+skill items

[Spatzimaus]

Personally I might be inclined to change skill magic so that it doesn't boost your skill chance, but instead gives you a flat modifier which you can use instead of your natural skill.

This makes it useful as a cheap item for low level characters, but as PCs get to mythical warrior status their own natural abilities and hard-won skills become more useful for them.

This still helps the cross-class folks as much as the people who know the skill. This isn't a big deal, but it's one of the minor complaints I've always had. Take the Cloak of Elvenkind, for example. Even with this change, it'd still be a great item for Wizards and such, since it'd raise their Hide skill to the point where they more or less always win an opposed Spot roll against an untrained opponent. This still effectively makes it worthless for a Wizard to multiclass into a Rogue, since he can pick up the basics of stealth through a few items.

It also would be nice for there to be an incentive to raise the skill yourself if it IS a class skill. Under your system, you pick up a +10 Hide item. Let's say you've only got 4 ranks of Hide. So, okay, it gives you effectively a +6 bonus. BUT, it removes any reason for you to continue to raise Hide yourself, until you reach the point where you'd have 11 ranks. Ergo, it's better to not train most of these skills at all and just buy +10 items, and we're back where we started.
At low levels and epic levels, no problem, but in the middle?

How about:
> For each rank of skill you already posess, the item gives a +1 bonus, but the item cannot raise your total skill bonus (skill ranks plus this item, NOT including stats and such) above the Max Bonus listed.
(Bonuses from circumstances, stats, spells, etc. shouldn't affect how the item works IMO)

Example: Cloak of Elvenkind is a +10 bonus. If you have one skill rank, the item gives a +1 bonus; five skill ranks give a +5 bonus. Above five ranks, you get diminishing returns since the item can't raise you above +10. So, someone with seven ranks only gets a +3 bonus from the item since it's not teaching much they don't already know. Past 10 ranks, you're a master in the skill, and the item is useless.

People who have no ranks in the skill would get no benefit. Maybe do a 50% minimum or something, to where a +10 item always gives +5, until this exceeds the +10 maximum.