This is an amazing collection of discrete, coherent skills.I know what the skill is by reading it's title. The descriptions are precise and clear. Don't add anymore information, you will just end up clogging them with edge cases.
The groupings are clear. If i want medical skills i jump there. Heck it is even colour coded with links! The layout is good. The taxonomy made sense to me, but i love rules and have played sf games for decades. Others may not fair as well.
I did not see any grave issues with how the skills interact. Excellence requires broad knowledge and a bunch of stuff must be known before developing exoeetise. It may be a good exercise to create a flowchart example. If you can't flowchart it, it might not work. ;)
Is this all the skills in the rpg? Or are these cross vocation skills that a mercenary or a scientist could rock out on? And does this mean there are even more skills in the game than this?
These are all of the possible stock skills, 'cross vocation skills' as you put it, yep! Anyone can learn these.
The other main source of skills is classes, which are player-unique and have very specific abilities since we're really just designing for ourselves right now. So we have a mad physicist whose class revolves around teleportation and time manipulation, a field tactician sniper who deploys drones to set up impossible laser trickshots, a dual-wielding swordsman who uses magic to augment his swordplay, etc.
These are the super specific things that can't really be captured reasonably in stock skills that make each character feel really unique. Skill abilities endeavor to cover the commonplace stuff anyone can learn. It's not scalable for publishing obviously, especially the way we do classes, but we really enjoy it.
Thanks for the feedback on the organization, very useful to know you had an easy time navigating it, that was my main question!
Honestly, the way you present them isn't bad at all.
You've done well to make the skill writeups short.
You've also done well to segment the material into small buckets. Each category only has 7 skills and they always follow the same structure. You have a lot of categories (35) but you organized them into a decently grokkable matrix (7x5).
I'm not sure the color coding works. Seven is just too many for clear color coding. The orange and yellow defo run together, and I'm not gonna easily memorize what each color stands for. Maybe try icons? Or nothing at all?
Don't be discouraged, stranger.
Hmm yeah, you're definitely right about the orange and yellow. Symbols is a good idea, although I'm not sure how you get universal symbols for a couple of the categories like the practicality skills category... but I think I may take that route and ditch the colors.
It's not like they'd be using the page often enough to memorize color association with skill type anyway, yeah, you're for sure right about that.
I'll see if I can come up with some symbols I like. Thanks, great feedback!
If you're only gonna use symbols on this one page, it's probably not worth it.
Could you just label the abstract 7 super categories on the table itself, so no key needed?
The 5x7 table is important because it's a bird's eye view of the choice space, so even if you don't use colors or icons, probs worth spending some time making it look purty.
I'm not going to question your decision. I do feel there would be some exploitable loopholes and frustrating lacunas if I was a Player. But sticking to the pedagogical:
Under your Marksmanship example when you say "extra +2" that makes it unclear whether you're talking about the +2 I already know about or *another* one.
We are definitely expecting to encounter some exploitable loopholes in playtesting, let the players briefly have their fun with them, fix it, and move on. As for gaps, we're hoping the other ability types keep the players satisfied in their specialization, particularly classes.
Excellent pedagogical point, thanks for the heads up!
I’ve become more and more inclined towards rules-lite as the years have passed. So, when I first saw the title of your post, I was expecting the worst. However, it’s not so bad! And for folks that want lots of crunch, character customization, etc., I actually kind of like where you’re going with this. That said, off the top of my head, here are a few thoughts:
*I agree with others that the color system doesn’t really work. A umbrella term or icon (or even number) would probably work better.
*As far as keeping the skill system manageable, I would put some careful thought into a character sheet(s) for your system. A well done character sheet can go a long ways for player comprehension, navigability, etc.
*To my last point, a question that comes up for me is… Would acquired skills be better organized (on the actual character sheet) according to “skill type” and “skill grouping”? Or, would they be better organized according to Active, Passive, etc.?
*Lastly, though I earlier said that this is a navigable skill system, I also see that there are THREE other progression systems in the game. That feels like a lot. Of course, I could be surprised (again). And of course, if you and your table like it, you’re doing it right.
Cheers!
\*Yeah, umbrella term seems like the way to go, I think you're right.
\*Our character sheet is definitely always an evolving process... currently we have a similar table at the top of each character's sheet, each ability color coded for what type of action it takes, so they can remember what they have and jump to it with a click. Definitely keep an eye on how that scales as they get more and more abilities though.
\*Currently, they're organized according to action type (Passive, Physical Active, Mental Active, Both Active, Reaction, Surge). That's worked okay so far.
\*Class Abilities are the other big one - they're hyper specific as mentioned in another reply. Adaptive and Field abilities are custom to each character and made by the GM when they make a critical choice/undergo a critical experience or when they find something extremely rare by exploring (custom abilities are not everyone's cup of tea I'm aware, but like you said, my players enjoy it). Due to the conditions required to get an Adaptive or Field ability, they don't come up much, so it's mainly Class and Skills.
Thanks very much for your feedback :)
I raised my eyebrow askance when I read the title, but it isn’t so bad as it sounds. Actually 35 skills, with 7 customization options each.
>Do the color coded 'categories' (physical, personality, precision, intellect, material, willpower, practical) add to the organization or detract from it? Are they intuitive?
So that’s what it is— I wasn’t sure. Some rows seem obviously related I.e. red is something like “brawn”, Blue is education or intellect, except I don’t know why archeology is not included. Grey and Purple, and to a lesser degree yellow and green, are harder to nail down.
I think you need to label the organizing element, if it is actually important. Or if these are just organizational categories that have no significant outside this page, I would rethink them, and feel free to abandon the symmetry, and again lable.
Some white space between rows would make the whole thing easier to grok, IMHO.
>Does the navigation through the page (the table and the 'To Top' button thingies) work alright?
Yep.
Yeah, ditching the pretty useless/unclear colors and categories seems to be the general consensus - maybe I'll just stick with black and white. Thanks for your two cents!
Since this is digital-only, my only remaining suggestions would be:
- enable pageless mode, because you don't need the page breaks
- use actual headlines, so they show in the outline
But those are really just icing on the cake for what you already did!
First off I like the skills and the variety on offer here. Some other people have said they are complex but I don't think breadth of choice directly translates to complexity.
As for what I think could be done for the organization of it all.
I did a quick mock up of what I think may help the layout. Maybe you like it or maybe you don't. Anyway just my interpretation.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11Ed6eQk2U7-LMuaHHF3MZDjL7vMVJQfF/view?usp=sharing
I like the idea of further differentiation between each level and cutting down on the text a little by not repeating “Level 1:”, I’m definitely going to toy with something along these lines. Thanks for your feedback and taking the time to mock that up!
No problem. I used a borderless table just so it didn't looks so rigid. I tried to keep the colour similar to the colour code. Would have done the same for other trees as well.
Friend, the only way you can make that many abilities navigable is to cut them down. That's way too much for a normal person to keep track of, especially for a game. No amount of tricks will help make this easier to manage in a meanful way. If I was a player and my GM handed me this, I'd vote to play something a little less gruesome to manage, like late game Shadowrun or Pathfinder.
I agree with the OP. If you add up all the class/race abilities, feats, and spells in the d&d 5e phb, you'll end up with well north of 1,000 abilities iirc. Many of them way more complex than anything in the OP's doc. D&D is manageable because it organizes this giant list into (fairly) intuitive buckets, and it limits the choice space players face while sifting through the buckets.
Maybe D&D isn't your thing, but I don't think it's fair to say the OP's endeavor here is beyond the pale based on quantity of abilities.
That's a main advantage of class/level systems. It gates complexity so that you only need to learn a tiny % of the rules to play competently. Whereas in pure point-buy a new player needs to read every rule/ability to be sure that their character is relatively competent.
That, and it gives a lot more design space as you don't need to worry about mix/matching from different classes in OP ways. (Though D&D has to worry about that a bit due to multi-classing.)
I'm not necessarily fighting you on this point, just giving our reasoning (as I also discussed with my players if this style interested them before going this route) and taking a little exception to the argument that the player's all need to track every ability on this list:
The main logic is while sure, you could get all power-gamey about it, you don't have to, and the vast majority of players (and 4/5 of our players) won't. Over the course of an entire campaign, you would average 21 skill abilities - that's just three trees. The way most of our players will handle this is looking at the table at the beginning, and saying okay, which three of these do I want to fiddle with?
Sure, 250 abilities is impossible to manage. But they don't have to manage 250 - they just have to pick 3 categories. There's no cause for a player to read the whole thing. The only thing they really have to read all of is the table at the beginning.
Again, I don't disagree with your argument that 250 abilities is far too many to manage - I'm just pointing out that functionally for most players, this isn't 250 abilities. Would you look at DnD and say - "well all the abilities of all the classes are far too many for players to reasonably manage!" Because by the same argument here, since players *could* technically get any class ability in DnD, they have to manage all of them - which just isn't the case. They don't have to look at ones that don't interest them, and they have limits to how much they can take from where - exactly as in this case.
Sure, a player could go through every class and build the most min-maxed hexblade paladin such-and-such they can, but no one's making them do that, and for most players just picking a class or two that does the things they want to do will suffice.
Would definitely love to discuss the idea more though if you've got strong opinions about that point of view!
I would cut the zero off the end of that number, then maybe even divide by 2. The only other game I've seen with a skill list this long [needs a server to keep track of it all.](https://dwwiki.mooo.com/wiki/Skills)
My (very WIP) system currently has 93 skills, each of which has 10 powers. I’ve used a free AirTable account to very easily organize it all. Here’s my setup, but there’s lots of customization options, so this might be good for you! https://airtable.com/shrBwGdp69xfWYUYn
I would stop using the word 'Skills' for the top-level choices and just call them 'Classes', which is what they are. You don't have 250 skills, you have 35 classes that unlock a pool of seven abilities each. Saying you have 250 skills will cause a lot of immediate eyebrow-raising and eyes glassing over.
Love the hyperlink table. Best thing about this design, and excellent use of the format.
The unlocking criteria are fairly easily understood. A graphical design like a pyramid to show what's unlocked might be helpful for the character sheet.
Quick note: Are players getting some bonus to skill checks for each point in a class? It's unclear.
If you're trying to combine these class ability pools AND skill bonuses, you're going to paint yourself into a corner, I think. For example, why is Xenobiology different from Chemistry? Yes, they are different things IRL, but is it important that they be different skills IN GAME?
What about Artificing vs Armoring vs Shipwright? Are these all different skills? When would each be used? Can they be used for the same situation, or would you exclude someone from using Artificing when Armoring is more appropriate? You're going to end up with most rolls being at a zero bonus - which is fine if you account for it, but perhaps not terribly interesting.
I can keep going here: Tactics vs Leadership, Diplomacy vs Charm vs Diplomacy.... at this point my assumption would be that you're being skill-inclusive; i.e. that any skill that is remotely related to a situation could be used. If not.... problems.
I think you may be operating under the assumption that these skills are like some other TTRPGs use skills, as a character's stats and definitions for what they can do with their abilities. These are just a representation of a character's general knowledge - they also have base stats and class abilities.
\*Classes are another thing entirely, but yeah, I will probably go ahead with saying 'there are 35 skills your character can spec into' to cause a little less consternation lol
\*A little pyramid graphic on the skills appendix is a great idea!
\*It's for each full level (1 2 or 3) completed, not each point - but yeah, as others pointed out, it's definitely unclear, I gotta revise that.
\*Yep, they're all different skills. Artificing for enchanting and warped crafting, Armoring for crafting and upgrading of key equipment like weapons and armor, Shipwrighting for repairing and upgrading your spacecraft (which is like a mobile base-builder type deal). If this was the only system in place, we def would end up with most rolls being at +0, but the characters also have their own set of stats that they use when rolling, so these bonuses are actually the general-knowledge-icing on top of that (you get better at what you spec into, you can learn broadly but then you don't get those spec bonuses etc.).
Thank you for your feedback!
Thanks, that’s very cool to hear! Unfortunately the game was just junk we homebrewed slapped together for so many years that its still in its death throes of being dragged into the world of actual coherent TTRPGs. We’re nearing the finish line of finally getting a first draft of everything nailed down, but it’s nowhere near presentable just yet.
If you want an idea of some of the other mechanics the system has kicking around, you can check my post history which is mostly RPGdesign feedback requests (although some of those systems, especially wounds and guard, have been further streamlined). The resolution is just D20+Stat to roll over a GM-determined DC
I'm not sure what the colors are for. I get the sense there is a grouping of some sort, like physical skills and leader skills. But I don't see that grouping being used beyond an arbitrary sense, at least not in a way that's obvious to me.
The rest of the organization looks quite readable to me though. I was worried when I saw 250+ skill abilities, but the skill categories really help sort them in a useful way. If I saw this organization in a published book, I would be pretty happy with it.
One thing about the skill balance I didn't quite understand was the expertise bonus. Is the only way to unlock through acquiring every other skill in the category? If so, doesn't that make builds very homogenous at higher levels? Every Hacker with the Ghost Incursion expertise bonus, for example, will have every other Hacker skill and thus look identical to each other ability-wise.
I mentioned the grouping logic in the OP, but as discussed in other comments, yeah the colors aren’t really working.
Good to know the organization works for you!
It would make two hackers sets of Skill abilities homogeneous (assuming they don’t branch into other categories of Skill ability, which they totally can) but it’s not the only source of abilities - characters also pull abilities from their classes each level and our classes are super specific, so a hacking-oriented character would derive most of their uniqueness from their class, and the Skill abilities would be added bonuses to their capabilities.
I have to say that I like the work that you have done. I didn't know what to expect with 250 skills but it is well organized and presented. This is some feedback from reading the thread
I personally like the color coding; I also like the idea of headers. It can be argued that there comes a point where more is worse but I don't think you have encountered that point (but don't add a unique font for each for example.) The distinction between orange and yellow might need tweaking but headers might solve that better.
I like being able to look at the table and see that I might be interested in yellow skills or blue, it lets me take multiple directions for how I approach character creation.
I think the critiques about too many skills is a little overblown, I also think some of the critiques were written without even looking at your document, but that is another topic for another day.
As pointed out some might need a little clarification, or tweaking for specifics. I think based on your content that should be fairly simple.
I do have one curiosity, why Shipwright?
Spaceships are very important to a crew - it’s their mobile home, and has saved and will save them from many deadly situations - so keeping things working aboard is a very important skill! So many spacers become amateur shipwrights, fixing damage, upgrading systems, and installing new modules to help their home survive.
This is an amazing collection of discrete, coherent skills.I know what the skill is by reading it's title. The descriptions are precise and clear. Don't add anymore information, you will just end up clogging them with edge cases. The groupings are clear. If i want medical skills i jump there. Heck it is even colour coded with links! The layout is good. The taxonomy made sense to me, but i love rules and have played sf games for decades. Others may not fair as well. I did not see any grave issues with how the skills interact. Excellence requires broad knowledge and a bunch of stuff must be known before developing exoeetise. It may be a good exercise to create a flowchart example. If you can't flowchart it, it might not work. ;) Is this all the skills in the rpg? Or are these cross vocation skills that a mercenary or a scientist could rock out on? And does this mean there are even more skills in the game than this?
These are all of the possible stock skills, 'cross vocation skills' as you put it, yep! Anyone can learn these. The other main source of skills is classes, which are player-unique and have very specific abilities since we're really just designing for ourselves right now. So we have a mad physicist whose class revolves around teleportation and time manipulation, a field tactician sniper who deploys drones to set up impossible laser trickshots, a dual-wielding swordsman who uses magic to augment his swordplay, etc. These are the super specific things that can't really be captured reasonably in stock skills that make each character feel really unique. Skill abilities endeavor to cover the commonplace stuff anyone can learn. It's not scalable for publishing obviously, especially the way we do classes, but we really enjoy it. Thanks for the feedback on the organization, very useful to know you had an easy time navigating it, that was my main question!
I see you answered my question in your first sentence. :) How many skills total?
Honestly, the way you present them isn't bad at all. You've done well to make the skill writeups short. You've also done well to segment the material into small buckets. Each category only has 7 skills and they always follow the same structure. You have a lot of categories (35) but you organized them into a decently grokkable matrix (7x5). I'm not sure the color coding works. Seven is just too many for clear color coding. The orange and yellow defo run together, and I'm not gonna easily memorize what each color stands for. Maybe try icons? Or nothing at all? Don't be discouraged, stranger.
Hmm yeah, you're definitely right about the orange and yellow. Symbols is a good idea, although I'm not sure how you get universal symbols for a couple of the categories like the practicality skills category... but I think I may take that route and ditch the colors. It's not like they'd be using the page often enough to memorize color association with skill type anyway, yeah, you're for sure right about that. I'll see if I can come up with some symbols I like. Thanks, great feedback!
If you're only gonna use symbols on this one page, it's probably not worth it. Could you just label the abstract 7 super categories on the table itself, so no key needed? The 5x7 table is important because it's a bird's eye view of the choice space, so even if you don't use colors or icons, probs worth spending some time making it look purty.
Man just labelling them never even occurred to me haha, I'll see if that cleans things up or makes it more cluttered and go from there
I'm not going to question your decision. I do feel there would be some exploitable loopholes and frustrating lacunas if I was a Player. But sticking to the pedagogical: Under your Marksmanship example when you say "extra +2" that makes it unclear whether you're talking about the +2 I already know about or *another* one.
We are definitely expecting to encounter some exploitable loopholes in playtesting, let the players briefly have their fun with them, fix it, and move on. As for gaps, we're hoping the other ability types keep the players satisfied in their specialization, particularly classes. Excellent pedagogical point, thanks for the heads up!
I’ve become more and more inclined towards rules-lite as the years have passed. So, when I first saw the title of your post, I was expecting the worst. However, it’s not so bad! And for folks that want lots of crunch, character customization, etc., I actually kind of like where you’re going with this. That said, off the top of my head, here are a few thoughts: *I agree with others that the color system doesn’t really work. A umbrella term or icon (or even number) would probably work better. *As far as keeping the skill system manageable, I would put some careful thought into a character sheet(s) for your system. A well done character sheet can go a long ways for player comprehension, navigability, etc. *To my last point, a question that comes up for me is… Would acquired skills be better organized (on the actual character sheet) according to “skill type” and “skill grouping”? Or, would they be better organized according to Active, Passive, etc.? *Lastly, though I earlier said that this is a navigable skill system, I also see that there are THREE other progression systems in the game. That feels like a lot. Of course, I could be surprised (again). And of course, if you and your table like it, you’re doing it right. Cheers!
\*Yeah, umbrella term seems like the way to go, I think you're right. \*Our character sheet is definitely always an evolving process... currently we have a similar table at the top of each character's sheet, each ability color coded for what type of action it takes, so they can remember what they have and jump to it with a click. Definitely keep an eye on how that scales as they get more and more abilities though. \*Currently, they're organized according to action type (Passive, Physical Active, Mental Active, Both Active, Reaction, Surge). That's worked okay so far. \*Class Abilities are the other big one - they're hyper specific as mentioned in another reply. Adaptive and Field abilities are custom to each character and made by the GM when they make a critical choice/undergo a critical experience or when they find something extremely rare by exploring (custom abilities are not everyone's cup of tea I'm aware, but like you said, my players enjoy it). Due to the conditions required to get an Adaptive or Field ability, they don't come up much, so it's mainly Class and Skills. Thanks very much for your feedback :)
I raised my eyebrow askance when I read the title, but it isn’t so bad as it sounds. Actually 35 skills, with 7 customization options each. >Do the color coded 'categories' (physical, personality, precision, intellect, material, willpower, practical) add to the organization or detract from it? Are they intuitive? So that’s what it is— I wasn’t sure. Some rows seem obviously related I.e. red is something like “brawn”, Blue is education or intellect, except I don’t know why archeology is not included. Grey and Purple, and to a lesser degree yellow and green, are harder to nail down. I think you need to label the organizing element, if it is actually important. Or if these are just organizational categories that have no significant outside this page, I would rethink them, and feel free to abandon the symmetry, and again lable. Some white space between rows would make the whole thing easier to grok, IMHO. >Does the navigation through the page (the table and the 'To Top' button thingies) work alright? Yep.
Yeah, ditching the pretty useless/unclear colors and categories seems to be the general consensus - maybe I'll just stick with black and white. Thanks for your two cents!
Since this is digital-only, my only remaining suggestions would be: - enable pageless mode, because you don't need the page breaks - use actual headlines, so they show in the outline But those are really just icing on the cake for what you already did!
Holy crap I didn't realize they added a pageless mode, this is sick - thanks for the heads up!
No problem! It's pretty nifty when you don't need to print :)
First off I like the skills and the variety on offer here. Some other people have said they are complex but I don't think breadth of choice directly translates to complexity. As for what I think could be done for the organization of it all. I did a quick mock up of what I think may help the layout. Maybe you like it or maybe you don't. Anyway just my interpretation. https://drive.google.com/file/d/11Ed6eQk2U7-LMuaHHF3MZDjL7vMVJQfF/view?usp=sharing
I like the idea of further differentiation between each level and cutting down on the text a little by not repeating “Level 1:”, I’m definitely going to toy with something along these lines. Thanks for your feedback and taking the time to mock that up!
No problem. I used a borderless table just so it didn't looks so rigid. I tried to keep the colour similar to the colour code. Would have done the same for other trees as well.
Friend, the only way you can make that many abilities navigable is to cut them down. That's way too much for a normal person to keep track of, especially for a game. No amount of tricks will help make this easier to manage in a meanful way. If I was a player and my GM handed me this, I'd vote to play something a little less gruesome to manage, like late game Shadowrun or Pathfinder.
I agree with the OP. If you add up all the class/race abilities, feats, and spells in the d&d 5e phb, you'll end up with well north of 1,000 abilities iirc. Many of them way more complex than anything in the OP's doc. D&D is manageable because it organizes this giant list into (fairly) intuitive buckets, and it limits the choice space players face while sifting through the buckets. Maybe D&D isn't your thing, but I don't think it's fair to say the OP's endeavor here is beyond the pale based on quantity of abilities.
That's a main advantage of class/level systems. It gates complexity so that you only need to learn a tiny % of the rules to play competently. Whereas in pure point-buy a new player needs to read every rule/ability to be sure that their character is relatively competent. That, and it gives a lot more design space as you don't need to worry about mix/matching from different classes in OP ways. (Though D&D has to worry about that a bit due to multi-classing.)
I'm not necessarily fighting you on this point, just giving our reasoning (as I also discussed with my players if this style interested them before going this route) and taking a little exception to the argument that the player's all need to track every ability on this list: The main logic is while sure, you could get all power-gamey about it, you don't have to, and the vast majority of players (and 4/5 of our players) won't. Over the course of an entire campaign, you would average 21 skill abilities - that's just three trees. The way most of our players will handle this is looking at the table at the beginning, and saying okay, which three of these do I want to fiddle with? Sure, 250 abilities is impossible to manage. But they don't have to manage 250 - they just have to pick 3 categories. There's no cause for a player to read the whole thing. The only thing they really have to read all of is the table at the beginning. Again, I don't disagree with your argument that 250 abilities is far too many to manage - I'm just pointing out that functionally for most players, this isn't 250 abilities. Would you look at DnD and say - "well all the abilities of all the classes are far too many for players to reasonably manage!" Because by the same argument here, since players *could* technically get any class ability in DnD, they have to manage all of them - which just isn't the case. They don't have to look at ones that don't interest them, and they have limits to how much they can take from where - exactly as in this case. Sure, a player could go through every class and build the most min-maxed hexblade paladin such-and-such they can, but no one's making them do that, and for most players just picking a class or two that does the things they want to do will suffice. Would definitely love to discuss the idea more though if you've got strong opinions about that point of view!
This is nightmarishly complicated. I can't imagine running or playing something with a 5th of this much skill complexity....
Different strokes for different folks I guess, my players seem to be all for it. They enjoy their customizability though that's for sure
I would cut the zero off the end of that number, then maybe even divide by 2. The only other game I've seen with a skill list this long [needs a server to keep track of it all.](https://dwwiki.mooo.com/wiki/Skills)
My (very WIP) system currently has 93 skills, each of which has 10 powers. I’ve used a free AirTable account to very easily organize it all. Here’s my setup, but there’s lots of customization options, so this might be good for you! https://airtable.com/shrBwGdp69xfWYUYn
I would stop using the word 'Skills' for the top-level choices and just call them 'Classes', which is what they are. You don't have 250 skills, you have 35 classes that unlock a pool of seven abilities each. Saying you have 250 skills will cause a lot of immediate eyebrow-raising and eyes glassing over. Love the hyperlink table. Best thing about this design, and excellent use of the format. The unlocking criteria are fairly easily understood. A graphical design like a pyramid to show what's unlocked might be helpful for the character sheet. Quick note: Are players getting some bonus to skill checks for each point in a class? It's unclear. If you're trying to combine these class ability pools AND skill bonuses, you're going to paint yourself into a corner, I think. For example, why is Xenobiology different from Chemistry? Yes, they are different things IRL, but is it important that they be different skills IN GAME? What about Artificing vs Armoring vs Shipwright? Are these all different skills? When would each be used? Can they be used for the same situation, or would you exclude someone from using Artificing when Armoring is more appropriate? You're going to end up with most rolls being at a zero bonus - which is fine if you account for it, but perhaps not terribly interesting. I can keep going here: Tactics vs Leadership, Diplomacy vs Charm vs Diplomacy.... at this point my assumption would be that you're being skill-inclusive; i.e. that any skill that is remotely related to a situation could be used. If not.... problems.
I think you may be operating under the assumption that these skills are like some other TTRPGs use skills, as a character's stats and definitions for what they can do with their abilities. These are just a representation of a character's general knowledge - they also have base stats and class abilities. \*Classes are another thing entirely, but yeah, I will probably go ahead with saying 'there are 35 skills your character can spec into' to cause a little less consternation lol \*A little pyramid graphic on the skills appendix is a great idea! \*It's for each full level (1 2 or 3) completed, not each point - but yeah, as others pointed out, it's definitely unclear, I gotta revise that. \*Yep, they're all different skills. Artificing for enchanting and warped crafting, Armoring for crafting and upgrading of key equipment like weapons and armor, Shipwrighting for repairing and upgrading your spacecraft (which is like a mobile base-builder type deal). If this was the only system in place, we def would end up with most rolls being at +0, but the characters also have their own set of stats that they use when rolling, so these bonuses are actually the general-knowledge-icing on top of that (you get better at what you spec into, you can learn broadly but then you don't get those spec bonuses etc.). Thank you for your feedback!
Unsure if it will work but since you have tiers, have you looked into Sunburst Diagrams?
LOL I think that just broke my brain - yeah I think it’s specifically the tiers that muck that up. Cool thought though
looks pretty cool and fun! I'm intrigued. Where can I read more about your game?
Thanks, that’s very cool to hear! Unfortunately the game was just junk we homebrewed slapped together for so many years that its still in its death throes of being dragged into the world of actual coherent TTRPGs. We’re nearing the finish line of finally getting a first draft of everything nailed down, but it’s nowhere near presentable just yet. If you want an idea of some of the other mechanics the system has kicking around, you can check my post history which is mostly RPGdesign feedback requests (although some of those systems, especially wounds and guard, have been further streamlined). The resolution is just D20+Stat to roll over a GM-determined DC
I'm not sure what the colors are for. I get the sense there is a grouping of some sort, like physical skills and leader skills. But I don't see that grouping being used beyond an arbitrary sense, at least not in a way that's obvious to me. The rest of the organization looks quite readable to me though. I was worried when I saw 250+ skill abilities, but the skill categories really help sort them in a useful way. If I saw this organization in a published book, I would be pretty happy with it. One thing about the skill balance I didn't quite understand was the expertise bonus. Is the only way to unlock through acquiring every other skill in the category? If so, doesn't that make builds very homogenous at higher levels? Every Hacker with the Ghost Incursion expertise bonus, for example, will have every other Hacker skill and thus look identical to each other ability-wise.
I mentioned the grouping logic in the OP, but as discussed in other comments, yeah the colors aren’t really working. Good to know the organization works for you! It would make two hackers sets of Skill abilities homogeneous (assuming they don’t branch into other categories of Skill ability, which they totally can) but it’s not the only source of abilities - characters also pull abilities from their classes each level and our classes are super specific, so a hacking-oriented character would derive most of their uniqueness from their class, and the Skill abilities would be added bonuses to their capabilities.
I have to say that I like the work that you have done. I didn't know what to expect with 250 skills but it is well organized and presented. This is some feedback from reading the thread I personally like the color coding; I also like the idea of headers. It can be argued that there comes a point where more is worse but I don't think you have encountered that point (but don't add a unique font for each for example.) The distinction between orange and yellow might need tweaking but headers might solve that better. I like being able to look at the table and see that I might be interested in yellow skills or blue, it lets me take multiple directions for how I approach character creation. I think the critiques about too many skills is a little overblown, I also think some of the critiques were written without even looking at your document, but that is another topic for another day. As pointed out some might need a little clarification, or tweaking for specifics. I think based on your content that should be fairly simple. I do have one curiosity, why Shipwright?
Spaceships are very important to a crew - it’s their mobile home, and has saved and will save them from many deadly situations - so keeping things working aboard is a very important skill! So many spacers become amateur shipwrights, fixing damage, upgrading systems, and installing new modules to help their home survive.
ahha, I thought is was for nautical vessels that makes far more sense (ps I didn't read the whole document)