Recruiting - Shards of the Silver Flame (recruiting re-opened)

Lord Wyrm · Sep 28, 2005

I'd like to clear the feat Able Learner with you, its from Races of Destiny pg150. It allows cross-class skills to be bought at one point per rank as opposed to two per rank. This is mainly for knowledge skills for Alarich.

Dracomeander · Sep 28, 2005

Eberron has the general feat Education which makes all Knowledge skills class skill for the character regardless of class. It also provides a +1 bonus to two Knowledge skills of your choice.

drothgery · Sep 28, 2005

Lord Wyrm said:
I'd like to clear the feat Able Learner with you, its from Races of Destiny pg150. It allows cross-class skills to be bought at one point per rank as opposed to two per rank. This is mainly for knowledge skills for Alarich.

I don't have the Races of ... books, and I don't think that feat's overpowered (it's much weaker than the original Cosmopolitan from the FRCS, which I didn't see as problematic), but it looks like Education may be a better choice.

drothgery · Sep 28, 2005

Oh, and as per the changed thread title, I'm not accepting any new applicants. If you've already posted in this thread but haven't posted a character concept yet, or I've expiclity invited you to join the game, go ahead and post your character concept.

I'll try and pick the characters tomorrow or Thursday. That will give you all of next week to work on stats and backgrounds; I'll be on a business trip next Wednesday and Thursday (and as per above, my tabletop game is Tuesday evenings), so I'll be away from ENWorld for a few days next week.

Lord Wyrm · Sep 28, 2005

Thanks

Able Learner itself works a little better than Education concept-wise and provides for non-Knowledge skills (i.e. Heal) down the line as well.

Brother Shatterstone · Sep 28, 2005

Working on it... Sorry busy night. One more IC post and I should have a short concept up. (In your PM box)

Anax · Sep 29, 2005

drothgery said:
I don't have the Races of ... books, and I don't think that feat's overpowered (it's much weaker than the original Cosmopolitan from the FRCS, which I didn't see as problematic), but it looks like Education may be a better choice.

Actually, by my reading, Able Learner is hugely more powerful than Cosmopolitan.

Cosmopolitan allows you to select one cross-class non-exclusive skill and make it a permanent class skill, and gain a +2 bonus.

Able Learner allows you to spend one skill point per skill rank on any skill, including cross-class skills. The dangerous thing about this is that there are *two* kinds of cross-class skills:

1) Skills which no class you're a member of has as a class skill.
2) Skills which some class you're a member of has a class skill, but not the class you took this level.

Any skill you've ever had as a class skill has a max rank of 3 + character level. Any skill you've never had as a class skill has a max rank of (3 + character level)/2.

Normally, what this means is that when you have a cross-class-once-class skill, you can spend points at a greater rate to push up that skill. So, this lets you keep pushing the ranks to their fullest, but you have to spend more points. (Which is good for a multiclass rogue, for example, to avoid losing the ability to have max ranks in a rogue skill.) But if you can buy cross-class skills for 1 point, then *cough* my character concept becomes far more powerful than I had imagined it to be. By taking rogue first, and then swashbuckler, I get 12 skill points * 4 for my rogue level, and have had all of the rogue skills on my skill list for the swashbuckler levels. The swashbuckler gets 8 skill points per level. (This is with human +1 and a +3 Int modifier.) At this point, it would be foolish of me not to take the Able Learner feat, because Able Learner will allow me to push up rogue skills to the max very cheaply--and with eight skill points a level, I have a pretty decent amount to spare. (For example: although I wouldn't do this, because it doesn't fit the concept, I *could* build the character with full ranks in Search, Disable Device and Open Lock, and *still* have five skill points left over each level for more juicy bits.)

Without the feat, my character concept becomes much more focused on swashbuckler skills, since anything I bring out of rogue can be brought up to the maximum only with a *lot* of work. (Which is probably reserved for just the Search skill to go with the Investigate feat, leaving six points to spread among the swashbuckler skills.)

The alternative approach is to say that the max ranks for a given skill is: 1 * the number of class-skill levels + 1/2 * the number of cross-class levels. (With the first character level counting as four levels.) This is... drastically more complicated, and doesn't allow a character to work extra hard to push cross-class skills up when multiclassing.

drothgery · Sep 29, 2005

Anax said:
Actually, by my reading, Able Learner is hugely more powerful than Cosmopolitan.

Cosmopolitan allows you to select one cross-class non-exclusive skill and make it a permanent class skill, and gain a +2 bonus.

Able Learner allows you to spend one skill point per skill rank on any skill, including cross-class skills. The dangerous thing about this is that there are *two* kinds of cross-class skills:

1) Skills which no class you're a member of has as a class skill.
2) Skills which some class you're a member of has a class skill, but not the class you took this level.

...

Without the feat, my character concept becomes much more focused on swashbuckler skills, since anything I bring out of rogue can be brought up to the maximum only with a *lot* of work. (Which is probably reserved for just the Search skill to go with the Investigate feat, leaving six points to spread among the swashbuckler skills.)

I hadn't really thought about the implications of multiclassing between two classes with 4 or more skill points/level and not much crossover on their class skill list. That packs a bit more punch than I thought at first glance.