Moving everything to skills -- BaB, saves, and armor class

[kenjib]

Has anyone considered making the system more streamlined by turning BaB, saves, and armor class into skills?

If you wanted you could have a few categories:

Combat Skills
-----------------
Blades (str)
Axes (str)
Bludgeoning Weapons (str)
Reach Weapons (str)
Thrown Weapons (str)
Unarmed (str)
Bows (dex)
Crossbow (dex)
Exotic Melee/Thrown Weapons (str, one skill per weapon ala craft or profession skills)
Exotic Ranged Weapons (dex, one skill per weapon ala craft or profession skills)

Defensive Skills
-------------------
Defense
Will
Reflex
Fortitude

Shields grant a bonus to defense and armor provides DR. Attacks are opposed rolls with an offensive roll opposed by defensive roll.

You could also have a skill for each school of magic that is used as an opposed roll against people's appropriate save skill.

Of course, these skills will probably be seen to have more utility than the standard skills, so perhaps different classes should get a different number of skill points per category.

Example:

Fighters
----------
Combat Skills: 4 per level
All skills are class skills
Defensive Skills: 4 per level
Defense and Fortitude are class skills
Spellcasting Skills: 0 per level
No class skills

Monks
--------
Combat Skills: 4 per level
Unarmed, Exotic Melee/Thrown, and Exotic Ranged are class skills
Defensive Skills: 4 per level
All are class skills
Spellcasting Skills: 0 per level
No class skills

Okay, it becomes apparent with the monk that there needs to be something between class skills and cross-class skills to capture the medium progression of things like the rogue/monk/cleric BaB. Any ideas on how to make a third tier like that for skills?

Anyway, this is just a rough, hair-brained idea. It's not intended to be complete but just to present the basic idea. Any thoughts?

 

[LostSoul]

Why use classes if everything is a skill?

 

[Khorod]

Third tier- vary the skill points involved...

Low: 4 & cross class
High: 4 & class skill
Middle: 3 & class skill

Interesting idea. The problems will start to crop up when you start adding the next layer of detail...

 

[kenjib]

Why use classes if everything is a skill?

That's a good point LostSoul. I think that it allows you to keep archetypes by giving various characters different foci. You also still have the same class abilities (rage, turn undead, sneak attack, etc.), spell casting progressions (the spellcasting skill for each school that I referred to only applies to save DC), weapon/armor proficiency, hit die type, etc.

Everything is not a skill - my post title was perhaps misleading. I was just talking about saves, bab, spellcasting DC, and defense, really. Sorry about that!

Third tier- vary the skill points involved...

Low: 4 & cross class
High: 4 & class skill
Middle: 3 & class skill

Interesting idea. The problems will start to crop up when you start adding the next layer of detail...

Hmm...that's an interesting idea for defense Khorod. People in the middle tier can either specialize in certain areas are spread points out to be more balanced. What about offense though? How do you allow someone to have an attack progression that is better than a wizard's but not as good as a fighter's with their weapon of choice?

What if there were three ranks:
Poor Ability (aka cross class): each skill point is worth 0.5 ranks in a skill. This is the default ability level for all skills.
Medium Ability (new): each skill point is worth 0.75 ranks in a skill
High Ability (aka class skills): each skill point is worth 1 rank in a skill

You can't spend more than 3+level skill points in a skill, however many ranks that will buy you (round down).

So,

Fighters
----------
Combat Skills: 4 per level
Class Skills: All (high)
Defensive Skills: 3 per level
Class Skills: Defense (high), Fortitude (high), Reflex (medium)
Spellcasting Skills: 0 per level
No class skills
Other Skills: 2 + int mod per level
Class Skills: Similar to PHB, but you could have some at medium ability now.

Monks
--------
Combat Skills: 4 per level
Class Skills: Unarmed (medium), Exotic Melee/Thrown (medium), and Exotic Ranged (medium)
Defensive Skills: 4 per level
Class Skills: All (high)
Spellcasting Skills: 0 per level
Class Skills: None
Other Skills: 2 + int mod per level
Class Skills: Similar to PHB, but you could have some at medium ability now.

Non-Specialist Wizard
----------------------------
Combat Skills: 2 per level
Class Skills: None
Defensive Skills: 4 per level
Class Skills: Will (high)
Spellcasting Skills: 5 per level
Class Skills: All (high)
Other Skills: 2 + int mod per level
Class Skills: Similar to PHB, but you could have some at medium ability now.

Sorcerer
-----------
Combat Skills: 2 per level
Class Skills: None
Defensive Skills: 4 per level
Class Skills: Will (high)
Spellcasting Skills: 4 per level
Class Skills: Choose Four (high), All Others (medium)
Other Skills: 2 + int mod per level
Class Skills: Similar to PHB, but you could have some at medium ability now.

Cleric
-------
Combat Skills: 3 per level
Class Skills: Favored Weapons (medium), Unarmed (medium), Bludgeoning (medium), Crossbows (medium)
Spell
Spellcasting Skills: 5 per level
Class Skills: All (high)
Other Skills: 2 + int mod per level
Class Skills: Similar to PHB, but you could have some at medium ability now.

Rogue
--------
Combat Skills: 3 per level
Class Skills: Blades (medium), Crossbows (medium), Thrown (medium), and Exotic Melee/Thrown (medium)
Defensive Skills: 4 per level
Class Skills: Defense (medium), Reflex (high)
Spellcasting Skills: 0 per level
Class Skills: None
Other Skills: 8 + int mod per level
Class Skills: Similar to PHB, but you could have some at medium ability now.

I agree that it's a very rough idea with plenty of problems though. Saves, for example, become more level dependent than they currently are when you almost double the spread of DCs/save boni. You would also need to come up with a conversion rate for things like poison DCs and other fixed DCs. Perhaps it's all managable though? It's also a pretty drastic change to the AC system and would require some modifications, like monk armor bonus and wis bonus to ac should change to some kind of inherent "iron body" DR to offset no armor.

 

[Drawmack]

Well, if you want to do that why not make them purchase things at character creation time? There are a couple of good class generation engines out there.

 

[LostSoul]

That's a good point LostSoul. I think that it allows you to keep archetypes by giving various characters different foci.

I guess those things could be turned into Feats, but that would be a lot of work.

 

[kenjib]

I guess those things could be turned into Feats, but that would be a lot of work.

Hmm...adding that in would be getting pretty close to the dLiberation system.

http://www.continuum.org/llanade/redleafgames/dliberation20.php

Maybe I should look at crafting a spin-off of dLiberation to address what I see as the shortcomings.

You could create an underlying classless system, and then put together some pre-made templates that people can use if they want an archetype to get started. Kind of like CoC or Lejendary Adventures.

 

[Pbartender]

You could change the Weapon Proficiency feats... Now, they'd make a particular set of Attack skills into class skills.

Likewise, Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes and Great Fortitude could make the Saving Throw skills class skills... You won't need the original versions, after all, since you will be able to use Skill Focus to add +2 (or +3, depending on which rules you use) to the skills.

 

[Coredump]

Okay Kenjib, no more hanging around with Grim Jesta.... He is obviously a bad influence. ;-)

Pretty soon you too will be able to sell your 'core books' as unnecessary....

.

 

[kenjib]

LOL Coredump. Hehe -- maybe I should post this on Kenzerboards and see what Grim thinks.

You could change the Weapon Proficiency feats... Now, they'd make a particular set of Attack skills into class skills.

Likewise, Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes and Great Fortitude could make the Saving Throw skills class skills... You won't need the original versions, after all, since you will be able to use Skill Focus to add +2 (or +3, depending on which rules you use) to the skills.

Fantastic ideas!!!! What to do with simple vs. martial though? Perhaps there would be two feats for each weapon skill type. For example:

Simple Blade Profiency
Martial Blade Proficiency (prereq: simple slashing proficiency)

That helps me update some of the classes in a better way too. Clerics, for example, could have simple proficiency in all of the types.

Do you think this makes the martial proficiency feats too powerful though? I don't really think so, because you only really use one weapon of each type anyway so it's not much of a difference whether you gain proficiency in one weapon or a group.

I'd still keep exotic weapons on a weapon by weapon basis instead of a group though.