a different way of getting class skills

[Kahuna Burger]

I've been thinking about skills, and tinkering with an idea of qualifying for skills - prestige skills if you wish. The idea would be that some skills require a foundation in other skills. An example might be tumble requiring 5 ranks each of jump and balance, or Craft : poison requiring profession herbalism and alchemy. You could gain the prerequisite skills either as class skills or cross class, but the prestige skills would always be counted as class skills.

I must dwell on this further....

kahuna burger

 

[Kerrick]

Interesting idea - kind of like further areas of study, like having to learn basic math and algebra before trig. I don't know how well it would work in practice, but it would certainly reduce "skill-whoring" (read: rogues) - the rogue would have to work to get those skills. It also makes for more diverse characters, in that someone can choose to take the acrobatics path (Jump/Balance), the poisoner's path (Profession: herbalist and Alchemy), or the diplomat's path (Bluff and Diplomacy leading to Innuendo?) Problem is, you wouldn't have too many of these unless you invented new skills or restricted existing ones, because (and this is IMO) the prestige skills should be learned only - if Joe Blow the commoner can do it without training, why should a character spend the time and effort to learn two other skills in order to do it himself?

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Problem is, you wouldn't have too many of these unless you invented new skills or restricted existing ones, because (and this is IMO) the prestige skills should be learned only - if Joe Blow the commoner can do it without training, why should a character spend the time and effort to learn two other skills in order to do it himself?

Some restriction of skills would be needed, and the easiest to start with would be the Foo (bar) type - Knowledge, craft, profession, maybe perform... You don't Craft(poisons) without Profession(herbalist) or have Profession(weaponsmith) without the Knowledge(metalurgy). Or maybe knowledge of the planes can't be had without a good chunk of arcane knowlege to base it on?

kahuna burger

 

[MarauderX]

Good idea, but was too hard to implement for me. I spent some time putting this chart together with arrows linking skills for prerequisites as well as cross-skill use. I got the idea from Shadowrun that we used to play a while back that had similiar skill links, and when all was said and done I had bunch of confused players and a new burdensome skill system to keep track of and implement for not only the PCs but the NPCs too.

I must say it was kinda cool, with characters being able to do untrained skills much better than before by using related skills, but so could the NPCs... and of course monsters... in the end I ditched it, and it is most likely never to return unless my players want to get really sophisticated in the future.