What would have to be done to 3.5 D&D if you removed skills and feats?

[Aust Diamondew]

Skills are one of the far less complicated and time consuming aspects of the game, the same with feats to a lesser extent (unless you go supplement crazy).

In any case you need some sort of a skill resolution system, unless you want the DM to arbitrarily decide things. To remove the whole skills chapter from the PHB would bring up all sorts of questions. How do I determine if I sneak past the gaurds? Pick the lock? Jump the chasm? etc...

Of course you'd have to rebalance the classes too.

 

[Slife]

I'd muck around with AC, and divide the edition number by 3.5

 

[Crothian]

I'd just take the fighter and instead of feats give them a list of options they can select at first level and every even level after that.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Convert skill checks into ability checks with appropriate bonus modifiers based on character class.

For feats, convert some of them into class abilities or options for specific and appropriate classes and others into general actions.

That covers replacing them... keeping it as balanced? No clue.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

[Castles & Crusades removes feats]...instead each character class [h]as a set of abilities they all get, and that's it.

Feat-like manuevers or tasks are often handled with the same mechanic as skills in C&C: the "SIEGE engine." Basically, the DM assigns a target number (based on difficulty, circumstances, and whether or not the ability in question is "prime"), and the player makes an ability check to see if they can pull it off. The major difference is that there are no "feat trees," and you don't need to have a feat "picked" and written down on your sheet to try it: you're free to try whatever you like. Obviously, that means DM judgment weighs heavier, but if you're looking at stripping out skills and feats, that's probably not a downside for you.

In stripping skills & feats out of 3.5, your main adjustment would need to be balance. You might consider junking the idea of "balance each class at every level," and return to the older concept of "classes are allowed to have different power curves." The game way to balance the different power curves is to use different XP advancement tables: weaker classes advance faster. The current wisdom is that unified XP advancement is superior, but I disagree. I think both methods have their problems, but separate XP tables makes things easy to tweak without "shaking the jello" across the entire system. I prefer it. YMMV.

My recommendation is to save yourself the trouble of hacking 3.5 and give C&C a try: it's done the hard work for you, already. Resist the tempation to tweak and add to C&C until you've run it for a bit. I think it plays great as-is, but it has a different mind-set from 3.5, so it might take some adjustment in the way you think about running the game. Alternatively, you could run B/X or BECMI, or OAD&D(1E). If you don't want to buy any rulebooks there's OSRIC or Basic Fantasy.

 

[Devall2000]

First off, thank you all for your responses.

As to why I would want to remove skills and feats, I'm interested in speeding up gameplay as well as seeing what it does to the system. I'd love to play AD&D again but my group has invested a lot into 3rd edition, so it's not going to happen on a regular basis if at all.

I am interested in C&C and will look at it, but I'm not out to abandon 3rd edition.

If I were to do it, I might alter the rate of experience for different classes or chane bonus feats into special abilities. I hadn't considered some of the suggestions.

-Jamie

 

[Nifft]

To speed up game play, consider exchanging classes + feats + skills for a larger number of "stereotype pacakges" (or "archtypes").

1/ Do away with individual ability scores. Just have three: Physical, Mental, Mystical.
Physical: Reflex saves, attack and damage bonus, AC bonus, physical skills.
Mental: Will saves, initiative bonus, bonus languages, social and perception skills.
Mystical: Fort save, bonus HP, spell and power potency.

2/ Package skills into broad groups and give each class one of three progressions (like BAB and Saves) for each skill group. Groups: Athletics (Jump, Climb, Swim), Acrobatics (Tumble, Balance), Larceny (Sleight of Hand, Open Lock, Disable Device), Stealth (Hide, Move Silently), Magecraft (Spellcraft, Kn(Arcana, Planes)), Perform, Social, Perception (Spot, Listen, Search), Wilderness Lore (Survival, Kn(Nature)), Book Learnin' (Kn(Everything Else)), maybe a few others that I missed.

Each skill group is modified by Physical, Mental or Mystical (actually, Mystical only modifies Concentration and Use Magic Device).

3/ Make tables so it's really easy to see what each "archtype" gets at each level.

4/ Change modules etc. so the DCs for various checks are easy for "focused" archtypes and hard for unfocused archtypes.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Wik]

I'd love to play AD&D again but my group has invested a lot into 3rd edition, so it's not going to happen on a regular basis if at all.

Um.

So, you have a group of players who like third edition... and you want to remove skills and feats from the game, as a way of compromise? It seems sort of ass backwards, to me. If you really want to speed up play, there are easier ways of doing it:

1) Get rid of a lot of feats, but keep them in the game. If a feat can't be resolved in "normal time" (in other words, the same amount of time that it would take for a character to normally make an attack roll) cut it out. Keep those "invisible feats" that I mentioned before, and let certain ones (Power Attack) in as well. And then get rid of all those dirty feats that add rule options to the game (Cleave, Rapid Shot, or whatever). That'll make things easier, while cutting down on the math.

2) Just maximize skills (in other words, PCs pick a number of skilsl equal to their skill points plus their int modifier at first level, and then when they make a skill check, their score is equal to their character level +3).

If you have a group that likes 3e, then simply cutting out skills and feats to make yourself happy is just robbing them. You're seriously better off either changing the rules as they currently exist to satisfy your need for a simpler system (I've been there, myself), or switching to OSRIC or C&C or something.

 

[Treebore]

If skills and feats were taken out of D&D, what would have to be done to balance it?
-Jamie

I switched to Castles and Crusades.

 

[Aus_Snow]

I'd start by adding feats, then skills.

-- N

(PS: Seriously -- those are some of the best parts of 3e & 3.5e. Why would you want to waste them?)

The penguin strikes again. "Beaten to it" just doesn't do this situation justice. Still, I can always add a "QFT". So yeah, I'll do that.

QFT.