Homebrewing Skills In Tales Of Argosa

 The skill system in ToA is simple. It is easy to learn, straightforward at the table and fast.

But I like a bit more in my skills systems. I like to be able to distinguish between a character who can do a thing, and one who is really good at it.

And I like the Traveller system.

The ToA system , RAW, is basically to add +1 to your Attribute when you make an aatribute check, if you have the skill. And there doesn't seem at first to be a lot of scope for fiddling with that, because of numbers and scope and 1-20, and so on. There's an option to make the skill a necessity for trying in some circumstances.

But there is another rule, in the character progression system, which kind of runs alongside this skill system. That rule is that every time a charcter levels up, they gain +1 to an attribute of their choice. Every time they level up. That's actually very generous. It isn't a bad rule, but it's probably open to abuse, if a player just keeps piling it onto the same aatribute every time. Basically, I think it is more generous than necessary. 

Every time an attribute increases, of course, every skill check you every make with that aatribute, wether you have the skill or not, also gets easier.

So my homebrew version of this rule will be to swap out some of those attribute increases for a skill point instead, and have a scale of skill level from 1 to 4.

I'll keep attribute increases, because everyone enjoys that buzz, but only at levels 3, 6 and 9.

On all the other levels, you get a skill point to put into an existing skill. Maybe characters will only get a new skill at the points where the Rules as they stand already give one and I'll award an improvement skill point at every level, so characters can develop a few skills. I'll have to play around with it. But either way, not increasing attributes so often ought to balance that out. Mostly.

I'll have to playtest this, to see how it works, of course. As an optional extra, I may even go full Traveller mode and award a penalty to trying something that requires a skill the character doesn't have. That's a but tough and I'll only do it if players are happy with it. After all, there is already the option to put a bar of Great Successes if oyu don't have the skill (which i totally use already).

Anyway, as always, if you get around to trying this out, please let me know how it goes.