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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Norfleet" data-source="post: 1116001" data-attributes="member: 11581">Skillpoint retroactivity is only the beginning of clean, reconstructible bookkeeping: Frankly, the 3/3.5E skillpoint system is a horrendous mess when it comes to backtracking: If the visible manifestation of a character's skills is the +X to them, then you have a huge mess, under core rules: First, if a character's int varies with level, such as if he is a wizard or otherwise raises int, you have to track when, exactly, he raised int to even reconstruct the number of skillpoints he should have. This becomes a severe issue with, say, Wiz/Clr/MTs, for whom raising which stat may not be entirely clearcut: He can raise Int or Wis, and may choose to raise both....which means that WHEN he raised Int as opposed to Wis becomes important for tracking how many skillpoints he should have.Then there's that whole cross-class skill business, which becomes an absolutely horrendous nightmare when multiclassing becomes involved: Then you have to wonder when he purchased a point as a class skill, when he purchased it as a cross-class skill, and the fact that his maximum is different if it's a class skill for one class, even if he has to purchase ranks cross-class using the points of another class, blah, blah. Just try this with a fighter/rogue who is primarily a rogue: Say with an end goal of a classical R16/F4 build. Fighters, of course, have a horrendously crippled pool of class skills to pick from....only a few of which overlap with the rogue. For a pure fighter, it's not a major issue because he faces the same choices every level, with the same skillpoints: He can just keep raising the same skills every time. For the multiclass character, however, it becomes an interesting dance not unlike corporate tax accounting: How to get the skills you want maxed, while making sure you don't pay cross-class penalties. You get this interesting behavior where, when the character levels as a rogue, he'll WON'T raise the overlapping skills at all, so that he can use a fighter level to shovel points into it while it's a class skill: Since there's no rule dictating how many points can be shoved into a skill at once, only the maximum, it's perfectly legal for him to level as a fighter, and shovel all of his skillpoints into one or two skills: If he has a high int, and perhaps is human, he's likely to have more skillpoints available to him than his skillpoint-impaired class will have decent skills.All of this, of course, would be significantly reduced by a simple "once a class skill, always a class skill" system, instead of that "maximum-rank as a class skill, but purchased either class or cross class.....blah-blah-my-head-hurts" stuff. Designing a multiclass character, particularly a multi-rogue, becomes an exercise in corporate tax accounting, with all the attendant joy.Frankly, the entire skills and skillpoint system is a horrendous bookkeeping nightmare: Multiclass characters greatly exacerbate the problem.</blockquote>

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