Non-binary Skill Training or "Dice Chain Competence"

DCC doesn't really use skills in the sense that a lot of modern tabletop gamers would recognize. Its partly class-based and partly occupation-based skill system largely removes the need for things like proficiencies. Do you have a relevant background? Then you're trained, you get to roll with your full d20, hooray! This is even true for Thief skills, the only difference being Thieves get given an extra bonus to those.

"But that’s not the only difference with Thief skills," you say? I'll get there.

This system is awesome because it means we don't have to fiddle around with skill selections, bonuses, background options or whatever at character creation. It takes out the min-maxing and number crunching and instead adds improvisation at the table, encouraging players to explain why their cheesemaker-turned-warrior has some niche expertise that'll save the day. It makes backgrounds relevant without having to do much work.

It gets a bit wonky the other way around though... What if your warrior with no cheesemaking experience takes up said activity during a week or a month of downtime between adventures? The game's rules give you "trained" rolls at a d20 and "untrained" rolls at a d10, so what about a character who doesn't have a background in the skill, but has since dabbled? Are they to suddenly jump up to a professional level? Well, we do have one example that can help us answer these questions: the Cast from Scroll Thief skill.

The Cast from Scroll skill is seriously weird when you look at it through the lens of the rest of DCC. It breaks so many conventions around how to handle skills, yet it all makes sense when you stop and think about what would happen if you just gave a Thief fully trained rolls and the usual skill bonus: suddenly they'd almost be better spellcasters than Wizards - as long as someone else writes the spell down for them first. And besides, spellcasting is the prime candidate for this sort of variable dice size given the variable effects of magic. It's not hard to see why they broke convention in this case to make Thieves into circumstantial, intermediate-level casters, but I think this happens to be an obvious solution for other kinds of intermediate skill levels too.

A Thief can become an intermediate spellcaster, but what if a Warrior practiced lockpicking in his spare time? He won't be a master thief, so he gets no Thief skill bonuses, but surely he can achieve a flat d20 roll with a lot of practice? A locksmith could do that with no class levels at all!

I am far from the first to suggest using the dice chain for skill levels, but here's my take on how to do it.

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Dice Chain Competence

To improve in an untrained skill, a character must do one of the following:

• Succeed in a skill under pressure. Lockpicking while dungeon crawling counts, so does performing most tasks while in battle or being pursued, or under a time constraint. It should be fairly easy to judge whether something is under stress or a leisurely distraction.
• Train under someone who is trained for three days. This likely costs gp or requires questing.
• Practice alone for a week.
• For an occupation, work for a month.

The last one warrants some explanation. Rather than only being able to train specific skills, a character could also opt to take a new occupation. Eventually, they'd be skilled in everything related to that occupation too - but they don't just get it right away. It takes a lot of work to learn all the skills of a new job. Leaning into the occupation system in DCC, an adventurer who has settled for a while and taken a second occupation could effectively become a carpenter/cheesemaker and get to use the trained skills of either. 0-levels are assumed to have a significant background in their occupation; it's the only thing of note they've done in their lives so far.

When a character rests (at least long enough to get the usual day's worth of healing) they get the opportunity for their proficiency to increase. For "succeed under pressure" this means making notes of which skills you used while adventuring and resolving all the increases on a rest, for the other options resting is simply implied by the elapsed timeframe unless something prevents it.

Upon resting, make an INT check. The DC of the check is equal to the max roll of the die you are moving towards: for a first-time lesson (an untrained d10 to a dabbling d12) the DC is 12. Because this is an ability score check, all characters use a d20 which gives decent odds at beginner levels and low odds at expert levels - though intelligent characters are significantly better at reaching the expert levels. Somewhat elegantly, this also softly caps the amount of training you can receive in a skill to the d20 level because even with 18 intelligence, you cannot naturally succeed on a DC24 check (just barely).*

Then, simply mark on your character sheet "Lockpicking: d12". Anything not specifically mentioned on your character sheet is a d10 as usual. Anything covered by your class or occupation is a d20 as usual. And now we have a whole gradient of possibilities between, creating room for granular improvements outside of XP and Levels and something else for characters to do in downtime.

*There might be something to be said for the possibility of allowing this under extraneous circumstances, but this feels like a whole can of worms and leaves less space for on-the-fly dice-chain advantage later. So let's make this soft cap a hard cap - no training past d20, which is already considered "trained" in DCC.

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Of course, this gets wonky again when we go back to the roots of this idea and compare it back to Thieves casting from scrolls… now we might expect Thieves to improve at casting every few times they do it. Well, that's a fair point, but I think we can equally argue that magic is something that takes a whole lot more knowledge and effort than that, though, hence why spellcasting as a feature is restricted wholesale to certain classes. This is something that requires class features to do, much like Mighty Deeds can't simply be practiced by a Cleric. Thus, training through practice in a magical skill is only possible as a Wizard, and the Thief partially bypasses this restriction.

Further applying this system to magic is absolutely an idea I'll be revisiting, though.

Scaling Traps

Not long ago I wrote on reddit about scaling damage for traps. Not simply presenting higher level characters with traps that do more damage - having the traps’ damage scale with the victim's Hit Dice.

This turned out to be somewhat controversial. And yeah, I get it; if you like your Hit Points to work as an abstract, heroic plot-armor-esque device for storytelling then this likely doesn't gel with your playstyle. Keep doing what you like. I myself am not even using this in my current campaign.

Let's start from the beginning with (an edited version of) the original post. I'll address a lot of the feedback I got at the end.

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Traps present an interesting problem. Take a very simple trap (it doesn't matter if it's spikes, a pit, blades, whatever) which mechanically works like this: a PC who triggers it makes a saving throw, if they fail they take 1d6 damage. Easy. The problem as I see it: this represents a huge threat to a level 0 or 1 character, but no real threat to a high-level character.

"Why is this a problem?" you ask? I guess it isn't, strictly speaking. But I want the world I am running to be relatively consistent and not morph around the players to suit their level. I don't want high level characters to contrivedly happen across stronger traps because they're a higher level. Simultaneously, I want being impaled by a goddamn spike to represent a serious injury to any character. This isn't a case where higher HP can narratively be justified by better endurance, hardiness, tenacity, determination etc. - this is a humanoid character being caught off-guard and hit by a trap intended to maim or kill. Realistically, this should deal life-threatening damage to either Joe Dumbass or Lord Swordsalot the Mega-Strong Orc-Stabber (but Swordsalot probably had a better chance of succeeding the initial save).

It would appear we are caught between a place where higher level characters run into "higher level traps", or traps simply aren't as much of a threat to them and they can just soldier on, removing tension and the need for careful progress. I find neither of these to be conducive to the kind of game I want to run. I still want my high-level players dungeon crawling, not dungeon running.

I have a proposed solution to this, which at first glance may appear to conflict with my desire not to have level scaling. Let's say that this trap, instead of dealing a flat die of damage, deals 1d6 damage per the target's number of Hit Dice. This isn't the trap scaling up or down to the party level - if a 1HD monster falls into the trap, it does 1d6 even if the party is level 7. The trap isn't getting stronger, proportionate damage is a property inherent to being impaled on a spike. It does proportionate damage to anyone. To take this to the extreme, a property inherent to a guillotine would be that it takes all of your HP - but the guillotine isn't scaling per level. Doing 100% of your HP of damage is just how a guillotine works.

Instead of scaling the world around the players, this is more like percentage damage or what some video games call "true damage". It's damage that doesn't care about how tough the character is.

I am torn on whether this means they throw more dice, or if they multiply a single die roll by their number of HD. I think there's potential justification for either method. A potential upside of a multiplier is that the distribution doesn't change as players level up. Arguably, however, more consistent damage for a higher-level character makes narrative sense. Plus having to roll a crap-ton of dice is both fun and scary for the player.

The intended result of this is that if my party's seasoned adventurers or their new recruits fall into the trap, regardless of their level, they'll be able to take "about half their HP" of damage for instance. This makes sense to me, as either character being impaled by a spike would do the same thing to their body. It's not like taking a hit in a fight - a seasoned fighter can believably take a hit without sustaining serious damage.

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And now for the feedback section.

Why not use ability damage, conditions, or other interesting effects instead?

You should! I just don't think this should always be the case simply because HP is higher now. Taking damage is the basic cost of putting oneself into lethal danger and I don't think it should be made entirely redundant. In short: do both, keep it varied.

Different classes are still affected differently in this system.

Yes, and I think that actually happens to work out quite well. Wizards should be scared of taking damage at all levels, and Warriors and Dwarves should be pretty hardy at all levels. When defending against proportionate damage, size of Hit Dice is more significant than total Hit Points. It's the difference between "definitely dead" and "might not get away with that twice".

Give traps an effect table instead. 

Very cool idea but doesn't directly address the problem I'm trying to fix. Also a lot of work because I don't think a generic table would work well for traps, which can be quite varied. This turns trap design into a much larger task which requires a table per trap or at least several types of tables for categories of trap.

Higher HP doesn't just represent physical damage, but also the abstract ability to avoid damage. Higher level characters are just avoiding the trap better.

I can accept this explanation of HP when it comes to combat, but as many before me have argued, it falls apart pretty quickly elsewhere.

In the case of the example trap, the character gets a saving throw. This is your avoidance of the trap. You succeed or fail.

When the trap hits, it might have to make an attack roll. Your AC is combined dodging and blocking, so this simulates being able to maneuver safely or the armor doing its job. This decides whether you are hit in a damaging way or not.

You can burn Luck here, for either of these rolls, to simulate the favor of the gods (as another commenter suggested factors into HP).

So, after check 1, you are in the trap. After check 2, the trap hits you effectively. This doesn't leave a whole lot of narrative space for that spike you just got impaled on to only deal 1d6 damage out of your 38 Hit Points. This isn't combat where there are countless moving parts and we simulate an approximation. This is a very binary situation! You got spiked, that hurts a lot!

This doesn't feel like DCC/Appendix N.

Maybe not. I think it might work for the kind of game I want to run - it might not work for you, your players, or your game. However, I feel here is a good place to point out that DCC does (kind of) have a precedent for scaling health effects according to Hit Dice: Lay on Hands. The Lay on Hands ability is capped by the target's number of Hit Dice, which is essentially proportionate healing instead of proportionate damage - the only difference being there is a cap (the Cleric's roll and resulting number of dice). You could cap the damage on traps but that just reintroduces the effect I am attempting to avoid in the first place.