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="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 3749164" data-attributes="member: 1465">I'm a fan of 3.0 skills much more than 3.5 skills, so for me the SW skills are not very nice. Some musings...   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> 1. A trained skill has a bonus = level/2 + ability bonus + 5. This means that a level 1 character has ab+5, compared to a maximum of ab+4 in 3.x.A level 10 character has ab+10, compared to ab+13.A level 20 character has ab+15, compared to ab+23.A level 30 character has ab+20, compared to ab+33.This actually means the 4ed character advances more slowly, BUT the skill focus feats is going to be +5, and eventually there will be something like improved skill focus (+10) and maybe even a greater skill focus (+15) available only after a certain level. Otherwise the other option to keep the real skills about as good as in 3ed would be to re-design all the DCs to make them lower, which I think it's much more complicated for the designers.Maybe it doesn't really change that much in the game. The new system would be good for NPC who can be 1st level and still be very good at their skills. For example the "greatest cook on earth" could be a 1st level commoner (weak in any fight) but have ab+10. This is good except that... the typical NPCs skills (craft, profession) are being removed from the game, so this benefit will not be used at all  :\ 2. An untrained skill (that can be used even if untrained) is always going to be 5 points lower compared to a character than has it trained, and 10 points lower compared to someone who has it trained and focused (makes sense that you need it trained before you get the focus).I don't like the image of a wizard who learns to jump/swim better by living as an average wizard, but ok there's not much damage to the game. This will have a benefit on group skills like move silently (the worst of the group makes the group fail, but now the worst of the group is not "as worse" as before).I don't like very much that the difference is constant. But once we factor Skill Focus in (and now SF is a much bigger and a much more needed bonus than before, so we'll see it taken more often), the difference is not constant any more. Basically we are just seeing a reduction of the difference, but it will still pratically scale with levels. 3. So now Skill Focus is VERY important to keep up with the challenges. There's a problem here: a Rogue has a lot of skills trained, therefore he NEEDS a lot of Skill Focuses to keep up in ALL her skills. Let's hope that the Rogue gets loads of bonus feats that can be spent on SF, otherwise a high-level Rogue may seriously suck if half or more of her skills are lagging behind the DCs.4. I do not like the idea of merging skills. I understand that WotC noticed a lot of people do it as house rules, and wanted the please the audience, fine. I don't like it because it reduces the difference between characters. Also, when you get very few skills using the same ability, you could go ahead and just turn it into an ability check. 3ed introduced skills exactly to differentiate between a wise character that's good at listening, one that's good at spotting, one that's good at both and one that's good at none. Now you can only be good at both or none. Something you could be in 3ed only, but now you have some choices less. But ok, if everyone likes it the new way, then no big deal.5. You cannot spread your skill points anymore. This is tricky... People complain that this was "difficult", but that's not true, because it's totally optional in 3ed. If you want it simple, just max as many skills as your skill points and you're done. However it happened to me many times in 3ed, particularly with Rogues, that I wanted to have more skills: i could choose for example to spread my skill points of 2 skills over 3 skills instead and have each of them 2/3 max, which isn't bad, effectively becoming able at 1 new skill. Some skills don't need to be maximized to be effective, so this option was good.Now if you're a Rogue and get 8 skills, then you just have to max 8 skills. However, I suspect there will be a feat that will simply add 1 more skill to your set, so maybe this will be back in the game just in a different form.</blockquote>

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