Merging Skills

[Plane Sailing]

The main one that I'd consider changing is joining spot and listen together as awareness and hide & move silently together as sneaking. This would be a welcome simplification and free up a couple of skill points for other interesting things.

Climb and Swim are skills it is useful to have a few ranks in, but you don't need to keep them maxed out. That's fine. Jump is also nice to have a few ranks in and some people might want to max it out, which is also fine.

Balance would benefit from being beefed up a little in usage, and I allow people to use balance checks to oppose Bull Rush and Trip attacks against them.

I agree that tumble is one of the uber-skills which does so much for you it is unbelievable

 

[Li Shenron]

Fantasy Flight Games's Mechamorphosis (a.k.a. "Transformers D20") rolled several sets of 3 skills into 1.

• Balance, Escape Artist and Tumble were all rolled into Acrobatics.
• Climb, Jump, and Swim are all rolled into Athletics.
• Disable Device, Open Lock, and Use Rope were all rolled into Build/Repair [Simple].
• Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Perform, and Sense Motive were all rolled into the skill Interaction.
• Craft and Profession were rolled into the Programming skill.
• Listen, Search and Spot were all rolled into the Senses skill.
• Hide, Move Silently, and Sleight of Hand were all rolled into the Stealth skill.

Wow... that is ALMOST like rolling all skills into let's see... Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma.