Interested in alternate skill rules.

[DreadPirateMurphy]

I've seen some interesting alternate skill rules for skills in products I've gotten lately.

Green Ronin's Black Company setting used a variant of Speak Language. Language had four levels of proficiency (with a -10 to +5 on skill checks based on level). When you spent 1 skill point, it was divided into a number of language points equal to your Int bonus.

An alternative is the use of the Knowledge skill in Iron Heroes. You have a general skill rating, but you can expend 1 skill point to add an area of expertise (e.g., geography or local) to your overall knowledge rather than raising your skill.

Both Iron Heroes and Spycraft 2.0 also provided rules for skill groups, with the first restricting access to groups by character class. Groups allow you to raise all the skills in a group at the same time.

I would be interested in any home rules or other interesting product takes that you folks have heard about. The skill system in the PHB seems to work better for some things than others.

 

[DanMcS]

You can pretty much wholesale swap in any skill system into a d20 game as long as you use it consistently. For instance, you could take the new World of Darkness skill list (24 skills, 8 each physical, mental, and social) or the Exalted skill list (25 skills, weighted towards a kung-fu sword and sorcery style) and use them with the D&D skill rules and be good to go.

Heck, you could even use a slightly modified nWoD character sheet as the basis for your D&D character sheet- use the 9 nWoD attributes and 24 skills, but have each attribute go 3-18 as in D&D, and each skill have ranks like D&D skills.

As a slightly less drastic change, you can go with a very minimal skill list, condensing skills down quite a bit. For example:

Acrobatics Dex (balance, tumble, escape artist)
Animalry Cha/Dex (handle animal, ride)
Athletics Str (climb, jump, swim)
Craft Int (appraise, profession)
Knowledge Int/Wis (heal, profession, spellcraft)
Stealth Dex (hide, move silently)
Notice Wis/Int (spot, listen, search)
Subterfuge Cha (bluff, disguise)
Interaction Cha/Wis (diplomacy, gather info, intimidate, sense motive)
Perform Cha
Concentration Con
Survival Wis (heal)
Manipulation Dex/Int (disable device, sleight of hand)
Speak Language
Drive Dex (Pilot)

At that point, I would probably drop everybody to 2 skill points per level except rogues, who get 4.

 

[IndyPendant]

I did a minimal change for my campaigns. I dropped two skills (Decipher Script--which is indescribably useless, and Open Lock--which I combined into Disable Device like in Modern d20) and designated certain skills as costing 1/2 cost to purchase: Balance, Climb, Craft (Excluding Alchemy), Disguise, Escape Artist, Forgery, Gather Information, Jump, Perform, Profession, Swim, Use Rope. No change in class skill points per level.

Makes the less desirable skills more tempting to take. (For example, no rogue with any brains would take ranks in disguise over ranks in hide or spot in an average DND campaign. But now, a rogue *might* be tempted to sacrifice some ranks in hide for some in jump *and* gather info...) Barely playtested yet, but I don't anticipate any hitches.