Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Anax" data-source="post: 2613530" data-attributes="member: 19868">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.</blockquote>

Verification