It occurred to me that this game would do well allowing players to choose the same skill for both their primary and secondary skills, receiving the bonuses and proficiencies of both, but sacrificing variety. It's just like having two different spell user skills, only you have just one twice. This allows characters to maintain a character who is pure Wizard, Fighter, etc. Though some skills may need modification for best benefit.
Any thoughts?
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Bump.
It sounds good, perhaps your character is a specialist in that particular field.
But I worry about power creep, of being too powerful too quickly in a particlar field. One wherein task difficulties become redundant due to hight skill scores.
We never allowed this in any playtest, and the question did in fact arise. We didn't want to make characters so one-dimensional... but we encourage people to house-rule that if they believe such a character to be a good idea. The P/S column is designed as a three-fold game mechanic built with a lot of consideration:
So you never play-tested it then? I wasn't talking about making it the game rule. I was talking about making it an option. If all someone wants to do is be a pure Spellcaster, they don't have that option currently. They are forced to multi-class, so-to-speak, which seems to me to be a weak point, not a strength.
It's your game, if you allowed a player to use the +20, +10 and pick spellcaster as their first skill they would be really good at it. But terrible at everything else. You could also allow three spells per level since they are dumping the 20 and 10 into one skill. Note that they would gain all the spells in the book (3x6=18)
Right, we never play tested it that way because it was in our opinion anathema to the core concept. But that doesn't mean it's gospel - give it a try and have fun!
Here's a quick surprise statement from someone who helped forge the game mechanics: game mechanics aren't as important as the story, nor as important as the player's fun. If any rule gets in the way of your fun, feel free to house-rule (and share your rulings with the community). Just be consistent so players know how to play in your game :-)
Can I quote you for my d00Lite RPG?
Any time.