Skills beyond 5 ranks

[Beholder Bob]

Certain skills have no reason to be developed after 5 or 10 ranks unless it is a core active skill (tumble, concentrate, spellcraft..). Ride, appraise, balance,.. A related point, raised in another thread, questions the use in having skill focus feat - after a certain point, most skills do not matter after a certain skill level is attained, quickly making the expenditure of a feat to enhance that skill pointless.

A possible fix (and very familiar to those who have played alternity) - add minor additional benefits for higher ranks in skills. In alternity, those who had x ranks in firearms gained additional tricks with fire arms at ranks x, y, and z. Do the same for the skills. For example:

Balance
..10+ ranks - use balance check instead of save to avoid falling into pits or falling on greased surfaces.
..15+ ranks - may use balance checks to resist bull rush attempts and to escape damage from an overrun.

Alchemy
..5+ ranks - regain the (3.0) ability to id potions as a daylong effort
..10+ ranks - may make 2 potions in a day
..15+ ranks - id potions as a 5 minute effort

Ride
..5+ ranks - when choosing mounts, roll mounts hp, if less then listed value, use listed value, else keep rolled amount (identify 'good' horseflesh')
..10+ ranks - when the mount you are riding makes a reflex save, it may use your base reflex save modified for its dex instead of its own.
..15+ ranks - you give the mount a synergy bonus of +2 to jump while riding it

I'd give no additional uses to tumbling, spellcraft, concentration, or other skills whose use is always called into use and whose rank is always important.

So, what do you think?

BB

 

[green slime]

Very nice ideas BoB...

Personally I'm very much for overhauling the skill system altogether; that is the set DC's.

Which skills would you look into?

One thought that strikes me is that it becomes rather complex; it isn't easy to figure out just what your capabilities by looking at the skill on your PC-sheet.

Perhaps some of these ideas should be associated to actual DC's, and the number of ways to boost your Skills via cash (magic items and/or spells) be reduced?

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Hmm. I'm not sure about your list of skills there.

Ride, for instance is always useful because of Mounted Combat, penalties for riding bareback, circumstance modifiers, unusual mounts, etc.

A character with ten ranks of ride, 5 ranks of handle animal, and a dexterity bonus of one has +13 to his ride checks. At that point, Guide mount with knees, stay in saddle, and fight with warhorse are automatic, cover, soft fall, leap and spur mount are nearly automatic, and controlling an untrained mount in battle or quick mount/dismount are slightly better than a 50/50.

If that character takes five more ranks in ride (for a total of 20 ranks--+3 for synergy and dexterity), everything except quick mount and controlling an untrained mount in battle are automatic--however, quick mounting while wearing fullplate and a heavy shield (-5 armor check penalty assuming both are masterwork/magic) is not quite automatic.

Give the character some bad circumstances--for instance trying to ride bareback on an unusual mount (a summoned griffon for instance) and all of a sudden anyone much less skilled than our masterful +23 rider is making skill checks all over the place. Mr. "10 ranks is good enough" can keep his seat automatically, but needs to roll in order to attack with his mount and needs to roll reasonably well to soft fall or take cover behind his mount. Give him an untrained elephant that he's trying to control without proper harness and he's unlikely to make the elephant do what he wants.

Appraise depends heavily upon the DM. Most of the time, the skill isn't used in general because the game is dungeons and dragons not merchants and merchandise and the economic aspects of the game are glossed over. However, a DM who made extensive use of the appraise skill might well see characters take more than 10 ranks.

Balance is generally another skill that depends heavily upon the DM. A character with 5 ranks gets a bonus to tumble and retains his dex bonus while balancing and that is typically all anyone takes. However, in a game that made extensive use of balance-check causing terrain, the ability to move at full speed across an icy, angled rooftop (DC 25 as I read it--10 for uneven surface, +5 for severly slippery, +5 for severly sloped, +5 for accelerated movement) on halfway decent rolls could come in handy. The ability to do so while wearing fullplate would be even more useful (if characters who wear fullplate had balance as a class skill).

Since balance is a skill that comes into play a lot (every time you get hit while balancing), a character in a campaign that makes extensive use of it will need a lot of skill in it.

In general, I think your suggestions would be good house rules but I'm not certain that your analysis of which skills are useful is accurate. (In addition to the analysis above, I've found that my 14th level fighter/wizard can get along just fine with only 5-6 ranks of spellcraft (5 ranks+6 int+2 synergy=+13 which enables him to scribe 8th level spells while taking 10 and it's +15 if he casts Heroism on himself (9th level spells)). If he became an epic character, I imagine spellcraft ranks and bonusses would become important again but at the moment, the only thing he would benefit from more ranks in is identifying spells as they are being cast.)

 

[Beholder Bob]

Elder-Basilisk:

Too true - the campaign determines what is and is not critical to the effectiveness of the skills. That said, my preference is to give small but notable modifiers to skills that are, for the most part, pointless beyond 5-10 ranks. The example you made of riding is most accurate, at extreme conditions you do want those extra ranks - but for the most part 90% of the 'average' (whatever that means) game, 5-10 ranks are enough to fulfill most every need. Some skills I'd pass on giving extra benefits (spot, search, listen, disable device, use magic device, concentrate, tumble, spell craft, pick locks, move silent, hide in shadows, etc) as these are considered by a majority of players in 'average' (again with the average.... ) to be useful at all ranges.

For example, 15 ranks in swimming should perhaps have something 'extra' to make focusing for 12 levels in doing practice laps. Reduce the penalty for fighting while submerged by 1, a +2 CON for how long you can hold your breath, reduce the penalty for perception checks while submerged,....

None of the above are overpowered, certainly not worth a feat. Even so, they are small but nice benefits that accentuate the skills developed. Mind you, This is all highly subjective, as my above example sticks out like a sore thumb in a pirate campaign - one would assume swimming to occur often enough to make it a common skill. Still, perhaps pirate with 15 ranks swimming perhaps still deserves that bonus to holding his breath...

As to book keeping. Hmmm. It shouldn't be any worse then tracking the conditional bonuses some skills already have inherent (a +2 to a skill check under specific conditions.) The worst case scenario is an 18 intelligence human rogue maintaining 13 skills at maximum. Then again, if you chose not to grant bonuses to the skills I've mentioned above, the # of skills drops by 9 on average, leaving only 4 skills to track their modifiers. I generally put minor conditional modifiers under a subsection of feats anyway.

I agree with your comment about my choice of skills, but one must begin somewhere. Perhaps the first step is identifying those skills perceived as least useful at high ranks by a group of my peers, such as you.

BB

 

[Scion]

I have been toying with making the synergy bonuses increase. Every 5 points in a skill gives the synergy. It would help out and in most cases I dont think it would be overpowering

 

[Vrecknidj]

In my campaign, I give an extra +1 to every synergy bonus for every 10 ranks in a skill beyond 5. So, if a 5 gives +2, then a 15 gives +3, a 25 gives +4, etc. It's not a very big bonus, and it tends to favor those who are specialists in certain skills, but it gives players yet another reason to max out another skill.

Dave

 

[jerichothebard]

Balance
..10+ ranks - use balance check instead of save to avoid falling into pits or falling on greased surfaces.
..15+ ranks - may use balance checks to resist bull rush attempts and to escape damage from an overrun.
BB

I like the idea in principal, but feel it's important to note that skill points and checks scale up much more rapidly than save bonuses. Subbing a skill check for a save, particularly as a bonus for having a really high skill is basically gar-ron-teeing that they will make it. Unless the DC is so outlandishly high that no one else ever could.

Other than that, I like the idea of giving better capabilities, of some sort, for high skill ranks.


jtb

 

[Beholder Bob]

I like the idea in principal, but feel it's important to note that skill points and checks scale up much more rapidly than save bonuses. Subbing a skill check for a save, particularly as a bonus for having a really high skill is basically gar-ron-teeing that they will make it. Unless the DC is so outlandishly high that no one else ever could.
Other than that, I like the idea of giving better capabilities, of some sort, for high skill ranks.
jtb

Doh! Uh, good point. Mayhaps I should change that to a +2 synergy bonus to the save instead. One of the many dangers of speaking or typing as you think! For the record - I have not actually tried any of this yet, just contimplating its use.

BB

 

[Li Shenron]

First thoughts:

1) Definitely the way to go is to expand the uses of as many skills as you want. Too many skills have been given very limited uses since the start of 3rd edition, and this is a pity. There are some published products which here and there have expanded the uses of existing skills, but also others have gone to the wrong direction (IMO) of adding new skills with very limited uses.

2) Synergy bonuses are fine, and I think there was for example an official 3.0 epic rule which increases them. However, this does not make a skill directly useful itself, it only gives you the reason to spend skill points in that skill to gain a benefit somewhere else. Not bad, but I think skills deserve more flexibility rather than more synergy
It is also possible to introduce synergy bonuses to OTHER skills instead of raising the existing ones.

3) One simple thing to do along with designing new uses is to think about easing existing uses. The simplest idea is to reduce the time taken to use a skill if you beat the DC by some margin. For example, you may make a Heal check as a MEA or even as a free action with a check high enough.