Should the whole idea of class skills be done away with?

[Carnifex]

I'm genuinely heading towards this conclusion. When 3e first came out, I thought it was gonna be great with the new skill system, and indeed it was. Far better than the non-weapon proficiency system from before!

But there was one thing I was disappointed by.

I was hoping that the skill system would give far more flexibility and customisability to characters, in terms of picking up minor talents and abilities that helped flesh out the character. let me give an example. I played in a fun 2e Planescape group, one of the players of whom ran a Cipher wizardess. Now this wizard was very into the whole Cipher thing of physical training and spent a lot of time at Sigil's Great Gymnasium, and was very athletic and acrobatic.

With 3e, I was hoping that a character like this would be able to take a few points of, say, Tumble, to reflect her abilities. Then it'd have an actual effect, though not a great one, on the battlefield.

But truth be told, she can't, not really, or at least not to any useful point, because of class skills and cross-class skills. Sure, she can technically get Tumble but a wizard, even with their high Int, doesn't get a great many skill points, and after the 'essentials' of Spellcraft & Concentration, you've then got things like Knowledge (Arcana) etc which need the points, etc. You often can't afford to 'frivolously' spend skill points in cross class skills.

I think it would actually be beneficial if the system was changed so that all skills are available equally to all classes. Then you could have your fighter who maybe picks up a few ranks in Craft (Alchemy) along with his Intimidate and Ride, since he's always had an interest in it, or the light fighter able to take Tumble to properly augment his character concept, and he's certainly not a rogue but a trained warrior... and similar concepts to these. Now, it might seem that this is a bit unfair on classes like the 'skill-monkey' rogue - after all, one of its benefits is all those skills it has as class skills.

However, it still has the massive benefit of vastly more skill points than everyone else. Doing away with the concept of class skills just makes all the characters more customisable and individual, and you'll still see a lot of points going on the 'class' skills of the various classes (ie wizards taking Spellcraft & Concentration, rogues having enough skill points to remain excellent at picking locks/disabling devices to a level far beyond everyone else, etc). Of course this requires some alteration to certain things like domains that grant additional class skills, but those could be easily modifed to just give a set bonus to the skills in question.

I guess I thought about this more deeply because of creating characters for Mutanst & Masterminds, where the ability to choose skills as you like, not being constrained by class skills, is very freeing. I believe such a change would just result in more variation in characters. What do people think?

 

[Mistwell]

I think it would be incredibly, noticeably unbalancing to do this.

Skills are part of the the balance of character makeup as one of the primary, not secondary, balancing factors. You will most certainly be giving large benefit to some classes and disadvantage to others if you do this, in my opinion.

Tumble, for example, is basically a feat with levels of progression. It was never meant for your wizard to be able to tumble well. Remove that, and you almost permit adding a level of rogue to your wizard without any penalties to the wizard levels.

 

[Carnifex]

I think it would be incredibly, horrible, noticeably unbalancing to do this.

Skills are part of the the balance of character makeup as one of the primary, not secondary, balancing factors. You will most certainly be giving large benefit to some classes and disadvantage to others if you do this, in my opinion.

Like what? Which classes would be greatly disadvantaged or advantaged, and why?

 

[Jeph]

I suggest that, instead of nixing class skills altogether, you do something more along the lines of d20 Modern's professions or the 'floating class skills' used by Ryan and co in Savannah Knights: Just give every character one or two bonus, permanent class skills. If they pick a skill that is already considered class, they gain a +1 bonus to checks with that skill.

 

[Trainz]

I agree and I don't... lemme eksplane:

I am very satisfied with the current skill system. Some classes should be better than others in certain skills.

That said, I understand where you're coming from.

House rule it, because WotC won't change it, at least not anytmie soon. Here are a few viable options.

Have every player pick up two skills that are cross classed and are treated as class skills for their PC. This will allow a certain degree of customization and explain that the fighter isn't one-dimensional without costing him all his skill points.

Another more complex option would be to create a generic adventuring class that has access to all skills. That classe's main power would be that, very skillful. Maybe give it 6 skill points per level. Build the class like a fighter, but remove all fighter specific abilities i.e. specialisation, bonus feats, and maybe have it only proficient in light, medium armor, and shield (no tower shield), and simple and martial weapons. Make all his saving throws medium (not good, not bad, you know, the progression that tops at 9 at 20th level), or maybe give it all good saving throws for good measure. Call that class Adventurer.

 

[Carnifex]

I suggest that, instead of nixing class skills altogether, you do something more along the lines of d20 Modern's professions or the 'floating class skills' used by Ryan and co in Savannah Knights: Just give every character one or two bonus, permanent class skills. If they pick a skill that is already considered class, they gain a +1 bonus to checks with that skill.

This is a possibility I have toyed with, and I do like the skill-abundant, feat-heavy characters of Modern, they seem so much more customiseable.

Yet why stop there, why not just dump class skills altogether? It's not like the Tough Hero is ever going to outskill the Smart Hero even without class skills, and he's likely to concentrate mainly on skills that the Tough Hero currently possesses as class ones anyway. It just means there's even more customisability.

 

[Trainz]

Just give every character one or two bonus, permanent class skills.

OK, so you beat me to it.

 

[Thanatos]

I kind of agree with you on this Carnifex..and so do my players...it was a big topic of discussion...though, I played Devil's Advocate and one response I made was what Mistwell said.

As a compromise, we did this:

For every bonus modifier of INT, a player could choose 1 additional skill that would be counted as a class skill.

That seemed to work out pretty well, made everyone happy - and didn't seem to unbalance things, at least with the course of our campaign.

 

[Carnifex]

Some classes should be better than others in certain skills.

Yet with no class skills, they still will be! The wizard, with his high Int, will have a large bonus to Spellcraft chceks, and a fighter who gets spellcraft ranks will have both fewer skill points to spend on it anyway, and also will have a lower overall bonus anyway due to lower Int. Not to mention Spellcraft isn't much use to a fighter anyway, so he'll be less inclined to take ranks in it anyway. A number of skills have rogue-only uses like in disabling traps, so the rogue will still be the best in that field (Especially with the huge number of skill points he possesses).

 

[dave_o]

Just let each class pick a certain number of skills to be considered "class" skills. Obviously, a Rogue will get a great deal many more class skills than Fighters, but that's because Rogues are more awesome.

Seriously, though, just do that - and with the cross-class option still open, if your character, in the future, decides to branch off to do something else, they can - but with a small hinderance.