Skill Tricks; good or bad?

[Keldryn]

The Skill Trick system is one of the main reasons I didn't buy the book. It didn't look broken or unblanced, but it's yet another system that just compounds the complexity, bookkeeping, and looking up of rules in the game.

 

[Hammerhead]

Skill tricks are cool, and I like them.

 

[Vorput]

Except for very few of them, they're less powerful than feats- and don't seem bad mechanically at all. I like the flavor of em. ::shrugs::

Btw, Prophet2b- I just took one when I leveled last session, so assuming we survive our desperate flight from Sharn- you'll get a chance to see it in play soon

 

[Imp]

I've been rolling some of 'em into standard skill uses, with various prereqs, and ignoring others. Frankly, I've been on sub-system overload ever since I let pact magic and (eventually, someday, once I work it out) affiliations through the gate. I just look at things like Bo9S and go, "huh. that would be a neat game sometime."

 

[Aleolus]

I like the skill tricks very much. Most of them vary with their usefulness, but there are two which are always useful, if the character has Spot or Heal as class skills. Spot the Weak Point, spot check against one oponent's AC, if successful, next attack against them is treated as a touch attack (can you say Dragon Killer, anyone?). The other is Healer's Hands. On a successful Heal check to stabalize a dying character, they regain 1d6 hit points.

 

[Twowolves]

It was was of the reasons I ended up not buying Complete Scoundrel.

Having said that, I should say that the decision was not a balance based one but a mechanics based one. Like others have said, it adds a whole mechanics to an already complex game. And in my opinion, it is a mechanic that isn't needed.

I agree. I didn't buy Complete Scoundrel after reading through it and seeing this new subsystem, and too many of the feats and PrCs were linked directly to Skill Tricks. That put the book at over 50% useless to me, and that made the price tag too steep for my blood.

Same thing happened with Reserve Feats in Complete Mage, and all the organizations eating up so much of Complete Champion. Which is a shame, since I bought and enjoyed all of the first round of "Complete X" books.

 

[starwed]

I don't understand that attitude at all. Neither reserve feats nor skill tricks are that complicated. Isn't it easier to introduce a coherent system into a game, than a whole bunch of new feats and spells, each of which have different mechanics?

If you don't like the way the system was implemented, that's one thing. But to dislike it just because it's a new system, that I don't get.

 

[Baby Samurai]

My problem is I've gone Saga with skills (no ranks/points), so how would I implement Skill Tricks?

 

[Particle_Man]

I liked the skill tricks. I was going along the Perception route and took that one that lets another player reroll their spot check. "Over there, sir!" became my common call.

I was going to take the one that let me see invisible but then I got eaten by the Tarrasque. But I bought some of the rest of the party time to get away.

 

[Particle_Man]

My problem is I've gone Saga with skills (no ranks/points), so how would I implement Skill Tricks?

I would say you could spend a feat to get three skill tricks, so long as it is not a starting feat. If you feel very ambitious, you could restrict what tricks you could take with that feat (until you are 9th level for tricks that required 12 ranks of skills in the old system).