Choosing Skills

[Kurashu]

Has anyone had experience with the UA skills variant where you choose your skills (Skill points + Int Mod)?

Was it good? Bad? Anything to watch out for? Is all skills as class skills a better variant?

 

[airwalkrr]

Which system exactly? The one on page 79? I have used it before. It works out alright. Personally I prefer the level-based skills option on page 81.

 

[Li Shenron]

Has anyone had experience with the UA skills variant where you choose your skills (Skill points + Int Mod)?

Was it good? Bad? Anything to watch out for? Is all skills as class skills a better variant?

The system is not even really a variant

This is basically what a player already does when he maxes out as much as he can. There is therefore absolutely no problem in using this system, but I would suggest that you still let the players choose: some player may still want more freedom or would prefer to have a couple of more skills at the cost of not maximing them.

The point of this "variant" is that it is simple: you choose your skills once, and then what happens is that basically you assume you always spend all your points on these. The result is that you're very much the same as what a core character can be, but with less bookkeeping.

Two minor things to watch out:

- with this variant, when you get a permanent increase to Int you basically choose another skill (which is immediately maxed), this is equivalent to retroactively apply Int increase to skill points: it's not what happens with the normal skill rules, it's not really a problem IMO, but if you have also "normal" characters then these have a slight disadvantage

- Speak Language is out of the rules with this variant... if a character wants to learn a new language during game, you'd have to figure out what to do