Pathfinder 1E pathfinder skill system

[Folly]

I have been play testing the alpha skills in one of my games, and do like it for all the virtues that the system has. But we have found some key issues with the system.

It makes taking a skills class as your first level... kinda abusive. In 3.5 terms it would be like taking a level of rogue at 1st and getting 8+int skills per level for all levels without having to worry about cross-classing. Since rogues get trap finding at 1st level, there is no reason a fighter should not take first level as rogue, and then go with the rest of their build. Especially since the penalty for multiclassing has been removed.

The skill system also creates some issues with melding with previous content. There are some prestige classes in which the skill requirements is the cost to get into the class(normally the hybrid PrC). But since alpha keeps skill maxed, situations that would have require cross-classing ranks disappear.

We have also found that not all of the consolidation of skills make sense. For example, having jump as part of acrobatic is an issue since it make jump into a dex check. To resolve this we move jump to an athletics skill that also incorporates climb and swim. We also decided to not use the Fly skill, since we viewed the point of the alpha system to simplify and fly adds complexity to the game (not to mention it is really simple to abuse the skill)

Another issue we found is that spell craft (since it is also concentration) heavily favors wizards. Before since concentration was a Con based skill, all casters had the same depencys of stat. Now wizards effectively got an addition bonus to concentration, while most other casters now have more stat requirements/take a penalty to concentration. To resolve this spellcraft either needs special rules for concentration or concentration needs to be removed from spellcraft.

 

[Johnny Angel]

Skill system reform has been my own particular beef with d20. Mostly my concern was that skills needed to be grouped, but in the particular case of d20 Future, Computer Use needed to be broken up so that it wasn't the absolutely indespensible skill that did everything. The problem was that reducing the number of skills would presumably require modifying the number of skill points available to each class, which would be a headache to work out. I looked to Pathfinder to find a solution, and as it turns out, they didn't tackle this at all, and I'm not seeing anybody else sweating this aspect of their skill system. So, has it been workng fine for the rogue to suddenly have a lot of points freed up?

I'm already looking at Alpha 2 by the time I'm addressing this, so I'll base my comments on that.

Skill ranks
People complain about GM prep time involved in more elaborate point-distribution methods, but that doesn't bother me just because I create my NPCs with a chargen spreadsheet, which expedites most such matters. There isn't one presently for Pathfinder, but I'm working on rebuilding my own Star*Forge chargen into a pan-d20 ready-to-customize version for which the Pathfinder specifications will be the first test data. Most of my own prep time is spent building tools to reduce my prep time. For me then deciding what skills are key to an NPC's concept is more consuming than the grunt work of doing the math. So, that affects my perspective on SAGA simple vs. Ye Olde Schoole point distribution, and your own views may vary without either of us necessarily being crazy.

As for the idea that there is no penalty for cross-class skills, but you get +3 if it's a class skill, it sounds workable at low levels. At higher levels, that difference will get increasingly insignificant. Are we afraid the fighter might learn to tumble? The standard system of double-cost cross-class skills makes it a daunting prospect to diversify, though.

Acrobatics
Great idea -- one that I and everybody else on this board has had at one time or another. My bard seems to have been the only one in the world pumping ranks into Balance, only to find that he was 12th level before an opportunity came up to do any tightrope walking. So, combine it with Tumble. In my game, I tell the players to treat them as the same skill, unless they just want to put in ranks into one of them to take advantage of the Skill Tricks system. But you folded in Jump? Uh uh. I mean, yes, if you consider some of the New Skill Uses that have appeared in places like Dragon Magazine in which it requires a Jump check to hop onto a moving wagon, for example, then there is part of the profile of Jump that is generally dex-based. But I would fold the long and high jumps into a skill called Athletics along with Swim and Climb, and I'm not the first to propose doing so.

Appraise
It was a good idea to change the "DC 12 for everything" rule, but yet the skill seems problematic to use. What happens if the PC fails the check? Does the item sell for the mistaken price if it's low? And if your estimate is high, how much will a merchant give for it? It also sounds nice to be able to pluck the best treasure from a hoard in a hurry. What situations are we imagining happening here, and how often does it happen in your game? Scanning a crowd for potential marks to pickpocket? Chatting up an NPC in a well-appointed home and looking for items to snatch? Grabbing one item out of the gigantic horde of a load-bearing boss before you are crushed by the debris of a crumbling temple? And how important are any of these if you can, as 3rd edition seems to assume, just buy any magic item outright and are supposed to be allowed only so much wealth at any given level?

As for identifying magic items, I like the specification for setting DCs, but I myself would put this under Spellcraft or Knowledge (arcana).

Disable Device
This needed to have Open Locks folded into it as in d20 Modern, though again it frees up rogue skill points. Where are the rogues in your game going to put them?

Fly
Good idea, for wherever it comes up. There are now rules for it, and I'll have recourse to consider these when I'm houseruling flying devices in my own steampunk-ish campaign.

Knowledge (arcana)
Knowledge skills are woefully underutilized. Perhaps freeing up skill points will fix this. In any case, it's nice to have some specifics on what can be done with this particular skill that is theoretically very handy but with no guide in the actual SRD as to how to apply it.

Linguistics
Fold Forgery into a skill called Linguistics? Madness! Other than that, it's a great idea -- it takes the place of Speak Language, but you can make checks on it to see if your broad understanding of languages allows you to decipher an unknown script. Should have thought of it years ago.

Forgery I would keep as its own skill, with the caveat that it is only handy in a campaign that emphasizes bureaucracy. Even then I'd generally recommend just having ranks in Knowledge (civics) to get the documents legitimately or Knowledge (streetwise) to find a good forger, as in d20 Modern.

Perception
Spot and Search needed to be joined. If I'm not mistaken, this was previously bundled with Sense Motive. That move I didn't like. But bringing the other senses into the mix was inspired. Finally, your 20th level tracker can smell the iocane powder.