I've got about a month before the current campaign wraps up and a new one starts. So I've got some ideas boiling around in my head.
Most of our players seem to be pretty focused on combat machines. Abilities, skills, and even spells are mostly just focused on what can be used in combat. We have handled most combat encounters just fine. However, non-combat hasn't gone so well. My warlock was a pretty good 'face' character (if I do say so myself), with a high deception and persuasion. Though even then, a bad roll means failure against most any Joe-Schmoe. We especially can't seem to make a skill check for investigate, arcana, history, religion, nature, insight, etc... So we got into some unnecessary fights and went into most fights completely blind.
I don't want to make another 'face' character, but I was thinking about seeing how good (and consistent) I could get for at least several of the other skills.
So I'm looking at things like the Skill Expert feat (can you take it more than once?), rogue Expertise at 1st and 6th level, bard Expertise at 3rd and 10th level, bard Jack of All Trades at 2nd level, Bardic Inspiration, bard Collège of Lore (3 more skill proficiencies). A lot of these are in bard. So this is sounding like 1 level of rogue and the rest bard.
Like I said, I don't want to make another 'face' character. So I might have to do some finagling to not be the face even with a good charisma.
Are there other feats or class abilities like this? Seems like wizard should have something for this, but I haven't seen it. Have you tried or seen someone else try this basic concept? How did they build it and how did it work out?
Most of our players seem to be pretty focused on combat machines. Abilities, skills, and even spells are mostly just focused on what can be used in combat. We have handled most combat encounters just fine. However, non-combat hasn't gone so well. My warlock was a pretty good 'face' character (if I do say so myself), with a high deception and persuasion. Though even then, a bad roll means failure against most any Joe-Schmoe. We especially can't seem to make a skill check for investigate, arcana, history, religion, nature, insight, etc... So we got into some unnecessary fights and went into most fights completely blind.
I don't want to make another 'face' character, but I was thinking about seeing how good (and consistent) I could get for at least several of the other skills.
So I'm looking at things like the Skill Expert feat (can you take it more than once?), rogue Expertise at 1st and 6th level, bard Expertise at 3rd and 10th level, bard Jack of All Trades at 2nd level, Bardic Inspiration, bard Collège of Lore (3 more skill proficiencies). A lot of these are in bard. So this is sounding like 1 level of rogue and the rest bard.
Like I said, I don't want to make another 'face' character. So I might have to do some finagling to not be the face even with a good charisma.
Are there other feats or class abilities like this? Seems like wizard should have something for this, but I haven't seen it. Have you tried or seen someone else try this basic concept? How did they build it and how did it work out?