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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Norfleet" data-source="post: 1101406" data-attributes="member: 11581">The real problem with the skillpoint system is the issue of opportunity cost: If you burn skillpoints on a Knowledge(Something) skill, you've effectively lost the ability to do something else. Unfortunately, knowledge is not something so easily quantified: It's perfectly possible to have never, ever, attempted to seriously study a matter, to never have spent any time even attempting to read about the matter, yet wind up knowing a great deal about it simply from exposure. Since you've never spent any time studying it, however, it follows that you've been able to study anything else, and have therefore not suffered any kind of opportunity cost for it: Yet, in the D&D system, to acquire a knowledge skill implies a direct and quantifiable opportunity cost, in the form of a lost skill since you've traded the potential to purchase one skill for a knowledge skill: What exactly you LEARN from each rank of this knowledge skill is a complete mystery. In essence, the system is treating your character's brain as a hard drive, where filling it with 3 GBs of data on religion means that space is no longer available for you to fill with 3 GBs of data on horseback riding. That's just not how it works. Also, all classes are especially tight with skillpoints. With a character of base int, meaning, not-a-genius, you can maybe pick up 2-8 skills, depending on class: When you take into account how many skills are tied up in a class's core competencies, that's leaves little or nothing: For instance, consider the rogue, 8 SPs/lvl: You have the stealth suite, that takes up 2 of them. Landmine detection and removal consumes another 2. Tumble and lockpicking, another 2 gone. Spot/listen, and we're out.There's just not enough skillpoints to take anything else other than required and functional skills, and the opportunity cost of doing so is both too high....and silly.Some wise guy is undoubtedly going to suggest that you don't need to max them.Consider this: IIRC, Knowledge(*) skills don't allow take-10/20. That means any attempt to use the skill without a huge amount of skillpoints invested in it will simply be buried under random noise anyway. One rank of knowledge(nature), for instance, has basically no meaningful effect: The amount of noise produced by the random roll will obscure any meaningful signal unless you're called upon to use the skill dozens of times.Given the direct opportunity cost, you're better off trying to raise skills to punch through noise on skills you'll actually be called upon to use.</blockquote>

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