Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder Skill Consolidation

[Morrus]

You mean backgrounds supersede skills?

I'm not sure what you mean by then superseding them; but I like them, yes.

 

[MerricB]

You mean backgrounds supersede skills?

There are no skills (as such) in 13th Age. Instead you have backgrounds, which are basically descriptive text as to what you've done with your life. For instance, one character had "Wilderness Dweller +5" and "Bounty Hunter +3".

When you would make a skill check in D&D, you'd look at your backgrounds and see if any of them would apply. I'm sneaking up on someone? That sounds like something I learnt as a bounty hunter, so I get +3 to the roll. Backgrounds can be quite broad in application and likewise vague, but the flipside of that is you'll rarely be unable to do something your character *should* be able to do because the system didn't give you enough skill points.

Cheers!

 

[Manbearcat]

While I too would prefer putting climb, jump, and swimming together, Paizo's rationale is reasonably sound for not doing so. Climb and swim are fairly standard movement categories and lots of creatures should get varying bonuses to one or more of them. Lumping them together causes a proliferation of context bonuses that doesn't simplify the game.

I think I would be "ok" (not preferable but ok) with the separation of Climb, Jump, and Swim if the Fighter (and probably Ranger...but only for thematic reasons there) gained (scaling with level) bonuses to these skills so they didn't have to invest so deeply (with their already limited skill points) just to have base competency in athletic fundamentals. A robust scaling bonus for Climb, Jump, Swim, Intimidate, Leadership score and automatic gain of Leadership at 7th level would get the job done in softening the blow of being spread thin twice-over (low number of skill points + primary shtick "Athletics" being split across multiple skills). Giving Fighters an extra bonus for the "Bonus" option of Hero Points if they use it for a skill (eg a + 12 or even 15 bonus) wouldn't be the worst idea in the world either. Finally, you could give Fighters 2 free Traits amongst a specified list of Equipment, Regional, and Social that are thematically Fighter-ey. Any combination thereof would go a long way toward establishing a "thematic center" for the Fighter, simultaneously providing base competency and giving players a cue as to their natural role in non-combat resolution. The menial Skill Points that they accrue as they level would serve to supplement/specialize/diversify.

 

[abellius]

There are no skills (as such) in 13th Age. Instead you have backgrounds, which are basically descriptive text as to what you've done with your life. For instance, one character had "Wilderness Dweller +5" and "Bounty Hunter +3".

When you would make a skill check in D&D, you'd look at your backgrounds and see if any of them would apply. I'm sneaking up on someone? That sounds like something I learnt as a bounty hunter, so I get +3 to the roll. Backgrounds can be quite broad in application and likewise vague, but the flipside of that is you'll rarely be unable to do something your character *should* be able to do because the system didn't give you enough skill points.

Cheers!

Though I haven't played 13th Age yet, I have a feeling that backgrounds determining what skills you can apply your bonus to can lead to arguments about what does your character really know. I see it as a problem as the shininess and hype about 13th Age starts to wane and people have play the game for a while.

As per your examples, what does Wilderness Dweller mean? He is a desert, mountain, forest, etc survivalist? Does he live in a cave or did he build some type of house to live? When it comes to bounty hunters, not all of them have the same skills and abilities.

I can easily see backgrounds not being any better than picking skills that you think your character should know and putting ranks into them. I could be completely wrong, but time will tell as well as your gaming group.

 

[sheadunne]

I like the Cortex system in Serenity. A list of general skills with subcategories. You can advance the general skill up until a certain point and then you have to specialize if you want to be really good at something.

You could do . . .

Athletics
. . . Jump
. . . Climb
. . . Swim
. . . Fly

All points go into the general Athletics skill until you have 5 ranks. After that you have to specialize by putting ranks into the individual skill. When you roll to jump you add Athletics + Jump. It's easy enough to do with most categories in the game.

Acrobatics
. . . Tumble
. . . Escape Artist
. . . Balance

Knowledge
. . . Arcana
. . . Religion
. . . Nature

Perception
. . . sight
. . . hearing
. . . tasting
. . . smelling
. . . touching

Persuasion
. . . Diplomacy
. . . Intimidation
. . . Sense Motive
. . . Bluff

Thievery
. . . Sleight of Hand
. . . Disable Device
. . . Forgery

Etc. The only issues is how many skill points are appropriate to maintain the system. At lower levels characters will be generally okay at things. But as the progress, they'll start to become exceptional at a more limited number of skills, while still retraining their basic knowledge. Anyway, I like the system (although the implementation in Serenity was a little lackluster).