All Skills as Class Skills?

[Voadam]

Has anyone ever house ruled all skills as being "class" skills (i.e. no cross-class skills)? What are the long term ramifications of such a house rule?

The biggest "abuse" I can see is that fighters and the like will have easy access to UMD. Is this such a problem, given the weakness of fighters at high levels?

Beyond that, it means that it'll be easier to get into some PrCs, and maybe create a slightly stronger combination of base class / PrC.

What I'm hoping to do is open it up for my players to further customize their character. If they want to play a diplomatic fighter, so be it. (role-playing vs. rolling diplomacy debate aside) If they want to play a Monk who studies the planes or history, so what?

I've done it in my Wildwood PBP game here.

Ramifications are that players can be skilled at things different from the default archetypes set up by the class skill lists. If you are a fighter trained to fight wizards you can have spellcraft and knowledge arcana at max ranks.

This can be good if you want skilled characters different than the archetypes, or bad if you don't. I find it good.

The players in my game have been good at taking things they think are appropriate to their characters and I'm happy leaving that type of judgment call to the players rather than the class archetypes.

 

[Baron Opal]

I find it quite useful. In my game all classes have access to all skills, but I also use the Iron Heroes skill groups. That way your points are spent more efficently in archtypal skills but you still have some points left over for the fighter in my game to have Intimidate, Spot and Knowledge: Engineering.

 

[SlagMortar]

The players in my game have been good at taking things they think are appropriate to their characters

This is the basic point for both sides of the argument. It is great if your players want to use it to create more flavorful characters. It is bad if your players want it so that your wizard can take Search and Disable Device and your fighter can take Open Lock so that you don't need a rogue and can instead bring along a second CoDzilla. Of course, rogues are fun so someone will always want to play the rogue.

As a DM, I would compromise. If your fighter wants to be a refined, diplomatic nobleman, then add Diplomacy, Sense Motive, and Knowledge (nobility) to the class list. Remove Jump, Climb, and Swim.

 

[phindar]

My group currently uses something similiar, skills are limited to max ranks for in class and half ranks for cross class, but all skills are bought at 1:1 (no x2 for CC). I haven't noticed any game breaking going on. Even if we weren't limited to half ranks, I don't know that it would really break anything; I'd have a slightly higher Sense Motive but thats the only change it'd make to my Fighter/Barbarian.

A friend of mine tried out an optional rule where characters could take a number of skills in-class equal to their Int Bonus, and that was a little broken. The fighter had nothing extra, whereas my mage was running around with Hide, Move Silent, Spot so on. At low to mid levels (which that game was), it made a Huge difference.

 

[Goblyn]

I house-rule for the sake of simplicity. The extra book-keeping involved in recognizing class vs. cross-class and the possible complications added by multiclassing add zero enjoyment to the game for anyone(including me, and I enjoy that type of thing usually). So it's gone. Due to most classes getting a rediculously low amount of skill points, I've no problem with letting them spend their pittance how they wish.

 

[ValhallaGH]

Has anyone ever house ruled all skills as being "class" skills (i.e. no cross-class skills)?

Yes.

What are the long term ramifications of such a house rule?

Long term, your players are less magic-dependent; not magic independent but less magic dependent. All those spells that exist because some people can't have meaningful ranks in appropriate skills (I'm looking at you, Glibness) can be better used on flight or fireballs or curing. Some players will want to use them to guarantee success on certain actions (I know of a 15th level Bard with a +150 Bluff check); deal with them as you deem appropriate.

Use Magic Device actually has very few ways to increase it beyond skill ranks, and requires many of those to be reliable at it. How useful the skill is depends upon a combination of the individual character (how likely to succeed) and the DM (how many devices can be found).

And Tumble. You'll see a lot of characters with a few ranks in Tumble due to that skill's powerful movement options and low DCs. If you end up adding an increased number of skills to the game, I would recommend making Tumble and opposed skill (either by tumble or by a BAB check). This would be to keep it from being a guaranteed success.

 

[hong]

I think it's a terrible rule. It's not going to make fighters more diplomatic, it's going to give them tumble and use magic device.

And...?

 

[ValhallaGH]

Hong! Welcome back from the dead.

 

[Rokes]

Yes.

Long term, your players are less magic-dependent; not magic independent but less magic dependent. All those spells that exist because some people can't have meaningful ranks in appropriate skills (I'm looking at you, Glibness) can be better used on flight or fireballs or curing. Some players will want to use them to guarantee success on certain actions (I know of a 15th level Bard with a +150 Bluff check); deal with them as you deem appropriate.

Use Magic Device actually has very few ways to increase it beyond skill ranks, and requires many of those to be reliable at it. How useful the skill is depends upon a combination of the individual character (how likely to succeed) and the DM (how many devices can be found).

And Tumble. You'll see a lot of characters with a few ranks in Tumble due to that skill's powerful movement options and low DCs. If you end up adding an increased number of skills to the game, I would recommend making Tumble and opposed skill (either by tumble or by a BAB check). This would be to keep it from being a guaranteed success.

Thanks for the insight! I already have Tumble house ruled to include BAB (10+BAB). Makes it easy if you max Tumble, but can get scary at higher levels if you don't. Makes you think twice about tumbling between two enemies.

 

[Rokes]

This is the basic point for both sides of the argument. It is great if your players want to use it to create more flavorful characters. It is bad if your players want it so that your wizard can take Search and Disable Device and your fighter can take Open Lock so that you don't need a rogue and can instead bring along a second CoDzilla. Of course, rogues are fun so someone will always want to play the rogue.

As a DM, I would compromise. If your fighter wants to be a refined, diplomatic nobleman, then add Diplomacy, Sense Motive, and Knowledge (nobility) to the class list. Remove Jump, Climb, and Swim.

Sure would suck to depend on that wizard to find all your traps, without trapfinding and all...