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

[tetsujin28]

Then go play GURPS instead of D&D.

So go play in the street. What a great attitude

I'm quite happy with D&D using a class/level system, and I'm willing to bet that most of the members of this forum are as well. Otherwise, they wouldn't be coming to a forum dedicated to D&D.

That would be you. Some of us who have been playing the game for more than 25 years feel differently.

 

[RangerWickett]

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.

Heh, I wish I'd seen this yesterday when the debate was first starting. Now I just don't bother with class skills anymore. I still won't let you take a skill if I've never seen your character have a reason to learn it, but if you want a Bluffing wizard or a Performing fighter (and I've had them in my game), I'm fine with it.

Even the tumbling fighter problem doesn't seem that bad. I mean, to tumble well, you need to spend a lot of your small number of skill points, and you suffer armor check penalties. Preferably, you'd only tumble if you wore little armor, and that's its own drawback.

But now I need to read this thread and see if people have any good points against me.

 

[Celtavian]

re

I think they should have the majority of skills be general. They should let the number of skill points dictate the limitation on how high skills can be bought up.

It is better for story. I don't know how many times I have read stories with fighter-types who definitely had Spot and Listen but weren't necessarily rangers. Even a common fighter in a fantasy world would need to know how to live off the land and have a plethora of other skills to be a decent mercernary. A less limited skill selection would go along way in allowing players to more fully develop concepts like the city dwelling noble fighter with diplomacy skills or the frontier dwelling wizard who knows how to live off the land.

Class skills are totally unncessary. I hope they eventually do away with them. They aren't really needed as the number skill points is an already stringent enough limitation on skills.

 

[jmucchiello]

Then again, how many times has the IP from the game changed company hands? TSR -> WotC -> Hasbro come to mind. Each time, the preceeding company was having money trouble when it got bought.

Well, for the WotC->Hasbro sale this is patently false. WotC was printing money when Hasbro bought them. While the reason they were doing so well was because of Pokemon CCG sales, D&D was not losing money at the time.

Personally a "Fighter" who wants to be good at Spot, etc. should just take a level of Rogue or Ranger. People still have this feeling that Rogues are Thieves for some reason. Rogues are just highly skilled. If you spend all of a rogue's skill points of Spot/Listen, then you have an observant character. The sneak attack damage becomes his ability to spot a better opening during a fight. People in the world should not identify themselves as "a fighter-7/rogue-1." The "fighter" in question would call himself warrior or soldier or veteran.

 

[Nine Hands]

One idea that I have not seen presented is just to reduce the cost of Cross Class skills to 1 skill point per rank, leaving the max rank cap that they normally have.

or

Remove the specified list of class skills and grant each class a specifi amount (based on the number of skills they normally use). Keeping the normal cost and max ranks for cross class skills.

Either way, the benefits are not that great, a Fighter who takes Use Magic Device (which may be pretty popular due to its functionality) would loose out on some of the more important Fighter related skills (Ride, Spot, Listen).

As long as the skills the character takes are not too easy to use (Tumble and Concentration come to mind), the game balance should be maintained. This way the character HAS to keep putting skill points into the skills he wants to maintain or they become less useful. Since skills like Tumble and Concentration have pretty easy target DCs once you reach a certain point, these might be seen as a problem for balance.

 

[Sir Whiskers]

In my last 3.0 campaign, I also eliminated the class/cross-class distinction from skills, even going so far as to have only one exclusive skill (Use Magic Device). There were *no* balance issues at all, and players did not stop playing rogues, as some have suggested would happen.

What I did find is that most (though not all) players tended to take many of the same skills early on, such as Spot, Listen, Escape Artist, and Tumble. But as the characters grew in levels, the players realized they still needed someone who was good at Diplomacy, or Bluff, or Swim, or...you get the idea. Players began to flesh out their skill choices in ways that made sense. Also, rather than one player telling another, "You have Diplomacy as a class skill - you have to take some ranks", whichever player felt the need chose the skills he/she wanted. The overall effect was more interesting characters.

The other systems suggested in this thread have many good points, but none are as simple as just eliminating the cross-class distinction. For that reason, I plan to keep using this system in the future, whether with 3.0 or 3.5 (including restricting UMD).

 

[Sanackranib]

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.

I disagree, this is exactly how the game Champions has worked for many years. you have the flexability to build your character how you want. even in the low power 75 point/normal human maximum games I never saw this as a problem. it just ment that every character was different . . . just like all of us in reality.

 

[tetsujin28]

Then how did D&D stay on top since its inception?

Because whilst not necessarily the best rpg, it was the first, and has a massive following and resources. That's how you get to be #1. And with 3.5 being a far cry from the original box set (which I started on in '76), the game has evolved to become a lot more than it was in the beginning.

 

[Sanackranib]

I think they should have the majority of skills be general. They should let the number of skill points dictate the limitation on how high skills can be bought up.

It is better for story. I don't know how many times I have read stories with fighter-types who definitely had Spot and Listen but weren't necessarily rangers. Even a common fighter in a fantasy world would need to know how to live off the land and have a plethora of other skills to be a decent mercernary. A less limited skill selection would go along way in allowing players to more fully develop concepts like the city dwelling noble fighter with diplomacy skills or the frontier dwelling wizard who knows how to live off the land.

Class skills are totally unncessary. I hope they eventually do away with them. They aren't really needed as the number skill points is an already stringent enough limitation on skills.

This really is the simple solution and I may try it in my next game along with 4 bonus skill points max 1 rank per skill that are "background skills that the PC might never spend extra points on ie: fishing or cooking

 

[Mistwell]

Then how did D&D stay on top since its inception?

Betamax was a technically superior system to VHS. VHS won.

Commodore and Apple computer systems were technically superior to IBM-compatibles. IBM-compatibles won.

Many will tell you that Linux-based and Mac OS base software are technically superior to Microsoft software. Microsoft software continues to win.

The world is full of such examples. The technically best product does not always win. Other factors, such as marketing, market penetration, critical threshold for word-of-mouth, distribution, availability of cash and credit, trendiness, compatibility with third party products, and many such elements come in to play when two products compete.

Just because the class-system is the most popular, it doesn't mean it is technically the best system.