Double Skill Maxima

[Plane Sailing]

Basically, if your players won't co-operate in making a mixed roguish team in the face of your instructions that all skills will be valuable (including read lips, innuendo, disguise etc) then you're pretty much sunk anyway. After all, you can double the skill caps and find that everyone still makes the same super-spotting, super-hiding specialists (or whatever).

Have you *tried* talking it over with the players and seeing if they would be willing to play different specialists? 'Cos if they will, your problems will be solved without introducing massive changes to the rules with unforseen consequences!

Cheers

 

[Mike Sullivan]

Basically, if your players won't co-operate in making a mixed roguish team in the face of your instructions that all skills will be valuable (including read lips, innuendo, disguise etc) then you're pretty much sunk anyway.

That's not the problem. The problem is that I don't believe that all Rogueish skills will be equally useful in my game, and, as such, I refuse to instruct my players that they are.

After all, you can double the skill caps and find that everyone still makes the same super-spotting, super-hiding specialists (or whatever).

Sure, but then I only have to make half as many skills equally useful as I would have before. Takes a lot of GMing burden off of me.

 

[mmu1]

Doubling the max skill ranks is definitely not going to work. Some classes can already get too proficient in certain skills very early on, under the current system, so if you gave people even more ranks, you'd also need to completely re-work the skill DC's.

I think you should either slash the available skill points (although 6, rather than 8, might be a better idea), or require everyone to multi-class (one level of a different class for each rogue level). That way everyone would hopefuly be specialized in different things.

 

[Morgenstern]

Spycraft has a feat called Unlocked Potential that lets you pick one of your skills and increase your max ranks in that skill by +3. What you might consider is swaping out the rogue's first die of sneak attack damage and replacinging it witht the Unlocked potential feat at first level (most of the concepts you mentioned don't need to be vicious killers anyway, and it sounds like your campaign will be more skill and less combat-based anyway...). Then add Unlocked Potential to the leis to things they can choose with their special ability picks. That way the players will select their own specialties and a trade off has been established so the class stays on par with other existing classes.

Hope this helps,

 

[Mike Sullivan]

Spycraft has a feat called Unlocked Potential that lets you pick one of your skills and increase your max ranks in that skill by +3. What you might consider is swaping out the rogue's first die of sneak attack damage and replacinging it witht the Unlocked potential feat at first level (most of the concepts you mentioned don't need to be vicious killers anyway, and it sounds like your campaign will be more skill and less combat-based anyway...). Then add Unlocked Potential to the leis to things they can choose with their special ability picks. That way the players will select their own specialties and a trade off has been established so the class stays on par with other existing classes.

Thanks, Morgenstern. Nice suggestion, and I like the idea of allowing Rogues to swap out their existing bonuses for Unlocked Potential.

 

[Drawmack]

Uh, there's no way I'm going to run a D&D game in which I have to throw out all the existing core classes and make 3 to 6 new core classes. If that were the only way I could do it, I'd play it in a classless game like Fudge or GURPS.

But I think this is a mountain out of a molehill. I don't see any reason something simple like *2 or *1.5 skill maxima wouldn't work.

You missed the point. If someone wants to be a plain old rogue you let them, of a wizard you let them. But there is no way in the blue blazes that any single classes character is going to be as good at investigating anything as the investigator.

Making the classes is also pretty easy just take the rogue and then take to other class you want aspects from and jugle things around.

 

[Spatula]

One thing that immediately stood out to me is that a traditional thief-like Rogue can pretty easily max out every traditional thief skill -- Hide, Move Silently, Climb, Open Locks, Disable Device, and Pick Pockets, say, are only 6 skills, and a Rogue can max 8 skills, or, for, say, a human with a 12 Int, 10 skills.

The rogue class is very flexible, and if you have a group of rogues, they should work together to stake out particular "territories" for each PC. The only skills that they might all need are Hide & Move Silent, but even then the characters might not all max those skills out, depending on their concepts. Only one guy needs to be able to open locks and disarm traps. Only one guy needs to have Spot & Listen maxed out. Only one guy needs to be Mr. Social. And so on. I'm assuming that the characters can take levels in other classes as well - fighter, wizard, etc. which will fragment the individual characters' abilities even more.

IMO you're better off with the players designing characters that work as a team rather than trying to change the rules in order to accomodate a party composed of nothing but "typical" rogues. The current campaign I'm involved has taken this approach - we're not all rogues, but 4 of 6 characters have rogue levels, and 2 of those are single-classed rogues.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Exactly.

After all - the rogue can max out the traditional thief skills... but the character class is called rogue, not thief, for very good reasons! It encompasses spy, diplomat, merchant and a dozen other possibilities.

 

[Andion Isurand]

Some Alternate Class Names

Rogue //> Acrobat, Agent, Assassin/Executioner, Brigand, Burglar, Detective, Investigator/Inquisitor, Ninja, Pirate/Corsair, Saboture, Scout, Spy, Tinkerer, Theif, Tough

**with Alchemy listed as Craft (alchemy) now, Rogues can be even more diverse

//////////////////////////////////

Barbarian //> Berserker, Champion, Tribesman, Savage, Warrior

Bard //> Actor, Artist, Diplomat, Embassador, Gypsy, Herald, Jester, Messenger, Mimic, Musician, Negotiator, Represenative, Ring Master

Cleric //> Healer, Occultist, Priest/Priestess, Prophet, Saint

Druid //> Beastmaster, Healer, Hermit, Shaman, Warlock/Witch, Witchdoctor

Monk //> Acrobat, Martial Artist, Ninja, Priest

Fighter //> Archer, Armsman, Bodyguard, Champion, Gladiator, Guard, Halberdier, Knight, Samurai, Sniper, Soldier, Swordsman, Warrior, Weapons Master

Paladin //> Knight, Champion

Ranger //> Archer, Animal Tamer, Explorer, Guide, Healer, Hunter, Naturalist, Rancher, Sniper, Shepard, Trapper, Tracker

Sorcerer & Wizard //> Adept, Mage, Magician

Abjurer //> Warder

Diviner //> Fortune Teller, Seeker, Seer

Evoker //> Elementalist

 

[Inez Hull]

I understand your situation Mike, we've just come back to playing D&D after a short stint of playing rolemaster. The ability to specialise and make a character competent on first level in their specialty really stood out to us all and I'm looking at changing how we play skills. I was considering upping the max points per skill or doubling the cost for exceeding the normal maximum like you suggested.

I also dislike the same-ishness of skill selections and have found that rogues usually tend tend have a basic package of core skills which wll always be maxed out. The skill focus feat would be an alternative but just seems too meagre at +2 (or even at +3 as often house ruled). Perhaps all characters could have a certain number of skills that they could pick to go beyond their normal maximum in?