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The thread that Michebugio started about customizing backgrounds got me thinking about a grievance I have with the game, specifically with regards to favored skills. Before i rail on it too hard though, I wanted to offer it up for suggestion and see if I was missing something.

In his thread I noted that I have always had a hard time getting excited about favored skills. I kind of think they are a moot point.

My thinking goes like this: The skills I want my characters to be good at, I'm going to put skill ranks into, because the potential for great and extraordinary successes much better reflect my understanding of being good at a skill. Also, to me, being good at something suggests NOT having to spend hope points to succeed at it. (The very idea of having or wanting a skill to be favored means that in order to realize it's full potential, you have to be comfortable with the idea of using hope to activate it.)

Since being good at a skill (3 or more ranks) generally all but insures success (except in cases of weary) - and certainly puts it within range of success via the basic attribute bonus - the idea of backing something up by making it favored seems incredibly redundant (and thus, wasteful).

Thus, the only application I can see for favored skills are skills for which I only intend on ever having 1 or 2 ranks (0 ranks being too few, and 3 or more being too many).

That seems very lackluster to me...and a little..I dunno..pitiful.

Am I missing something? How do you guys interpret, use, or get excited about favored skills?

If I remember correctly, in my TOR game (which, sadly, lasted only 5 sessions) players were spending a lot of hope even on skills they had at three. After all, invoking an attribute bonus is a good way to succeed at extraordinary tasks, so it represents the ability to once in a while pull something off that pretty much no one else will be able to do.

However, I also don't see a great advantage in a skill being favoured - after all, it makes a difference of only 1-3 points, and often, you will end up with one or even two favoured skills in the attribute group where you have only favoured +1. To me, it seem's like an element of the rules that is really not needed, as opposed to the invoking of attribute bonusses that, to my mind, are a vital part of the system.

Jakob wrote:(...) To me, it seem's like an element of the rules that is really not needed, as opposed to the invoking of attribute bonusses that, to my mind, are a vital part of the system.

Same as me. When I explained the rules to my players I skipped the whole favored thing. Only once they got a functional knowledge of the rules I introduced them (2-3th session).
Sometimes my players forget what they are, 'cause the in-game effect is pretty light.

Ages ago -in the old forum- I asked the design reason for the favored thing, yet I got no answer.

Yeah I'd be interested in hearing the official reasoning on that also. But there is a lot of insight from the more experienced people on this forum as well, hence why I opened it up for discussion.

I'm not ready to poo-poo on it just yet. I really *like* the idea in concept, I just don't know that the mechanics of it really play out that well.

It's actually the same for me, sadly.

This gets even worse for an Elf: since ALL of his Common Skills will become Favored most of the time (thanks to Folk of the Dusk), my Elf player didn't even bother choosing reasonable Favored Skills at character creation!

He almost took them at random

We too think favored skills are almost worthless in play, to the point that we all forget about them entirely. I'm not sure how to improve them though, without needlessly complicating things. Perhaps doubling the favored bonuses?

Rocmistro - would you be terribly offended if I ask you to edit the name of your thread? It's unnecessarily out of character with the atmosphere we'd like to preserve hereabouts.

(Agree on what Jon says, the title may also be misleading somehow)


By the way, I once toyed with the idea that a Favored Skill shall grant you a (fixed) bonus to the roll equal to the relevant Attribute, without spending Hope, much like the NPCs and monsters.

You could still spend Hope on a Favored Skill roll, specifically to raise further that bonus up to the Favored Attribute score.

In the end, I dropped it: that made Favored Skills hugely more important, while also decreasing drastically the difficulty of the game.

Thanks for the edit - greatly appreciated.

I thought about ruling it (less dramatically) that the ease by which you generate AP's when using favored skills is moreso than non-favored skills. (This allows it to stay within the realm of LM governed approval.)