Beefing up "Favoured" skills

[Glorelendil]

I've always defended the rules for "favoured" against those troglodytes who dare criticize TOR (free attribute bonus, my arse), but...

When my inner min-maxer is ascendant, I'm tempted to game the system by using "favoured" purely for AP economy. That is, I try to pick skills that have the lowest initial score, and not spend any background points on those skills, simply to save the most AP over time, without really caring which skills they are or how they fit the character concept.

But what...my inner RP-er argued...favoured skills were structured something like traits. That is, "invoking" them gives you something useful? Especially some mechanic that would create an additional incentive to invest AP in those skills.

Options I came up with:
- You can use favoured skills for auto-successes just like traits, albeit with the "one per scene" limitation. E.g. the LM calls for everybody to three Stealth checks, and you have Stealth so you claim one auto-success. Then you succeed on the next two, so you get an AP for the first roll and you invoke the Stealth "trait" on the second one for yet another AP. That's a "perfect storm" scenario, but it illustrates how it would work.
- Favoured skills reduce the "cost" of earning AP when used. So the first and second AP would require simple successes, while the third would require either a Great Success or a simple success with the invocation of a normal trait.
- Tengwars with Favoured Skills can be used for something, e.g. helping other people succeed on their tests, or granting a bonus die to another roll made during the same "scene". Kind of bookkeeping heavy, but maybe you count up those tengwars, sort of like punches on your loyalty card at the coffee shop, and every N tengwars you get a point of Hope refunded, or an XP, or something.

Other ideas? What do you think about the basic premise? I.e., don't increase baseline chance of success with favoured skills, but encourage both investing in and using those skills?

[Falenthal]

- Favoured skills reduce the "cost" of earning AP when used. So the first and second AP would require simple successes, while the third would require either a Great Success or a simple success with the invocation of a normal trait.

That's probably the optimal idea, IMHO, from the three. It doesn't step into other mechanics (skills treated as Traits) and doesn't need bookeeping.

Although APs earned "easily" with, say, Stealth can later be used to increase the ranks from a non-favourite skill. That doesn't make a lot of sense. Requiring a lower AP cost to increase for favoured skills is enough benefit, I think.

[Glorelendil]

Requiring a lower AP cost to increase for favoured skills is enough benefit, I think.

Hmm. As I noted, that creates an incentive to choose skills that start off low, and to not invest background points. The two bonuses even contradict each other: as you increase a skill you are less likely to need a bigger attribute bonus (although possibly that is by design to make sure you are "better" at the skill regardless of level).

The incentive should (imo) be to choose skills that fit your character concept. And currently it does not do that, especially if you have a trait that covers the skill in question. E.g., if your character is supposed to be the sneaky type and you have both Burglary and Elusive, why bother making Stealth favoured, or even spending points on it? You can always invoke a trait for an auto-success.

A sentiment is commonly expressed that "favoured" means "better at"; what I am suggesting is that it means what the word means: you favour the skill in the sense of preferring to use it. It's the way you like to solve problems. Thus there should be an incentive for using it to tell your character's story, not just an increased chance of success when you do use it.

[Falenthal]

I need to rush to some errands right now (real world ones, nothing like Aragorn's...), but this idea popped-up:

"When a Trait is invoked regarding a favourite Skill (auto-success, gaining an AP, allowing a skill test when otherwise unable), you can use invoke the Trait for a second use regarding the same roll (auto-success + gaining one AP, gaining two APs from a single roll, allowing a skill test and auto-success at said test,...)."

It's a bit like those Undertakings that allow you to gain a Trait for the next Adventure phase, and that allow for two Trait invocations if the hero already possesses that Trait.

Have to go now.
I'm sure your bright head will be able to do something out of it.

[Glorelendil]

My first reaction was to like the idea of synergy between traits and favored skills. But then it occurred to me that it would reward certain obvious pairings, thus reducing choice. So I think the two things need to remain unlinked.

The result I'm looking for is that given the choice between two skills of the same rank, on a task/test for which you would not spend Hope, you would still have an incentive to use the favored skill. Making it slightly easier to earn AP is one way.

[Falenthal]

it would reward certain obvious pairings, thus reducing choice.

The way I see it, that's true.
Swift+Athletics, or Fair Spoken+Courtesy, etc.

But it would also lead to overspecialized characters that would lack in other terrains. That is also an option in character creation, and not a very good one in TOR.

Nevertheless, I understand your concern.
Still working on some idea...

[Falenthal]

When rolling an Epic result (Gandalf plus, at least, one Tengwar) with a Favourite Skill, automatically gain one AP (to the total account, not the skill group).

This induces to have some ranks in the skill, to increase the chance of Tengwars, and to roll instead of invoking autosuccesses. And favours rolling a favoured skill over other, just in case your lucky.

[zedturtle]

It seems to be that this is a tricky thing to define as a problem, due to various places that favoured skills come from (it's tricky to pick optimally for this efficiency and for all other efficiencies at the same time). That said, the way I would probably want to "fix" it would be to great encouragement for investing in favoured skills... perhaps an Undertaking that allowed you to utilise a Favoured skill and then you roll that skill. On a Great Success, you start with one AP in that category, and with an Extraordinary success you start with two AP in the category.

That way, you're paying for something (giving up an Undertaking), getting something (a possible 2-for-1 deal on APs), but not so much that you're eclipsing other players and you're encouraged to invest in the Favoured skill early on. Yes, in theory, you could spend the AP earned by the Training Undertaking on a different skill, but you get a discount on favoured skills and a positive feedback loop, so I doubt that'd be much of a concern.

[Glorelendil]

That's an interesting general idea: favoured skills become something you can use in a special way during Fellowship Phases. Maybe even something that encourages you to use all of them.

How's this:
Undertaking: Demonstrate Mastery
You spend the Fellowship Phase engaged in a variety of activities that challenge the skills at which you excel. Describe what you do and how you use your favoured skills. For each favoured skill make a single test: for each Tengwar rolled you get a bonus die to be used in the following Adventure Phase (which can only be spent on common skills, not combat or Wisdom/Valour, and only one die per roll).

Yes, it takes a bit more bookkeeping, but not a lot. You could circle the skill, or put a checkmark next to it.

On the other hand, that approach still doesn't encourage players to use their favoured skills while adventuring, which was part of the point.

Hmm. No perfect solution yet.

[Rich H]

Seems like there's a couple of things at work here with regard to Favoured Skills:

1) They are cheaper to increase due to reduced AP costs

2) You'd like them to become more important within at-the-table gameplay

For (1) I'd simply remove the rules in advancement that let Favoured Skills be more cheaply increased. That way you reduce the desire to start off with lower ratings in those skills for starting characters. It's still there to some degree though as using the Favoured Attribute when applying an attribute bonus would give a 1, 2, or 3 point increase to those skills. Is this still enough of an 'exploit' for players to be straight-jacketed into certain character creation choices? Not sure.

For (2) I like the idea of them interacting with traits and/or AP gain in some way but don't have any ideas that haven't already been mentioned. Will need to think about this a little more...