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Message: <blockquote data-quote="IronWolf" data-source="post: 5232018" data-attributes="member: 21076">Items and spells can certainly make significant boosts to skills or obviate the need for a skill check there are several situations I think the skill ranks are till beneficial - even in some cases where there may be a spell to cover it.Jumping can be topped by the spell, but sometimes you need to jump before the spell can be cast if you are chasing someone.  Cases where a character has had to jump across roofs and waiting for a spell would have been that much longer the person being chased would have had to get away.  Several situations I can think of where I need to jump *now* not next round.  Possibly an item could circumvent this, but then I'd need to give up a slot for it.Similar for balance.  Several cases of balance being used on a ship deck in a storm or a row boat that just got hit by something big, swinging rope bridges, etc.  All cases where balance has been useful.Highly GM dependent as you said.  Maybe cases where you have to choose what to take with you now because of limitations to what you can carry?Still useful even at higher levels when needing things or access to places that aren't necessary protected by high level beings.  Certainly situational though.Still finding climb somewhat useful.  Again, sometimes not enough spell slots to accomplish everything so you might not have the slots to burn.  Certainly as you reach higher levels the magic items tend to minimize the climb skill - unless of course you've been caught unprepared somewhere you you've been taken prisoner and stripped of your items, separated from your party magic user and need to climb *out* of that slave pit!  But yeah, more valuable at lower levels.Yeah - flavor.I think my group tends to bluff and not do as much with diplomacy!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Possibly useful when you suspect whomever you might be trying to fool is going to be using magic to detect magic or other arcane means.Yeah, most often used for escaping grapples in our campaigns.  Well, more accurately the DM telling us that it could be used and us all groaning for our lack of ranks in it.  Flavor?  Agreed - I don't see this used much.Some improved uses in Pathfinder.  This is usually house ruled in our games to actually allow dice to be rolled to heal folks so we tend to put points in it, but mainly due to the house rule.We tend to use knowledge checks for those times our character could quite likely know something the player doesn't simply because the character is more familiar with the game world theoretically.  Sometimes spells just aren't worth burning if a good knowledge check can do.Flavor for if you want your character to know several languages or some sort.  Certainly by higher levels though if you simply must know what the script says on the wall that is not in a language you know then the spells can easily allow your party to work around the issue.We've seen some use of this occasionally.  Probably more unique situations.  Perhaps buttering up a crowd before we start rolling on bluff or diplomacy checks.  Our DM is cool like that though!Yeah - we are at the point now where we windwalk near everywhere!  So not much use for horses for travel.  For a mounted type warrior, I can see more use.We do a fair amount of sense motive in our games.  Obviously depending on rolls it sometimes helps us get a feel for mannerisms that might betray a person or not.  Now if the person in question is a huge plot point, then yes, likely they have some items of their own to help circumvent our Sense Motives.  They work often enough in our games to still be worth something.I don't see this used much in our campaigns.  I think the learning found spells is significant - depending on how much the DM sprinkles that type of item in the game though.Also can be used with detect magic to identify properties of the item as a potential usefulness.We also sometimes like to know what did that guy just buff up with, even if the party mage isn't counterspelling.Still like stealth for times when the area is or might be protected by magic wards that might negate Invisibility.  Agreed.Heh!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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