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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Spatzimaus" data-source="post: 1127929" data-attributes="member: 3051">Having Knowledge skills that overlap is fine, as long as you don't let them stack.  Just use the highest skill that deals with the subject.We're definitely straying into House Rules territory, so here goes.***HOUSE RULE***It's all about synergy.  Craft, Knowledge, and Profession skills each have specific uses in their own right, but they also help other skills out.STEP 1: Figure out which skill to use for the skill check.STEP 2: The DM assigns a "synergy threshold".  Default is 5 ranks.  If the task is particularly easy or it's something intimately related to your background, it might decrease to 4 or even 3, while if it's something totally foreign to you it might increase to 6 or 7.  Most of the time, just leave it at 5.STEP 3a: When making any skill check, if one of your Craft skills has anything to do with the check in question AND that skill is over the threshold, you gain a +2 Craft Synergy bonus.  If the DM rules that the skill is very related to the skill check and you have twice as many ranks as the threshold, the bonus increases to +4.You can't claim synergy bonuses from multiple Craft skills, just use the one that gives the highest bonus.  If the skill in Step 1 is a Craft skill, you can claim synergy from one other related Craft skill.STEP 3b: Same as 3a, except replace Craft with Knowledge.STEP 3c: Same again, except using Profession.Bob the Horizon Walker wants to convince some pirates he's just a simple sailor on the ship they're raiding.  This is a Bluff check, but thankfully Bob has a bunch of skills that help out here.(DM leaves the threshold at 5 ranks)Craft: None of his craft skills he has help here.Knowledge: He's got Knowledge (geography) 10 ranks, which gives a +4 synergy bonus if the DM rules it's applicable.  The DM says it's okay to claim some synergy (it DOES deal with the area he's in), but that it's not "closely related", so he can only claim the +2 bonus.  He has other Knowledge skills too, but since none of them is over 10 ranks they couldn't give a higher bonus, so it doesn't really matter whether they apply or not.Profession: Once upon a time he really WAS a sailor, so he has 5 ranks of Profession (sailor), which is another +2.So, he gets a +4 bonus to the Bluff check thanks to his other skills.It helps if you add "racial skills" from these categories, that are always class skills for someone of that race.  So, Knowledge (Elf) is a class skill for all Elves, regardless of class, and covers traditions, history, religions, nobility, geography, etc. but only in regards to Elves.  You could do the same for Craft and Profession, but practically every class already has all these as class skills.The problem is that this makes things like Loremaster a bit easier to get into, but that's not too terrible.***/HOUSE RULE***</blockquote>

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