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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Matthias" data-source="post: 3466213" data-attributes="member: 3625">Having read more of this thread...I really dislike the skill consolidations. It reduces character variation and customization. Rolling everything possible into Perception and Persuasion is the worst.With Perception, the problem of merging Sense Motive with the physical senses has already been touched on (why should someone who can see and hear well also be able to read people?) The difficulties of Wisdom governing both intuition, willpower, and the physical senses is bad enough; overloading skills just makes the whole thing worse. Why even have skills at all if you're going to whittle them down to the bare minimum?Persuasion is another big problem. There are worlds of difference between trying to persuade someone into giving you what you want, lying to get what you want, and threatening naked force to get what you want. They are all means to the same end, but that doesn't mean they should all be one skill. How many times do you see Chewbacca intimidating people, versus Lando or Han bluffing people, versus Luke or Obi-Wan trying to talk their way into (or out of) a situation? But now that kind of cinematic distinction will disappear.I'm not completely against reforming or finding a solution to tracking dozens or a few hundred skill points, but I'm skeptical of this glorified 2E-style non-weapon proficiency system.Three tiers of expertise are too few. There ought to be at least four, if not more.When I am generating a high-level character (for D&D), I have a mostly error-free method I use. I'm not saying it should be adopted as standard but it works for me just fine.1. I choose all the skills for my character that I want to put ranks in and list them on a piece of paper, along with the total number of skill points I have to spend. I am careful not to choose too many skills, which will dilute the number of SP that even the high-priority skills will receive. I don't try to build an exhaustive list since I will probably have SP left over at step #6.2. If I want to max out any chosen skills, I do this immediately, and mark down the new SP total as appropriate.3. I assign each remaining chosen skill a priority level; low, medium, and high. Priority translates to a X1, X2, and X4 ratio when it comes to skill points (that is, high-priority skills will have 4 times the skill points of low-priority skills). If there aren't that many skill points to go around, I may use only low- and high-priorities (with a X1 and X2 ratio, respectively).4. I add all the 1's, 2's, and 4's together, and divide my current SP total by that amount (keeping any fraction). This is my initial SP total for low-priority skills. I double that value (still keeping any fraction) for my medium-priority skills, and double it again for my high-priority skills -- hence the X1, X2, and X4 ratios. After this, I round down all three fractional numbers to the nearest integer. Those fractions are kept so that if I (for example) ended up with a low-priority value of 1.75, that would give me medium- and high-priority values of 3.5 and 7, so instead of 1 / 2 / 4, I have 1 / 3 / 7. Keeping the fraction makes spending your SP more efficient.5. Beside each skill I write said values for their SP. In this case 1 SP for low-priority, 3 SP for medium, and 7 SP for high.6. I add up all the skill points doled out so far, and subtract that from my current total. There are usually a few skill points left unspent, which I often divvy up among whatever other skills I didn't pick up at first, but would make sense for the character to have at least half a rank in.7. I translate the skill points into ranks, dividing by 2 in the case of cross-class skills. 8. I finally add in skill synergy bonuses, racial bonuses, feat bonuses, and the rest.</blockquote>

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