Making player skill choices feel useful

[dreaded_beast]

My player picked a various number of skills for her character, but during the game, the most commonly made skill checks are Spot, Listen, and Search.

I've tried to tell her that she can help me make her skills useful by attempting to use them in creative ways even if I don't ask for a check. However, she is still learning the rules, so she may have a hard time trying to do this.

I look at her character sheet every so often to get an idea of her skills, but I'm still having difficulty in incorporating all her ranked skills in an adventure.

Any suggestions?

 

[Abisashi]

More info!

Any suggestions?

What skills does she have?

 

[dreaded_beast]

She is a Monk

Skills:
Balance
Climb
Concentration
Escape Artist
Handle Animal
Heal
Hide
Jump
Knowledge Religion
Knowledge Arcana
Listen
Move Silently
Perform
Search
Sense Motive
Spellcraft
Spot
Tumble

 

[VirgilCaine]

Try and throw in situations where say, Balance checks come in handy, or where she can ID enemy spells and use that information or where Perform is useful--a certain animal is ferocious and dangerous, but can be easily lulled to sleep with music, for example.

If she has a monopoly on these skills it is easy, but this might not be the case if there is a Bard, Wizard/Sorc, Cleric, or Rogue in the party.

 

[Liolel]

Hmm, heres a few ideas.

Balance: What season is it. If its winter, a battle may occur in an area covered with patches of ice. Or maybe some oil is spilled as part of an ambush.

Handle Animal: The pc is traveling on a horse or with someone who's on a horse and something spooks the horse. The skill could be used to calm the horse down and stop the horse from bolting I believe (or that might be ride, in which case the situation is still useful because events shouldn't always play to a pc's strengths.

Jump: In the dungeon an old pit trap is open but blocking the corridor. Use the jump skill to get over. And if the check fails you have a use for climb.

Sense Motive: A diplomatic situation with someone not entirely trustworthy would have plenty of chances for this to be used. Or a sorcerer charms a friend and the skill can be used to detect the charm.

Those are the ones that come to mind off the top of my head. The real problem seems to me is that the pc has so many different skills its hard for
all of them to be useful and with the skillpoints divided so much that difficult tasks would be beyond the use of most skills. But that is just an assumption.

 

[Zad]

That's a lotta skills.

Balance: at higher levels this becomes moot. You can introduce it just by having interesting terrain - wet rocks on a streambed, ice, etc.

Climb: up to her really, provided there is a motivation for doing so.

Concentration: not really a great choice for a monk

Escape Artist: grappling! Have a pack of small monsters grapple the party. Don't forget to use "Aid another"

Handle Animal: good ideas above. The other night we had a random encounter with (no lie) a horse.

Jump: see "balance"

Knowledge Religion and Knowledge Arcana: Knowledge checks are handled differently game to game. Typically for us the DM says "You see strange carvings and icons on the archway." Player says "do I recognize the icons?" DM says "Make a knowledge: XXX check." We don't go in looking to utilize the skill but it comes out as the mechanic to support the role playing.

Perform: not worth much unless you're a bard.

Sense Motive: happens all the time

Spellcraft: of limited use


Some of the ones I left off have pretty intuitive uses.

 

[Tessarael]

Firstly, not all skills are created equal. If there's some skills that are not useful in your campaign, you may want to consider removing them or giving them some direct mechanical use (e.g. see my comments on Balance and Escape Artist).

Balance - seldom useful. Let rank add to checks to avoid being tripped.

Climb - useful until the spellcasters have Fly. Still useful in urban settings to scout along rooftops. Can be useful undergroud. Climb a tree in a forest to spot things (e.g. distant fire).

Concentration - mostly useless for a Monk, except when needing to activate a supernatural ability.

Escape Artist - seldom useful. Let rank add to checks to avoid being grappled.

Handle Animal - useful if party has pets, steeds, or pack-bearing animals. Otherwise useless.

Heal - stabilize someone when the Cleric isn't around. Increase healing rate per day, to reduce number of healing spells Cleric needs to cast.

Hide & Move Silently - very useful for a scout.

Jump - not so useful. Use to jump over caltrops, across rooftops, from tree to tree, over a pit, etc. Oh yeah, Monks get increased movement rate, so they get big bonuses to jumping ... probably no point putting many ranks in this.

Knowledge Religion - info on undead, etc. Useful.
Knowledge Arcana - info on dragons, etc. Useful.

Listen & Spot - great for a scout, a watcher at night, etc.

Perform - useless for a Monk, except to make some money when not adventuring.

Search - only really useful for a Rogue, or Cleric with Find Traps. Can be somewhat useful to help find secret doors etc.

Sense Motive - can be quite useful when talking with NPCs. Is that person lying? What do they feel about this situation (angry, sad, etc.)?

Spellcraft - useful. Figure out what spell the bad guy cast. Figure out what spell is in effect nearby.

Tumble - great in combat to get to a position to flank to get +2 to hit. Better for a Rogue for Sneak Attack.

Basically, there's seldom much point for a Monk to put ranks in Balance, Concentration, Escape Artist, Handle Animal, and Perform. Jump is probably not that useful, simple because the Monk will have high movement rate and very good Jump anyway. Some skills are useful just because they give a synergy - e.g. Jump gives +2 synergy to Tumble.

Just my thoughts ...

 

[Shallown]

Also, If I remember correctly, your player's character is in a small village town. Seems she has skills that others in the town may not so others in the village would see her as the Local "expert" especially for any skills not usable without training. Another idea is that some skills are used more for roleplaying than needing to roll. I have a dwarven fighter who has carpentry and armor/weapon smith skills. Becuase he thinks in his characters off time that's what he does. He only bought Carpentry so he could fix up his own barn/smithy with the people he had hired to do so. It was used purely for role playing.

I run a skill intensive campaign. This is why I gave all the characters 2 extra skill poinst each level (Multiplied at first as well) becuase I want them to have skills outside the basics must characters have. If I have them making lots of skill rolls then they tend to continue investing in the non-basic skills (spot, listen search etc) Plus I think some spell casting classes have to have some skills to function and limits/uses up skill points pretty fast.

What I am saying more or less is look at what skills she has and let her use them. She has perform then have people ask her to do so, she has K - arcana then people ask about this strange old wand they found or something like that. It can lead to adventures as well as be a skill she utilizes more often now.

later

 

[dreaded_beast]

Thanks for all the replies so far keep em comin!

I should also have added that this is a solo-campaign, heh.

 

[random user]

Though a little contrived, one possible way to make perform useful is a haughty bard (or could be some other NPC but bard is what came into mind first) who has some information or item that is needed, but refuses to help unless the requester can show some musical (or other artistic) talent.

Concentration... hard to think of something for that one, though the monk in my current campaign currently has ranks in it because he wants to pick up some arcane levels later (basically he wants a monklike character with some ability to cast magic. Rather than coming up with a prestige class, I made a house rule that if your wis is high enough, if you leave the monk class to take up something else, you can come back once, but only once.)