You can't really talk about replacing Troika's BASE SKILL stat without considering what that means for Advanced Skills. For as foreign a system as Troika seemed to me, seeing something that reminded me of D&D 3.5's Skill list in an OSR game was oddly anachronistic.
What I like about Advanced Skills:
- Gives PC's individuality despite potentially sharing a BASE SKILL
- Increase as PC's gain experience
- Making up new ones
What I didn't like about Advanced Skills:
- They were the only stats PC's could increase
- They suggest to players that the answer might be on their character sheet
- They don't let PC's cast spells untrained (see the Spells as Items post once its done)
My first thought was to split BASE SKILL into 3 stats calculated in the same way:
- d3+3 for STR
- d3+3 for DEX
- d3+3 for WIL
But then I looked at how often two PC's stats ended up being the same as each other and realized that I wanted some more variance among scores.
But I couldn't just increase the stat range without breaking the 2d6 roll under aspect:
- BASE SKILL ranges from 4 to 6
- Advanced Skills range from 0 to about 4
- So the hardest roll under a PC can attempt would be 4, and the easiest about 10.
Elegant, nice, great.
What about adjusting it down? From d3+3 to d6?
That would mean rolling a 1 or 2 in STR would make it impossible for a PC to roll under on something like climbing a wall without a relevant Advanced Skill.
Ew.
So then... What if starting STR DEX and WIL kept their 3d6 generation from Into the Odd and we moved from 2d6 roll under to d20 roll under? Is that insane?
I don't think so?
That lets us keep all the working parts of Into the Odd's stat system (roll under relevant stat for challenges, roll over to increase a stat by 1 on "level up", and stat-based starting equipment packages) and things like combat can still be Roll VS, with both sides rolling a d20 instead of 2d6.
Monster stats would adopt the same ITO approach of "all 10's unless it's notable," or just rebalance their single SKILL number with one along 3d6's curve rather than the d3+3 curve.
So do we still need Advanced Skills?
I think so, they'd just be a bit less common in starter packages. I mapped the ones from the base rules against what Stat I think each would be rolled with:
Uses STR
- Climb
- Ride
- Run
- Swim
- Strength (Completely replaced by STR)
Uses DEX
- Acrobatics (Probably completely replaced by DEX)
- Fly
- Locks
- Sleight of Hand
- Sneak
Uses WIL
- Astrology
- Awareness
- Disguise
- Etiquette
- Evaluate
- Healing
- Languages
- Mathmology
- Poison
- Second Sight
- Secret Signs
- Specific Spell Skills (Probably completely replaced by WIL)
GM determines / Case by case / I’m not sure
- Craft Skills
- Golden Barge Pilot
- Tracking
- Trapping
- Tunnel Fighting
- Weapon Fighting
All of this still begs some questions:
- What stat do you attack with?
- Does this affect weapons at all?
- Can you still damage STR DEX and WIL like Into the Odd?
To be continued!