Phaezen

Just a few thoughts on reworking skills for 3.x and 4th.

I'll use the blog to compose my thoughts and then post into a forum for some more general feedback.

In the interest of disclosure, I will take the opportunity to point out that I don't believe you need background skills to roleplay a character, roleplaying should be its own reward and shouldn't result in mechanical advantages or disadvantages. With this in mind, having background skills (craft, profession, knowledge) can help define a character, but this shouldn't come at the cost of removing adventuring skills from the character, or provide an excessive advantage to any singal character.

To start things off, lets look at the percieved pros and cons of each editions skill systems

3.X

Pros

• Highly customisable
• Helps define character background

CONS

• Most classes have too few
• Taking background skills can negatively impact a characters ability to adventure
• Big disparity between unskilled, semiskilled and focussed ranks, at level 3 the difference can easily be a large as 7 (5 ranks and 2 singery bonus, not including stat bonuses) and up to 25 differeance at level 20, possibly more with class features and feats.

4e

PROS

• Less disparity between unskilled and skilled characters (5 to be exact at all levels, not including stat bonuses)
• Most classes have more skills

CONS

• Fewer skills mean less differentiation between characters
• No background skills

I will look at trying to find a middle ground between these two systems in my next post.

Phaezen