Take 10.5

[StreamOfTheSky]

+1 to:
Appraise (nice to be that much more sure)
Balance (potentially life saving)
Bluff, Diplomacy, Disguise, Gather Information, Handle Animal, Intimidate (that's quite the socialite)
Climb (potentially life saving)
Craft, Profession (earn more money)
Hide, Move Silently, Listen, Spot (scout extraordinaire)
Tumble (good for falling)

I'd say that's overpowered. Perhaps not in a dungeon crawl style game, but in a wilderness/city politics game, that's alot of bonuses.

But only when you take 10. The feat's mostly worthless if you haven't put in a sizable amount of ranks in the skill and can thus afford to take 10. As I see it, since the average roll of a d20 is 10.5, the feat's merely allowing you to round up rather than down. Does it favor skill monkeys? Sure, they get to use it more. Just like how you could argue weapon focus "favors" fighters, since they get more attacks to add it to.

 

[Meatboy]

@ Musrum

This is an interesting idea. I think perhaps that knowing the DCs of everything really draws players out of immersion though. At least for me part of the thrill comes from facing down a challenge and not knowing exactly where I stand with it.

 

[Musrum]

I can see how that could be a problem for some people.

As a player I'd like to be able to get the Fluff, but have that backed up with some Crunch.

For example, I like to hear a description of a cliff that evokes how difficult it is to climb, but I would like my ranger to be able to cast a practiced eye and be able to tell if he can climb it.

 

[Musrum]

Keep in mind that you are in fact changing the probabilities of opposed rolls with this variant.

For example, opposed grapple checks. Lets say you have a creature with a very large grapple check versus a PC with only a decent one (and frankly, this happens all the time once you start fighting huge creatures).

If you keep the creatures grapple check a mid range constant, the PC may have NO chance of escape. The only chance the player can escape is if both the creature rolls low and the player rolls high. So you have actually changed very significantly how grapple check play out.

True. You could then just say that a Grapple is just another type of attack, and a nat 20 is an auto success. This would give you a 5% chance of winning even in those circumstances when you would have no chance on an opposed check.