Most and Least Powerful Skills

[Plane Sailing]

In my judgement:

Powerful skills:

Spot - absolute requirement to avoid getting surprised
Bluff - so many uses it's hard to catalog them all
Tumble - again lots of uses, plus almost magical evasion abilities



Underpowered/underused skills

Read lips
Innuendo
Pickpocket
Intuit Direction
Forgery
Balance

 

[Marius]

Spot and listen, as per everyone else. I tend to play in heavy heavy roleplaying campaigns, where some weeks there will be either 1 combat situation, or no combat whatsoever, so Dimplomacy and Bluff are incredibly important to me. Hooray for my 9 charisma!

As a ranger who backs up the rogue in the party, search is also excellent.

 

[Drawmack]

IMHO: This is far to game-style dependent, just as powerful/weak spells. It depends on the type of situations the players a placed in. Some skills shine as used in all types of play; listen, spot, search, move silently, hide. Others though are almost completely dependent on the style of play. You name the skill and I can give styles where that skill will be either heavily used or heavily valuable.

Below are examples of other people's weak skills and where they would be highly useful:

Plane Sailing
Read lips, Innuendo, Forgery - In an intrigue/political campaign all of these skills are very heavily used.
Pickpocket - In a city style campaign this gets used all the time.
Intuit Direction - In the woods, swamps etc. this skill in invaluable.
Balance - Sailed on a lot of ships lately?

Li Shenron
Appraise - My party likes to know how much the kitty is worth before they attempt to sell it.

Bret
Climb - In low magic campaigns this comes in very handy also what about areas where magic is suppressed?
Heal - Great for stabalizing a character in battle when magic is better used to thwart enemies.
Swim - been on a lot of boats lately?
Perform - synergy bonuses out the butt
Jump - Played in a lot of ruins with crumbling floors lately?

Jester
Profession - Deep Emersion, Heavy RP with lots of down time.

I could go on but I feel the point is made.

 

[demon_jr]

I believe the usefulness of skill can also be determined on the creativity of the player.

I think someone mentioned earlier that a so-called useless skill in the hands of one player could be quite useful in the hands of another player who knows how to use the skill creatively.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Drawmack:

point 1 - stalker0 was interested in peoples experiences, thus I don't understand your point in proposing specific campaign settings with the intention of undermining other peoples experiences! Of course it is possible to concieve of situations where they are useful but...

point 2 - I stand by my evaluations. Spot, Tumble get used in almost every combat situation, which happen many, many times. bluff/diplomacy the same in intrigue-heavy campaigns.

Forgery on the other hand, will never be used in every encounter. Every so often, sure, but it just isn't as useful.

Pickpocket may get used for light relief, or for one particular task but it isn't an "every encounter" skill.

Intuit Direction is so far from being generally useful that I'm surprised it's even there as a skill!

Innuendo as written is no use unless there are two rogues who want to communicate secretly in public. Pretty rare and specific circumstances for that in almost every campaign

I rate the skills mostly on how often they are likely to be used, and *even in political campaigns* they will be used less frequently than the "good" skills including bluff, diplomacy etc.

So why not contribute rather than rubbish other peoples contributions? In YOUR campaign, what skills are most commonly taken, and which ones least frequently?

Cheers

 

[Pielorinho]

I've run a city-based intrigue game, so I'll comment from that perspective.

Disguise, bluff, area knowledge, diplomacy, and gather information all get used a lot. Read Lips, Innuendo, and intimidate never get used, even though they seem like they'd be useful, and forgery has been used once only in our 50+ sessions. (And in that case they hired someone else to forge the documents for them).

Intuit Direction? Why?

And, of course, tumble, spot, and listen get used all the time.

Daniel

 

[Malin Genie]

Most useful:
Spot
Listen
Tumble
Search
Concentration (for spellcasters) or the Hide/MS duo

Least:
Innuendo
Read Lips
(both cool ideas, just never really see much light. Possibly in very specific types of campaign)
Intuit Direction (even though my character has 3 ranks in it...)
Forgery
Disguise
Decipher Script (a 1st level Comprehend Languages spell trumps this one)
Open Locks (ditto Knock)

To my mind, the 'least useful' are so because the circumstances in which they are useful are so well-defined and limited.

 

[Drawmack]

point 1 - stalker0 was interested in peoples experiences, thus I don't understand your point in proposing specific campaign settings with the intention of undermining other peoples experiences! Of course it is possible to concieve of situations where they are useful but...

He was interested because he is attempting to make a balanced system with no cross-class skills and wants to balance them a bit better since they will not have the class balancing. The fact that he is asked means that he's looking to make this generic and not specific to his campaign. I don't think think this can be made generic because playing styles vary too much. That is the point but....

point 2 - I stand by my evaluations. Spot, Tumble get used in almost every combat situation, which happen many, many times. bluff/diplomacy the same in intrigue-heavy campaigns.

I was not attempting to change anyones opinions.

Forgery on the other hand, will never be used in every encounter. Every so often, sure, but it just isn't as useful.

We have been playing the current campaign since Sept. and forgery has been used about 14 times. Forging documents to get friends out of jail, enemies into jail, get into protected areas, etc.

Pickpocket may get used for light relief, or for one particular task but it isn't an "every encounter" skill.

There are rules for using pick pocket to hide items on your person. Another thing to point out is that if you want to find out about someone picking their pocket is probably the easiest way.

Intuit Direction is so far from being generally useful that I'm surprised it's even there as a skill!

Have you ever been in a forest or large swamp. I have and if you are not inimatly familiar with the area you will get lost. The PCs in my games get lost if they are not using their intuit direction skill. Try making a large overland journey without any type of direction finding device through a heavily wooded area. You can get a general sence from where the sun rises/sets but when if you can't see the sun for a number of hours?

Innuendo as written is no use unless there are two rogues who want to communicate secretly in public. Pretty rare and specific circumstances for that in almost every campaign

Intrigue heavy campaign with three rogues in the party here. Innuendo replaces thieves cant.

So why not contribute rather than rubbish other peoples contributions? In YOUR campaign, what skills are most commonly taken, and which ones least frequently?

I felt I was contirbuting. I also did not intend to offend anyone.

Common: Non-Combat Skills
Uncommon: Combat Skills

 

[Pielorinho]

Have you ever been in a forest or large swamp. I have and if you are not inimatly familiar with the area you will get lost. The PCs in my games get lost if they are not using their intuit direction skill. Try making a large overland journey without any type of direction finding device through a heavily wooded area. You can get a general sence from where the sun rises/sets but when if you can't see the sun for a number of hours?

I have, too. If the sky is really, really overcast, it might be an issue. Otherwise, assuming you know the rough time of day and the season and the hemisphere (things that you'll generally know), you perform the following steps:

1) Look for a patch of sunlight at least 3 inches across. You can almost always find this, no matter how thick the forest -- I've performed this experiment in the old-growth temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest.
2) Stick your finger in the patch of sunlight, pointing at the ground.
3) Look at your finger's shadow.
4) Assuming you're in the Northern hemisphere and that it's not midsummer and that it's midafternoon, the sun is gonna be in the southwest part of the sky. That means your shadow will point northeast. If it's morning, your shadow will point northwest. If it's noon, it'll point north.

It's pretty simple -- more simple than, for example, tumbling through an ogre's reach in the middle of combat.

At least, in my experience it's easier .

Daniel

 

[officeronin]

Most used/most powerful:

Languages
Spot
Listen
Tumble
Bluff
Sense Motive

Add concentration and spellcraft for spellflingers, hide, move silently and search for rogues, wilderness lore for rangers, and perform for Bards

Never used:

Profession
Rope Use
Intimidate (since there's no good mechanic for it)

Some of them are useless unless you have really high scores:

Escape Artist
Use Magic device

And a few are worth getting a few ranks in, and then dropping it:

Scry
Alchemy
Climb

Personally, I like the idea of being able to swim...

OfficeRonin