Phoenix (skill mechanism)

[Alex Koponen]

    Burton has an excellent point. Though I'd played D&D since 1976, by the time (1984) when P&P came out I was tired of D&D's poor design. 3rd Ed. D&D has done an excellent job of improving the game, not least because it came up with a single better and more elegant game mechanism for attributes and another for combat. 
    P&P would be simpler to learn and easier to play if it only had a single elegant skill/combat mechanism (that worked well for all things). So far as I see the P&P attribute (ability) system is fine.

    One of the things that I liked about RuneQuest was the skill improvement system as we played it with our houserules. Each successful use of a skill would get a checkmark to the skill. When time was available to ponder what had happened (after a battle - not during) one could roll to increase in any skill checked. Multiple checks meant an improved chance of successfully increasing the skill. 
    In combat P&P gives an automatic expertise, once only per skill, that requires knowing the CDF of the highest CDF opponent the skill was used against. Actually I believe that Scott uses a house rule modification eliminating the once only limitation. Rule 2.22 also lists other ways expertise is gained.

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Choinski, Burton 
  To: POWERS-AND-PERILS at geo000.CITG.TUDELFT.NL 
  Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 7:22 AM
  Subject: Re: Phoenix


  The biggest problem that I see P&P "classic" to have is differing rules for what really could use the same mechanism.  Combat uses one form of die roll mechanism, while Magic uses a similar method.  Ranged combat has a kind of odd "bolt-on" flavor.  Skills are resolved with a different mechanism (and where some are EL based, while others are percentage, how the skills are handled is also different. Even some skills or abilities (Climbing, swimming, dodge) have special case resolution mechanisms that make it unweildy.  

  I see no reason why a general skill mechanism cannot be figured out that can apply to all skill tasks. The hard trick has always been to retain the "cinematic" feel (or "conan-ness", if you prefer) where a PC can take on a bunch of mooks and have a reasonable chance of making it out (if he is careful), but not to make it so much so that player characters can completely run roughshod over the world. 

  I think a good part of the complexity can be evened out if some of the odd mechanisms can be collapsed into fewer ones.  An example of this I might point to is my "target-12" skill variant system, on Wout's site.  
           -- Burton
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