Otterscrubber said:
Why further pigeon-hole characters by giving them half as many skill points as others AND THEN making skills cost twice as much?
Skill points represent that someone has taken time to learn a skill. Why would one person be better at listening (or swimming) than another? Isn't this taken care of with ability score adjustments?
First of all, you could try to think that some characters are twice better because they have at the same time more skills to buy at half price and more skill points, instead of thinking that the others are pigeon-holed.
Then think that skill ranks represent experience while ability modifiers represent attitudes. I agree that a couple of skills like Spot or Listen may seem more difficult to "train" consciously, but they are still the result of the characters way of life.
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It seems that I always write this, and I may be probably the only one who uses the following house rule, which is "the other way around" the one used by everyone else: I keep the cost of cross-class skills equal to 2 points per rank, but I let max rank be level+3 just as with class skills.
I think my house rules keeps the difference between characters with good or bad class skill list, but at the same time doesn't forbid a character to become very good in one skill he really likes, without multiclassing.
There are many (but not all, definitely) skills which is much better to keep as high as possible, otherwise they tend to become less and less useful as levels go up. For these skills, you either have them as class skills or not have ranks at all, because soon even maxed out they would hardly work, and it doesn't really matter if you have payed them less.