Not Quite Skill Points

[Starfox]

Some of my players are nostalgic about the customization and personalization yu could get with the skill points of yore. I tried to think of a way to do this, and this is what I came up with. It is not skill points, but has many of the benefits. This rules is the result a pretty long discussion discussion, and does not use skill point but allows skill diversification by another method.

You can opt to take a penalty of one or two point to the skill bonus of each trained skill. These points go into a pool; you can distribute points from this pool among all your untrained skills, but no more than two points can go into any one untrained skill. You can change penalties and redistribute points at every even level.

• The end result is similar to the proposed skill point rule.
• The rule is simpler and closer to canon
• The identity and number of trained skills is preserved
• This can probably be used as a "special" or "miscellaneous" modifier in various character builder utilities, unlike the skill point model.

This works seamlessly with Jack of all Trades.

• JoT is still strictly worse than a full trained skill (max +4 total)
• A bard with JoT can achieve parity at +5, but this is the bard schtick.
• The total benefit to skills is preserved (+2 per untrained skill).
• Overall, JoT becomes better, but only slightly so.

 

[Garthanos]

Some of my players are nostalgic about the customization and personalization yu could get with the skill points of yore. I tried to think of a way to do this, and this is what I came up with. It is not skill points, but has many of the benefits. This rules is the result a pretty long discussion discussion, and does not use skill point but allows skill diversification by another method.

You can opt to take a penalty of one or two point to the skill bonus of each trained skill. These points go into a pool; you can distribute points from this pool among all your untrained skills, but no more than two points can go into any one untrained skill. You can change penalties and redistribute points at every even level.

• The end result is similar to the proposed skill point rule.
• The rule is simpler and closer to canon
• The identity and number of trained skills is preserved
• This can probably be used as a "special" or "miscellaneous" modifier in various character builder utilities, unlike the skill point model.

This works seamlessly with Jack of all Trades.

• JoT is still strictly worse than a full trained skill (max +4 total)
• A bard with JoT can achieve parity at +5, but this is the bard schtick.
• The total benefit to skills is preserved (+2 per untrained skill).
• Overall, JoT becomes better, but only slightly so.

It looks like you created an even more advanced JOT....

In my game world like most humans on earth, modern humans (the evolved) believe in re-incarnation and memories from passed lives can give them gifts in skills they are otherwise untrained in... this is a compensation for having less life span than the fey souled ones (the new children), or the Auld World humans. In effect these Modern Humans may be jot without quite realizing they are. Your rule could bring this rather interestingly in to play.

Probably the hardest idea IMGW to bring in will be that most modern humans are rather decidedly knee jerk against magic and the magical healers of the past are now very rare indeed. Actually 4E makes this latter bit much easier than previous editions, Warlords are far less over shadowed. A modern human Wizard will be an outcast hiding behind false professions and similar things its actually a cool background. Auld Worlder Humans have more in common with Eladrin.... anyway
your idea has me thinking ;-)

 

[Tuft]

One of the things I like about skillpoints is the feeling of developing, growing from barely competent and dependent on luck into being able to trust your competency more and more.

Any ideas on how to simulate competency growth with your system?

 

[Garthanos]

Not sure why you dont feel like the impact of d20 worth of randomness doesn't overwhelm the +5 from being just competant in a trained skill already... ie what are you missing "really" nor why 30 levels later +20 doesnt represent the progression of competance you speak of...

 

[Starfox]

Tuft, I don't think this potion affects the feeling of developing for incompetence to mastery at all. That comes by itself as you advance in levels and possibly add Skill Specialization or other feats that grant skill bonuses. What this does is that it lets you alter the feel of how you progress along that path.

Say your character is working to learn Athletics. You could first place one, then two points in it as an untrained skill. You then spend a feat to get training in the skill, but apply a -2 penalty to it, which you then gradually remove. Over a succession of 10 levels, you could improve your Athletics bonus one per level.

Or if you use a certain skill a lot, such as Thievery, and feel you want to reflect this new experience - you can add a minor bonus to it without having to spend a full feat. And the opposite is also true - you might be trained in Stealth, but if you haven't used it for a level or two, you can choose to reduce your skill bonus to reflect your lack of practice.

 

[Starfox]

No cons either here or on my home forums; I'll try this live.