Skills That Should be Handy for an Adventurer...But Aren't in Actual Play.

[lukelightning]

Decipher script should be useful, but effectively it's not. Normally DMs either want you to get some information, in which case you can get it without needing the skill, or they don't.

If you find an old scroll of some weird language, chances are the DM wants you to have the information on it, so at most you'll have to cast comprehend language because nobody in the party can read Kuo-toan or whatever.

As for use rope, the only real use is to tie up prisoners (for other uses taking 10 or 20 is sufficient). And players hate taking prisoners; it's always so much trouble.

 

[DestroyYouAlot]

My proposal is to make broader skills.

No need - synergy bonuses take care of that. At 2nd level, a character can be getting all kinds of bonuses in skill B, C, and D from taking 5 ranks in skill A.

And, besides - you guys are crazy. (Or maybe I just run my game differently from other people... nahhh, you're all crazy.) The only skills on that list that I can honestly say haven't seen occasional to regular use in my campaign are Alchemy, Forgery, and Use Magic Device, and the latter two have been been featured in the players' contingency plans. Of course, I'm mindful to make all of them useful, and I feature a broad mix of adventure and RP styles in my game, but still...

A few frequent offenders:

Appraise: How else, exactly, do your PCs tell if the jeweller is giving them an honest price on that sapphire, or giving it to them the hard way? (Or do the gems in your campaign come labelled "500gp"?)

Balance: I don't even know where to start with this one (other than to remind the person that suggested this be rolled over into a Ref save that skills are "active" while saves are "reactive", and to wonder how exactly a second-story man rogue character would take ranks in a saving throw?). Anyway, I also use a homebrew spelunking system that uses this skill heavily. (Let's see, charging across a Slick surface with a Moderate incline? That's a DC 15...)

Bluff: My players took special notice of the feint rules, and I have a PC in one game that specializes in feinting with a glaive. Anyway, maybe your players are more honest than mine, but lying effectively comes in pretty handy sometimes.

Concentration: Not much written into the 3.0 rules for non-spellcasting Concentration checks, but I've thrown it in a few times for random stuff like drinking games, etc.

Craft / Profession: Again, seems pretty obvious, but these are as much about character background and flavor as they are in-game use. But you never know...

Decipher Script: Puzzles. Among other things. But, seriously, puzzles.

Diplomacy: Sees plenty of use, but is relatively ill-defined - and the "NPC reactions" in the DMG are crap. Seriously, anyone who plays a d20 game should check out Rich Burlew's alternate Diplomacy skill article on Giant in the Playground, I guarantee you'll never look back: This Old Rule: Diplomacy Skill

Forgery: Adventuring in Cormyr without an adventuring charter 101, right this way folks.

Heal: More useful in a diagnostic than a curative sense; also, consider allowing a successful check to get a sense of a monster or NPC's current HP remaining.

Knowledge (whatever): Wow. Just, wow. (Although, an earlier poster was right, this wasn't well-defined until 3.5.)

Sense Motive: Again, detecting a lie can be a life-saver.

Use Rope: You never take prisoners? How about rappelling down a cliff? (I know I'm not letting the wizard tie that knot.)

 

[Felon]

I just think nobody uses it; it would be great to have in the right campaign but skill points are so precious it's not worth it. It's easier to just use illusory script on a piece of paper that makes the reader accept the paper as the proper document.

Well, see, the question wasn't "what skills go unused?" It was "what skills SEEM like they'd be really useful, but out not to be?"

Use Rope, for instance, is not on that list for me because a quick perusal of the skill description indicates that while it's technically a skill, just about anything you do with it can be accomplished by a decent Dex character who takes 10.

 

[pawsplay]

Indeed, Use Rope is used to tie up prisoners who have Escape Artist. Just about any other use can be covered by a decent Dex or 2 to 3 ranks.

 

[Wolfwood2]

Sleight of Hand seems like it would be cool, even in adventuring situations.

The trouble is, people are afraid to use it because of the consequences of failure.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

The biggest issue is that Skills, more than any other aspect of the game, require both the DM and the players to come up with uses for them.

There are not that many skills that you can guarantee will always be useful. Feats can suffer from this a little bit, but not as much. Unless your game is very atypical, you can be pretty sure you will end up in a fight, and most feats are geared for combat.

But Skills are meant to cover things any mundane person might be able to do. Once spent, you cannot reassign the skill points. They rarely have any impact on combat. And most importantly, nearly any skill can be duplicated by the use of a Spell. And for most Casters, Spells can be memorized and used just as they are needed. Its not big deal for a Wizard to memorize a spell like Water breathing if they expect to be in contact with water. If he only ever needs it once, it gets used and just stays in his spell book until needed.

But if you put a bunch of ranks in Swim, and only ever swim once, its not really that useful. And Disguise is seldom useful, given that it is usually easier to use spells when such things are called for.

Spot, Listen, Bluff, Sense Motive, and Tumble are the only skills you can be certain of needing though most of your adventuring career. If your a spell caster, you can also add Concentration to that.

The rest of the skills are remarkably dependant on the campaign setting, the adventures you typically end up playing in, and the players themselves.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Warbringer]

True 20 - If the opponent fails it's intimadate check, treat as shaken

 

[DestroyYouAlot]

I should also include that, from levels 3-5, the only caster in my group's party was a bard. He and the ranger got plenty of uses out of their skills, as they were oftentimes the only way to solve a problem. Which, I guess, speaks pretty well for the d20 skill system - it allows some creative thinking to sub in for spellcasting. (!!!)

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Bluff: My players took special notice of the feint rules, and I have a PC in one game that specializes in feinting with a glaive. Anyway, maybe your players are more honest than mine, but lying effectively comes in pretty handy sometimes.

I've never had a problem with this skill. The rules seem decent with it. Opposed check, sensible modifiers. (I think it's either Modern, 3.5 or both that have the sensible modifiers.)

Decipher Script: Puzzles. Among other things. But, seriously, puzzles.

DMs seem to think you're not allowed to use any character skills for solving puzzles. No Int checks, no Knowledge checks, no skill checks, just watching people get bored trying to solve a puzzle that makes perfect sense to the DM but makes no sense to them.

Forgery: Adventuring in Cormyr without an adventuring charter 101, right this way folks.

I'd say "define adventure". Do you need one for solving a murder case? Tackling gangs? How are they going to know you're going into that old dungeon over there - is there a guard standing there? "Oh, I'm off saving the world, why do I need a special piece of paper for this? "I just don't see how this could be enforced.

Sense Motive: Again, detecting a lie can be a life-saver.

It might be different in D20 Modern, but the skill doesn't actually detect lies. It detects trustworthiness. But yes, I find the skill very useful.

Use Rope: You never take prisoners?

And do what? Torture them? Until I read some online guidelines about how US soldiers take prisoners in Iraq, I didn't know how to keep someone secure without a jail cell or manacles, and I don't think most players do, either. They're afraid the bad guys are going to escape, and they're right... captured PCs have this habit of escaping before much time passes, too. Usually we either kill the bad guys or let them go. It's not like they can accompany us on an adventure, especially since they want to escape or screw us over somehow.

How about rappelling down a cliff? (I know I'm not letting the wizard tie that knot.)

Get some pretied rope. Or a climbing kit!

True 20 - If the opponent fails it's intimadate check, treat as shaken

Same like in 3.5. How long does it last? In 3.5, it lasts one round. Woo.

Sleight of Hand seems like it would be cool, even in adventuring situations.

The trouble is, people are afraid to use it because of the consequences of failure.

This is from a D20 Modern perspective more than DnD. In Modern, you can use this skill to pick pockets, but also to hide weapons, usually guns. Picking pockets is pointless because it just makes the GM (represented by law enforcement) angry and also nets you nothing worthwhile (the Modern Wealth system is really funny sometimes). You could use it to plant something on someone (like a bug), but in most campaigns this doesn't come up often enough to be worthwhile.

However, it's common because of hiding guns. (And it's too good a skill for that, but that's another story.) Unfortunately, players sometimes try to use their gun-hiding skill for the pick pocketing skill; it only happens late at night when they're tried and their IQ is crashing, and for this reason they never pick pockets sensibly, but only stupidly. My players once stole a custom agent's badge and also his gun (the PC was unarmed at the time) because "they wanted a genuine customs agent badge". Needless to say, the customs agent saw him and got angry, and rejected the attempted bribery, so the PC shot him. It ended with a SWAT takedown. Another time the PCs tried to bribe a mob boss with $3000 or so. He flashed them the $5000 he had in his wallet, and said he had so much money there was no point of bribing him. So of course they robbed him of it. Well, they got the cash, but of course they had to run away from dozens of angry Triad members.

 

[lukelightning]

The problem is that there are too many skills and not enough skill points.

Yes, it would be great[/i] to have ranks in appraise. However, between hiding and sneaking and searching for traps and disarming traps and unlocking locks and climbing and tumbling and everything else a rogue is supposed to do there aren't the points to spare.

Balance should be a reflex save. Yeah, "skills are active, saves are passive." But balance is used to avoid falling down. Most of the time its from a spell or other effect. Yes, it would be great to have skill points to spend in balance, but the classes who are likely to have ranks in balance (rogue, monk) need the skills points elsewhere.

Forgery? It's campaign specific. In the right campaign it's great, but I've never seen it used. And it strikes me as one of those things that no matter how many ranks you put in it, the DM is gonna make the task impossible; "The investigator notices the seal on your letters of travel aren't correct and attacks."

Decipher script is only useful if the DM gives you things to decipher. And he'd have to give a lot of them for it to be useful.

Sleight of hand: another "it never works" skills. By the time you can actually pickpocket someone successfully, the 5gp you get isn't worth it. Yeah, there's always the old "pickpocket the key/document/plot element from the guard/noble/Big NPC" but who are we kidding? you know that's a job for our good friend "sneak attack." And it's a situation which is so rare it's not worth spending skill points in.

Lots of people like craft but it takes far too long to make anything. Woo hoo! After a week of toil I have a flask of alchemist's fire! By the time you have enough ranks to make things quickly, you're already rich enough to buy whatever you can make.

This being said, my latest character is a wizard that has lots of ranks in things which I've called "relatively useless" above (decipher script, forgery, lots of ranks of knowledge). It fits the character, but I could only do this because of the sheer number of skill points he had from his high int score.