How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

[Dead guy on tab]

As a GM, I would like to balance the players' powers with their skills. Unfortunately, skills often are purchased as an afterthought once the powers are sorted out. This is especially a problem with new characters. How do I emphasize skill use without either having the plot drag (because the character's haven't purchased skills) or having NPC's always showing them up (because the NPC's have skills the player's don't)?

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

 

Some possibilities:

 

1 ) Build the characters yourself with player input.

 

2 ) Reserve part of their points for "noncombat" skills. For example, make the game 175 base + 25 skills + 150 disads instead of 200+150.

 

3 ) Reserve part of their experience for skills only.

 

4 ) Reward the use of skills they do have. If Captain Computron gets cool moments out of his Computer Programming, he'll start looking into Security Systems, Cryptography and the like and other players will take note too. This may involve some early tailoring of scenarios to allow particular skills to come into play.

[OddHat]

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

 

Generally, I ask players what their characters do for a living, and then have them buy skills accordingly. If you're a soldier, you get the full package every NPC soldier carries; if you're a scientist, you get the science skills. Even the player who says "Stripper" still ends up with at least familiarity with Seduction, Trading, PS:Stripper, and Streetwise.

 

I tell them that I view a skill on their sheet as a request from the player to me as a GM to add a scene now and then where that skill will come in handy, and where the character will have a chance to shine. No points are wasted; if you spend 1-3 points on KS: Arcane and Occult Lore, you know that your character will occasionally get to advance the plot with his knowledge, getting as much or more screen time as he would have gotten by sinking those points into another multipower slot.

 

If I need a PC with a particular skill set in the game, I tell the players that a PC with those skills will have a chance at more screen time and ask someone to take them.

 

I don't bring in NPCs to provide skills unless the player has them as contacts or role plays seeking them out; if you don't have the skills to track down Dr. Impossible, you sit and wait while the character who does takes center stage.

[Sean Waters]

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

 

To be honest I don't, not much.

 

When I build a 350 point character I pretty much always allocate 30 points for non-combat skills but I know that is not everyone's cup of tea.

 

If I really wanted the players to buy skills I'd include lots of situations int he game that required skills to solve, and I figure that they will eventually get the picture. Sure Mass Driver can tear that door off it's hinges, but that makes a lot of noise, and Sneak Thief can do the same job i.e. getting through the door, in near perfect silence.

 

Of course this might just encourage one player to buy lots of skills.

 

Maybe the best way is just to require a certain number of points of non-combat skills in any given build, or a gosh darn good reason why not.

[OddHat]

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

 

If I really wanted the players to buy skills I'd include lots of situations int he game that required skills to solve, and I figure that they will eventually get the picture. Sure Mass Driver can tear that door off it's hinges, but that makes a lot of noise, and Sneak Thief can do the same job i.e. getting through the door, in near perfect silence.

 

Of course this might just encourage one player to buy lots of skills.

 

Maybe the best way is just to require a certain number of points of non-combat skills in any given build, or a gosh darn good reason why not.

 

Generally, I don't hint. It works better to directly say "Look, we need someone with some kind of Arcane Lore, someone who speaks Ancient Assyrian, and at least one guy who can drive a stick shift."

 

The players discuss who's going to take what with me and sometimes with each-other, and the skills get worked out.

 

And if Captain Bonk ends up with no skills, he gets to stand around looking useless in many non-combat scenes. If there's nothing but combat, that's a different problem.

 

Of course, a big part of the issue is that many GMs just don't make skills all that useful in the first place. More than a few never bother to learn how they work in HERO at all.

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

 

It's definitely easier with players you're still teaching. You get to get them in the habit of putting points in skills right after characteristics are bought up. ^ v ^

 

Another way I've encouraged buying-up of skills as the characters develop is by giving out Hero Points as well as XP. HPs are used on things actively pursued within the game, with a strong encouragement that they be spent on skills rather than powers or characteristics. It helps that I have one experienced player (Josh) who knows the system and understands the utility of skills and so gets to use his all the time, thereby showing them how much of a difference a few points wisely spent can be.

 

Of course, I make sure I give them plenty of opportunities to use skills. I need to remember to review which skills they have, again, though; it's an ever-growing list, and memorization isn't my strong suit.

[Nekkidcarpenter]

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

 

I tend to side with those who try to encourage skill buying rather than mandating it. When a character describes his concept to you make some notes about the skills you think he should have and present them to him as a suggestion.

 

The same kind of suggestion the GM makes about who gets the last slice of pizza.

 

Encouraging continued skill buying is harder, IMO. It's particularly hard in certain groups because they think that you won't destroy your own game world just because no one in the group has Computer Programming, and of course they're right. In this case there is no Carrot or Stick, so the players tend to keep the skills they originally had without improving any.

 

An approach similar to Alice the Owls', and borrowing heavily from another game is to have each player choose a skill they used during the session and roll a check with it. If they fail the check, they get a point in the skill. So a 8- skill is likely to improve for free, a 14- not so much. If they didn't use any skills during the game then other people essentially get free xp and players hate that. Especially the types of players who don't buy noncombat skills.

[BNakagawa]

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

 

Whatever you do, never allow anyone to purchase a power pool only for skills.

 

Ditto for any meta-skill such as universal translator, etc.

[Sean Waters]

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

 

Generally, I don't hint. It works better to directly say "Look, we need someone with some kind of Arcane Lore, someone who speaks Ancient Assyrian, and at least one guy who can drive a stick shift."

 

The players discuss who's going to take what with me and sometimes with each-other, and the skills get worked out.

 

And if Captain Bonk ends up with no skills, he gets to stand around looking useless in many non-combat scenes. If there's nothing but combat, that's a different problem.

 

Of course, a big part of the issue is that many GMs just don't make skills all that useful in the first place. More than a few never bother to learn how they work in HERO at all.

 

 

It is SO much easier when GM and players understand each other

 

I agree with all you say and I like Alice's idea about Hero Points too, which helps with the continuing development.

 

One other approach is the order in which you build stuff. I am very bad. To start a character I tend to write STR, DEX, CON....and go from there.

 

If you shake up the order a little, de-emphasise characteristics by making them the second or third item on the build list - behind skills, you'll probably get more skill based characters. For some time now I've recorded skills like this:

 

7 Acrobatics +2

 

That would mean I've spent 3 points on acrobatics and 4 points buying the roll up. This divorces the skill a little from characteristics (and makes the idea of using an unusual characteristic roll more palatable - base the acrobatics roll on CON if you are trying to cover a long distance over the rooftops, or basing it on strength if you want to climb a rope with a heavy load) and makes them feel a little less a specialised extension of characteristics.

[Sean Waters]

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

 

As a GM' date=' I would like to balance the players' powers with their skills. Unfortunately, skills often are purchased as an afterthought once the powers are sorted out. This is especially a problem with new characters. How do I emphasize skill use without either having the plot drag (because the character's haven't purchased skills) or having NPC's always showing them up (because the NPC's have skills the player's don't)?[/quote']

 

When the NPCs turn up, they could be extremely sarcastic.

 

That would probably work

[Nekkidcarpenter]

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

 

How do I emphasize skill use without either having the plot drag (because the character's haven't purchased skills) or having NPC's always showing them up (because the NPC's have skills the player's don't)?

 

 

And you also have the issue that you GM the players and characters you have, not necessarily the ones you want. Just finished playing in a game where there were no mystically aware characters and every other plot was some magical thing that none of the pc's had any ability to solve or a good rationale for acquiring said ability. Yet for some reason the sorceror supreme kept showing up and asking us to help. Then the npc's would talk to each other and decide what we should do.

 

And we weren't short on noncombat skills but none of us were magically based. Bureaucratics and Computer Programming didn't seem real useful in any of our encounters with DEMON.

[archermoo]

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

 

Generally I don't have to, as most people I game with have generally taken care of it themselves.

 

That being said, if you would like to make skills more important in your campaign, I'd suggest letting the players know that if they don't buy non-combat related skills they aren't going to have much to do when there isn't a combat going on. And that that will happen regularly. I've generally found that people get the hint and either a) decide not to play, or buy some skills.

[Cancer]

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

 

There are several points to carry away here.

 

Pushing players to take noncombat skills in character creation, and keep developing those skills as the game progresses, is good unless you've got a pure-combat game, whether you want to admit it or not.

 

But your players aren't psychic, whether their characters are or not. Are you going to guide their choices on what noncombat skills to take?

 

If yes, OK. A player who is told someone on the team needs land vehicle build/repair and it makes sense that it ought to be him, but takes KS: ancient Roman coinage instead, is being a willful flake.

 

If no, now it sort of falls upon the GM to reward those unguided investments. To do otherwise is to tell your players that their choices for noncombat skills are a waste of points ... they never get used, they have no in-game benefit, and it was a scam on the GM's part to make the players build their characters that many points weaker. Instead, what matters is what the GM thought was cool all along (cf. Nekkidcarpenter's arcane knowledge story), and he that held back. And the message in that case is: build a combat god, then later you can buy the random noncombat junk with XPs after the GM lets you know what he really meant you to take in the first place.

[Silbeg]

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

 

4 ) Reward the use of skills they do have. If Captain Computron gets cool moments out of his Computer Programming, he'll start looking into Security Systems, Cryptography and the like and other players will take note too. This may involve some early tailoring of scenarios to allow particular skills to come into play.

 

Gotta agree with you on this one. If the players don't see a value in non-combat skills, they won't buy them. The more value that you give them, the more they will use them, and the more they will buy them.

 

I have tried to throw in, on occasion, some use of the "extra" skills... and have called for players to make skill rolls on skills they think will come in to play. I just try and have them tell me the skill they are using, and then create a modifier based on how close the skill matches the skill I expected.

[OddHat]

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

 

 

But your players aren't psychic, whether their characters are or not. Are you going to guide their choices on what noncombat skills to take?

 

Good post, and good point. One of the most important things you as GM can do is sit down and decide what skills you think will be coming into play in the campaign, and then communicate that to the players. If you tell your players that Skill X will give their character some screen time, at least one or two will take it.

 

As a side note, when I GM convention games I keep a list of key non-combat skills each PC has, and look for chances in the scenario for each of them to be brought into play. I also plan an Investigative phase to most scenarios, and ask the players to tell me what skills their characters are trying to use and how, in case they come up with something I hadn't thought of. It usually pays off.

[Balabanto]

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

 

Here's how I encourage players to buy more skills. If you're a technical character/sorcerer/detective, you need to have enough skills to justify whatever it is that your character is SUPPOSED to be able to do.

 

If you're not a technical character/sorcerer/detective, you should have a few social skills, knowledge skills, etc.

 

You need to have investigations that require the PC's to go to see NPC's a lot. Make them the same skills over and over.

 

Eventually, someone does get the bright idea of paying 3 points for it.

 

If the characters don't have life support, drop them in the arctic. "Hey, guys...wouldn't it be great if one of you had bought Survival: Arctic?"

 

If the characters have no detective and do everything by reading minds, politely inform the PC that if he continues to mind rape people, eventually someone will notice. You might want to take KS: Human Psychology or SC: Behavioral Psychology before PSI comes to RECRUIT him. Won't his friends be surprised?

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

 

I agree that skills should not be mandated. Some concepts don't cry out for skills. However, I see nothing wrong with making things tougher on the characters because they don't have skills.

 

Frequent use of Everyman skills [eg "I try to chat up the secretary" "OK, roll Converstion. You didn't buy it? Well, you get an 8- roll. You know, with your PRE, if you bought the skill, you'd have a 14- roll, and I might even let a COM roll be used a sa complementary roll." "You rolled a 10? Oh, she accidentally spills her coffee on you (or at least it looks like an accident), and rushes off to get a cloth to clean that up."] may encourage some skill purchases.

 

Put in opportunities to use skills they don't have. You don't have to trash your game to show their use. No one has Pick Locks, so you bash the chest open? OK - but some of the objects inside were fragile, and they're broken now.

[PhilFleischmann]

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

 

I would also strongly recommend against mandating the purchase of skills. If you want players to buy skills, run scenarios where those skills would be useful. If PC end a session defeated or humiliated or otherwise with a less than optimal outcome, thinking, "If only I had purchased XYZ Skill." They're likely to spend the next few xp they get on the skill.

 

How often do your games require some detective work on the part of the PCs? Do they ever face situations requiring finesse, or delicate degotiations? Maybe there's a giant robot rampaging through the city which seems to be immune to anything the PCs throw at it - if only one of them had Electronics, or Mechanics, or some similar skill. Do they ever have to deal with normal people, such as calming a panicking crowd, or an angry mob? Or rescuing them from a natural (or man-made) disaster?

 

Why do you want the players to buy more skills? There are a number of possible reasons:

1. You want them to flesh out their backgrounds.

2. They'll be useful in the game.

3. They're too powerful in combat - spending all their points on combat abilities.

4. You just feel like they should, but you don't really have a reason why.

5. Something else?

 

I would say that 1 and 2 are good reasons, but 3 and 4 aren't so much.

[Silbeg]

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

 

Encouraging continued skill buying is harder, IMO. It's particularly hard in certain groups because they think that you won't destroy your own game world just because no one in the group has Computer Programming, and of course they're right. In this case there is no Carrot or Stick, so the players tend to keep the skills they originally had without improving any.

 

Not sure about that. All it takes is one event that they learn that the terrorists attacked [famous landmark] killing [large number], and that they could have avoided it by hacking the terrorists email network, or whatever.

 

Then, you can even drill it in further by the press asking where the heroes were? How could they have missed such obvious clues? Where were the WMDs??

 

This won't destroy your game world, but it will make it a bleaker place. This is especially true of a DNPC or something gets killed/injured/kidnapped in the mayhem.

[Peregrine]

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

 

Whatever you do, never allow anyone to purchase a power pool only for skills.

 

Ditto for any meta-skill such as universal translator, etc.

 

I don't think he wants skills to be a point sink, I think he wants characters with a useful amount of non-combat skills, for non-combat adventuring. Meta-skills would help achieve the desired effect.

 

(Besides, what kind of micromanaging GM wants to use skills as a points sink?)

[Comic]

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

 

Can you come up with an example, or a few, of places where skills need encouraging and what the advantage is to the player, other players, and GM? That might help, since I'm not sure I follow the logic.

[pinecone]

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

 

As a GM' date=' I would like to balance the players' powers with their skills. Unfortunately, skills often are purchased as an afterthought once the powers are sorted out. This is especially a problem with new characters. How do I emphasize skill use without either having the plot drag (because the character's haven't purchased skills) or having NPC's always showing them up (because the NPC's have skills the player's don't)?[/quote']

 

Unfortunately, the only way to make skills become desirable is to make them usefull...so you'll have to take a little junk as the players discover that having skills makes them more effective, and they only way that happens is for them to be less effective/efficient without them....

 

 

I'd try talking to folks..."Hey I'm going to start getting hardnosed about skills, so can you guys/gals work with me here?

 

I work to Reward skills instead of punish ignorance, but each person responds to differant stimuli. I work hard to put little benefits into the adventure, "easter eggs" that are found through skill use...it works for me.

 

Plus of course I have a rep for making skills count so most come to the table expecting to use 'em....

[SAVeira]

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

 

I have a house rule that covers this:

A minimum amount of Skill Points must be spent, when creating a character. The amount is equal to 10% of the starting character’s overall point total. So in this campaign a character starting with 350 points must have spent at least 35 points on Skills. Martial Arts, Skill Levels or the Power skill do not count towards this total.

[pinecone]

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

 

I have a house rule that covers this:

A minimum amount of Skill Points must be spent, when creating a character. The amount is equal to 10% of the starting character’s overall point total. So in this campaign a character starting with 350 points must have spent at least 35 points on Skills. Martial Arts, Skill Levels or the Power skill do not count towards this total.

 

Find weakness? "Hmmm 35 points....FW(16) with "punch"....."Done!"

[SAVeira]

Re: How do you encourage your players to buy more skills

 

Find weakness? "Hmmm 35 points....FW(16) with "punch"....."Done!"

Find Weakness is a power and as I have spell out, that cannot count for the 35 points.