An Interesting Variation on Skills

[airwalkrr]

Unearthed Arcana describes a system wherein each character gains a bonus equal to their class level on every class skill. I have often shied away from this variant for the simple reason that it makes the Intelligence ability less useful. But I believe I have come up with a way to deal with it.

Instead of gaining bonus skill points, you gain bonus class skills at 1st level. These can be any skills you like, and they improve by 1 each level just like your other class skills. It would allow for a sneaky wizard, charismatic fighter, or a knowledgable rogue. I doubt it would really break anything in the game. Some people may dislike the idea that all skills have equal ranks, but at the end of the day, I really like variants that let me just sit down and play the game quickly. This one makes leveling a cinch (since skill points can take a while to decide what with so many options) which reduces paperwork a bunch.

What do you think?

 

[Li Shenron]

Usually I'm very much against variants that boosts the number of skills in which the characters are good, I'm even against shelling out more skill points than in 3.0, and I think that this UA variant goes way beyond my taste.

But then, contrary of what designers and players say, I think this variant is quite good for a group that doesn't use skills very often. In that case the players will occasionally need a skill and will ask themselves "who's good at this?": most likely there will be a couple of PC with that class skill, so they'll simply let the one with best bonus do the task. In some cases, no one will have that skill, and they will just have to workaround the task.

I think that there are problems instead if the group is actually more interested in skills since the start. This is for example our group's case. It might seem great at first sight, but then it actually makes character design a lesser challenge (although not everyone like it to be).

Some possible things to watch out for:

- Two characters of the same class in the group: this automatically means that the better character do all the job, and the other don't. Think of two Rogues, one of which ends up being 1-2 levels higher for some reason: the best Rogue will search for traps and disarm them, no reason for the second to do that (except weird circumstances like 1st rogue being unavailable).
Normal: two characters of the same class usually select at least SOME different class skills

- A character selects some "bonus skills" like you said: this is ok only if either (1) the skill is reactive (Listen, Spot), or (2) the skill can be done in parallel with others (Knowledge: 2 rolls better than 1). But if you choose someone else's "stick", one of the two characters will never use it (ex. Bluff, Diplomacy, Search, Disable Device...).

- A multiclass characters may steal everybody's "stick"

 

[Voadam]

I think that works fine. It adds some customizability to the characters and retains the mechanical skill benefit of intelligence.

The tricky part is multiclassing still complicates the calculations.

 

[GreatLemur]

- A multiclass characters may steal everybody's "stick"

Did you mean "shtick"?

 

[airwalkrr]

I think that works fine. It adds some customizability to the characters and retains the mechanical skill benefit of intelligence.

The tricky part is multiclassing still complicates the calculations.

Well, the UA system says to do things simply and just say all skills that are class skills for any classes add a bonus equal to your level. I think that is probably going a bit too far. It wouldn't make sense for a 10th level wizard who takes a level of rogue to suddenly become really good at tumbling, disabling traps, etc. I do not think it would be too difficult if you just gave each skill +1 for each level in a class that had it as a class skill. In fact, I think mechanically, this would encourage players to stick to a single class, which is a good thing, at least IMO.