shadow
First Post
After some absence from gaming, I've decided to come back to work on my homebrew that I have been toying around with for several years. I was originally planning/playing it with straight 3e rules. However, with all the d20 options available and the release of 4e, I decided to completely redo the rules system to make it better fit my vision. Essentially, I am doing a high fantasy world where magic is rare, but powerful (I am using Green Ronin's True Sorcery). Since I am redoing classes and races, I thought that I might as well redo other areas of d20 that I feel could use improvement...
That brings me to today's thread - the skill system. I always had some problems with the skill system in 3e/3.5e as it stood. I works fine on lower levels, but I've found that it tends to break down at mid-high levels. There are a number of problems inherent in it.
One is the escalating DCs that the DM is required to come up with to keep players on their toes. By 12th level, a character with max ranks in a class skill automatically suceeds tasks with an average difficulty (DC 15) and difficult tasks (DC 20) 75% of the time - without taking into account ability modifiers. By the time a character reaches high levels most tasks can be accomplished without even rolling. To compensate for the problem I have noticed DMs just assigning higher difficulty to tasks and because they are "epic" difficulty. (This is a swim check of DC 35 because you are in a raging "epic river".) Of course, I like the idea of characters getting more skilled and even doing "epic" feats with skills when appropriate; the problem is that the it becomes too much of a "easy or impossible" at higher levels.
The second problem I have with the d20 skill system is the idea that a roll of a 1 is always a failure. That idea is apparently there to keep some element of chance in a system that otherwise would give high level characters an automatic sucess on certain skill checks. The problem is that no matter how skilled high level characters get, they still have a flat 5% chance of failure with every skill check.
The final problem is that at higher levels there is a very high discrepancy between class skills and cross class skills. Class skills get to absurdly high levels, while cross class skills (assuming they are maxed out) are only half as high. This leads to characters who are experts at one area, but impotent in other areas.
Sorry about the rather long rant, but I wanted you to understand where I am coming from in regards to the skill system. With that said, I would like to know if anyone has experimented with a modified or alternate skill system, and how it worked. I don't want to go too far astray from d20 - I want a system that will mesh with the rest of d20 rules. Could anyone give me some advice about or ideas about a skill system that addresses the problems that I
mentioned above.
That brings me to today's thread - the skill system. I always had some problems with the skill system in 3e/3.5e as it stood. I works fine on lower levels, but I've found that it tends to break down at mid-high levels. There are a number of problems inherent in it.
One is the escalating DCs that the DM is required to come up with to keep players on their toes. By 12th level, a character with max ranks in a class skill automatically suceeds tasks with an average difficulty (DC 15) and difficult tasks (DC 20) 75% of the time - without taking into account ability modifiers. By the time a character reaches high levels most tasks can be accomplished without even rolling. To compensate for the problem I have noticed DMs just assigning higher difficulty to tasks and because they are "epic" difficulty. (This is a swim check of DC 35 because you are in a raging "epic river".) Of course, I like the idea of characters getting more skilled and even doing "epic" feats with skills when appropriate; the problem is that the it becomes too much of a "easy or impossible" at higher levels.
The second problem I have with the d20 skill system is the idea that a roll of a 1 is always a failure. That idea is apparently there to keep some element of chance in a system that otherwise would give high level characters an automatic sucess on certain skill checks. The problem is that no matter how skilled high level characters get, they still have a flat 5% chance of failure with every skill check.
The final problem is that at higher levels there is a very high discrepancy between class skills and cross class skills. Class skills get to absurdly high levels, while cross class skills (assuming they are maxed out) are only half as high. This leads to characters who are experts at one area, but impotent in other areas.
Sorry about the rather long rant, but I wanted you to understand where I am coming from in regards to the skill system. With that said, I would like to know if anyone has experimented with a modified or alternate skill system, and how it worked. I don't want to go too far astray from d20 - I want a system that will mesh with the rest of d20 rules. Could anyone give me some advice about or ideas about a skill system that addresses the problems that I
mentioned above.
