Secondary Skills for Swords & Wizardry and other games.

[William]

Here is an attachment containing a list of Secondary Skills and some guidelines for their use. The list presented is influenced by a system put forward by Gary Gygax in 1979, but it has been greatly expanded and there are some loose guidelines for codifying the skills for their use in play. Gary always just left the secondary skills as food for thought, leaving the rest up the players and DM to expand it out as they wished. This is the kind of skill system that Gary approved of for use in A/D&D, not the "General Skills", Non-Weapon Proficiencies", and the like that were eventually tacked onto the game.

This list has been created for use with Swords & Wizardry Complete, the full OD&D with Supplements 1-4 (plus material from Strategic Review and The Dragon), and AD&D 1e. It can be used with Swords & Wizardry Core or White Box, and OD&D without any supplemental material, but it might be a good idea to add a decent level of Tracking ability to the Trapper / Furrier and possibly also to the Woodsman secondary skills, as there is no Ranger character class in those versions of the games. It would also make sense to use a D6 or D20 when testing the skills in White Box S&W / OD&D games, rather than using a percentile system, as in White Box S&W / OD&D the Thief character class also is not present and thus no percentile skills either. This list will not sit well with the Non-Weapon Proficiency system introduced in the AD&D 1e Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, Wilderness Survival Guide, and Oriental Adventures rule books.

There is no reason why this list could not be used with B/X D&D or one of its clones such as Labyrinth Lord or Old School Essentials, though it might be a good idea to "B/X-ify" Table 1. Likewise the list could also be used for BECMI, Rules Cyclopedia D&D, and AD&D 2e, but the D&D General Skills and AD&D Non-Weapon Proficiencies will have to be ignored, and the DM may (?) want to revise Table 1 if using BECMI.

There is also a short list of optional Basic Skills that could be given to all characters as standard adventurer's abilities.

I'm not a professional games designer and I do not want or expect any royalties or payment for the use of this, as I have put it here purely for the enjoyment it may bring to people in their games. However, if it gets used commercially in some OSR kind of way a mention of my name would be nice.

Cheers,
Bill

[merias]

Thanks for sharing this, William. Saved! I like the idea of secondary skills, and tying the choice of skills broadly to INT seems like a good idea. Simple and quick.

Specific skill tables I tend to avoid, if used too heavily, IMO they lead to games where the attitude is "It's not listed on my charsheet, so I can't do it". But it looks like you addressed that concern here, with all PCs getting the base chance of success on a short list of adventuring-type skills, and some getting a higher chance based on class or background. This seems like a good way to handle skills in general for OSR-style games.

The only thing I would change is for thief-specific skills, I like to treat those as super-normal. So the thief chance to move silently is just that - to move while making absolutely no noise at all. Other classes just can't do this - they can try to move quietly, but will never be able to move silently. And you can still give thieves their "normal" chance of moving quietly as well, as a fallback. I think this also helps players of thieves accept the small chance of success at low levels. But this is all very subjective, no one right way to do it, etc .

[William]

Yeah I have been thinking about the Thief skills issue myself over the last couple of days, and yeah you're right - it's probably best to have the Thieves skills as super normal. Another problem with the Basic Skills is Animal Handling at 20%, as it conflicts with the Animal Husbandry secondary skill which may also begin at 20% too. One solution is to have the secondary skills start at 30% instead of 20%, whilst a solution to the Thief skills issue is to have "Move Quietly" and just a plain simple "Hide" rather than a "Hide in Shadows". Also, none of these skills progress upwards unless the character uses the skill successfully whilst at a certain experience level.
I'm going to do a little bit of revision and post it here in a short while.

Bill

[William]

Here is a slightly revised, and probably superior version, of the Secondary Skills system. The main difference is with the "Basic Skills" list and its relation to the Thief skills, but the "Secondary Skills" themselves now start at a higher percentage than before, as long as the proposed adjudication system is used. Feel free to use your own if it takes your fancy.

Bill

Edit: This attachment is the same as the one at the top of the page.

[William]

This attachment has a couple of small typos removed. A bit pedantic I know. Sorry about the different versions - I'm not a professional games designer and I can only fit this in in my spare time.

Bill

Edit: This file is now also the same as the one at the top of the page.

[merias]

Thanks William, the changes look good. It might be a good idea to update the first post with the latest version as well, I suspect most people coming upon this thread will download from there (or maybe you did that already it looks like?).

[William]

Thanks Merias!
I have updated the other posts with the new file

[William]

I have posted the last and final version of the Secondary Skills system for Swords & Wizardry and other games.

The Move Quietly basic skill was set at 20% for Thieves and subclasses, and 5% for everyone else. This has it at the same skill percentage for Thieves and subclasses as Move Silently, but it should obviously be easier to Move "Quietly" as opposed to completely "Silently". The Move "Quietly" percentage has been raised for both classes who have Thief skills and classes who don't.

Once again apologies to anyone who has an interest in this. I'm doing this in my spare time, so obviously I'm fitting it in here or there and it's resulting in different versions. This is the final one, and all the above links will download the final finished version.

Bill