Afrodyte
Explorer
I was thinking of a way to allow for more customization within classes, and it occurred to me that what bothered me was not so much that classes didn't get much but that what they got didn't always make sense intuitively. I realized that it was because the characters' backgrounds rarely, if ever, neatly coincided with the class abilities and skills. Usually, either one or the other was lacking or just didn't fit right. Sure, I coud multiclass, but there are XP penalties to consider, and I don't think that docking 10% XP just because I wanted a few more skill ranks to flesh out my character makes sense. I also didn't want the abilities unique to the class I was multiclassing into. I could also make Intelligence one of my prioritized abilities, but that puts me in a bind if my character is not meant to be particularly smart or if bitter experience were the teacher instead of reason and intellect.
What I thought about, then, as basing the number of skills known on Wisdom, for that seems a great way to represent the insights gained from experience. Characters who lead cloistered lives don't really have much exposure to different things, and less is required of them to live. However, characters that are more worldly tend to gather a wider repertoire of skills. A bookish, sheltered character may not know many skills, but the depth of knowledge in the things she does know can be impressive. A character who is not too bright but very experienced may not be able to communicate or even understand the theoretical basis behind much of what he knows how to do, but he uses what he knows very well.
Off the top of my head, this is something I came up with:
Maximum number of class skills: Wisdom score.
Skills per level: Wisdom + Intelligence modifiers
You cannot take any exclusive class skills (for instance, Scry) unless you have levels in the appropriate class. As you advance, you must decide which skills to count as class skills and which as cross-class. The total class skills must still equal your Wisdom score, regardless of what they are. If the skill you select as a cross-class skill has more ranks than the maximum for such skills, it cannot be chosen as a cross-class skill. The only way to gain more class skills to increase your Wisdom score.
At first I thought it imbalanced, but after further thought, I realized that in most cases, characters tend to concentrate on a few skills related to what they do. As for the question: "What do I do to keep a wizard from picking pockets and sneaking around better than a rogue?" I tend to believe that peer acceptance is a far more powerful motivator than any cover-ups I write up for potential loopholes.
What I thought about, then, as basing the number of skills known on Wisdom, for that seems a great way to represent the insights gained from experience. Characters who lead cloistered lives don't really have much exposure to different things, and less is required of them to live. However, characters that are more worldly tend to gather a wider repertoire of skills. A bookish, sheltered character may not know many skills, but the depth of knowledge in the things she does know can be impressive. A character who is not too bright but very experienced may not be able to communicate or even understand the theoretical basis behind much of what he knows how to do, but he uses what he knows very well.
Off the top of my head, this is something I came up with:
Maximum number of class skills: Wisdom score.
Skills per level: Wisdom + Intelligence modifiers
You cannot take any exclusive class skills (for instance, Scry) unless you have levels in the appropriate class. As you advance, you must decide which skills to count as class skills and which as cross-class. The total class skills must still equal your Wisdom score, regardless of what they are. If the skill you select as a cross-class skill has more ranks than the maximum for such skills, it cannot be chosen as a cross-class skill. The only way to gain more class skills to increase your Wisdom score.
At first I thought it imbalanced, but after further thought, I realized that in most cases, characters tend to concentrate on a few skills related to what they do. As for the question: "What do I do to keep a wizard from picking pockets and sneaking around better than a rogue?" I tend to believe that peer acceptance is a far more powerful motivator than any cover-ups I write up for potential loopholes.
