Must we use Int to modify skill points?

[Sigurd]

Intelligence need not only be bookish

Only nondextrous ones.

I have seen people who cant pay attention to anything science related at all for more than a few second be able to pick up mountain climbing in a single afternoon, and they were the best one at it in the group in a weeks time.

Someone who is very good with their hands will pick up on that knot pretty fast, someone who can barely handle holding a pencil may never get it.

That assumes, that for D&D purposes, your example person did not have a high Intelligence. It is our society that assumes, wrongly, that people who pick up physical skills quickly but dont take to book learning are not intelligent. D&D does not necessarily follow that bias. Barbarians with a high Int pick up skills quickly but are illiterate by backgound. Perhaps your real life example would be a character whose high Intellegence manifests itself as quickly picking up physical skills?

Thats what they like, thats what they're good at, thats what they do. Science just wasn't an important skill choice to them. If the game doesn't often create barriers to characters learning everything - hey they are heroes after all.

sigurd.

 

[Scion]

http://www.ibiblio.org/edweb/edref.mi.th2.html

 

[Whitemage Bishieboy]

in real life there are multible types of intelligence.in D&D there is one.the general meaning of intelligence is ability to learn.thus logiclly an all around smarter person would be defualt understand how to do things easier.

nitpick,repair and such are mental skills.i dont think a stuipid brawler type would ever get very good at them for there amount of practice both by the rules and realisticly(for the most part).anywho,this is what feats are for my friend.

now time to nitpick the new skillpoint idea.int is a decent stat right now,infact id place it third,this makes it worthless.house rules are fun(i had to rewrite the SRD for my list...)but they need to at least have a semblence of balence.
also it puts a STRAIGHT cap on how high skill mods can go,i like that stats let you have mods above level+3.

 

[Bearfs]

What about"You can choose any of your Ability modifers as a bonus to your skill points at level 1 instead of int mod,but you must spend your bonus skill points based on your ability modifer to skills that based on that ability."?

 

[Vlos]

Scion, I am very interested in your possible system. It sounds cool. If I recap everything right. Character would get skill points by STAT to use on STAT related skills on a 1/1 basis. Also characters would not get STAT bonuses added to a Skill.

Then would they get class skills that they could use as regular? Class and Cross-class costs? I am tempted not to grant the Class skill points.

If you only used STAT points those that are more rounded characters would get more skill points than someone who dumped all their character points into a single STAT.

You could maybe say a character can spend STAT points on non-STAT related skills that are class skills on a 2/1 cost. For instance if I have a 14 CON which grants +2 bonus skill points for spending on CON related skills and I don't want to, so I can take those two skill points and spend them on a class skill (per the current class) and gain 1 skill point in a non-CON stat.

You could then take that to the next step for non-class skills you could have a cost of 3/1 or even 4/1 costs.

If you are working on something I would definitly be interested in it.

As others stated, characters would probably have higher skill points, but their skills would reflect their stats. And again skills usually are not game unbalancers.

I would also keep sinergy bonuses, not sure if you said you would not drop them.

 

[Scion]

You have most of what my quick thoughts were pretty well down yeah

It will probably wind up that the max ranks has to be increased slightly (maybe +1 / 3 character levels.. at level 18 this would mean max ranks of level + 9)

synergy is still good to go of course

I had thought that class skill points would be cut in half, and that those could be used for any skills of the class. That way, the classes that are supposed to be more skill oriented will still have their bonuses.

Characters would probably wind up with a few more skill points that is true, but they would be more limited in choices.

The main problem I see is the lack of skills that use con. But, I suppose all that means is that those points would be used cross stat more. It is not an incredibly good solution, but it would be the easiest conversion.

The actual base idea is very interesting, I wouldnt be able to implement it in my game currently though so I probably wont put a lot of work into it at the moment

Something to decide: will stat boosting items grant extra skill points? I can see benefits and drawbacks to both sides, so it would be a dm call. Chances are 'very' good that I would allow the extra points to work. It gives someone even more of a reason to pick up some item to boost a stat that they wouldnt otherwise need or use.

If you decide no on the above, then there could be other items for each stat that actually do grant the bonus.

Still, I dont see any way it would be 'overpowered'. There are some issues with it being underpowered. It might be able to be powergamed more, but no more so than everyother part of the game so no big deal there.


Possibly something even earlier. Your max ranks for skills are based on level+3
as per normal, with a bonus/penalty equal to the modifier on the stat.

So if you had a 14 str your str based skills would have a max rank of level +5.

So, skill points for each stat for the correct set of skills, buy cross classed at 2:1, then place half the normal number for class skills + race + misc into whatever are available for the class (obviously cross class skills still cost double, but in this case max ranks wouldnt change).

The more I think about it, it actually sounds like a somewhat better system than the current one in a lot of ways. There are many skills that are generally just not 'good enough' to make the cut to pay points for. In a lot of ways this helps get around that.

If you do wind up working up a full write up let me know, I would love to see it.

 

[Cyberzombie]

On the idea of stat modifiers giving bonus skill points, and the problem of Constitution: simplify it. Lump the physical stats together and the mental stats. You get a small pool of physical skill points and a small pool of mental stat points that can *only* be used for skills in that category. Problem solved.