Reasons for taking +2 to skills Feats?

[Psion]

Doesn't improved toughness require toughness?

Nope, just base fortitude save +2.

 

[catsclaw227]

From my house rules:

Skill Augmentation [General]
Choose two related skills.
Benefit: You get a +2 bonus on all checks involving those two skills.
Special: You can gain this feat multiple times. Its effects do not stack. Each time you take the feat, it applies to a new pair of skills.

I have, in past campaigns often given a free feat at 5th level. I may give this feat to each PC as a bonus feat at 5th level, but it needs to apply to skills that they used often and must match their character concept.

FYI -- I also have a feat all PCs get called Skill Experience:

Skill Experience [General]
Your experience adventuring has sharpened your senses.
Benefit: Grants a +1 to spot/search/listen skills at 4th level and every 4 character levels after this. This represents their extra adventuring experience.

 

[Nifft]

In my experience, two kinds of PCs take those feats.

1/ Extreme skill monkeys who want to be better than anyone; and

2/ Guys who have way more feats than skill points, and need to catch up.

Cheers, -- N

 

[boolean]

For others, like Magical Aptitude, the combination is just silly. Seriously, what kind of character wants to develop both Spellcraft and UMD? Spellcraft is best used by the kind of class that doesn't need UMD. There's a reason there isn't a single class (well, core class at least -- although I'd be surprised if anyone's developed a non-core class with both) that has both of those as class skills.

There is a single core class with both Spellcraft and UMD as class skills. Nobody remembers the poor Bard.

Artificers (from the Eberron Campaign Setting) and Beguilers (from PHB2) also have both Spellcraft and Use Magic Device as class skills.

 

[orsal]

There is a single core class with both Spellcraft and UMD as class skills. Nobody remembers the poor Bard.

[slaps self on the forehead]Duh! You would think that, just because my principle character these days -- the one who's been getting most of my playing lately -- is a bard who has one or more ranks in both of those skills (see my sig), I would have remembered that.

But that would be giving me too much credit.

 

[Glyfair]

ESeriously, what kind of character wants to develop both Spellcraft and UMD?

Artificers often take this feat, as well as the occasional warlock.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

Magical Aptitude is another of those ones that you take (after you've taken Skill Focus) in order to stretch just a bit more to make those insanely high DCs. All you care about is the UMD part. It makes sense in a high-magic world with high PC wealth, so you can buy scrolls and magic items. Magical Aptitude + Skill Focus + 12 Cha + Circlet of Persuasion + 5 ranks in Decipher Script = level +14 on scroll checks, and level +12 on other UMD checks.

This is especially good for Warlocks, who can take 10 on these checks and will typically have a higher Cha. 8th-level warlock with 18 Cha, for a guaranteed 35 on UMD scroll checks? Say hello to 8th-level spells. In this case, the Magical Aptitude feat is letting the warlock use scrolls of caster level 15 rather than caster level 13.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

From my house rules:

Wulf put these in one of the BadAxe Games products, IIRC. It's a pretty common (and good) house rule.

Myself, I use these kinds of feats for a lot of my NPCs - I don't generally build my NPCs specifically to challenge the PCs but rather, to embody their overall concept as much as possible within the constrains of the rules (same goes for spell selection, for that matter). I occasionally take them as a player, but not as often. If PC's got more feats, I might take them more often.

 

[solkan_uk]

I don't mind the feats that much, except that they keep adding them, and they feel weak. At least considering core books they aren't prerequisites for other feats and aren't particularly good.

In addition they are balanced in the same way as skills (i.e. not very well), in the standard model for D&D certain skills are noticably weaker. Perform, Profession, Knowledge and so on, are all useful in a niche or in a certain setting, but aren't exactly useful in your standard dungeon crawl (excepting perform/bards), yet all gain ranks at the same rate and get the same bonuses.

 

[Brother MacLaren]

In addition they are balanced in the same way as skills (i.e. not very well), in the standard model for D&D certain skills are noticably weaker. Perform, Profession, Knowledge and so on, are all useful in a niche or in a certain setting, but aren't exactly useful in your standard dungeon crawl (excepting perform/bards), yet all gain ranks at the same rate and get the same bonuses.

Even in a dungeon crawl, Knowledge can be a life-saver due to the ability to identify a monster's abilities. So many monsters have abilities that a PC should not be able to figure out without that skill -- for example, whether to use Restoration, Remove Curse, Remove Disease, or Neutralize Poison to cure the corporeal instability caused by a Chaos Beast. Yet another reason bards rock -- Knowledge skills and tons of skill points.

I wonder if it would be balanced to introduce a feat that granted +1 to all Knowledge skills (or all Perform/Profession/Craft).