rycanada said:Why would you want to remove the skill caps? My thoughts for keeping them circle around the power of available feats, and the availability of feats such as skill focus and +2/+2s for the truly dedicated. Why wouldn't these be sufficient?
Well, a max ranks of 9 is only 5 higher than a 1st level PC, or a 25% difference on a d20. That seems far too low to me to distinguish between a talented novice & 'best of the best'. I suppose you could allow skill focus to be taken multiple times & stack? But my inclination if I capped skill ranks would be to allow at least a 100% difference between no-skill & max-skill characters, which would translate to a skill ranks cap of +20 on a d20. My experience has been that compared to skill-based systems like Runequest/BRP, D&D offers far too little variation in skill effectiveness at low levels, with the randomness of the dice overwhelming the skill ranks.
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