Rebalance Skill modifiers

[zhazz]

There are hundreds of items readily available (often through the RIG or Second Hand), which grant +3 in various skills. Combined with pre-generated items from the shops and/or drop pool the combined bonuses reach ridiculous totals.

A few days spent checking e.g. Second Hand near the end of the reset cycles (more items generated that way) can quickly yield an item of +2 or +3 bonuses to each item slot (11 total), for a combined bonus of +22 to +33, or 27 avg. All for an average low cost of ~1500 gold a piece, or ~18000 gold total.

Considering the server is not supposed to be high magic, this seems counter-productive. As magical bonuses on items can (with the addition of a few rare +4 skill items) outpace builds that have invested into specific skills.

I don't know how often it happens that someone changes item sets during an event to get +30 bonus to e.g. Astronomy. But if it's possible to do, I'm confident that it does happen. When it does, someone with low-to-none investment in e.g. Astronomy can suddenly outperform someone who actually invested into the skill, and thus be the one getting critical information during said event (DCs during events is another topic altogether).

Therefore I'd like to propose that skill bonuses be categorized as follows:

Type	Sources	Stacks?
Innate	Base skill, racials, class bonus, feats, attribute modifier, synergies	Yes
Focus	Skill focus (+3), Epic skill focus (+10)	No
Enhancement	Items, magic, consumables	No

Bonuses from Enhancements and bonuses from Focus do not stack within their category.
In effect only the highest value from among all the Enhancement sources and all the Focus sources would be applied, with the new formula looking like so:
Base Skill + Racials + Attribute Mod + Synergies + Feats + Class Bonuses + Enhancement + Focus

This should bring the typical maximum to:
55 => 33 Base Skill + 2 Racial Bonus + 11 Attribute Mod + 2 Synergies + 4 Greater Heroism +3 Skill Focus.
For most skills that is a total of 55. Class specific bonuses, Feats and Epic Focus can then take it higher.

The highest non-stacking Enhancement bonus is Camouflage (+10 to Hide), whereas the highest in general is Greater Heroism.


Numbers can therefore still be quite high. But magic and items on the unskilled won't outshine the skilled anymore.
More emphasis is put on being innately good at something, versus carrying a wardrobe of "what do I want to be today?" items.


A bonus from this suggested change is that Sneaks and Anti-Sneaks no longer have to stack Hide / Move Silently gear or Spot / Listen gear to be maxed out. This opens up a lot more interesting opportunities for gearing choices. More freedom in gearing essentially.

Edit:
Added part about more item variety for sneaks and anti-sneaks.

[Lockonnow]

well i have fund some unique Shields that have skills one wit heal and other with Athletics.

[Quartz]

I would be open to skills on equipment not stacking if the max skill bonus was upped from 4 to 50.

[zhazz]

I would be open to skills on equipment not stacking if the max skill bonus was upped from 4 to 50.

That defeats the entire purpose, and just makes it worse.

Purpose is to make innate skill matter more than equipment and magic.

[Quartz]

I would be open to skills on equipment not stacking if the max skill bonus was upped from 4 to 50.

That defeats the entire purpose, and just makes it worse.

Purpose is to make innate skill matter more than equipment and magic.

If the purpose is to make innate skill more important in events, then it's not necessary to change anything. You could just propose an event policy that DMs do not consider skill bonuses from magic or items in their events.

[DaloLorn]

Unfortunately, the DMs have no easy way of discerning this unless they're aggressively scrutinizing the offending PC at the time the roll is made. Skill synergies, ability scores, skill foci, and class/racial feats can bump certain skills to 50 or higher without a single magical item or spell effect. (Case in point, one of my PCs gets half of her modified Diplomacy skill just from having 5 ranks in every skill that synergizes with Diplomacy! If she had a higher Charisma score and put a full 33 points into the skill...)

The death of skill stacking has been long overdue, and delayed mostly by concerns around the consequences for the stealth/perception meta (and to a lesser extent Feint; and arguably Appraise needing to be rebalanced for a post-stacking world). Those concerns are unfortunately still valid, but that we cannot escape the broken system does not mean we cannot acknowledge its brokenness.

[zhazz]

Feint can be fixed by changing the contested roll to use Sense Motive rather than Spot, so it aligns with the source books. Monster stats are being reworked anyway, so giving them appropriate levels of Sense Motive could be part of that.

Appraise should be fixable by adjusting the discount formula.

Granted, both of those are likely black-boxed for some obscure reason. However, we have some highly talented developers on the server, who have performed miracles before with such things.


That only leaves Stealth / Perception.
Arguably that will be less of a hassle with my suggested change. It is no longer a mad scramble to get as many items with bonuses as possible, which cancel each other out anyway. Instead it is tied to the builds themselves, with items being a much smaller part — most of the time outdone by magic.

Dedicated Stealth / Perception builds should be able to reach low 60ies possibly high 60ies with the suggested change. Which is still ~25 less for both than what they can currently get to. That's 25 skill increase points from items no longer needed, which can go into more interesting stuff.

[Garnet]

On its surface I'm totally against changing the system. In order to go all out and 'skill stack' on your equipment, you are likely making many other sacrifices in the gear you choose to use. This allows for much more play style versatility then everyone just being at "33" for the skills they want, then wearing a one piece of +3 gear for each of those said skills-- the sense of being dedicated and specialized in something will be greatly diminished (Unless the feats are dramatically improved, like make 'stealthy' give +10/10, individual Skill focuses give +15 sort of thing to reward the truly dedicated).

Maybe a good middle ground compromise would be removing the 'non functional RP only' skills from equipment. Skills like all the 'Lore:Local, Lore:Nature, Gather Information, Diplomacy' etc. would be skills that can only be achieved by putting points into them naturally on your character. Picking these skills is a total sacrifice mechanically in playing the game, but that would prevent the "RP Stargazing event, put on +30 Astronomy gear" while still rewarding the characters who invested into these skills for just such an RP moment!

Changing mechanical things like hide/sneak/spot/bluff would have quite a negative effect for a lot of us who dedicate their play styles around them. Not to mention it would probably make treasure hunting/equipment finding a lot less exciting. Something along the lines of "Awesome I found some +4 hide/Move Silent Amulet! Oh wait... I already get this from my gloves... I'll just wear the +4 Natural AC bonus like everyone else."

[Quartz]

Unfortunately, the DMs have no easy way of discerning this unless they're aggressively scrutinizing the offending PC at the time the roll is made. Skill synergies, ability scores, skill foci, and class/racial feats can bump certain skills to 50 or higher without a single magical item or spell effect. (Case in point, one of my PCs gets half of her modified Diplomacy skill just from having 5 ranks in every skill that synergizes with Diplomacy! If she had a higher Charisma score and put a full 33 points into the skill...)

The death of skill stacking has been long overdue, and delayed mostly by concerns around the consequences for the stealth/perception meta (and to a lesser extent Feint; and arguably Appraise needing to be rebalanced for a post-stacking world). Those concerns are unfortunately still valid, but that we cannot escape the broken system does not mean we cannot acknowledge its brokenness.

I don't really see server moving in that direction, to be honest. Mainly due to sneak vs spot in PvM. Even new areas are introduced with monsters that usually have 30+ skills in spotting.

[DaloLorn]

Unfortunately, the DMs have no easy way of discerning this unless they're aggressively scrutinizing the offending PC at the time the roll is made. Skill synergies, ability scores, skill foci, and class/racial feats can bump certain skills to 50 or higher without a single magical item or spell effect. (Case in point, one of my PCs gets half of her modified Diplomacy skill just from having 5 ranks in every skill that synergizes with Diplomacy! If she had a higher Charisma score and put a full 33 points into the skill...)

The death of skill stacking has been long overdue, and delayed mostly by concerns around the consequences for the stealth/perception meta (and to a lesser extent Feint; and arguably Appraise needing to be rebalanced for a post-stacking world). Those concerns are unfortunately still valid, but that we cannot escape the broken system does not mean we cannot acknowledge its brokenness.

I don't really see server moving in that direction, to be honest. Mainly due to sneak vs spot in PvM. Even new areas are introduced with monsters that usually have 30+ skills in spotting.

I mean, I specifically called out stealth being the biggest hurdle!

That said, while pretty hefty, it is theoretically solvable. Just takes a lot more effort than we're likely to see.

[Ewe]

I wrote some tech years ago that could achieve this (or at least a similar version). The main pushback isn't that it isn't a good idea (it most likely is), it's that we'd make a lot of people feel bad who spent countless years, time, and gold on collecting skill sets. I don't really know how to reconcile the sunken cost people.

[Mork]

Personally I'm not a big fan of this. Let's say I have a 30 level toon and invested 1 point in Lore:Arcana. I'm playing on bgtscc for 10 RL years character is learning Arcana by sitting in Candlekeep and reading books everyday.

By 10 years of learning I should absolutely have knowledge of all spells and magic yet my sheet will say : 1 point Lore:Arcana.
Should I be forced to RCR to show this change in my characters knowledge? What about my other skills? Should I be forced to Retcon whole character knowledge? What if It's knowledge crucial to his bio and history? Should I be forced to suddenly stop being a navigator with 30 ranks in Geography that character had when he hit 30 level those 10 years ago?

With items I can at least show effort and character progress.

Proposition would make sense if we'd get skillpoints for roleplaying over time depending on how old your character is on BGTSCC. DMs could award it for RP and character investment in learning process and I believe exactly such thing happens with custom DM items having +skill bonuses. Since we do not have such system (to get extra skillpoints directly on character card) items are the only way to show such effort.

More so you seem to undervalue effort of finding items with +skillstats. Why would it be any less valuable by clicking + sign during levelup? To me it sounds like something with even less effort than checking second hand merchant. Ideal world would be people having skills only if they invest their time into RP learning or heavily describe it in their bio but making system like that seems impossible on server like ours.

It's not like it's natural for character to absolutely stop learning anything at all once 30 level is reached.

[Garnet]

By 10 years of learning I should absolutely have knowledge of all spells and magic yet my sheet will say : 1 point Lore:Arcana.
Should I be forced to RCR to show this change in my characters knowledge? What about my other skills? Should I be forced to Retcon whole character knowledge? What if It's knowledge crucial to his bio and history? Should I be forced to suddenly stop being a navigator with 30 ranks in Geography that character had when he hit 30 level those 10 years ago?

With items I can at least show effort and character progress.

This is really excellent point Mork that I wasn't even considering. With how easy it is to level up now, it would be extremely discouraging to someone who has spent their entire BG career on a skill (Like Stealth for example) only to be on equal terms with someone that started 1 month ago. Should new players be penalized just because they didn't play 15 years ago like some of the veterans, absolutely not... But they should at least have to put in the work (both from an RP and mechanical perspective)

Quartz had a really great idea here:

If the purpose is to make innate skill more important in events, then it's not necessary to change anything. You could just propose an event policy that DMs do not consider skill bonuses from magic or items in their events.

I'm not sure if it's possible, but maybe the "Roll Skill" function can be broken out to show Natural skill + Modifiers so the the DM's can easily distinguish this at a glance? So an RP dice-roll would look something like

"DMFI Dice Roll For: Gather Information MOD 60 (Natural 33 + Equipment 27 + DiceRoll 7) TOTAL: 67 "

Functionally speaking no change to how the skills mechanically work, but from an RP (visual representation), DM's could see at a glance for RP situations and choose to go with the "Natural" skill modifier If they are inclined.

[zhazz]

By 10 years of learning I should absolutely have knowledge of all spells and magic yet my sheet will say : 1 point Lore:Arcana.
Should I be forced to RCR to show this change in my characters knowledge? What about my other skills? Should I be forced to Retcon whole character knowledge? What if It's knowledge crucial to his bio and history? Should I be forced to suddenly stop being a navigator with 30 ranks in Geography that character had when he hit 30 level those 10 years ago?

That's part of the issue, though.
You want to portray your character has acquired a certain proficiency in a given skill over time. So you use items to showcase that. Though some/most of those items are not the ones you will be wearing day-to-day. You put them on when you need to showcase your character's proficiency with e.g. Lore: Arcana. If you are then caught in a situation without those items on, and need to use your Lore: Arcana skill, you are suddenly less proficient than you ordinarily would be.

You could of course pick items that give skill bonuses, while also providing the other bonuses you are after. That's what several people try to do at least. There are downsides to it, however. Typically either reduced skill bonuses, attribute bonuses, armor, or spell slots.

It's not like it's natural for character to absolutely stop learning anything at all once 30 level is reached.

That's a different part of the issue as well. A limitation of the game. Characters max out relatively quickly in mechanical progression, thereby stagnating growth through RP. While I think it could be cool to allow for RP to add to skills over time, it isn't feasible to do so. Either the gains are so slow that it's borderline meaningless, or the gains are so quick that everyone eventually maxes out on everything.

I'm not sure if it's possible, but maybe the "Roll Skill" function can be broken out to show Natural skill + Modifiers so the the DM's can easily distinguish this at a glance? So an RP dice-roll would look something like

"DMFI Dice Roll For: Gather Information MOD 60 (Natural 33 + Equipment 27 + DiceRoll 7) TOTAL: 67 "

Functionally speaking no change to how the skills mechanically work, but from an RP (visual representation), DM's could see at a glance for RP situations and choose to go with the "Natural" skill modifier If they are inclined.

That's definitely an option too. I can see a few (fixable) issues, however.

1. First it would require every DM to treat the rolls the same way, as otherwise a character is a master in one event, and a simpleton in another, despite no changes to the character.
2. Second it's gonna be highly divisive to the player base. Some will find it unfair that they efforts to acquire equipment is not taken into consideration, while others will find it unfair equipment outshines their natural proficiency.
3. Third if DMs agree to only consider the Natural part for events, then equipment with skill bonuses become worthless for events, which is one of the main reasons to invest into a skill in the first place (combat mechanical skills are a different thing entirely).

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A completely different option could be to keep the stacking of skills, but put a cap on it, which scales with maximum base rank possible. For example 50% (rounded up) of maximum base rank. That would give the following:

Level	Class Skill?	Max Base Rank	Max Magic/Item Bonus
7	Yes	10	5
15	Yes	18	9
30	Yes	33	17
7	No	5	3
15	No	11	6
30	No	17	9

That way magic/items can only get a character so far. There's incentive to get Class Skills, and to invest into skills.

[Mork]

Clicking + during level up takes much less effort than finding set of +30 skill gear on items. If anything having items should be considered as better than having levels in skill if we really are to take effort into account. I know this statement sounds absurd but think about it. You can level 3 characters having maxed like 4-5 skills before you'll find perfect set of gear for a single skill on one character.

What you're really want to propose is what you just admitted is not feasible - eg Skills for RP that's actual effort.

We can't have above so we have second best option which is rolls taking into account both modifiers from skillpoints spent and enchanted gear.

Trying to favor one over other feels just wrong. Both things come absurdly effortless when compared to actual days, months and years of roleplaying the learning proces and roleplaying a character itself.