World Map, Items, Dialogue Screen, Script Actions

[screeg]

Your English is fine, Marinx, and any poster who agrees with everything I say is always welcome here!

[Marinx]

You've been most kind sir

[BlueSalamander]

Thank you Marinx!

maybe you could include choice in editor whether you wanna main char or not because if module creator have nothing special in mind for that "main" char, it would be pointless to have one.

Right, that I can do, yes. A checkbox option in the editor.

Also it would be nice to include option whether you wanna create module with just a main char and add NPC to party later ingame

Already possible, you can limit the number of self-created PCs to 1, meaning you'd have the main char, plus recruited chars if any.

About map I totally agree with Screeg. Map is beautiful but titles are too yellow.

Right, it might be enough just to add some blue all over as mentioned by Screeg, saving me the need for reviewing each and every title.

Doesn't that defeats the purpose of "secret" door/stuff?

Not really, because you might still miss it. It was like that in KotC.

I prefer static checks as Tiavals suggested. Just make sure that game don't reveal this checks to player.

Sure, sounds like a good idea. If we're talking about a check that would be made whenever you open a desk drawer, that works fine. However if we're talking about a secret door, the check would only be made when the PCs are sufficiently close to the door. But I suppose the whole room could trigger the check, and then you would not feel that you have to walk into every square.

Only problem with a static check is that unless you have a super-searcher (probably an Elf Rogue), no matter how close the PCs are to a secret door, they still won't find it. Good or bad, I'm not sure.

If he doesn't have high enough check then he shouldn't have a slightest idea about there is any secret at all.

Yes, good point.

Will resting be hardcoded to campfires?

At the moment, clicking a campfire triggers resting as in KotC. A campfire can be used a number of times (e.g. 5, or infinite) and then it disappears. The number is displayed when mousing over the campfire. There's a script action for completely healing a character, that includes the effects of rest. I'll add another one for applying rest to the party. That way you can have the party rest as part of the events of a script.

Will world map be hardcoded or we will be able to import our own world map to module?

The world map is not hard-coded. It is created in the editor just like any other map. There's a selection box 'world map' that you have to set if you want the map to be a world map (or city map). The various locations on the map, you create them as rectangular activable zones with a name, a blue dot picture and a script address. The big blue dot is printed on the world map so that the player knows it is a special location. The name is displayed when the player mouses over the location. The script is executed when the player clicks on the location. So it is the script that will control where the party ends up. You could use the script to make the PCs have a travel encounter.

The only things that will be hard coded will be the character classes, the feats, and of course the combat rules and level-up rules. Everything else, you can modify in the editor.

No problem at all with the English

Apart from that, I'm working on combat now. That means copying the code from KotC and then reviewing it line by line to update it to the new engine and new data structures. There are a number of very long functions I have to update, including combat start triggers, executing an attack, combat animation, casting a spell, artificial intelligence and probably a few others. At the moment I'm doing the combat start triggers and initiative rolls.

[Marinx]

BS, thank you for your answers and time you took to read my suggestions.

Only problem with a static check is that unless you have a super-searcher (probably an Elf Rogue), no matter how close the PCs are to a secret door, they still won't find it. Good or bad, I'm not sure.

It depends how high you set those Search DCs. But in my experience one party member always have maxed Search. So at 1st lvl with INT 16, you already have +7 to Search, without race bonus.
If you design DC according to maxed out searchers, and if party don't have maxed searcher, then they'll miss secret almost always. If you design DC for average searcher then maxed searcher will beat it easily every time. This is a problem with skills in 3rd edition and I never liked this skill system. I prefer more skill system like there is in 5th edition. There are no ranks, just proficiency.

Maybe you could do it this way if it's possible. Static check is done with take 10, so before mentioned searcher with +7 will have Search check 17. This check is done independently/automatically (behind the scene) when player is near secret. And if player wants to search the room, game allows him one search per room via search button/command. Or one search per secret. I'm not sure if this would be best solution, but at the moment I can't think of better one

At the moment, clicking a campfire triggers resting as in KotC. A campfire can be used a number of times (e.g. 5, or infinite) and then it disappears. The number is displayed when mousing over the campfire. There's a script action for completely healing a character, that includes the effects of rest. I'll add another one for applying rest to the party. That way you can have the party rest as part of the events of a script.

So, if I understood correctly, with help of script, I could implement rest as part of particular event. But what if I want to set rest system without campfires like there was in Infinity games (BG, IWD)? Player would need some sort of button/command for script to execute. Would that be possible?

[Tiavals]

Now that I think about it, will there even be skills in KotC2? There isn't any mention of them in the Fantasy World Engine page.

Are skills a useful addition to the game? Most of the things skills add could be implemented with only classes and races. For example, you might only see a secret door if you have a rogue in the party, or perhaps a dwarf. In a forest or other natural place, a ranger, druid or elf might instead be needed to spot it. In a library, only a wizard can spot a secret(whether a hidden book of knowledge, or a magical portal(effectively a secret door)).

In such a system, you'd always find them if you have the proper person in the party(and perhaps only if you're on the right tile?).

Likewise, for diplomacy skills you could have Bards and Paladins be the "triggers" instead of a diplomacy skill check. For intimidation, barbarians and death knights. For knowledge things, druids would know of nature, wizards and sorcerers of arcane matters, clerics and monks of divine matters, psionicists and psychic knights of mental things. You can pretty much divide all skills to the classes(and races too) in an interesting way. For combat acrobatics and so on, you could give a bonus(or automatic success) to monks and rogues, while everyone else rolls a die(perhaps a bonus to centaurs or elves). Really, the only place where skill checks are interesting are combat, because they aren't simply a case of "one check, load the game and try again if it fails", since a combat has dozens of checks each turn.

Of course, skills could add many interesting things to the game, but if they haven't been implemented yet, an alternate way of handling such things might be better. After all, KotC2 is a computer game, not a tabletop game, so it shouldn't be a carbon copy of the same system. In a computer game, you can usually load if you fail, which makes skill checks less meaningful. In a tabletop game, the excitement of a single die roll, where all the players are on the edge of their seats to see if it succeeds or not, can't really be duplicated in the same way in a game where the player controls the whole party and can load the game at will.

If you fear the characters would be too similar without skills, you could use a proficiency system like Marinx suggested, combined with the "always succeeds if present" system. A ranger, for instance, could choose 2 skills to be proficient in, from a list of(from the top of my head):

Knowledge Nature
Search
Climb
Tracking
Herbalism
Stealth

So, you could make a ranger that has Stealth and Climb, making it possible to scout places other characters can't enter(since they lack those proficiencies). Or your ranger might have Heralism and Knowledge Nature, so he'd notice things about the nature and comment on them, perhaps collecting enough herbs to create a potion if you walk around a herb bush, or such.

Naturally, the skills would overlap by characters, like a Druid would have Herbalism and Knowledge nature in his list of choices, while a Rogue would have Climb, Search and Stealth.'

Perhaps the skills could be divided to categories, and each character would have 2 or 3 categories to choose from. For example, a ranger would have the categories of Nature(herbalism, knowledge nature) and Scouting(search, climb, tracking, stealth). On the other hand, a druid would have Nature and Religion(knowledge religion, Piety/worship/pratice of religion) to choose from. So you could make a druid that only took Nature proficiencies, only Religion proficiencies, or a mix of both. A druid and a ranger might have the same proficiencies if you wanted, or totally different ones.

The good point in this is that normally if you have to control a party of many characters, assigning individual skills to each of them may be tiresome, but with a proficiency system, you'll just choose the proficiencies in the beginning and that's that. The bad part is of course that there's less things to customise the character with, if you can't choose the skill ranks in as much detail as you want. Also, it'd eliminate the differences between characters, so a half-giant ranger and an elf ranger would be identical in proficiencies(if they chose the same ones, that is), since if you don't have skills with ranks, it's kinda foolish to have stats affect them either.

However, you could sort of solve this by having each race have their own category of proficiencies. For example, the Half-Giant category would have things like Intimidate and Feats of Strength, so each Half-giant(even a wizard) could choose those proficiencies if he wanted. The benefit of this is that it gives more feeling to a race, since thematically in a fantasy world, elves are superior to humans in noticing things, stealth and nature knowledge. If the Elf category had Stealth, Search and Nature Knowledge, you could always give the player the choice of taking such a proficiency if he wanted. This way, you could have an elven wizard or fighter who still knows things about nature or is stealthy, giving the character more, well, character. At the same time, if the player doesn't want to take such proficiencies for his elf, he doesn't need to. Humans might have a category that includes Bartering and Diplomacy, or such things.

I hope all of this wasn't too long-winded and confusing.




-------------------------------------

Short version:

I suggest a system where skills are instead proficiencies(no ranks, you either have it or not). Each character class has two categories of proficiencies linked to them. Each category has a handful of proficiencies. For example, the Scouting category would include the proficiencies of Stealth, Climb, Tracking, Search. Since each class has 2 categories, a ranger for example would have Scouting and Nature. A druid would have Nature and Religion. In addition, each race has one category tied to it. Therefore, a character would have three categories of proficiencies to choose from. A dwarf ranger would have Dwarf, Scouting and Nature. Each character would choose three proficiencies from all the ones available for him. Each category would include at least 2 choices and maybe a maximum of 4. So a character would have from 6 to 12 different proficiencies to choose from, with his 3 available proficiency slots. You can choose one from each category, or three from a single category, or any variation. So, a dwarf ranger could focus on his Dwarf Proficiencies, or take one from each category. Thus, even two dwarf rangers could have very different proficiencies and therefore a different feeling to having one in the party.

A bard might be an exception, with more categories and perhaps proficiencies than others, or such. While I don't think it'd be a good idea to let characters choose more proficiencies as they level up, it might be possible. It creates some annoying problems, such as the player wanting to backtrack to dungeons he already went through since he got a new proficiency and wants to check if he missed some secrets. There should be enough interesting things to choose during a level up as it is, such as feats and so on.

Of course, a very important thing is to make sure that there are more proficiencies in the game than a single party can have. If the default module has a party of 4(thus 12 proficiencies), the game ought have at least 30 different ones in total, for it to feel like an important choice as to what to take when making the party. One important consideration would also be, what happens if two characters have the same proficiency? Are two people with Knowledge Nature somehow better than one? Can two characters with diplomacy succeed where one always fails? Or should it just be "one is always enough".

Something to think about.

[BlueSalamander]

in my experience one party member always have maxed Search. So at 1st lvl with INT 16, you already have +7 to Search, without race bonus.

Yes, but the game will not have skills. So if you have a character with INT 16, he has +3 only, not +7. Then we can add a +2 bonus from the race and +4 from the rogue class. As you say, it all depends on the difficulty class. If you require only +4 to detect a secret door, then this could be found with an INT 18+ wizard, or with an INT 10 rogue, or with an INT 14 dwarf, or with an INT 14 elf. I think that would be fine. Essentially you're requiring the presence of a wizard or a rogue. But if the DC is very high then you might need a high-intelligence elf rogue.

This is a problem with skills in 3rd edition and I never liked this skill system.

But in 3rd edition you also add the result of a d20, right? So there can be a big luck factor.

if I understood correctly, with help of script, I could implement rest as part of particular event. But what if I want to set rest system without campfires like there was in Infinity games (BG, IWD)? Player would need some sort of button/command for script to execute. Would that be possible?

But if you do that, don't you think it would make the game worse rather than better? Because that means resting after every battle. I'm not planning to have a rest button, but you could always create a magic item like a Buddha statue which, when activated by the player, has the same effect as resting.

will there even be skills in KotC2?

No, there won't be hard-coded skills, just like in KotC. I suppose you could do something with scripts if you really wanted to.

Are skills a useful addition to the game? Most of the things skills add could be implemented with only classes and races.

Yes, that's also my opinion. The thing I don't want is giving skill points to everyone, when in fact I know that only one or two classes (e.g. the Rogue) will really benefit from those skill points. I think the Rogue does not need skill points and should be considered to be highly skilled at all Rogue jobs (stealth, pickpocket, disarming, etc) in the same way that a fighter is good at fighting and a wizard is adept at spell casting. The fighter does not need skill points for fighting and the wizard does not need skill points for wizardry.

For example, you might only see a secret door if you have a rogue in the party, or perhaps a dwarf. In a forest or other natural place, a ranger, druid or elf might instead be needed to spot it. In a library, only a wizard can spot a secret(whether a hidden book of knowledge, or a magical portal(effectively a secret door)).

Yes, exactly. You could do that. Different requirements depending on the type of place.

In such a system, you'd always find them if you have the proper person in the party(and perhaps only if you're on the right tile?).

Probably it's better not to require standing on the exact right tile, especially if you're already requiring a specific class or race.

Likewise, for diplomacy skills you could have Bards and Paladins be the "triggers" instead of a diplomacy skill check.

Yeah. My idea is that there will be about eight special skill categories: Nature (Ranger, Druid), Healing (Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer, Paladin), Arcane (Wizard, Sorcerer), Warrior (Fighter, Barbarian, Death Knight), Psionic (Psionicist, Psychic Warrior), Streetwise (Rogue, Bard), Religion (Cleric, Monk) and Word of Honour (Paladin). I've already created a script action to check whether the party includes a character of a particular skill category. So the idea is that you could have the following dialogue choices, for example:

[Nature] Look for medicinal herbs.
[Arcane] Decipher the magic runes.
[Warrior] Intimidate the nobleman.
[Word of Honour] Tell me your secret and I will not reveal it, I swear it on my honour.
[Half-Giant] Push the boulder away.

the only place where skill checks are interesting are combat, because they aren't simply a case of "one check, load the game and try again if it fails", since a combat has dozens of checks each turn.

Exactly, and you can't save during combat.

If you fear the characters would be too similar without skills

No, I'm not concerned about that, but thank you for the explanation of the proficiency system. It certainly sounds interesting. The main problem I can foresee with this system is that you would want each skill to be equally useful, or at least somewhat useful for everyone.

If you implement the 'Herbalism' skill, for it to be selected by the player, it has to offer advantages just like the 'Search' skill. So that means for every module you make, you have to worry about 'did I cater for every skill that the party could have?'.

I would rather have no formal skill system and let the designer focus on what he wants to focus on. For me, if you have a druid or a ranger in the party, then you automatically have the Herbalism skill; it might not be useful in the current module but that's okay because it's part of the package of being a druid or a ranger. If you have a barbarian, you automatically have the Climbing skill, etc.

Of course, a very important thing is to make sure that there are more proficiencies in the game than a single party can have. If the default module has a party of 4(thus 12 proficiencies), the game ought have at least 30 different ones in total, for it to feel like an important choice as to what to take when making the party. One important consideration would also be, what happens if two characters have the same proficiency? Are two people with Knowledge Nature somehow better than one? Can two characters with diplomacy succeed where one always fails? Or should it just be "one is always enough".

Well, you've summarised the difficulties associated with the proficiency system. As you said, for proficiencies to be meaningful, the game would need to have a lot of them. Many people have asked for a party size of 6 or even 8, so we can't look at the party size of 4 as being the standard size. So if we can expect the party to have most proficiencies, why even bother with a complicated system?

I just think that the proficiencies are part of the package that comes with a class (and more rarely with the race). A wizard always learns about Arcane as part of his training. There will be no wizard who does not know about Arcane because he could not have become a wizard without knowing about it. As for what to do when two characters have the same proficiency, it seems to me that 'one is enough' is a good rule.

[Tiavals]

I do like the simple approach you have outlined for the most part, but it has the same problem as the more complex system. An average party will already have most of the proficiencies. Of course, I do get the point that if the end result is going to be that anyway, then might as well go with the simple system instead of the complex one.

For example, even with a party of four, you'd probably have something like a fighter, cleric, wizard and rogue in your team. This means you'd have over half of the eight special skill categories you outlined. You'd have 5 out of 8 in an average party, since a druid, sorcerer, cleric and paladin all have 2 categories, and it's unlikely you wouldn't have at least one of them in any party, since you'll likely want a healer/ability damage remover, and the psionicist is the only one besides them that can do it at all, and relying only on the psionicist for healing might be a bad plan.

With a party of more than 4, you'd more or less always have all of them, which kinda defeats the purpose. And if you have all of them, then why have any at all? At least, I know that as a player, if I had 6 characters, I'd make sure to grab 7 categories. And with 8 characters, well, I'd obviously take the right characters to give access to all of them, thus making it completely pointless to have them in the first place. (Unless for some reason I had a very strong idea for a party that meant I couldn't get all of the categories, such as wanting to have 2 fighters and 2 barbarians in the same party).

As a rule of thumb, I'd say that you should make sure that no party composition ever gets more than 75% of the categories, no matter what. With 8 categories and an 8 character party, that's quite difficult, of course. If the main module is going to support 8 characters, you'd almost have to make each class into it's own category.

Although, if you have each race being it's own category, that of course helps a lot in some ways, but doesn't help with the problem of there being too few categories in my opinion. At bare minimum, a party should always have at least 2 categories it can't get no matter what, I feel. Otherwise it feels a bit pointless.




My perspective on the proficiency/skill thing isn't that they should all be equally useful, but they should all be interesting and do something at a few points in the game. Rather than making the game easier, they should make the game more interesting. I suppose it's more about enhancing the atmosphere, like how the soundtrack of the game changes how you feel about playing the game. It doesn't really matter if one is mostly better than the others, so long as all of them do something memorable, especially since the player would have so many of them. I have played my fair share of games that have skills that more or less do absolutely nothing while some skills are essential for survival. But in a game like KotC2, none of the skills would be essential for survival, since the character class and race themselves cover that. Therefore, the skills don't really need to be that balanced, since they'd realistically be a small bonus from a mechanical perspective. More importantly, the skills would exist to make the player feel special and unique while playing, that it's his story that's unfolding.

I do get your point about catering for each skill, though, and for sure it would be a lot of work, since it might be hard to think uses for some skills, especially ones that haven't already been seen a dozen times in other modules.

[Marinx]

But if you do that, don't you think it would make the game worse rather than better? Because that means resting after every battle. I'm

not planning to have a rest button, but you could always create a magic item like a Buddha statue which, when activated by the player, has the

same effect as resting.

This is ok workaround for me. I have in mind more story based module,conversation heavy with less fighting so this is why I asked. And campfires breaks immersion, at least for me. But I'm just brainstorming right now. It's not really big deal. I'll do it somehow when time will be right

Yes, but the game will not have skills. So if you have a character with INT 16, he has +3 only, not +7. Then we can add a +2 bonus from

the race and +4 from the rogue class. As you say, it all depends on the difficulty class. If you require only +4 to detect a secret door, then

this could be found with an INT 18+ wizard, or with an INT 10 rogue, or with an INT 14 dwarf, or with an INT 14 elf. I think that would be fine.

Essentially you're requiring the presence of a wizard or a rogue. But if the DC is very high then you might need a high-intelligence elf rogue.

Ah, ok then. I wasn't aware that there are no skills in game. This approach seems ok to me.

But if you want to consider about skills like you mentioned, here is how skills are working in D&D 5th. Just as an example and idea starter

In 5th they implemented thing which is called proficiency bonus. 1st lvl character have +2 prof. bonus and every 4 levels it increases for +1.

1st-4th lvl = +2 prof. bonus
5th-8th lvl = +3 prof. bonus
9th-12th lvl = +4 prof. bonus
13th-16th lvl = +5 prof. bonus
17th-20th lvl = +6 prof. bonus

This bonus is added to any check in which character is proficient. Ie. attack with weapon, attack with spell, saving throw, skill...

Skills are just ability checks and if you are proficient in skill then you just add proficiency bonus to your check.
For example your wizard have proficiency in Arcana skill. Arcana is INT based skill, so wizard rolls d20+INt_mod+prof_bonus for Arcana.

"Skill bonus" don't rise during level ups. Just your proficiency bonus at those levels I mentioned. You can find magical items which are granting bonuses but are very rare.
So with no magical items which grants bonuses, lvl 20th character will have max +11 to skill because in 5th no PC can have attribute larger than 20 (+5 bonus), except in rare cases.

I must say that I like this approach very much because there are no more +zillion to skill/attack/something like in 3.5 and especially pathfinder.
I had a monk in pathfinder once who had 41 AC on lvl 5, and this is just one example.

Proficiency in skill are gained in three ways.
1. Every class can select couple of skill from class specific list, ordinary two but classes like bard and rogue have three and four respectively
2. Each character chooses background which grants two bacground specific skill proficiencies, ie. Acolyte grants proficiency in Insight and Religion.
3. Feat Skilled grants three skill proficiencies

Here is list of all skills:

Strength based:
Athletics

Dexterity based:
Acrobatics
Sleight of Hand
Stealth

Intelligence based:
Arcana
History
Investigation
Nature
Religion

Wisdom
Animal Handling
Insight
Medicine
Perception
Survival

Charisma based:
Deception
Intimidation
Perform ance
Persuasion

Notice that there are no constitution based skills and there are no skills like crafting and disable device. That's because this skills are replaced with tool proficiencies. Some classes starts with some tool proficiencies while other don't and any character can learn any tool proficiency through campaign. For example rogue starts with thieves tools proficienciy, bard starts with three music instruments proficienices, druid starts with herbalism kit etc.

Also there are passive checks:

A passive check is a special kind of ability check that doesn’t involve any die rolls. Such a check can represent the average result for a task done repeatedly, such as searching for secret doors over and over again, or can be used when the DM wants to secretly determine whether the characters succeed at something without rolling dice, such as noticing a hidden monster.
Here’s how to determine a character’s total for a passive check:
10 + all modifiers that normally apply to the check

There are basic rules on WotC site which are free. Here is link

Also I must point out very interesting way to use skills like:

Perception notices the trap.

Investigation reveals how the trap works and what is likely to occur when the trap is sprung (also likely how it can be disarmed).

Thieves' tools are used to try to disarm the trap.

So you could have 1 guy doing all this. Or maybe 3 players help each other.


"Hey I found a chest. Oh wait, it's trapped."

"Hmm. Looks like there's a springload mechanism here. It'll deploy once you open the chest. But interfere with the spring..."

"Got it. And I've just the tool to clip that spring out. Hang on."

So in this example we see how three skill check is needed just to get rid of the trap and similar logic can be applied to other skills and uses.

Hope that I didn't bored you to death with this and that it'll give you some good idea

[BlueSalamander]

Sorry for the delayed response.

An average party will already have most of the proficiencies.

Yes, that's true. It depends on the party size and party composition. You have an incentive to use a varied party. For example, if your party is made up of four clerics, because you think that Cleric is the superior combat class (it might be), then you won't have access to some special dialogue choices.

Anyway, even with that system, we can still associate some dialogue choices with a single class. For example, the Bard could be given an option to do singing or charm a NPC that no other class could charm.

you'd probably have something like a fighter, cleric, wizard and rogue in your team. This means you'd have over half of the eight special skill categories you outlined.

Yes, you would get five skill categories, because you're using a variety of unique classes. But if you were using, say, a Fighter, Barbarian, Wizard and Sorcerer, then you would get only [Warrior], [Healing] and [Arcane]. So you would miss dialogue choices associated with the five other groups, plus any other dialogue choice associated with the classes you're not taking.

Whereas, if I was able to choose the skills of each character, then I would always distribute them between my characters so that I would get all the important skills no matter what kind of party I use.

if I had 6 characters, I'd make sure to grab 7 categories

Yes, but you might not be able to create all six. Maybe you can create up to four and then you can recruit some extra characters. Anyway, I would probably choose a character more based on his fighting ability and how well the group can perform in combat, and not take only the skill categories into account.

If my group is going to be super powerful because I have two half-giant fighters in the party, then the consideration of skill categories is not so important anymore.

if you have all of them, then why have any at all?

I do think that, even if you have all the skills, as a player you would still want to see how each character is pulling his weight and bringing some unique contribution to the adventure. So I think it would still be cool to see some dialogue options labelled with a skill category. But you're right that the game would still be enjoyable if there wasn't any skill system.

At bare minimum, a party should always have at least 2 categories it can't get no matter what

As mentioned above, we can have dialogue options associated with a particular class or particular race, too. Even if you have eight characters, you can't cover all the classes.

We can also create more categories. For example [Assassin] for the Death Knight and Rogue. With that option we could injure one of the opponents before the start of combat, or skip some combat altogether using a swift strike. But I guess it doesn't resolve the issue of having all the skills, because if two classes have access to the same category then you're more likely to have one character with the skill.

We could restrict [Healing] to just the Cleric. Do you think that would be a good idea? That way only a Cleric would get dialogue options to heal NPCs, and not the Paladin, Druid or Sorcerer. Healing is the only skill that I've given to four classes.

they should all be interesting and do something at a few points in the game.

Right, I agree that for a skill to be interesting, it should do something unique at a few points in the game. So, if there is a formal skill system, where the player picks the skills that he wants, then for each possible skill, we have to look through the whole module to make sure that the skill is used in an interesting way at least a few times during the adventure.

It may not seem like much, but it would be a lot of work not spent on creating good battle encounters or developing the story line. As an example the list provided by Marinx contains 18 skills, not counting the tools. So you would want to have each of those 18 skills offer something interesting three or four times in all the modules that you make.

So I think it's a good argument for having a very limited number of skill categories which are likely to be useful in the natural flow of the adventure and won't feel forced, or require too much extra work.

This is ok workaround for me. I have in mind more story based module,conversation heavy

Sure. You can also have the party rest using a conversation option.

Arcana is INT based skill, so wizard rolls d20+INt_mod+prof_bonus for Arcana.

Sounds interesting, thanks. That's definitely simpler than in D&D 3.5.

in 5th no PC can have attribute larger than 20 (+5 bonus), except in rare cases.

Oh, that's quite something. No more Belts of Giant Strength then?

there are no more +zillion to skill/attack/something like in 3.5

Right, so it works like that even for attack and armour class too.

I had a monk in pathfinder once who had 41 AC on lvl 5

Yeah, you can easily have a high AC, depending on equipment. Just using non-magic plate armour, a non-magic tower shield and a +5 ring of deflection, and having 12 dex, can give any character 28 AC. And at that point it can be difficult to have humanoid enemies remain challenging. Because if you give good equipment to the enemies to make them better, that equipment ends up in the hands of the player who uses it to become even stronger. Hence, in KotC 2, only marked equipment will be lootable. That way we can have challenging humanoid enemies without overwhelming the player with loot.

Here is list of all skills:

Right, thanks for all the info.

investigation reveals how the trap works and what is likely to occur when the trap is sprung

That sounds weird to me. I would have thought investigation would be something like asking the right questions to a bunch of suspects, noticing their reaction, or something like that. It seems to me that to investigate a trap you would need to have trap knowledge, not just generic 'investigation' knowledge.

Also it seems to me that some skills are overlapping. Like Athletics/Acrobatics, Insight/Perception/Investigation, Persuasion/Deception/Intimidation. I prefer a simpler system.

[Tiavals]

Yes, that's true. It depends on the party size and party composition. You have an incentive to use a varied party. For example, if your party is made up of four clerics, because you think that Cleric is the superior combat class (it might be), then you won't have access to some special dialogue choices.

Hmm, I didn't think of the possibility that a player might make multiple characters of the same class. With so many classes to choose from, it seems like a waste to me.

Party rpgs are all about choice in character creation, so it makes sense that a player might want to sacrifice dialogue options and focus on combat abilities. Although honestly I believe any given party will be more powerful and versatile if each character is of a different class, at least if the limit of 4 characters exists. I guess I shouldn't assume everyone else agrees with that when creating the party, though.

Yes, but you might not be able to create all six. Maybe you can create up to four and then you can recruit some extra characters. .

I figured that if the party limit was 6, the player would make all 6. It does make a lot more sense from a rpg/setting/fluff perspective to let the player make 4 and then recruit 2, since it allows for NPCs to join which is always great. I usually choose NPCs based on how interesting they are, instead of what they bring to the table, as it were, so I might end up having two fighters because of that, which does resolve much of the "issue".

As mentioned above, we can have dialogue options associated with a particular class or particular race, too. Even if you have eight characters, you can't cover all the classes.

A few limited class-dialogues would go a long way to make stuff more unique. There need not be more than 1 for each class in the entire game, if they exist to supplement the category based system. Sounds like a good idea to combine them, with the main focus being in the categories with some rare class dialogues.

We can also create more categories. For example [Assassin] for the Death Knight and Rogue. With that option we could injure one of the opponents before the start of combat, or skip some combat altogether using a swift strike. But I guess it doesn't resolve the issue of having all the skills, because if two classes have access to the same category then you're more likely to have one character with the skill.

I think an [Assassin] category sounds great. It helps to differentiate between Rogue and Bard, and Death knight with the rest of the warriors. Then again, [Assassin] sounds like a pretty powerful category that relates only to combat stuff(unless you can make Sherlock Holmes type deductions from dead people with it), with most of the rest categories being more dialogue/extra options oriented. Of course that isn't necessarily a problem.

We could restrict [Healing] to just the Cleric. Do you think that would be a good idea? That way only a Cleric would get dialogue options to heal NPCs, and not the Paladin, Druid or Sorcerer. Healing is the only skill that I've given to four classes.

[Healing] is more problematic. All of those classes do have healing abilities(although a Psionicist can get them too), and the category is pretty crowded. But if you remove the others, their classes will only have a single category. I think it'd be fine if the Paladin only had Word of Honour, since the Paladin is the only one to even get that category(plus they don't have Lay on Hands in your system, so their healing abilities are pretty poor). As for Sorcerer, you might make a sorcerer without any healing spells, in which case the [Healing] category wouldn't make sense. On the other hand, if your Sorcerer had a lot of healing spells, it'd be strange for the category to be missing. It makes sense to me that the Druid would have [Healing], since the description says they focus on healing stuff, plus the image of a druid healing people with herbs and so on is pretty strong to me, at least.
I'd probably say that only giving Druid and Cleric [Healing] would be okay. The Sorcerer and Wizard both have only [Arcane]. The Sorcerer is a pretty powerful class in my opinion, so it's okay it only has one category, in that regard.
In any case, I'd definitely remove the Paladin. It wouldn't be the end of the world if 3 classes got [Healing], since 3 classes get [Warrior] too.