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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 4670321" data-attributes="member: 58197">Sure, at 2nd level, if you aren't dabbling much and have a whole lot of skill points to play with (if you have 40 ranks to spread around and your max is only 5, that means you're getting 8 skill points per level, which is a lot more than most characters get).Now suppose you have a ranger character with no Int bonus. You look at the skill list. "Well," you think, "my character is a pretty typical ranger. I have to be able to survive in the wilderness, of course, and I should be pretty athletic - I can swim and jump and climb. I want to be stealthy, and I want to be alert. So, let me see: That's Survival, Swim, Jump, Climb, Hide, Move Silently, Spot, and Listen. Eight skills."Then you look at your skill points. As a 1st-level ranger, you get 16 skill points to spread around.  So you put +4 in Survival and Spot, because you want to be a hotshot eagle-eyed tracker. You put +2 each in Hide and Listen, and +1 in the other four. That's not bad, right?  Only a 3-point difference. You'll feel it, certainly, but it's not the end of the world... though it bugs you a bit that some of the other PCs are outperforming you off raw stat bonuses.Fast-forward to level 5. Now you've earned another 16 skill points and spread them around. You've got +8 in Survival and Spot, +4 in Hide and Listen, and +2 in Move Silently, Swim, Jump, and Climb. You're not too bad in Hide and Listen, but you're starting to wonder what you put all those points in athletic stuff for, since it's not having a whole lot of impact.On to level 9, and you've got +12 in Survival and Spot, and +6 in Hide and Listen. And you're coming to realize that all those +3 modifiers aren't doing you much good. The DM is calibrating his skill DCs to the characters with +12 - the barbarian who can leap great chasms, the rogue who can scale any wall. You're 9 points behind those fellows. When a check poses any kind of challenge to them, your odds of making it are slim to none.Meanwhile, the points you sacrificed to get here are really starting to sting. When you try to sneak around, you're barely competent at not being seen, and even when you do manage that, you always step on a twig and get heard (once again, the DM is calibrating his DCs to the rogue who maxed Hide/MS). Your eyes are sharp, but your ears are no better than those of the cleric, who hasn't put a single rank into Listen and is just going off his crazy pumped-up Wisdom bonus. The only place you really shine is tracking and spotting things.What I've just described is the sort of thing novice players often go through in 3.X if they don't have someone to steer them away from it. They have this idea of being a wilderness ranger, like Aragorn, stealthy and alert, athletic and an expert tracker... and what they end up with is a tracker who's a little stealthy and a little athletic, but is nowhere near stealthy or athletic enough to keep up with the challenges the party will be facing, and so might as well not have bothered.Now, is it possible to make a ranger who really is good at all those things? Sure, if you know the system. But novices by definition don't know the system, and they don't know that the "dabbler" approach won't deliver. Dabbling is what the system puts in front of them - why have skill points if not to spread them among the skills you want? - so they use it without realizing it's not actually what they need.Try the same thing in 4E. You're a ranger, which gives you Nature plus four other skills. You pick Athletics, Perception, Stealth, and Endurance. There you are, you have your Aragorn. But wait, you wanted to be a hotshot eagle-eyed tracker; not just good but the best. Well, pick up Skill Focus (Perception) and there you go. Maybe you want to be a healer, too, so you get Skill Training (Heal). The system does not lead you astray; it asks you, very simply, "What do you want to be good at? What do you want to be really good at?" And then it makes you good at the former and really good at the latter, and you stay that way throughout your career.</blockquote>

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