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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TKDB" data-source="post: 5868858" data-attributes="member: 6690697">The main thing I like to see in a skill system is a rough parity in value of each skill. When a skill that's largely just a point of flavor and is more or less irrelevant to the overall course of events costs the same amount of XP (or whatever your currency of advancement is in the system) as the skills you'll be using countless times throughout the campaign and often determines whether your character lives or dies, there's a problem. You shouldn't need to think too hard to come up with how a skill will be frequently and significantly useful to invest in. It's ok to have skills that are only useful to certain types of characters (such as Perform for bards in 3.x), but make sure every skill has the potential to offer a good return on your investment. This often means that more general is better -- while it may be more realistic for two (or more) related skills to be distinct, if you'd need both of them combined to equal the frequency and/or urgency of usefulness as other skills you could invest in, it might be better to combine the two into a more general skill. Otherwise you're essentially investing twice as much for no real gain.Also, I'm a big fan of skill synergy mechanics. Even when it's obvious that a given task would rely on a certain skill, there are often other skills that would plausibly play a role as well, and I like it when those related skills can contribute. Ideally, I'd like to see a skill synergy mechanic that scales with how much you advance the contributing skill, so investing more heavily in a related skill gives a greater bonus to the primary skill.</blockquote>

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