Tuesday, January 11, 2011

YDIN - Is three skill levels enough?

Was wondering, is three skill levels enough variety for character differences in different know-how?

For you who might read this but is not familiar with YDIN mechanics, here it is in nutshell:

Characters have attributes which range from 1 to 6 one being lowest and six the highest.
Skill levels have currently three levels from 1 to 3 where one is lowest and three highest (of course there are unskilled actions but I don't take them in now).

Skill level determines both bonus to attribute and a die used when character tries to accomplish a task.

Bonuses are the following:
Skill level 1 bonus is 0.
Skill level 2 bonus is +2.
Skill level 3 bonus is +4.

Dice used are the following:
Skill level 1 die used is D6.
Skill level 2 die used is D8.
Skill level 3 die used is D10.

Target number of a task is attribute value + skill level bonus against die determined by skill level. (There is one twist, rolling higher or under what is optional though but I am not going to explain it here again as it is not relevant now).

So, if I added 4th skill level, it means that bonus of it would be +6 and die used would be D12.

It makes perfectly sense, and I was just thinking that are those current three steps in skill levels not enough and if I did add fourth skill level, it would be for master-characters. It would be expensive to buy with experience and not available for starting characters.

I think, I'll write 4th skill level as a possibility for advanced characters and tough antagonists and monsters to use.

5 comments:

Nuurori said...

Just because d12 exists, you should :D

Siskoid said...

Additionally, this would allow for some kind of "expertise" subskills for which you could give additional +1s. So say Fighting Skill Level 2, but with a speciality in Battle Axe, would have +2/+3 or d8/d8+2 (Fighting/Battle Axe).

Unknown said...

Nuurori, I thought the same ;) Well seriously, If you already use D8 and D10 I don't see why not to use also 12. Many games are single die-type games, and basically every game except D20 uses single die-type, so I want other dice to my game.

And yeah, added skill lvl 4.

Unknown said...

Subskills might work also, yes. But I don't see how D8+2 will do any good.

Attribute 3 and "fighting skill" 2 person has target number of 5 against D8.

Attribute 3 and fighting skill 2 + subskill has target number of 6 but he rolls D8+2 what means, he more likely fails than guy without subskill when rolling under.

Subskill might give extra +1 like you said.
Fighting 2 and subskill in battle axe would be +3 instead of +2 but with same dice.

But are subskills too good then?

Here is example skill list:
http://cradleofrabies.blogspot.com/2010/10/ydin-modern-setting-skills-list.html

Here's how skills work:
http://cradleofrabies.blogspot.com/2010/10/ydin-skills-in-general.html

So, if you buy firearms, you get bundle of three different firearm categories but they all are at one negative modifier. You can buy them also separately.

So, with firearms 1 you can use all firearms in category with negative modifier, or you can buy firearms at 1 and pistols at 1 so firearms are at 1 neg mod except pistols what don't suffer this.

I have also bundled some other skills, so you don't have necessarily to buy every single skill, but those are bundled so you know something about them, but aren't expert in whole skills variety in that category.

Unknown said...

Oh, another way I could do this is that subskills don't get negative modifiers but if you specialise then you'll get that +1 bonus... Hmm.