[d20] Class Skills

[reverendkeith]

Are there any feats that allow one to gain new Class Skills? For example, if you play a Cleric who was raised in a noble family, is there a feat (or whatever) to get Sense Motive as a Class Skill without having to take a level of Rogue, Aristocrat, etc. ?

On a side note, I noticed that someone posted a house rule on the web saying "purchasing the Skill Focus Feat for a skill automatically makes that skill a Class Skill". Does this sound unbalanced?

 

[Jeff Wilder]

I've seen several feats in third-party supplements that allow picking up class skills. There's one called, I think, Broad Experience, from, I think, Kitchen Sink's Digital Burn that allows the character to simply pick up any two cross-class skills and make them class skills. (If I sound uncertain, it's because I've read a lot of third-party material and don't have it all mentally indexed.)

I don't think Broad Experience is unbalancing, but I prefer my own earlier rule, called Cross-Training It's basically the same thing, except that Cross-Training only allows multiclassed PCs to make any two skills from one of their classes class skills for all of their classes. It's more restrictive, but I like it that way. I'm sorta in the camp of those who feel that if you wanna emulate a class' abilities, you need to take at least a level of the class.

As for Skill Focus providing both a bonus and making the skill in question a class skill ... I think it's too good compared to the other skill-boosting feats (e.g., Awareness). I don't think it's a game-breaker, though.

 

[Spatula]

Forgotten Realms has a feat called Cosmopolitan, which makes a skill a permanent class skill.

 

[Liquidsabre]

Skill focus already gives a +3 to skills now, plus someone wants to make it a class skill?? Ack, yeah that is a bit unbalanced. Spatula got it, the feat you want is Cosmopolitan.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

Skill focus already gives a +3 to skills now, plus someone wants to make it a class skill?? Ack, yeah that is a bit unbalanced. Spatula got it, the feat you want is Cosmopolitan.

So, +2 and the skill is a class skill is roughly equal to a +3 bonus? I don't think that scans quite right.

 

[DM_Matt]

Is my group the only one that doesnt bother to divide up skill points among classes and just lets characters treat all their class skills from various classes as class skills from them all?

 

[Li Shenron]

A feat that makes a cross-class skill become a class skill lets you save 1 skill/point per level. I think it's not bad! Skill Focus and the +2/2skills feats are worth less point but they also let you break the limit of 3+lv ranks.

I really think there should be something in the core rules to add skills to the class list, without multiclassing. Although generally the class skill lists make sense, they also prevent interesting characters to be made; for example, Diplomacy doesn't seem to me something that should be hampered for some classes. Anyone could be the leader of the group and the spokesman. Not having a chance (at higher levels especially) to give your character a high rank in cha-based skills usually has the effects that nobody bothers to have a high-cha Fighter or Barbarian or Wizard. Never seen a charismatic Wizard for example, altho it's quite a common figure in literature.

If you want to be more generous, instead of a feat require the character to spend something like 4 skill points at first level only to turn a skill into a class one (with no ranks).

Note that IMHO the real problem is NOT in the fact that the skill costs double, but in the fact that the max rank is half. That's what really prevents characters to take cross-class skills, since it's generally better to max-out a few skills rather than having more lower ones. As a last resort, you can HR that the max rank is the same for all skills, but the cross-class skills still cost 2 points per rank.

 

[juliaromero]

I know this is more of a house rules comment, but a few of that sort have already been made here, so I'll throw in my two cents. I allow spot and listen to be class skills for EVERYONE. It seems exceptionally silly to me that it wouldn't be so, and it isn't even remotely unbalancing in any of my games.

I'm also fairly lenient on "trading" class skills based on good backgrounds (or even awarded bonus class skills for exceptionally good background stories). I think this gives a bit more flavor to individual characters ... for example this particular fighter had a great background story about his father being a jeweler or something and so I let him take Aprraise as a class skill with a +2 misc. modifier. If find this really encourages the players to come up with unique and detailed background stories without unbalancing any of the game mechanics to a noticeable degree.