My NEW Skill list (feedback greatly appreciated!) LONG POST!

So, I played my first game of 4E this past Sunday, and in building my character and looking over the new shiny system, I really enjoy how much 4E's design has been focused on how skills are what a character can do. In my previous, albeit short-lived 'New Skill List Thread' about a month or two back, one of those who responded said that, and in reading the 4E rules, it finally drove home for me.

I then tonight went full-force into the 3E skill list, paring-down, cutting out, and reorganizing all sorts of lovely bits and pieces. What follows is the lovechild of a night of frenzied, inspired work. I appreciate any and all feedback!


MY NEW SKILL LIST:

Acrobatics (DEX)
Athletics (STR)
Bluff (CHA)
Concentration (CON)
Diplomacy (CHA)
Handle Animal (CHA sometimes DEX)
Intimidate (CHA)
Knowledge: Arcana (INT)
Knowledge: History (INT)
Knowledge: Local (CHA)
Knowledge: Medicine (INT)
Knowledge: Nature (INT or WIS)
Knowledge: the Planes (INT)
Knowledge: Psionics (INT)
Knowledge: Religion (INT)
Notice (WIS)
Perform (CHA)
Profession (INT or WIS)
Sense Motive (WIS)
Sleight of Hand (DEX)
Sneak (DEX)
Use Magic Item (INT or CHA)
Use Mechanical Device (DEX or INT)
Use Psionic Item (INT or CHA)

Alternative look at it:
STR: Athletics
DEX: Acrobatics, Sleight of Hand, Sneak, Use Mechanical Device****
CON: Concentration
INT: Knowledge: Arcana, History, Medicine, Nature**, the Planes, Psionics, Religion, Profession**, Use Magic Item***. Use Mechanical Device****, Use Psionic Item***
WIS: Notice, Knowledge: Nature, Profession**, Sense Motive
CHA: Bluff, Diplomacy, Handle Animal*, Intimidate, Knowledge: Local, Perform, Use Magic Item***, Use Psionic Item***.

*Handle Animal has certains uses for which DEX may be used.
** For Knowledge: Nature and Profession you may use your WIS or INT mod which ever is higher.
*** For Use Magic Device and Use Psionic Device you may use your INT or CHA mod, whichever is higher.
**** For Use Mechanical Device, you may use your DEX or INT mod, whichever is higher

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Here are the fine details of the skill list:

Acrobatics (DEX)
Is for all Balance, Escape Artist and Tumble checks

Athletics (STR)
Is for all Climb, Jump and Swim checks.

Bluff (CHA)
Is for all uses of Bluff and Diguise.

Concentration (CON)
Is for all Autohypnosis and Concentration checks.

Diplomacy (CHA)
Is the same.

Handle Animal (CHA or sometimes DEX)
Is for all Handle Animal and Ride checks. For uses of Handle Animal that used to be ride skill, use you DEX modifier on checks, except for Leap, Spur Mount, and Control Mount in Battle checks - those use CHA.

Intimidate (CHA)
Is the same.

Knowledge: Arcana (INT)
This skill takes over all Knowledge: Arcana checks and Spellcraft checks. It also pertains to Knowledge checks for Constructs, Dragons, Elementals, Magical Beasts and Oozes.

Knowledge: History (INT)

Knowledge: Local (CHA)
Is for all Gather Information and Knowledge: Local checks.

Knowledge: Medicine (INT)
Is for all Heal checks, for which I've swapped out D20 Modern's Treat Injury skill.

Knowledge: Nature (INT or WIS)
Is for all Knowledge: Nature and Survival checks as well as checks for Animals, Giants, Fey, Monstrous Humanoids, Plants and Vermin.

Knowledge: the Planes (INT)
Is for all Knowledge: the Planes checks, as well as for Survival checks when on a different plane, as well as checks for Aberrations, Elementals and Outsiders.

Knowledge: Psionics
Is for all Knowledge: Psionics and Psycraft checks. It’s also for creatures of the Aberrations, Constructs, and Psionic creatures and races.

Knowledge: Religion (INT)
Is for Knowledge: Religion checks as well as for checsk for Outsiders with an Alignment subtype and the Undead.

Notice (WIS)
This takes over all Spot, Listen and Search checks.

Perform (CHA)
Is the same, save for there is no distinction between what sort of performance type you choose – that is simply fluff/flavour.

Profession (WIS)
Is for all Craft and Profession checks.

Sense Motive (WIS)
Is the same.

Sleight of Hand (DEX)
Is for all Sleight of Hand and Use Rope checks.

Sneak (DEX)
Is for all Hide and Move Silently checks

Use Magic Item (INT or CHA)
Is the same (slight name change)

Use Mechanical Device (DEX or INT)
Is for all Disable Device and Open Lock checks.

Use Psionic Item (INT or CHA)
Is the same (slight name change)

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Now with that done, some re-balancing of classes needs to be done, so here we go:

Here's a little calculation I did. The following assumes you count Knowledge as 10 seperate skills, Perform as 9 separate skills, and count Profession and Craft as one skill each (since both are infinite in scope, this makes things easier if you just take that ratio down to 1. Makes sense? I hope so!)

Now, since 53 skils = 100%, and if you times 53 by 1.88 you get (essentually) 100%, I then multiplied all of the base classes skills by 1.88, to get the rough percent of skills they should have.

Bbn gets 9/53 possible skills. 9x1.88 = about 17%
Brd gets 34/53 possible skills. 34x1.88 = about 64%
Clr gets 10/53 possible skills. 10x1.88 = about 19%
Drd gets 13/53 possible skills. 13x1.88 = about 25%
Ftr gets 7/53 possible skills. 7x1.88 = about 14%
Pal gets 10/53 possible skills. 10x1.88 = about 19%
Mnk gets 26/53 possible skills. 26x1.88 = about 49%
Rgr gets 19/53 possible skills. 19 x1.88 = about 36%
Rog gets 37/53 possible skills. 37x1.88 = about 70%
Sor gets 6/53 possible skills. 6 x1.88 = about 11%
Wiz gets 15/53 possible skills. 15 x1.88 = about 28%

To group them:
Lower Skills (0-24%): Barbarian (17%), Cleric (19%), Fighter (14%), Paladin (19%), Sorcerer (11%)
Medium Skills (25-49%): Druid (25%), Monk (49%), Ranger (36%), Wizard (28%)
Higher Skills (50%+): Bard (64%), Rogue (70%) [Monk is close]

But, that also isn’t counting their skills per level. Therefore:

Bbn .17x4 = .68
Brd .64x6 = 3.84
Clr .19x2 = .38
Drd .25x4 =1.00
Ftr .14x2 = .28
Pal .19x2 = .38
Mnk .49x4 = 1.96
Rgr .36x6 = 2.16
Rog .7x8 = 5.6
Sor .11x2 = .22
Wiz .28x2 = .56

We can now see just how good the classes are power-wise, in regards to skills. We can also see that Fighters and Sorcerers (big surprize) got the major shaft, skills-wise. Let’s see what we can do about this then, with my new skill list...

Barbarians get: Athletics, Handle Animal, Intimidate, Knowledge: Nature, Notice, Profession.

Bards get Acrobatics, Bluff, Concentration, Diplomacy, Knowledge (all skills; taken individually), Notice, Perform, Profession, Sense Motive, Sleight of Hand, Sneak, Use Magic Item

Clerics get Concentration, Diplomacy, Knowledge: History, Medicine, the Planes, Religion, Profession, Sense Motive

Druids get Athletics, Concentration, Diplomacy, Handle Animal, Knowledge: Arcana, History, Medicine, Nature, Religion, Notice, Profession, Sense Motive.

Fighters get Acrobatics, Athletics, Handle Animal, Intimidate, Knowledge: Local, Medicine, Profession,

Monks get Acrobatics, Athletics, Concentration, Knowledge: History, Medicine, Religion, Notice, Profession, Sense Motive, Sneak.

Paladins get Athletics, Concentration, Diplomacy, Handle Animal, Knowledge: History, Medicine, Religion, Profession, Sense Motive.

Rangers get Acrobatics, Athletics, Concentration, Handle Animal, Knowledge: History, Medicine, Nature, Religion, Notice, Profession, Sneak.

Rogues get Acrobatics, Athletics, Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Knowledge: Local, Notice, Perform, Profession, Sense Motive, Sleight of Hand, Sneak, Use Magic Item, Use Mechanical Device, Use Psionic Item.

Sorcerers get Concentration, Knowledge: Arcana, the Planes, Profession, Sense Motive, Use Magic Item and one of the following: Bluff, Diplomacy or Intimidate.

Wizards get Concentration, Knowledge (all skills; taken individually), Profession, Use Magic Item.


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I’ll have to calculate the rest of this out tomorrow, including skill points per class! It's rather early here.... lol.

Cheers,
--N

I don't agree with the groupings, and would change them as follows:

Notice: Spot and listen is good enough already.

Use Mechanical Device: Group Search and Disable Device together, making this purely (int). Perhaps also let the PC use this to create traps of his own, as opposed to using Profession. This could probably use a new name, too. DD can be used on magical traps, too afterall.

Sleight of Hand: Add Open Locks here. It may have three now, but it's still much weaker than Notice, Athletics, and Acrobatics.

Sense Motive: If you're going to leave this skill on its own (and if you put Disguise under Bluff, as suggested below), perhaps make it this skill that opposes the disguise check, instead of Notice? If you do this, perhaps name it Insight, like in 4E.

Questions:
Where's Disguise? If I'm not blind and it's not there, maybe add it with Bluff? Perform could possibly work for a spot, too.
History needs more. Why not add architecture and engineering to it? Ooh, and use it as an alternative for Profession (seige engineer).
Why does UMI and UPI allow int use, when the skills they were formed from were both strictly charisma?

As far as class balance...the real winners are classes that got free skills via having one of the old skills in the new combos, most noticeably classes like Barbarian that get listen but not spot (Swordsages and a few other non-core classes are like this as well). What exactly did you do to determine the new class skills? Fighter gets Acrobatics, for example, but never had any of those 3 skills before. Did you add on picks to make up for "shafting"? Barbarian class skills look too close to Fighter/Sorceror/Cleric's in number, considering the former had an extra 2 skill points a level over the latter. Ranger list looks too short, Paladin's too long.

I've also done a combining of skills. Mine looks a lot like yours, except for a few minor differences:

Climb, Jump, and Swim are still separate skills. I tried combining them, but there was so much different stuff you could do that it ended up being huge and a mess.

Craft and Profession are still separate. They have different stats, and they're sufficiently different that I couldn't really justify combining them.

Listen and Spot were combined without Search, and the skill is called Perception. Search, besides using a different stat, requires someone to actually pay attention, while Listen/Spot are "Hey, you might've seen/heard something - give me a check."

The Knowledge checks weren't combined with anything. I could see rolling Spellcraft and Knowledge (arcana) together, but not Survival and Know (nature).

I’ll have to calculate the rest of this out tomorrow, including skill points per class! It's rather early here....

Click to expand...

For skill points, I generally give them skill points equal to 1/3 of their class skills. So the new fighter, for instance, would get 2 + Int. Course, I also use a modified cross-class skill system - ALL skills are 1 point/rank, but you gain a +3 bonus for class skills, and you lose the x4 at 1st level.

Now, since we've got a cut-down list and we want to give PCs more skill points to spread around to cross-class skills, I changed it to 1/4 class skills, +2 skill points. So this is what you'd end up with:

4 + Int: Bbn, Clr, Ftr, Mnk, Pal, Sor

6 + Int: Drd, Rgr, Rog, Wiz

8 + Int: Brd

(Most of these actually ended up being odd numbers, but I figured for the sake of backwards compatibility it'd be easier to keep even ones, so I rounded up in a few cases.)

Kerrick said:

4 + Int: Bbn, Clr, Ftr, Mnk, Pal, Sor

6 + Int: Drd, Rgr, Rog, Wiz

8 + Int: Brd

Click to expand...

...I disagree with the results your calculations gave you...

...I disagree with the results your calculations gave you...

Click to expand...

20 skills, divided by 4 = 5; add 2, = 7. I just rounded up to 8. Bards should be the ones with the most skill points, not rogues - they're supposed to be the "jack of all trades", after all.

Generally speaking I like what you've done, though personally I think it's a little too condensed. But not by too much.

Of course, I'm looking at this from the perspective of True20 now, which is where I've toddled off to after 3.5, and a lot of what you've condensed is what they condensed, so I think you are on a good track.

Kerrick said:

Bards should be the ones with the most skill points, not rogues - they're supposed to be the "jack of all trades", after all.

Click to expand...

Interestingly, Jack of All Trades is a feat to be better at untrained skills. Mayhaps the Bard is the "jack of all trades" because he's too poor on skill points to be trained in many of them?

StreamOfTheSky said:

I don't agree with the groupings, and would change them as follows:

Click to expand...

Fair enough

StreamOfTheSky said:

Notice: Spot and listen is good enough already.

Click to expand...

The idea is to have all senses under this skill. Search is essentually a close-up examination, so I think that fits with my design goals well enough.

StreamOfTheSky said:

Use Mechanical Device: Group Search and Disable Device together, making this purely (int). Perhaps also let the PC use this to create traps of his own, as opposed to using Profession. This could probably use a new name, too. DD can be used on magical traps, too afterall.

Click to expand...

Good point on the magical traps bit, that could definitely use some consideration...

StreamOfTheSky said:

Sleight of Hand: Add Open Locks here. It may have three now, but it's still much weaker than Notice, Athletics, and Acrobatics.

Click to expand...

Well, Use Rope is a throw-away anyways Again, I'll have to consider this all...

StreamOfTheSky said:

Sense Motive: If you're going to leave this skill on its own (and if you put Disguise under Bluff, as suggested below), perhaps make it this skill that opposes the disguise check, instead of Notice? If you do this, perhaps name it Insight, like in 4E.

Click to expand...

Personally, my players and I hate the name "Insight" for the skill in 4e; it's much too vague, so we are going back to Sense Motive anyways . In any case, Disguise got the boot to Bluff, though I see I fialed to mention that whoops.

StreamOfTheSky said:

Questions:
Where's Disguise? If I'm not blind and it's not there, maybe add it with Bluff? Perform could possibly work for a spot, too.

Click to expand...

Again, it's under Bluff. My bad

StreamOfTheSky said:

History needs more. Why not add architecture and engineering to it? Ooh, and use it as an alternative for Profession (seige engineer).

Click to expand...

Eh, again the skill list is more for what a character can do - Architecture and Engineering isn't really relevant to an adventurer unless they use it for Siege Engineering or Sapping, and really those can be fine under Profession

StreamOfTheSky said:

Why does UMI and UPI allow int use, when the skills they were formed from were both strictly charisma?

Click to expand...

Basically one may either use the skill intuitively or with careful training. It never made sense to me as a Cha skill.

StreamOfTheSky said:

As far as class balance...the real winners are classes that got free skills via having one of the old skills in the new combos, most noticeably classes like Barbarian that get listen but not spot (Swordsages and a few other non-core classes are like this as well). What exactly did you do to determine the new class skills? Fighter gets Acrobatics, for example, but never had any of those 3 skills before. Did you add on picks to make up for "shafting"? Barbarian class skills look too close to Fighter/Sorceror/Cleric's in number, considering the former had an extra 2 skill points a level over the latter. Ranger list looks too short, Paladin's too long.

Click to expand...

Yes, some classes got boosts, and other classes had some re-arrangements. I'll go through them one by one, which I really should have done in the first place...

Barbarians get: Athletics, Handle Animal, Intimidate, Knowledge: Nature, Notice, Profession.
It made sense for this class to have Know: Nature and Notice as he's a wild, primal wilderness-type fellow. I thought it was a reasonable addition.

Bards get Acrobatics, Bluff, Concentration, Diplomacy, Knowledge (all skills; taken individually), Notice, Perform, Profession, Sense Motive, Sleight of Hand, Sneak, Use Magic Item
Bards don't change much here. I think their skill list is good for the Knowledge-fu, the pseudo-rogue angle, the entertainment and the party face route. Fits well enough.

Clerics get Concentration, Diplomacy, Knowledge: Arcana, History, Medicine, the Planes, Religion, Profession, Sense Motive.
Largely unchanged. I think they get a couple new Knowledge skills.

Druids get Athletics, Concentration, Diplomacy, Handle Animal, Knowledge: Arcana, History, Medicine, Nature, Religion, Notice, Profession, Sense Motive.
Again, largely unchanged. I wanted to made sure they filled the role as lore-keeper and wilderness master and their skill list was already fairly in-line with that, though I added a few things.

Fighters get Acrobatics, Athletics, Handle Animal, Intimidate, Knowledge: Local, Medicine, Profession
Their boost was long-overdue. All of the Athletics skills should have always been with the fighter - they especially benefit a "swashbuckler" style fighter, and even a heavily armoured battletank of a fighter will get use out of balance and Escape Artist. It just didn't make a lot of sense that the fighter couldn't worm his way out of the grasp of a HUGE monster. Knowledge: Local and Medicine also allow the fighter to be useful with hurt friends, and be able to do something very useful in town with various plot=hooks and the like

Monks get Acrobatics, Athletics, Concentration, Knowledge: History, Medicine, Religion, Notice, Profession, Sense Motive, Sneak.
With Monks I focused on their religious aspect, and their more... "ninja-y" aspect, shall we say. I wanted their senses and body to be highly trained, so they definitely got Acrobatics, Athletics, Concentration, Notice, Sense Motive and Sneak. Also, they lost Diplomacy - I always thought it was a bit of a "gimme" for a class who had no true reason to be very diplomatic. That, plus the whole lore master aspect is well-represented in their skill list.

Paladins get Athletics, Concentration, Diplomacy, Handle Animal, Knowledge: History, Medicine, Religion, Profession, Sense Motive.
It never made sense to me that Paladins didn't have Climb, Jump and Swim - they were much like a fighter/cleric combo, and moreso on the fighters turf than anything (4e seems to agree with this, as an aside) so I gave them Athletics as a freebie. Other than that, the Paladin's list is exactly the same.

Rangers get Acrobatics, Athletics, Concentration, Handle Animal, Knowledge: History, Medicine, Nature, Religion, Notice, Profession, Sneak.
Rangers actually hugely benefit from the compression of skills - basically every standard skill they got in 3.5e, two or more are now simply one skill. That's why their list looks unusually thin. I also added in Knowledge: Religion (as they cast spells and choose gods and the like), Knowledge: History (as I like them to be more like LotR rangers, who are sort-of Keepers of the Old Ways of sorts) and I gave them Acrobatics as well. So, they got a boost.

Rogues get Acrobatics, Athletics, Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Knowledge: Local, Notice, Perform, Profession, Sense Motive, Sleight of Hand, Sneak, Use Magic Item, Use Mechanical Device, Use Psionic Item.
Really, no changes here asides from the addition of Use Psionic Item.

Sorcerers get Concentration, Knowledge: Arcana, the Planes, Profession, Sense Motive, Use Magic Item and one of the following: Bluff, Diplomacy or Intimidate.
Sorcerers got a boost, and BOY did they need it! I gave them Knowledge: the Planes as I really see no reason why they wouldn't know of that sort of thing anyways, and then I gave them their choice of social skill (Bluff, Diplomacy or Intimidate) as a flavour choice + Sense Motive. BAM, I think Sorcerers are up-to-par!

Wizards get Concentration, Knowledge (all skills; taken individually), Profession, Use Magic Item.
Wizards remain unchanged