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General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Class Skills vs Cross-class Skills
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<blockquote data-quote="TwinBahamut" data-source="post: 4135264" data-attributes="member: 32536"><p>Well, I suppose this is true, but for me this is a question of balancing the potential gain of trying to find perfect balance, versus the potential loss of limiting character choice. In my opinion, if the skills are imperfectly balanced, but still close enough, than restricting them to certain classes in order to make it even more balanced hurts more than it helps.</p><p></p><p>I did not say that "personal preference means that they won't take it", I said that some may not take it because of opportunity cost. For example, if a team of four PCs have only three skills they can train each, and there are twelve skills available, then even if there is a slight imbalance in the balance of skills, the stronger tendency would be for each character to pick an entirely different skill set so they can cover every situation, rather than have every character pick the the same three "strong" skills. In such a party, there will still be only one scout (the player who trained perception).</p><p></p><p>Well, suppose that the Warlock automatically gets the Arcana skill for free (a reasonable assumption, considering that the Rogue gets Stealth and Thievery automatically). In that case, a Fighter selecting Arcana as one of his limited choices of trained skills <em>is</em> a case of him putting a greater investment into it than the Warlock. The Warlock does not need to put a limited resource into the choice, but the Fighter does. Any kind of niche protection or direct flavor link between class concept and skills is already handled by the automatic class skills.</p><p></p><p>Also, I don't agree that any kind of flavor-based assumption or stereotype should be used to argue whether a class should get access to a skill or not. To make this more clear, why not look at skills like Insight, Streetwise, or Dungeoneering. Can you name a class for which skills like these should ever be cross-class skills? Is there a class for which the character growing up on the streets does not make sense? Is there a class where being insightful does not make sense? Is there a class where going into a dungeon does not make sense? I think, for a PC with the right story, any skill choice makes just as much sense as any other, and I don't think a PC should need to spend a feat in order to fill out details like that.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="TwinBahamut, post: 4135264, member: 32536"] Well, I suppose this is true, but for me this is a question of balancing the potential gain of trying to find perfect balance, versus the potential loss of limiting character choice. In my opinion, if the skills are imperfectly balanced, but still close enough, than restricting them to certain classes in order to make it even more balanced hurts more than it helps. I did not say that "personal preference means that they won't take it", I said that some may not take it because of opportunity cost. For example, if a team of four PCs have only three skills they can train each, and there are twelve skills available, then even if there is a slight imbalance in the balance of skills, the stronger tendency would be for each character to pick an entirely different skill set so they can cover every situation, rather than have every character pick the the same three "strong" skills. In such a party, there will still be only one scout (the player who trained perception). Well, suppose that the Warlock automatically gets the Arcana skill for free (a reasonable assumption, considering that the Rogue gets Stealth and Thievery automatically). In that case, a Fighter selecting Arcana as one of his limited choices of trained skills [i]is[/i] a case of him putting a greater investment into it than the Warlock. The Warlock does not need to put a limited resource into the choice, but the Fighter does. Any kind of niche protection or direct flavor link between class concept and skills is already handled by the automatic class skills. Also, I don't agree that any kind of flavor-based assumption or stereotype should be used to argue whether a class should get access to a skill or not. To make this more clear, why not look at skills like Insight, Streetwise, or Dungeoneering. Can you name a class for which skills like these should ever be cross-class skills? Is there a class for which the character growing up on the streets does not make sense? Is there a class where being insightful does not make sense? Is there a class where going into a dungeon does not make sense? I think, for a PC with the right story, any skill choice makes just as much sense as any other, and I don't think a PC should need to spend a feat in order to fill out details like that. [/QUOTE]
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Class Skills vs Cross-class Skills
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