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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Al" data-source="post: 1581399" data-attributes="member: 2486">Yep. I would disagree.  In making Sneak, one effectively makes Hide and Move Silently class skills for purposes of buying ranks- i.e. one only has to spend 2 points to get stealth abilities up a rank, as opposed to 4 under the RAW.  The 4 points currently makes it prohibitive to buy up at a realistically high level.  At 2 points, however, it's certainly worthwhile. Indeed.  The question of "opportunity cost" always comes into play.  However, the classes to which Sneak is likely to appeal already have pitiful class skill lists.  The fighter class skill list is genereally regarded as one of the worst in the game: Hide and Move Silently are almost self-evidently superior to Ride (with the exception of special mounted PrC), Climb, Jump and Craft (weaponsmithing) in a standard game.  Likewise with many of the "athletic" class skills.  They simply tend to become obsolete by the mid-levels when mobility-based magic is commonplace.  Simple Boots of Levitation remove the need for Climb, and, to a certain extent, Jump at a cost which is trivial at high levels.  Druids and wizards suffer the opposite problem: they have a few good class skills, but their numbers of skill points far outstrips the useful class skills.  Sneak would be a perfect accompaniment.  At 4 points per rank, the cost is prohibitive.  At 2, it's the equivalent of making Hide and Move Silently class skills.The other concern, of course, is that of multiclass characters.  It works both ways.  Stealth-based classes can now divert far more resources into martial and other complementary classes without sacrificing their stealth.  Ironically, not only does the change make it more attractive for a fighter to take levels in ranger, but also vice versa.   It surprised me as well actually.  The ramification is quite clear, and perhaps a bit disturbing: against dedicated skill users, cross-class opposed skills are effectively useless.  Though, in fairness, I've tended to find this in my games as well.  Fighter guards tend to be hopeless at detecting PC rogues, for example.  The numbers are:Chance of being detected on any one opposed roll= (0.15 x 0.1 x 0.05)/20= 0.015, or 1.5%.  The figures in brackets are derived from the assumption that the trained sneaker has +16 over the cross-class detector and investigates the permutations of what the sneaker is rolling versus the detector.  If the sneaker rolls a 1, the detector has a 15% chance of detection (since the sneaker wins on a tied score).  The chances to avoid detection are thus 0.985, which squared is 0.970225, or 97.0225%.  As an aside, I use the 20=30 and 1=-10 house rule.  The numbers under this system are interesting: against the schmuck it's 95%, the cross-class detector 86% and the class one 59%.  Thus, cross-class skills suddenly become much more useful, and both schmucks and class skill buyers are affected less.</blockquote>

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