Reasons for taking +2 to skills Feats?

[Aus_Snow]

I like the feats exactly as they are, and have had players create a reasonable number of PCs with one or more of them.

In fact, I've made more. A fair few more (can't recall exactly how many more at this moment, and they're in my house rules book, which is not here, so. . .)

It's nice to be able to 'cheat the system' and go above whatever total you're meant to max out at, at any given character level. Skill Focus also sees a bit of play, and the combination can be pretty abusive (but not in a bad way, really).


Regarding them turning up in supplements, which ones? I've not come across any outside of the PHB, and I think a campaign setting or two (one of which provided several of the now core ones, I believe).

 

[lukelightning]

I've been thinking of house-ruling them so that the bonus scales with level, perhaps +2 that goes up by 1 for every 3 levels or something.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

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.

I think the worst example is balance. It's a skill you would think would be important, what with the adventuring to unsafe places and all, but most of the DC's are so ridiculously low, it's like a tacit admission from WotC that it's a skill to ignore. While there are situations to make a balance check or plummet to certain death, I've yet to see a DM willing to do something like that to his players. In all my gaming, balance has come up a total of two different occassions I can recall (i use grease a lot, so it comes up on enemies, but not us, and even then -- DC 10 !). In both cases, it was simply to avoid falling flat on our faces for no actual damage. In the first case, the lightining rail coming to a sudden halt, the DM asked for a dex check, and I asked why a balance check wasn't approriate. His response: "Oh, you actually have ranks in it?"

 

[Celebrim]

I think the worst example is balance. It's a skill you would think would be important, what with the adventuring to unsafe places and all, but most of the DC's are so ridiculously low, it's like a tacit admission from WotC that it's a skill to ignore. While there are situations to make a balance check or plummet to certain death, I've yet to see a DM willing to do something like that to his players. In all my gaming, balance has come up a total of two different occassions I can recall (i use grease a lot, so it comes up on enemies, but not us, and even then -- DC 10 !). In both cases, it was simply to avoid falling flat on our faces for no actual damage. In the first case, the lightining rail coming to a sudden halt, the DM asked for a dex check, and I asked why a balance check wasn't approriate. His response: "Oh, you actually have ranks in it?"

Again, this is entirely campaign and DM dependent. You've obviously not played in one of my games. I call for balance checks on average twice per sesssion for every player. Rarely does falling over mean immediate damage, but quite often it means making some sort of 'save' (climb check usually) to avoid tumbling off the narrow staircase/mountain path/rope bridge/etc. to your nearly certain doom.

For example, a balance check is required when moving across uneven or difficult terrain. I'm a caver/hiker IRL, so you can believe me when I say that I pay attention to the fact that most adventuring environments are uneven, difficult and often wet and slippery terrain. Normally, you can take 10 while walking on such terrain and unless you are greatly burdened (big armor check penalties), it doesn't come up and even then it isn't worth paying attention to (you don't normally hurt yourself stumbing around at a slow walking speed). But when you have to hustle or run on broken rock or mud or through underbrush, you better believe that balance checks will be called for.

Up until the mid-high levels when most characters can fall back on flying magic of some sort if they need to, balance is an extremely important skill if the DM pays any attention to it at all . And even then its a big help to have a few ranks in balance because it lets you save your (at least in my campaign) usually limited time per day flying for when you really need it (like against the flying spell caster, or that fight on an icy slope above the 2000' precipace versus the frost giant champion).

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Skills are far easier to raise than anything else. Check out the price of a masterwork tool/item vs. a weapon, and note the MW item gives a +2 bonus vs. the weapon's +1. Note the price of enchanting items to provide a bonus to a skill vs those that grant a bonus to saves, armor, or attack. Its dirt cheap. The opportunity cost benefit of improving something which is easy to improve (skill) vs something thats harder to improve is quite high. The feats just flat out suck in comparison to nearly anything else. The important thing to realize is that this is by intent.

When 3.0 came out, they noted that some things just sucked. And that they sucked for a reason, primarily PRC entry formats. The dwarven defender was pretty tough, but required you to essentially waste 2 feats on non-optimal crap (endurance and toughness) in order to buy your way in.

The problem arose when this design intent was lost, and soon people were of the mindset that anything more powerful than alertness or toughness was broken, ignoring the fact that these were intended as low level feats, and sucky ones at that. The PHB 2 design notes make mention of the attempts to correct this problem. If I never have to see another +2/+2 feat again (or its sucky ilk), I'll be thrilled.

If you want to have them be remotely useful as something other than PRC entry gut punches, add some scaling to them. Have the bonus increase by +1/+1 every 4 levels (so they grant a +7/+7 at 20). Have skill focus let you take 10 under duress.

 

[Vanye]

Alertness is free with a familiar. A tiny bonus for that class feature.

For as long as the familiar is within 5ft of the master (or whatever "within arm's reach" translates to for the appropriate sized caster; Familiars).

I think that if they dropped that limit, it would help arcane casters out...

 

[Vanye]

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

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

Or the sub-class
1/a - Classes who's abilities depend heaviliy on the success of a skill use, ie Eberron's artificers & the truenamer.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Err ... yes. One of the problems of skills in d20 is that at mid-levels, or at least certainly at high levels

Would it be fair to characterise the position as follows?

At low levels, any bonus to skills can be useful, because it helps you meet the static DCs and gives a slight edge on opposed checks against comparable opponents.

At higher levels, specifically once you skill ranks +ability +etc reaches and exceeds the common static DCs the feat doesn't give you anything (except still a slight edge in opposed checks against comparable opponents).

This would put the +2/+2 feats in the same kind of boat as toughness... a feat which is useful at low level but largely wasted once you get to higher levels.

I imagine that in a campaign that ran from lvls 1-10 they would seem pretty reasonable, in a campaign that ran 1-20 they would eventually be seen as a waste and in a campaign that ran 11-20 they would hardly ever be seen.

Cheers

 

[DMH]

I think Skill Focus should grant a bonus that scales with level, because a +2 just doesn't mean very much once you get beyond low levels.

The Synergy series (one fantasy, one modern and one superhero) from Misfits does exactly that. Most of them are just bonuses to the roll, but a few have other benefits.

 

[Justin Cray]

I like to give these out as rewards for good backgrounds. But I also like the houserule. Hmm.