House Rulling Skills

[Archade]

Hey all,

I'm looking to stay with 3.5 with a minimum of change, but I am looking at the skill list as it stands, and some skills (Spellcraft) are far more useful than others.

With that in mind, rather than dropping skills, I'm thinking of making some skills more useful.

For example, Appraise let's you determine the value of an item. Hardly anyone takes ranks in this skill. Maybe if a DC 25 skill check got you a 10% discount when shopping for anything, this skill would be more valuable?

What do you guys think? Can you think of improving any existing skills in this manner?

 

[Claudius Gaius]

Why not? I always tended to be a bit freewheeling - You want to use Appraise to shop for bargians? Seems reasonable, make a check and tell me what you get". Lets see...

Craft is good for making things, for associating with other craftsmen with the same speciality and getting information from them, for evaluating raw materials and goods related to the craft skill, and for convincing city guardsmen that you're a harmless professional, rather than a dangerous adventurer.

Decipher Script is good for cryptography, interpreting pictographic scrawls, handwriting analysis, and identifying obscure languages and where a particular bit of writing might have come from based on style, age of dialect, etc.

Disguise is good for making your voice sound different or like someone else's, setting up camoflague, making a weapon look like something harmless, finding a dish that covers up the flavor of a poison, or concealing information in the images in a book you've written.

Handle Animal is good for making baits, training any creature you can exercise full control over (such as slaves), and keeping very small children from running amuck when babysitting.

Heal is good for surgery, identifying poisons and diseases, evaluating the properties of herbs, installing cyberware, and mixing up cocktails of various drugs.

This could go on for some time of course...