Other skills.

[Darius West]

The list of skills in Call of C'thulhu is good, but there are a few extras that could be included imo.  Please consider the following, and make your own suggestions for skills you would like to see.

Police Procedure (05)

Police procedure is a knowledge of what is expected of a police officer when investigating a crime or allegations thereof.  Police procedure covers things such as how different types of crimes should be approached, taking statements from witnesses and obtaining their contact details and whereabouts at times relevant to the events being investigated.  It also includes the expectations of policymakers as to standards of police behavior during an investigation.  It is a skill that would be of benefit to Police Officers, Detectives, Federal Agents, Private Investigators (many of whom have formerly been police), Forensic Pathologists.  It would be invoked to ensure that characters are following proper procedure, and are aware when they are breaking procedure.  It would also provide some notion of what to do when an investigation hits a dead end, or when handling uncooperative witnesses.

Domestics (25)

Domestics is the science of house keeping.  Had H.P. Lovecraft spent more points in it, he might have lived longer.  It covers such things as cooking cheap nutritious meals, keeping one's home clean, cleaning windows and surfaces, repairs to clothing and basic tailoring, knowing how to do laundry and iron clothes, caring for infants, knowing how to store produce to improve shelf life, basic horticulture, and gardening, budgeting the groceries, rent and utilities as appropriate.  Basically, how to live with a measure of dignity in a domestic urban setting.  It also covers such things as when things are out of place or don't make sense in a house.  It can be assumed that a character with 50% is able to live with a measure of dignity, and a character with 75% or more is an organized person with an organized household who is well able to cope with life's little emergencies.  Domestics is essentially what was called "women's work" in times past, with all the sexism that implies, and was a staple of housewives, domestic staff, and bachelors who aspired to live better than swine.

Streetwise (05)

Streetwise is the skill of liaising with criminals.  It is used to make contact with people engaged in criminal activities in such a way that they don't become overly suspicious.  It includes using the right slang terms, looking the part, and conducting oneself with enough projection of threat that you are not seen as a victim, but enough savoire faire that you are not assumed to be a police officer or infiltrator.  It is used to obtain information about illegal activities, local criminal personalities, and where illegal goods might be purchased and so forth.

Handyman (10)

This skill subsumes Mechanical and Electrical repair, and includes carpentry, painting, and gardening.  This is the skill of repairing, maintaining, and making things for domestic consumption. It includes repairing household appliances and a familiarity with their use, up to and including spot repairs on broken down cars.  it includes such things as repairing furniture, putting up shelves, hanging paintings, renovating a room, or even building a house (though that is probably better left to professionals), changing lights, knowing to turn the electricity off before re-wiring a room and actually remembering to do it, cleaning chimneys, etc. This is the masculine equivalent of domestics skill, with all the sexism that implies from times past, i.e. that only men could fix mechanical things.  This is also the sort of skill that anyone might possess but would be of most value to drifters, agricultural workers, and handymen (i.e. untrained repair specialists).

 

[rust]

Hmm ... I am normally not a friend of additional skills because this can lead to a skill creep, which forces the players to spread out their skill points over too many skills, resulting in a character's set of comparatively low skill values.

So, in the case of Police Procedure I would probably make it a specialization of the Law skill (Law / Police Procedure), Domestics I would consider a part of a character's general knowledge (or the lack of Domestics a roleplaying thing), in the case of Streetwise I would probably make it a Lore skill (Lore / Underworld), and instead of Handyman I would use Mechanical Repair,

 

Edited June 22, 2016 by rust
orthography

[K Peterson]

I'd have to agree with @rust. CoC has quite of a lot of skills already. I think it could be argued that, conversely, the skill list could be shorter to avoid skill creep. For example, I play 5th/6th edition but I think that 7th edition went in the right direction when it consolidated Fist/Punch, Kick, and Headbutt down into one Fighting(Brawl) skill.

Rather than create additional skills that are rather specialized, I prefer to take into account an investigator's Occupation and their backstory to determine how their skills can be applied. Someone with a criminal occupation is going to be able to leverage a Fast Talk, Bargain, or Persuade when liaising with criminals. Not that likely for a dilettante. That's not to say that a dilettante couldn't learn to do that in-play, over time. But there would be task penalties to begin with that would gradually lessen with exposure, practice, and perhaps mentoring.

Unfortunately, I don't see a lot of use for a Domestics skill, or any other that I'd consider to be a mundane skill. How often is something like Domestics going to be used in play? Is any player going to be that interested in sinking points into that skill, or leveraging it in-play? It adds some investigator 'flavor', I guess, but it could something easily fleshed out in an investigator's backstory. 

Edited June 22, 2016 by K Peterson
grammar and spelling

[trystero]

One thing I've always liked about Call of Cthulhu is that scenarios often include NPC skills that aren't listed on the investigator sheet; Masks of Nyarlathotep, just to pick one example, includes NPC skills like "Belly Dance", "Be Tempted", "Act Before Thinking", and (relevant here) "Cook and Clean". These are great for giving the Keeper a vivid picture of the NPC; their existence implies that the skills on the investigator sheet are just the most commonly-used ones, and that any skill is possible.

That said, I agree that these specialized/descriptive skills are generally better used for NPCs; unless one of them is really important to the player's character conception, I wouldn't bother adding them, as they (a) take points away from the listed skills, and (b) won't ever be called for in a scenario. (Though they might be usable even if not called for...)

[Mike M]

Some of these skills actually fit in Art/Craft - such as: Domestics, Handy Man/Woman. Although Mechanical Repair etc. may well suffice for Handy Man/Woman.

Police Procedure - in general, the Law skill covers this and, by association, having the occupation/backstory of police or detective implies this knowledge, so if the Law skill wasn't relevant for a particular piece of information, the occupational/backstory experience would give the character a Know roll.

Streetwise is really covered by the social skills backed up with either a contact and/or relevant backstory/occupation. I'd encourage the player to use their contacts (or find some) and make use of Charm, Fast Talk and Intimidate, etc.

Introducing generic skills really only serves with homebrew scenarios, where you can ensure they have some value to the players, otherwise, they will have used up points in skills that never appear in published material.

[Darius West]

I agree with trystero that there should be some sort of proceedure for creating skills that effectively flesh out a character as is done sometimes half jokingly in scenarios.

Personally I have always loathed the process by which everything is transferred over to being a lore or an art/craft, which is far more guilty of point spreading than any other skill system. 

As for Mike M's sugestion that adding skills that aren't specifically represented in scenarios will mean that players have wasted points, to this I would say, that is more a symptom of bad Keeping if you can't step even narrowly outside the published materials.  "Heaven forfend the Keeper allow the players to stray off the railroad tracks in a published scenario so far as to use something other than a regulation skill".  I would agree that other communications skills probably can take the place of streetwise however. 

On the other hand I notably disagree with the idea that somehow Police Proceedure defaults to Law.  The two skills are simply not equivalent.  Police are involved in enforcing the law and they will by necessity have some idea of what the law is, but, that is far from the same as having a formal education in torts, jurisprudence, contracts, family law, criminal law, commercial law etc etc.  On close insepction one might even argue that the Law skill needs revision because there are too many sub-categories, and it needs to be divided into different disciplines like Science is divided into physics, biology, chemistry etc.  But of course in this is simply adding more skills to the mix and that is, of necessity, a bad thing, isn't it?  Despite the fact that IRL people can spend their whole lives perfecting their understanding of particular branches of the law without ever really dabbling in any of the others outside their tertiary education.

I find it far more problematic that CoC has so many different communication skills i.e. Fast Talk, Intimidate, Persuade, Charm, when arguably the whole point of RPGs is for players themselves to do the communicating, so why have any communication skills at all?  What is the point of calling it a role playing game if despite the player's best efforts to communicate well, it all comes down to a dice roll anyhow?  Or more importantly, even if you were okay with that philosophical contradiction, why have 4 skills when one would suffice, i.e. Persuade (except without the ludicrous restriction that it takes 4 hours to perform).  I mean, really isn't persuasion that what every communicaton skill is aiming to do anyhow ?  Aren't charm, intimidation and fast talk merely communication tactics, not skills in themselves?

I hope people enjoy this post, and understand that the purpose of the polemic is to encourage discussion more than anything else.

 

[rust]

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

I find it far more problematic that CoC has so many different communication skills i.e. Fast Talk, Intimidate, Persuade, Charm, when arguably the whole point of RPGs is for players themselves to do the communicating, so why have any communication skills at all?  What is the point of calling it a role playing game if despite the player's best efforts to communicate well, it all comes down to a dice roll anyhow?  Or more importantly, even if you were okay with that philosophical contradiction, why have 4 skills when one would suffice, i.e. Persuade (except without the ludicrous restriction that it takes 4 hours to perform).  I mean, really isn't persuasion that what every communicaton skill is aiming to do anyhow ?  Aren't charm, intimidation and fast talk merely communication tactics, not skills in themselves?

In my view dice rolls for communication skills make sense when the character has a higher communication skill than his player or when the player prefers the impartial dice roll to the referee's arbitrary judgement of his roleplaying performance. As for the number of communication skills, I think there should be two such skills, one for the communication between the character and one person or a small group and one for the communication between the character and a large group (= public speeches / oratory), because these two types of communication are really different.

[Mysterioso]

23 hours ago, rust said:

In my view dice rolls for communication skills make sense when the character has a higher communication skill than his player or when the player prefers the impartial dice roll to the referee's arbitrary judgement of his roleplaying performance. As for the number of communication skills, I think there should be two such skills, one for the communication between the character and one person or a small group and one for the communication between the character and a large group (= public speeches / oratory), because these two types of communication are really different.

Take it down to one skill Convince, give the Keeper a possibility of awarding for some bonus for a high attribute (Fast Talk: Convince +X for, say LK at 15 or higher; Persuade/Oratory:  Convince +X for, say INT at 15 or higher; Intimidate: SIZ; Charm/Seduce: APP; etc.), and then encourage the player to roleplay it a bit. 

Edited August 14, 2016 by Mysterioso

[Mayhem]

I am still early on running CoC to the group I play with, and I have already run into some interesting instances, where I had trouble figuring out what skill might apply and wanted to sort of give them a chance in game to improve a skill that they had never had before.

The two game play examples I ran into was where they were using a biplane and trying to bomb a target.   The pilot had the flying skill, but the second person in the plane was trying to drop a heavy item onto a specific location (about 50 feet around).   They did the practice run (and I assumed the skill was required a combination of strength and dexterity), and they made an extreme success on that as a basis.   They did the complete run in the tense situation where it really counted, and missed.   But I sort of wanted to give that character some experience as a "bombardier".   

In the situation tonight, they have found the bad guy, and with careful observation they waited for him to leave the building, and then they decided to burn the building down.   And I don't think that's necessarily as easy as it sounds.    I wanted them to roll for arson.   But didn't know how to play it.   

As a group, they may never get the chance to burn something down again, or bomb something.   But if the base skill for those things is 1%, having worked and tried it, had the chance to fail and succeeding, I think they might actually get an arson skill with 5%.   That they could then roll on and improve (if it comes up many times). 

Given that nobody ever gets more HP, and will remain squishy to a bullet no matter how long they play, it's nice to reward them with skills that may get used.  

[andyl]

12 hours ago, Mayhem said:

I am still early on running CoC to the group I play with,

[snip]

As a group, they may never get the chance to burn something down again,

Some players will try to burn stuff down, of blow stuff up all the time.

I think the skill for the bombadier was a good call.  For arson I don't think you really need a roll if they are unobserved and have loads of time and some accelerant. 

[SunlessNick]

The description of Lore makes it out to be for the esoteric, so I created a category skill called Field, which is for humanities subjects like theology (technically History, Law and Occult could be considered to fall under it, but they come up often enough to use them separately, especially History).  It has a base of 5% rather than 1%.

I also have an Administration skill for managing or navigating a bureaucracy.  Some of that comes under Accounting, but it needn't involve money.

One I've removed is Own Language - I just use a Know Roll for if ever I have to roll that.

[Darius West]

On 1/25/2021 at 7:20 AM, SunlessNick said:

The description of Lore makes it out to be for the esoteric, so I created a category skill called Field, which is for humanities subjects like theology (technically History, Law and Occult could be considered to fall under it, but they come up often enough to use them separately, especially History).  It has a base of 5% rather than 1%.

I also have an Administration skill for managing or navigating a bureaucracy.  Some of that comes under Accounting, but it needn't involve money.

One I've removed is Own Language - I just use a Know Roll for if ever I have to roll that.

These are all very good suggestions SunlessNick.  I might point out that a person whose business is language (poet, author, proof-reader) may seek to have a higher proficiency than their Know roll would convey, but that is the only complaint I might make.  I love the idea of "Field" as a skill and may well adopt it.  I certainly like the idea of Administration/Bureaucracy as a skill too.

On 1/24/2021 at 5:33 AM, andyl said:

Some players will try to burn stuff down, of blow stuff up all the time.

I think the skill for the bombadier was a good call.  For arson I don't think you really need a roll if they are unobserved and have loads of time and some accelerant. 

I think the most important thing is to insure that the skill has a reasonable base percentage.  IDK about how many people play RuneQuest, but it divides skills up into categories and provides attribute based bonuses for them, and I have often wondered if something similar might actually do CoC some good, as attributes are often barely relevant in the rules, but matter IRL.

[Grimmshade]

I really like the 7e Cthulhu rules, but if there is one thing that seems weird to me it's that attributes don't affect your ability with a skill at all. I wonder what the reason for that design decision was? Seems like if you have a high STR and DEX you should be naturally better at athletic stuff.

I mean, I guess with the way skill points are calculated in character creation some attributes do matter when it comes to skills. 

[Ric]

CoC First Edition divided skills into categories and assigned a bonus to them derived from the relevant Characteristic. So for example Manipulation skills received a bonus from Dexterity. I always quite liked that system.

As regards skills, I think Charm, like Dodge with DEX, should start at half APP. Own Language allows for improvement, particularly for characters who write for a living. Thus my journalist characters for the magazine Strange! But True roll their Own Language skill when they write an article. If they succeed, they have written so well that the crusty old editor pays them a bonus.

Lore skills to me a specifically non academic, non mainstream. They represent the 'oral tradition' kind of knowledge; the things that you don't find written down, or only in the most obscure and private sources. Generally I tie them to a location - eg. Innsmouth Lore, or an occupation Seafarers Lore.

I like the idea of Field as a humanities type counterpart to Art/Craft and Science. One early skill I would revive in that would be Linguistics, with the attached possibility of a character having some knowledge (say 1d20%) of any particular language.

Skills I would specifically include would be two from Trail: Contacts and Preparedness.

[Grimmshade]

I need to dig out my 1st edition rulebook, I forgot skills worked that way!

Maybe I just need to make sure I use Attribute rolls more. One other idea I'm toying with is using an Attribute either in a combined roll, or having the player roll the Attribute first to possibly earn a Bonus die, if the Skill action is somehow playing up the Attribute. So someone using their stunning good looks to aid a Charm roll allows the player to roll a combined roll of Charm/Appearance, earning a Bonus die if only Appearance succeeds. It's a work in progress.

Preparedness is sort of covered by Luck in 7e, if I'm remembering my Trail correctly. Contacts is derived from every skill in 7e.  

[greger]

On 2/3/2021 at 3:59 AM, Grimmshade said:

I need to dig out my 1st edition rulebook, I forgot skills worked that way!

I'm very curious to see what the rules were for this. Please enlighten those of us that are fresh to the rules, if you find out how that worked?

[Grimmshade]

1 hour ago, greger said:

I'm very curious to see what the rules were for this. Please enlighten those of us that are fresh to the rules, if you find out how that worked?

I just had a look at my 1st edition book, and the system doesn't quite work that way. It's basically exactly like 7e except skills are grouped into categories (like "Manipulation") for no real reason other than "to aid play." There were no more bonuses from Attributes than there are now.

[SunlessNick]

Prior to 7th Edition, I had a version where I used 2D6+6 for all characteristics, then grouped skills by characteristic, with a modifier of (characteristc -13)*2, for a range of +/-10%.

[Ejlertson]

The more skills you add the harder you make it for the Investigators. 

Unless you add additional Skill points with it, skills will either be ignored or overall skill will be less well rounded.

 

[DreadDomain]

On 1/27/2021 at 1:52 AM, Grimmshade said:

I really like the 7e Cthulhu rules, but if there is one thing that seems weird to me it's that attributes don't affect your ability with a skill at all. I wonder what the reason for that design decision was? Seems like if you have a high STR and DEX you should be naturally better at athletic stuff.

I mean, I guess with the way skill points are calculated in character creation some attributes do matter when it comes to skills. 

That is something that I never liked about CoC or Stormbringer and always much prefered the RuneQuest way of managing skills by grouping them by categories have having characteristics give a bonus to said category. It has the side benefit of having the skills grouped by theme so it makes it easier to find an appropriate skill "this is clealy an attempt to influence, look at your Communication skills and tell what approach you want to take"

On 2/5/2021 at 2:53 AM, SunlessNick said:

Prior to 7th Edition, I had a version where I used 2D6+6 for all characteristics, then grouped skills by characteristic, with a modifier of (characteristc -13)*2, for a range of +/-10%.

I like it. For CoC 7E, the easiest way would be to group skills by characteristics and have a skill bonus of CHAR/5 (aka the extreme value). It gives a range of +3%+18% which significant but not game changing. It does mean an extra +10 on average all across the board so if it makes skills too high for your taste, reduce the skill allocation at character creation. It is not necessarily my preferred approached by it is a simple one that already uses a known value in the game.

The RQ3 approach would also work quite well.

[SunlessNick]

1 hour ago, DreadDomain said:

It does mean an extra +10 on average all across the board so if it makes skills too high for your taste, reduce the skill allocation at character creation.

INT based skills would average +13%, which is a possible push to be a thinker rather than a bruiser.

Something I'm doing in my current 7th Edition games is have the player choose whichever characteristic best encapsulates the Investigator's nature - essentially, whichever would be the key one in a Pulp Cthulhu game - and then making the personal interest points INT+that rather than INT x2.