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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5502150" data-attributes="member: 82106">I don't know why a level 2 rogue would be an appropriate challenge though. He's just going to fail miserably and he should. If the wizard is supposed to confront the thief at some point a level 2 thief is hopelessly outclassed. The wizard could pull out his dagger and fight hand-to-hand with the guy and win trivially. He has access to magical resources that will let him track the thief down without any hope of this level 2 antagonist being able to do anything about it. If the story is the guy ultimately fails then maybe he should just fail right away. You can always fluff it as the thief manages to pick the wizard's pocket and as he heads out the door the wizard (having thwarted all sorts of sneaky types in his 30 levels of adventuring) picks up on what's going on. If you are in that 1 in 1000 corner case where you REALLY REALLY need to have it work then DM fiat is the answer. You can raise the thief's skill bonus to some super high level, but what you really are after is a specific sequence of events at that point, so why bother rolling at all?If you want a challenging scenario with an antagonist stealing from a level 30 wizard, then I'd say you want to use an appropriately leveled antagonist. On the whole the issue seems adequately dealt with in 4e.Yeah, I wasn't personally saying I think skills are too broad and diffuse. I was more talking about what happens when a character has reached say mid-paragon and has 10 feats. Characters that add sort of random 'interesting' feats tend to get a bid muddied in theme. As for the other idea. I think it is fine as a house rule if someone wants it. As a core rule I'd be against it. Too many players would just automatically take some skill attached to their dump stat and use it to get training in something valuable. They'd never use the dump skill anyway. Now, as a background option it might not be so bad, take a -5 in one skill and get another skill added to your list you can train or take a +2 background bonus in it. Still going to be gamed, but if that's your background benefit you haven't actually gained anything, you've just made the character more quirky.The hyperfocus thing is similar, some players could game it, but the situations where you can do it and be sure you're not hurting yourself are narrower. Restrict it to trained skills. OK, normally I'd be a good swimmer but I'd rather not be able to swim well and be able to pick locks better. Still possible to min/max but if both are trained skills at least you're giving up as good as you're getting.</blockquote>

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