NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="IanArgent" data-source="post: 3735115" data-attributes="member: 21673">Ehn? I didn't say anything about how the bard and rogue can't manage unless they preplan (though it is, to a certain extent, true, because they don't have enough skill points to cover all their bases simultaneously). And I'm "poor rogue" if EVERYONE ELSE gets more skill points (even if the rogue does). I don't want the rogue to get more skill points at any rate, it's a bandaid solution to a systemic problem.See my post at <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=3734855&postcount=249" target="_blank">#249</a> in this thread. Once the delta between skilled and unskilled goes over about +15, the system breaks down, even more obviously when it is an opposed test. All you are suggesting is putting off the inevitable, because as it stands, the skill monkey can make a DC 15 test at level 2 with no immediate effort (take-0 on the roll) . Tacking on modifiers just hides that until later levels. Eventually you reach the point that you either have to set the base DC high enough that the skillmonkey can fail, or you allow the skillmonkey to breeze the check in favor of letting the rest of the party have a chance. For those following the nitty-gritty, the skillmonkey can take-10 a DC 35(!) check at 12th level with no spell or magic item assistance. that's a 50% chance of making a DC25 check with a cumulative modifier of -10 to his roll; a check that an untrained party member can't hope to make before adding the flourishes. At that point you might as well just make the fancy uses of the skill trained-only and be done with it, because the unskilled people can't make it anyway. Plus, I thought we didn't want superheroes in D&D.This actually isn't entirely the fault of the skilled vs. unskilled issue - it's a fault of being able to ramp your skill bonus by 1 per level. That forces DCs to go ridiculously high ridiculously quickly. But I don't see any way to stop that in the system as it stands. Cutting max skill ranks in half, inasmuch as the DCs would only have to ramp half as fast. This is also an example of why NOT to give out more skill points - it just makes the problem worse, in that more skills can be maxed. Chopping max skill ranks in half, but leaving the same number of skills just doubles the number of skills a character will have; at the cost on not being able to advance half your skills each time you level, but still having to advance the other half! And it still does nothing to address the cross-class skill issue, where cross-class skills aren't worth the expenditure of skill points. Plus, once you've done this, you're halfway to the SWSE system anyway.A +10 delta between untrained and focused is quite enough. The +5 difference between trained and untrained is enough for most purposes. If a trained character can make the check on a roll of a 10, the untrained character needs a 15, and the focused character makes it on a 5. If the 'advanced' use of a skill has a -5 penalty attached, the trained person has to make a 15, the focused person has to make a 10, and the unskilled person has to pray for a 20... If the highest skill check in the system is +25 before stat adjustment (30 levels gets you a +15 base check, +5 for training, +5 for focus), a -5 penalty is meaningful at all character levels.You do need to make some uses of skills "trained only", I'll admit, so you can set DCs low enough for low-level characters to be able to make them, but untrained characters still can't make them. Guess what, SWSE does that.</blockquote>

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