Find the Weakness... Updated again 99% final

Here is the near the final draft. Any thoughts are welcome.

Sadrik

SKILLS
Characters get skill points at first level and buy their skills from their class’s skill list.

After first level characters receive an additional skill point at every even level. (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, and 20)
Humans get 1 more skill point at first level.
Rogues have a class feature that gives them an additional skill point at every odd level after first level. (3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, and 19)
Characters can also get additional skill points by taking the following feat.

SKILLED [GENERAL]
Benefit: You gain 2 more skill points to buy more skills.

Costs:
At first level when characters are buying their skills they get a bonus to buying their class skills. Class skills get a free point added to it when bought.

Your goal here is to have the characters just pick skills without the nonsene of a couple of ranks here, couple here? Why not just say, you get our normal amount of skill point per level in skills that are maxed out. So a human rogu with a int of 14 would chose eleven skills at max ranks.

Seems simpler....

-Sravoff

Well,

Yes simpler. But it does not have the gradations that I am looking for. Some classes should be better at a certain group of skills over others. I want to add that second level of complexity to make it more interesting than just pick X skills and you have max ranks in them.

So, what if you are a 1st level fighter and then for your second level you become a rogue. I want to come up with a system that would give the character a small benefit in their Dex based skills without making it overly complex. My goal here is simplification.

I was thinking of something like this. If you had a fighter who took tumbling as one of there skills, a Dex skill which is an Average skill for a fighter, he would have a +2 ranks at first level. Then you took a level in rogue which is Good for Dex skills, he should get a bonus. What should the bonus be? (+1 or +2) This would be a one time non stackable bonus to the skill.

Sadrik

mmmmhhhh... Then I dunno.....
I guess the way you ahve it is pretty good that way, I would say a +1 for one step away and a +2 for two steps away. ie a barbarian with intimidate cross class to a bard gets +2 whil cross classing to rogue gets +1. Though some rogues aer nothing but silver tounged conartists and barabarians should be good at intimidating. Just my thoughts.

-Sravoff

So........how exactly is this supposed to work? A wizard gets 8 + int mod skill points to start with......what do they do with them if they don't buy ranks like normal? Do they use each point to gain their class' save bonus with that skill? I.E. pay 1 rank to gain Good spellcraft progression because it's Int based and wizards have a good Int save? Why in the hell would anyone spend points in that case to gain a skill that their class sucks with, such as a wizard learning Diplomacy or a fighter learning knowledge-nobility and royalty? How would anyone ever be able to become decent or good with such a skill using this system? Is your ultimate goal to shoehorn all wizards as being the same skills-wise, all fighters being the same skills-wise, etc.? To where every fighter in the world couldn't diplomacize his way out of a paper bag, so to speak? Even if he took 1 level of rogue at some point......what good would it do? He doesn't get skill points each level, so he can't dump a bunch of points into Diplomacy at any point to make it actually useful. No wizard would ever be able to climb a tree. No sorcerer could ever swim across a ford. No barbarian could ever scare even a little kid with his pathetic Intimidate. Not trying to come off as crass or rude, but pointing out the glaring hole I seem to see in this set-up.

How about, instead, giving each class a free rank in each of their 'favored skills' at 1st-level in the class, and again at every 5th level beyond that in the class? Or something like that. Perhaps add a caveat that if they multiclass, they won't gain free ranks two levels in a row, such that someone can't just go from Fighter to Rogue at 2nd-level and gain an extra 4~ free ranks at 2nd-level; but if they waited for 3rd-level to multiclass into Rogue, they would get the 4~ free ranks of a 1st-level Rogue. Designate a few 'favored skills' for each class. I.E. Fighters favor Climb, Intimidate, Jump, and Swim, Rogues favor Bluff, Hide, Knowledge-Local, and Move Silently, Bards favor Diplomacy, Listen, Perform, and Sense Motive, etc. Maybe base it on the number of base skill points that class gets; such as 3 favored skills for classes with a base of 2sp/level, 4 for classes with a base of 4sp/level, 5 for classes with a base of 6sp/level, 6 for classes with a base of 8sp/level, 7 for classes with a base of 10sp/level, etc.

So........how exactly is this supposed to work? A wizard gets 8 + int mod skill points to start with......what do they do with them if they don't buy ranks like normal? Do they use each point to gain their class' save bonus with that skill? I.E. pay 1 rank to gain Good spellcraft progression because it's Int based and wizards have a good Int save?

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A 1st level wizard gets 8 (base) + 1 (human) + 3 (16 int) = 12 skill points. Skills that are class skills for wizards cost 1 skill point (Knowledges, spellcraft, concentration etc.) and cross class skills cost 2 points (tumble, ride etc.). So, with those twelve points they can buy 6 cross class or 12 class skills or any mix in between.

Is your ultimate goal to shoehorn all wizards as being the same skills-wise, all fighters being the same skills-wise, etc.?

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No. I think that I have given enough skill points to characters so that that does not happen. They could be able to take their needed skills and still have points left over for other stuff that they conceptually want their character to have.

No wizard would ever be able to climb a tree. No sorcerer could ever swim across a ford. No barbarian could ever scare even a little kid with his pathetic Intimidate. Not trying to come off as crass or rude, but pointing out the glaring hole I seem to see in this set-up.

Click to expand...

You are not rude this is a good point. But these are all cross-class skills. And with intimidate I think I would treat that as a strength skill but uses charisma to modify it so the barbarian would have max ranks (good) modified by their Cha.

Ill post anotrher reply later no time to finish...

Sadrik

You didn't exactly answer my first question though. Does buying a skill mean that only then do they get their class' bonus on that skill, in the manner I described? So your example wizard would have 12 skills that get a greater bonus than just their key ability modifier? That seems to be it, but I wanted to be sure that's what you mean. Other than that...... I don't think the Poor bonus is sufficient to make those skills useful enough to the character to differentiate them from other characters of the same class. Perhaps bump up the Poor bonus to equal the Average bonus, then bump the Average bonus up a few points? Making the bonuses G+23, A+18, and P+12 over time, for instance? Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I don't know...... Perhaps instead, allow each character to switch one of their Good bonuses with one of their Poor bonuses, at the expense of not being able to switch their other Good bonus with an Average one? So a wizard for instance might be unusally good at Strength stuff, but not really so sensible or perceptive (some sort of hedge wizard or something, for instance). Or a particular barbarian might be more charismatic and forceful in personality than most, but not so good at concentrating.

Also, another thing; doesn't this leave Concentration Constitution-based, to where Wizards and such will inadvertently sub-par with Concentration? Is it intentional that they should have to swap their Good Wisdom Save with their Average Constitution Save? Just wondering.

BTW, you have a typo, saying 6 cross-class or 12 cross-class, when I think you meant 6 class or 12 cross-class or the reverse maybe?

Let me see if I understand this...

At character creation, you get to 'buy' um...'access' to certain skills. So that Wizard can get 'access' to (for example) 6 class skills, and 3 cross class skills. But this doesn't give him skill ranks directly.

Now you look at the skills he picked, and compare it to the two lists.
Listen is one of his selected cross class skills, and is based on Wisdom. Wisdom is a 'good' for a Wizard, so at 1st level, he has 4 ranks in Listen. Is this correct?
Next level, he takes another level of Wizard, and his Listen is now +5.

When he is a Wizard3/Cleric3 his listen is +12

If he were a Wizard2/Rogue3/Arcane trickster5 his Listen would be +12

And a Wizard3/Cleric3/Mystic Theurge3 would give a Listen of +18.

Is this right?



Now, is this total modifier? Or does the stat modifier still get added in?

Assuming I am pretty much right in my understanding.... I see definite problems here.

First, all characters will be the same (for the most part). Look at the number of 'class skills'. A wizard only has 6, so he will likely always pick those, and all wizards have the same 'good/ave/poor' so they will pick 3 of the 'good' ones, and likely they will often be the same.

The rogue gets a different problem. No matter how important he thinks climib or jump is... he will always be bad at it. At 10th level, he will have a whopping +5 in those. So why would he pick them? It would make much more sense to pick up *only* dex and Int skills. Even Diplomacy, Sense motive, spot, and search are all stuck at +7. While Hide(etc) is +13.

If he picks his 14 Dex/Int 'class' skills, it will be the same as maxing out 14 skills... that is a LOT more than the current rogue can do.

There is a *huge* benefit in only taking skills that your class is 'good' at. So it no longer really matters if it is class or cross-class.... and thus they will likely all start looking the same.


Looking back, I think my initial understanding is flawed... I think your chart includes the (x4) for first level, but you will need to describe better how to deal with multiclassing.

I guess he didn't really want to find the weaknes....