Favored Skills: Thoughts on Concept?

[Corvo]

I also toyed with that idea, Rich, but I thought it might be too good. Glad to see you've given it a run through. What are the costs, if you don't mind me asking? 3 /6 / 9 / 12 /15 /18? (ie, multiples of 3 instead of 4?)

That's exactly what I went with.

I'm pretty happy with how this works out in play (ie, it doesn't change any rules with regard to what Favoured Skills do) but it does make them more attractive to develop as they are noticeably cheaper; especially at higher ranks.

Just to be sure: this wa you got rid of the whole "favored attribute" number on the sheet?

[Láthspell]

Favored Skills are simply an added bit of customization to the attributes. Sure, if you reply purely on skill dice and you absolutely refused to spend Hope on a skill check it doesn't matter if the skill is favored… but then it doesn't matter what your attributes are either. Using that as a guideline a Hunting match between a Beorning and a Woodwoman of equal skill would seem like a toss up as to who would win.

As has been mentioned, Attributes (and by extension Favored Attributes and Favored Skills) are really about minimizing chance. Beran of the Mountains and the Bride both have a Hunting skill of 3, purely from that perspective they have a equal chance of success. The Bride's favored skill gets a bonus of 9 if she spends Hope, whereas Beran only get a bonus of 4. Statistically they should both be able to beat a TN of 14 with 3 dice, but the dice don't always roll your way, and the Bride has a much larger margin for error needing only a 5 versus Beran needing a 10. So while both are skilled at Hunting, the Bride would clearly be the more reliable of the two.

Favored skills also allow a character to be skilled in areas that are outside of the norm for their Culture. For example, Caranthir the Wood-Elf can has a poor Heart score of 2, and thus when he fails at a Inspiring, Traveling, Healing or Courtesy, the chances are slim that Hope will help him pull through. Despite his low Heart however, there are two skills that he has favored and so he gains 5 from Hope for Insight and Battle. Thus his chances of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat when engaged in such tasks is much more likely.

From a story-telling perspective the favored skills help paint a more detailed picture of the hero. Rather than just being another Elf with low Heart, Caranthir (Envoy of the King) is instead an experienced combat veteran, who is trusted by the Elven-King for his keen insight into the hearts or men, dwarves, and elves.

What if those favored skills were instead Travel and Stealth? This Envoy's skills hint at an Elf who journeys to distant lands, possibly sneaking past enemy lines. Their skills might even be identical but which ones are favored still tell different stories.

Anyhow, the gist is that I feel that Favored Skills add quite a bit to the game.

[Rich H]

I also toyed with that idea, Rich, but I thought it might be too good. Glad to see you've given it a run through. What are the costs, if you don't mind me asking? 3 /6 / 9 / 12 /15 /18? (ie, multiples of 3 instead of 4?)

That's exactly what I went with.

I'm pretty happy with how this works out in play (ie, it doesn't change any rules with regard to what Favoured Skills do) but it does make them more attractive to develop as they are noticeably cheaper; especially at higher ranks.

Just to be sure: this wa you got rid of the whole "favored attribute" number on the sheet?

No.

[Jakob]

Anyhow, the gist is that I feel that Favored Skills add quite a bit to the game.

The way you put it, it actually makes a lot of sense. I guess I never looked at this game mechanic so closely. I just kept looking at underlined skills that ended up under attributes with a score like 4(5) and thought "Meh." - but in other cases, they might make quite a big difference.
To allow a very, very small degree of min-maxing, it might make sense to have players assign their favoured attributes at the end of character generation, when they know all of the favoured skills they ended up with. Otherwise, it might be really frustrating if you end up with two underlined skills in your 2(3) column ...

[Láthspell]

Oh good, I'm glad my ravings helped clarify things and didn't make it more confusing. As for assigning the Favored Attributes after all the Favored Skills have been determined, I see absolutely no issue with that. In fact, that is how it's done on Azrapse's Character Generator. If you haven't used it before, I would highly recommend taking a look. http://azrapse.es/tor/sheet.html

[Jakob]

As for assigning the Favored Attributes after all the Favored Skills have been determined, I see absolutely no issue with that. http://azrapse.es/tor/sheet.html

I just looked it up, and that is actually how it works in the RAW. I just never did it that way, instead assigning the favoured attributes along with the attribute scores from the background ...

[Rocmistro]

Favored Skills are simply an added bit of customization to the attributes. Sure, if you reply purely on skill dice and you absolutely refused to spend Hope on a skill check it doesn't matter if the skill is favored… but then it doesn't matter what your attributes are either. Using that as a guideline a Hunting match between a Beorning and a Woodwoman of equal skill would seem like a toss up as to who would win.

As has been mentioned, Attributes (and by extension Favored Attributes and Favored Skills) are really about minimizing chance. Beran of the Mountains and the Bride both have a Hunting skill of 3, purely from that perspective they have a equal chance of success. The Bride's favored skill gets a bonus of 9 if she spends Hope, whereas Beran only get a bonus of 4. Statistically they should both be able to beat a TN of 14 with 3 dice, but the dice don't always roll your way, and the Bride has a much larger margin for error needing only a 5 versus Beran needing a 10. So while both are skilled at Hunting, the Bride would clearly be the more reliable of the two.

Favored skills also allow a character to be skilled in areas that are outside of the norm for their Culture. For example, Caranthir the Wood-Elf can has a poor Heart score of 2, and thus when he fails at a Inspiring, Traveling, Healing or Courtesy, the chances are slim that Hope will help him pull through. Despite his low Heart however, there are two skills that he has favored and so he gains 5 from Hope for Insight and Battle. Thus his chances of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat when engaged in such tasks is much more likely.

From a story-telling perspective the favored skills help paint a more detailed picture of the hero. Rather than just being another Elf with low Heart, Caranthir (Envoy of the King) is instead an experienced combat veteran, who is trusted by the Elven-King for his keen insight into the hearts or men, dwarves, and elves.

What if those favored skills were instead Travel and Stealth? This Envoy's skills hint at an Elf who journeys to distant lands, possibly sneaking past enemy lines. Their skills might even be identical but which ones are favored still tell different stories.

Anyhow, the gist is that I feel that Favored Skills add quite a bit to the game.

I appreciate your comments, but having played now in 5 TOR campaigns (1 real life, 3 play by posts and 1 Google+) I haven't seen favored skills having a big effect in game. I suppose I personally find them a bit lackluster because I'm the type of player who enjoys agonizing over every single character creation decision, and currently, I don't find that the assignment of favored skills really has that much of an impact that I need to agonize over it. Also, given the constraints associated with where and how you get all 4 of them makes it tricky to really base a character around them (and I don't mean for min-maxing purposes) but rather just concept.

[Hermes Serpent]

If I was running for a group that didn't have say 20 sessions under their belt I might go with allowing the character to adjust Distinctive Features either in line with the current rules for doing so or during the game if they feel that nothing in the current choices suits their concept or it just isn't playing how they thought it would. My reasoning for this is that the game should be fun and penalising someone for not rigidly playing the character's Traits and thus not allowing the potential for advancement is fundamentally unfair.

Currently I've allowed characters to adjust their armour when they found after a half dozen sessions that they didn't have quite enough Endurance to cope and I've allowed characters to retroactively change around some spent points when they found that the Reward or Virtue just wasn't happening for them. There's no point in making a player unhappy as that often ends up wrecking the game.