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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3989644" data-attributes="member: 4937">This is my pet peeve.&nbsp; Either one of these acts accomplishes the same purpose.&nbsp; I don't think this necessarily makes for a better game either.&nbsp; Going in this direction you rapidly get to the point where skills are pointless, because every character will demonstrate near universal competancy in at least his class skills and virtually every class can treat intelligence as a dump stat.&nbsp; You also relatively reduce the value of things like the humans extra skill point per level. Again, the purpose of skills is to solve particular problems that occur in the game.&nbsp; But, if the solving of those problems is to be gauranteed by the wide compentancy displayed by the characters, you might as well just handwave the whole problem.&nbsp; Skills usually aren't extended problems.&nbsp; You either make the roll or you don't.&nbsp; There is rarely anything in the way of a player challenge.&nbsp; If you never want the characters to fail the challenge, then there is no point in having it in the first place.&nbsp; The closer you get to universal competancy, the less value you are placing on skills and as a practical matter the less value players will percieve in making sacrifices to obtain higher skill.&nbsp; This is a simple supply and demand issue.&nbsp; The greater the supply of skill points, the less value they have.There is also a more subtle danger in increasing the number of available skill points, in that there is a tendancy for the DM to match this increase in skill by an equivalent increase in challenge so that there is no net effect in having greater skill.&nbsp; In other words, they tend to match the DC's to the characters skill level and you end up in a Diablo-like situation where the numbers are getting bigger, but the PC's relative strength versus the challenges he faces is always static.&nbsp; The skill version of this is, &quot;No matter how many ranks you have in the skill, I'll always set the DC such that you have a X% chance of failure.&quot;&nbsp; If the DM has focused in his mind that players can't possibly obtain universal compentancy, it is hoped that he'll base DC's on something other than the players ranks in the skill or level.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 3989644, member: 4937"] This is my pet peeve. Either one of these acts accomplishes the same purpose. I don't think this necessarily makes for a better game either. Going in this direction you rapidly get to the point where skills are pointless, because every character will demonstrate near universal competancy in at least his class skills and virtually every class can treat intelligence as a dump stat. You also relatively reduce the value of things like the humans extra skill point per level. Again, the purpose of skills is to solve particular problems that occur in the game. But, if the solving of those problems is to be gauranteed by the wide compentancy displayed by the characters, you might as well just handwave the whole problem. Skills usually aren't extended problems. You either make the roll or you don't. There is rarely anything in the way of a player challenge. If you never want the characters to fail the challenge, then there is no point in having it in the first place. The closer you get to universal competancy, the less value you are placing on skills and as a practical matter the less value players will percieve in making sacrifices to obtain higher skill. This is a simple supply and demand issue. The greater the supply of skill points, the less value they have. There is also a more subtle danger in increasing the number of available skill points, in that there is a tendancy for the DM to match this increase in skill by an equivalent increase in challenge so that there is no net effect in having greater skill. In other words, they tend to match the DC's to the characters skill level and you end up in a Diablo-like situation where the numbers are getting bigger, but the PC's relative strength versus the challenges he faces is always static. The skill version of this is, "No matter how many ranks you have in the skill, I'll always set the DC such that you have a X% chance of failure." If the DM has focused in his mind that players can't possibly obtain universal compentancy, it is hoped that he'll base DC's on something other than the players ranks in the skill or level. [/QUOTE]

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