills. If there was a correlation between main stats and skills, it would encourage making the charters even MORE lopsided. Keeping them separate is a safety feature MORE point buy systems need.
 
Heck, that a beginning (was the term novice?) character can start with d12s in main stats for SW is one of my beefs with the system but the limited scope of the main stats helps mitigate that
 
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High abilities are reflected in that it’s easier to learn an associated skill (you learn at half cost). Also, it’s cheaper to pick up a skill at character creation than later (so if you think you will eventually use Shooting, pick it up at creation and increase it later when you want).
 
We were all SW newbies when we played our first Deadlands game, though we were all D&D veterans. Snapping the D&D paradigm proved to be tough with character creation, so I gave all my players a few mulligans to massage their PCs after the first couple of sessions.
 
The second time around, they did less to max a single ability score or two and more to add a spread of skills that they could add to later. After four sessions, they already had three "advancements" to add to skills if they wanted. (I was generous, giving 3xp per session in the first four sessions - they were 6hr sessions after all.) So players generally took an extra edge and bumped 1-2 low skills by two and/or bought a new skill.
 
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Untrained means you have no idea what you are doing. Let’s take fighting - I am sure the first time someone steps into the boxing ring with someone who knows what they are doing will get their clock cleaned (d4-2). Now, you might learn quick if you have natural ability, but it is a skill, and it must be learned (just like D&D must be Unlearned ). Let take it to another skill - survival (Smarts). If you have no basic survival training, you are not going to survive if you get dumped in the desert. Being Smart allows you to learn, but it does not magically give you all the options.
 
Plus, you will find them d4's Ace a lot in critical situations. That is a great representation of beginners luck.
 
It's amazing how often d4+d6 (wild die) aced on untrained skills. we had one guy roll 3 "6"s in a row (and then a 1) that gave a 17 (19-2) on an untrained skill in the first session. He basically skull smashed a walking dead with a gun butt with no fighting skill in one quick round.
 
I don’t know probabilities, but I can recall at least four hugely cascading aces on untrained skills in the first two sessions, and at least two more where a single ace handled the TN 4 on an untrained skill*.
 
*These guys were lights out on the dice the second session, though.
 
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I figure between the d4 and your wild die, you have a pretty good chance.
Just don't forget to roll the wild die...
 
This and bennies. But, it is getting a little weird that my legendary heroes can't do anything well (trained) besides fight & shoot. I give them some language and knowledge skills to reflect their role-playing, though.
 
Edit: in our other game my hero has Jack of All Trades so that I can use Smarts skills untrained. After that at Novice rank, it's all edges & combat skills with each advance. It is still fun for me. Plus, I took Luck & Great Luck to get more bennies to affect the story with my increased chances of successes on skill checks.
 
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High Agility means you can learn to Shoot well twice as fast as the guy with low agility.
 
If you want your Agility d10 Zulu warrior to pick up a British Martini-Henry rifle and immediately start shooting redcoats like a crack sniper, SW is not the game for you. But it's certainly not unrealistic. Your Zulu starts at d4-2, but a little practice gets him to d4, and he can be up at d10 pretty fast.
 
 
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I don't like to focus on Ace’ing, though, as that doesn't address the OP's issue. Acing dice helps all folk, not just untrained high-attribute folk.
 
Also, thinking even more on it, the increased rate of training isn't truly accurate (except at character creation). A character can't become better at shooting any faster than another character, regardless of attribute. You can only increase a skill one die per advance. Granted, high attributes allow you to increase two skills, instead of one, but they don't allow faster learning.
 
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Perhaps a better way to say it is that you can learn more at the same time. So if you are high Agility character, you can learn fighting AND shooting at the same rate that someone who is low Agility can only learn one of those skills.

I'll just say this - after playing SW for about 2 years in a variety of genres after being a dedicated D&Der, the Attribute/Skill link now feels very natural. It’s one of those things that is different from other games and people immediately want to change it. "It does not make sense" tends to come from the context of other game experience (kinda like if you intro someone to TTRPGs and they ask "where is the board?"). You can always tell the new people on PEG's boards when they try to convert their favorite D&D setting - they are trying to convert every Feat/Power in the book instead of stepping back and figuring out what really provides the flavor of the setting. They try tinkering with the attributes/skills, roll a d20 for initiative instead of the cards, less Acing, graph back on HPs. All that is fine, but what you find is it strips away the Fast! Furious! Fun! of the game.

It’s not that one must run the RAW no matter what, but you see people trying to D&D-ize the game (to pick a culprit, since that is the game experience of many) right out of the box without running it for a campaign or two. Once the elegance and interplay is understood, the modifications people make to enhance their settings make more sense without killing the FFF of the system. As an example, to the Core rules I have only one House Rule - if you roll a 1/1, you cannot Bennie out of it (unless its insta-kill), but you get a Bennie for your troubles (cuz you are going to need it!). In the recent release of the Deluxe, they now have a "setting option" that is pretty darn close to that.

Less really is more in this system.
 
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It's just you.

No, really it’s not an uncommon complaint. I see it a lot, right behind the whole "cards for initiative" and "no hps????" arguments.

The thing is, you’re having a high Agility trait makes it cheaper to raise your Shooting skill. An uncoordinated character is going to have a much rougher time raising his shooting (or any Agility-based skill for that matter) without a lot of specialization. This makes sense to me in that just because you are a highly coordinated person (say, an expert martial artist) doesn't not directly translate into ALL of your Agility-based skills.

Also keep in mind that in SW, Edges are what make your character. So if you want your lithe, agile character, you're going to have a lot more going for you than a high Agility score. You’re going to want the Acrobat professional edge at a minimum, plus several others to round out your character. Want to be good with a gun? You'll want Marksman and Trademark Weapon (Old Painless) at the very least. If you're playing in some sort of Wahoo, John Woo-style Urban Noir setting, there may be 2 or 3 more gun related edges for you to choose from. Almost any one of these edges is going to quickly eliminate that -2 unskilled penalty, and many of them have an Agility d8+ prerequisite. So, as far as I'm concerned, it’s all there in the mix.

I suppose you could just as easily add an edge (called, let's say, "Versatility") that eliminated the –2 penalty from Unskilled actions. I'd make the character take this once for each and every Attribute they want to negate the penalty in, though.

You could also simply house rule that once your character passes a certain threshold (say, d10) in an Attribute that it eliminates the unskilled penalty for those skills based on that attribute. But then buying that skill at a d4 seems like a bit of a waste (maybe you can buy two skills per level op). I don't think that would break the game.

The second time around, they did less to max a single ability score or two and more to add a spread of skills that they could add to later. After four sessions, they already had three "advancements" to add to skills if they wanted. (I was generous, giving 3xp per session in the first four sessions - they were 6hr sessions after all.) So players generally took an extra edge and bumped 1-2 low skills by two and/or bought a new skill.

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Up front, I'll just go ahead and say that I'm using the skill rules as-written and it isn't a problem at all for my group, but I can certainly see where you're coming from. I already told you which method I'd probably go with if decided to try something different, so I'll address some of the criticisms you've encountered.

Those who first play the game tend to have that complaint, so you are not alone. But I urge you to play the game for a while and not tinker. There is a ton of elegance in the system and making that change has a cascading effect.
'Elegance' might be a bit hyperbolic, but I agree that you do likely need to make other changes if you start playing around with numbers. That's why I suggested altering the Parry and Toughness calculations if you ever tried using stat+skill for rolls. Still, Savage Worlds is hardly an unsolvable mathematical riddle and if you do find something that doesn't quite add up later thanks to a change you made you can tweak things as necessary.

"Untrained means you have no idea what you are doing."
Absolutely. So, given that, it would only make sense that in a melee fight between an Agility d12 character and one with Agility d4 (both untrained in Fighting), the guy with high Agility would have an advantage since he'd likely have some small advantage at dodging around and catching his much clumsier opponent off guard. By the official rules, though, they're both rolling (d6-2) and (d4-2), take the highest roll, to hit against a Parry of 2.

"Finally, the ability scores in Savage Worlds are much more important than in (say) D&D. Agility tricks, Smarts Tricks, Vigor rolls (Soaking damage), Spirit to come off Shaken, and Str for damage. Making them even more important will really skew the game in favor of Ability scores (which pulls people away from taking cool stuff like Edges or Skills when they get an Advance)."
Yes, attribute scores are extremely important (though Spirit got heavily nerfed with the new Shaken rule). However, in the overwhelming majority of settings they can only be raised once per rank by spending an advance. Changing things so they influence skill rolls won't make people favor attributes any more than they already do since nearly all characters will go ahead and pick up that one attribute boost each rank.

As a SW dilettante, the only one of these options I'd accept is the "replace the Wild Die with an Attribute Die" one.  Everything else complicates the resolution system to no good effect.

And it's going to overpower Attributes relative to Skills, but as long as you know that and it's what you want it seems a good enough hack.

Quote from: daniel_ream;898177And it's going to overpower Attributes relative to Skills, but as long as you know that and it's what you want it seems a good enough hack.

Yep. Most of the time, though, skill points are much easier to come by than attribute increases so it's not much of a problem. Where the real balancing comes into play are those settings where characters can increase their attributes outside of the normal once-per-rank limitations. Those would have to be handled on a case-by-case basis; for example, making it so cybernetic augmentations that increase attributes cost more/inflict more strain on the user.

Quote from: Brand55;898185Yep. Most of the time, though, skill points are much easier to come by than attribute increases so it's not much of a problem. Where the real balancing comes into play are those settings where characters can increase their attributes outside of the normal once-per-rank limitations. Those would have to be handled on a case-by-case basis; for example, making it so cybernetic augmentations that increase attributes cost more/inflict more strain on the user.

I'd house rule that as well, that is you can only increase an Ability Die once per rank. But also you raise a good point. What about a setting with Bionics/Cybernetics? Or even a Superhero setting where a more rapid increase in abilities is genre appropriate.

Quote from: Gwarh;898202I'd house rule that as well, that is you can only increase an Ability Die once per rank. But also you raise a good point. What about a setting with Bionics/Cybernetics? Or even a Superhero setting where a more rapid increase in abilities is genre appropriate.

That's already the rule; characters can only use an advance to increase one of their attributes once per rank. To increase faster than that, they have to have access to some special method (cybernetics, super powers, etc.). So the system already favors increasing skills over attributes, especially when you factor in the 2-for-1 deal you get for increasing skills.

When you start looking at really high attributes, then you're dealing with the sort of stuff that, honestly, Savage Worlds just doesn't do all that well. The system isn't a great fit for Superman. The first thing I'd do is increase the 'costs' (whether literal or figurative) of any means by which characters can increase attributes outside of their normal once-per-rank advancements. So cybernetics that boost Strength will be more expensive and cause a little more strain on the user's system, leading to fewer available cybernetics overall for that person, and supers who choose to take Super Attribute might have to invest 3 points per step instead of 2 (just as having an increased attribute would be a 3-point racial trait instead of a 2-point bonus under these rules).

Much of the time, people with superhuman traits won't even need to roll to do typical tasks. Their high bonuses mean they'll automatically succeed barring snake eyes or huge penalties (when they try to do inhumanly difficult tasks). The guy with Agility d12+4 won't miss often in combat and will be really tough to hit, and you'll have to find other ways to challenge him. If you're okay with that, then there's not much of a problem.

The other thing you need to look at is if everyone will have access to these increased stats or only a few characters. If the latter, then honestly I think you're better off using the base rules so as not to give any particular character type a distinct advantage. Harrowed in the Deadlands games, for instance, would have a massive edge over everyone else if they got to use their attributes in place of the Wild Die.

Also, keep in mind that higher attributes affecting rolls just means you have free rein to increase the challenges that players face. Increased difficulties means increased penalties, which will go a long way to offsetting the better dice rolls the players will have and making those characters best suited to a given task stand out.

The down side to that is you're increasing the range of negative results as well.  The obstacle that challenges the Fighter annhilates the Thief, etc.

I was dealing with this myself a while back (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?32199-Alternate-Savage-Worlds-Rolls).  I have a couple things in there to try and lessen the pain of a d12 attribute and maybe flatten the raise spikes a little.  A few people in that thread said they did the Wild Die Replacement, and Baby Jesus wasn't incinerated.

Quote from: daniel_ream;898214The down side to that is you're increasing the range of negative results as well.  The obstacle that challenges the Fighter annhilates the Thief, etc.

That is already a problem with some SW games as it is. I've seen it with supers games (where Super Skill and certain other powers can create huge issues) and games like Hellfrost. My group quickly learned that there was almost no point in playing a mundane character in Hellfrost unless you wanted to feel like a fifth wheel.

There's no cookie cutter answer for every group, but communication is key. Players should know that, no matter how awesome their stats might be, they're going to be challenged. And the more they push things, the more dangerous they make it for the other members of their party. Plus, it's key to challenge the players in different ways, ways that the Fighter isn't ready to just brush off. If you have an awesome Fighter and an okay Thief, the answer might not be to throw a bigger orc at them. Use more orcs, with more of the orcs targeting the Fighter. Or have them fight the orc in a spinning room slowly filling with poison gas from a trap that needs to be disarmed.

Quote from: daniel_ream;898177As a SW dilettante, the only one of these options I'd accept is the "replace the Wild Die with an Attribute Die" one.  Everything else complicates the resolution system to no good effect.

And it's going to overpower Attributes relative to Skills, but as long as you know that and it's what you want it seems a good enough hack.

How well does that actually work in play? No huge differences for the most part? I'm curious because I keep looking at SW, but the wild die always being D6 keeps throwing me off. It doesn't feel quite right for my table.

Quote from: Jason Coplen;898228How well does that actually work in play? No huge differences for the most part? I'm curious because I keep looking at SW, but the wild die always being D6 keeps throwing me off. It doesn't feel quite right for my table.

If you go through the design notes for the game, the purpose of the d6 wasn't to boost PCs. It was added to the game simply to prevent die rolls from being to swingy. After the Wild Die was added, the decision was made to not give to extras. But since the main purpose behind the Wild Die is just to reduce the number of really low rolls, there isn't a real need to have it grow.

Krueger is right that it's not going to destroy the system have a Wild Die equal to the related attribute. I don't really care for that houserule though. I'm not fond of attributes trumping skills in games. It results in characters getting too samey. Once you get your Agility up to D12, suddenly you are an expert swordsman/marksmen/acrobat/lockpicker. I prefer the Savage Worlds method where having a high attribute means it's simply cheaper for you to buy related skills.

As for Gwarh's house rule, I've played and ran a lot of Savage Worlds and I've never seen a great need to slow the game down at every roll to give players an extra 1-3 bonus. A little bonus in SW goes a long way, and I have never had an issue with PCs usually being underpowered in the first place. It's not hard to get a +2 to a skill through Edges, and it isn't that hard to get one attribute to 10. Then you have that skill at +4, which is huge in SW terms.

Isn't the very presumption of most skill rolls in SW that you only roll if there is a chance something bad will happen if you fail at it?

Quote from: tenbones;898289Isn't the very presumption of most skill rolls in SW that you only roll if there is a chance something bad will happen if you fail at it?

Yeah. Most games are like that, actually. Making it so attributes affect the skill roll (usually to the character's benefit) will just mean there will be more rolls that can be skipped. In many games the number of such skipped rolls will be negligible, but in other games (like supers) it might come up far more often.

That's what I gathered. So I guess using these rules as proposed by Gwarh, would assume you're probably rolling the dice more often than might be necessary?

I don't profess to have enough experience to gauge how well SW scales. I own enough books like Interface Zero - which has full capital-scale ship combat, am I to presume it doesn't do this level of combat well?

Quote from: tenbones;898297That's what I gathered. So I guess using these rules as proposed by Gwarh, would assume you're probably rolling the dice more often than might be necessary?

I don't profess to have enough experience to gauge how well SW scales. I own enough books like Interface Zero - which has full capital-scale ship combat, am I to presume it doesn't do this level of combat well?

SW works best at the heroic human level to street-level Supers. I don't have Interface Zero, but I don't think the scaling issue would be an issue though. SW has solid mass combat rules, but they are just the system being applied at a different level rather than trying to fit individual and mass combat on the same scale. I would assume the capital ship combat is the same thing. It probably operates on its own separate scale.

I know the chief complaint among my SW play group was that Attributes didn't feel like they mattered enough. The one player described them as a tax you had to pay to focus on Skills, and that the efficiency of raising skills being so dependent on Attribute scores really punished pursuing character concepts. I think replacing the Wild Die with the Attribute would certainly help with this problem, but could really change the feel of the game. But hey, I think it sounds interesting enough that it's worth a shot.

Quote from: Coffee Zombie;898677I know the chief complaint among my SW play group was that Attributes didn't feel like they mattered enough. The one player described them as a tax you had to pay to focus on Skills, and that the efficiency of raising skills being so dependent on Attribute scores really punished pursuing character concepts. I think replacing the Wild Die with the Attribute would certainly help with this problem, but could really change the feel of the game. But hey, I think it sounds interesting enough that it's worth a shot.

A lot of GMs and Players new to Savage Worlds ignore the Attributes in Savage Worlds and don't necessarily see how all of them are important, even outside of the skill costs, but it requires actually using all of the rules in the book.

Strength: For one, it covers how much you can carry, and this is important because SW is a bit of a stickler on encumbrance rules. Not even ranged attackers get off here, because larger ranged weapons inflict penalties on characters under the strength requirement.

Agility and Smarts: Agility and Smarts tricks can really turn the tide of battle, particularly against tough opponents. Many Edges also interact with these attributes. Smart Tricks in particular help non-combat characters contribute to combat by setting enemies up for their allies. Smarts and Agility are also used to resist tricks used by opponents.

Spirit: Less important thanks to the new Shaken rules, but very important if you're running a setting with any kind of Fear rules. Failing Fear checks in SW games can really fuck over your character...

Vigor: How tough you are, as well as wound soaking, no need to explain why this is important.