Thoughts on Skills

[Nifft]

Here's a system I'm considering:

- Characters gain double skill points at each level, but no extra skill points at 1st level.
Rogue: 16/level
Bard, Ranger: 12/level
Barbarian, Druid, Monk, Sorcerer: 8/level
FIghter, Cleric, Wizard: 4/level


- Skills cost extra for higher ranks:
Rank 1-4: 1 SP per rank
Rank 5-8: 2 SP per rank
Rank 9-12: 3 SP per rank
Rank 13-16: 4 SP per rank
Rank 17-20: 5 SP per rank

- Cross-class skills cost one extra SP per rank:
Rank 1-4: 2 SP per rank
Rank 5-8: 3 SP per rank
Rank 9-12: 4 SP per rank
Rank 13-16: 5 SP per rank
Rank 17-20: 6 SP per rank


Mechanical Effects:
1) This would encourage mid-to-high level generalists, since specializing early would be painful.

2) Making your first level a Rogue wouldn't be the skill windfall it is now -- which would encourage better game play by not rewarding metagaming.

3) The Feat Skill Focus would get significantly better as a character levels up -- in sharp contrast to how it is now.

4) It becomes easier to assign DCs for mid-to-high level problems. Under the current system, skills seem to be an all-or-nothing affair. With this system, you can reasonably assume that a mid-level PC can do a bit of everything OR do one or two things really, really well.

5) Int bonus will play a lesser role to Class.

-- Nifft

 

[ValarX]

This is a good consideration. I've always been frustrated with low Int characters who can't do anything skill-wise. This should also allow characters to have a wider variety of skills rather than two or three that they max out (Fighters). You might want to consider changing the list of class and cross-class skills for each class since this will most definitely increase the number of skills a character could take. And, you might also want to change max ranks (Max Ranks = Level x 2) to reflect the difference in skill gain.

 

[Nifft]

Yeah, I can't think of a good mechanic to limit "max ranks"... I'm starting to think that I shouldn't bother, and let characters just get as good at skills as they want to get.

(In the 3e system, that's an insane stance, since skill ranks don't have diminishing returns. Under the proposed system, a character who puts all her ranks in one skill can't max that skill out for many levels anyway.)

-- Nifft