Considering changing the way skills are done

[Dave G]

Howdy!

It's going to be a while before I run a D&D game again, but I've been thinking of making some house rules to reflect the way skills are done. I wanted to start a discussion on this and get your insights and opinions.

1st change. Cross Class skills...

In my opinion, Cross Class skills are limited too much by the extra cost involved. By keeping the level limits the same, but making them cost a 1 for 1 rate, do you think this unbalances things?

2nd Change. Skills sets...

In my opinion there are way too many skills that would be applicable to classes that don't have them as class skills. There's a lot of work yet to be done on this, but here's the beginnings of my idea... I think that each class should have a set of skills, but that the character should be able to decide which ones she or he chooses as his class skills. For example, a fighter's class skills are: Climb (Str), Craft (Int), Handle Animal (Cha), Jump (Str), Ride (Dex), and Swim (Str).

I think there are others that fighters should have access to... I would propose adding Spot and Listen to the list of possible skills a fighter can choose as his class skills... Note: the class would still only have 6 class skills, but she or he would choose them from the list.

So my questions on the 2nd change are:
a.) which skills should be added for which class(es)
b.) what problems do you forsee with this change.

Thanks for your help, I think this could be a potentially fun discussion, so please chime in, even if it is to say I'm smoking crack or something

 

[Drawmack]

1st change. Cross Class skills...

In my opinion, Cross Class skills are limited too much by the extra cost involved. By keeping the level limits the same, but making them cost a 1 for 1 rate, do you think this unbalances things?

Yes because it allows you to max out twice as many cross class skills as you can by the core rules.

2nd Change. Skills sets...

In my opinion there are way too many skills that would be applicable to classes that don't have them as class skills. There's a lot of work yet to be done on this, but here's the beginnings of

^snip^

a.) which skills should be added for which class(es)
b.) what problems do you forsee with this change.

Maybe basing it on class is the wrong way to go, maybe it should be based on locality or maybe locality and class. So a fighter from the jungles gets class skills he would have to learn in that environment while a fighter from a desert gets skills that he would need to learn in that environment. I would think that this would be flat locality though, like everyone in a jungle can climb and use a machetty (sp.) so they get Climb as a class skill and exotic weapon prof. Machetty. or something like that. It may be good to make a list for each locality that the player can choose from.

The problems with adding class skills is that you should also add skill points and then you have upped the power level of your game.

 

[der_kluge]

Balance is a relative term. If you allow all the PCs to do something, then there really aren't any balance issues. They'll just end up with more skills - which don't really tip the balance of a campaign, IMHO.

What I did, was to allow PCs to choose which skills they consider class skills. Exclusive skills are only available to the classes as regular, but every classe chooses a number of skills to be their Class skills. I used the rules for Experts. Everyone chooses 10 skills - those are their class skills. The number of skill points doesn't change (Although I increased that as well; YMMV).

Exclusive skills like read lips, can't be chosen by clerics, for example, so that rule still applies.

But, what this does is it takes some of the nonsense out of the way skills work. So, I could have a cleric of deception and they could have bluff, innuendo, forgery, and intimidate as class skills. You couldn't do that before.

 

[Hollywood]

Re: Re: Considering changing the way skills are done

Yes because it allows you to max out twice as many cross class skills as you can by the core rules.

Yes as he says... so flip it around and go the other way. Cross-class skills have the same max. as class skills, but cost 2 skill points as normal. I use this house rule and have zero problems with it simple because most classes don't have the skill points to abuse it.

The problems with adding class skills is that you should also add skill points and then you have upped the power level of your game. [/B]

A simple addition would be to allow players to choose at 1st level [in each class they take] to pick up to 5 [non-exclusive skills] as local skills and treat these as class skills. Much in the same way as the Expert NPC class. This way, the players can get a bit more flexibility in their skill selection as it makes sense to their character. But don't increase the skill points. The players then need to pick and choose.

 

[LostSoul]

The classes that rely on good skills a lot - like the Ranger and Rogue - might be a little less appealing under this scheme. Especially the Ranger, since it's the only class with good HP, BAB, and killer skills.

If you were doing this, I'd consider giving the Ranger a boost of some kind, whether it's more magic, more feats, or something different.

 

[Stalker0]

I'm trying to do something similar, I actually have a thread about it on the boards as well

I like the idea of using 2 points to buy a rank in a certain skill, or doing it the other way, one point buys you two ranks. The main thing about skill balancing is that some skills are innatly better than others. Spot and listen are very very important, while climb is rarerly gotten.

So what I would suggest, is instead of doing it by class, where for some classes spot is 1 rank 1 point and others its 1 rank 2 points, do it by skill.
Spot would then always be 1 rank 2 points no matter the class, and maybe climb would be 1 rank 1 point.