Your Favorite Skill

[FreeTheSlaves]

Diplomacy. Half of a session can be taken up with talk. Gather info & local knowledge are very nice too.

 

[Eccles]

Anything with ridiculous ranks and more synergy bonus and other advantages than you can shake a stick at.

Who *doesn't* enjoy rolling 40+ on something and grinning at the rest of the party?

 

[DMH]

Alchemy using all the cool stuff in Alchemy and Herbalists, the Alchemist Power Class and the Enchiridion of Treasures and Objects D'Art.

I am still waiting to find an alchemist Prc that makes improved homoncolus (sp) and other life.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Heh, I have a bunch that I take together for a really good time.

Bluff
Diplomacy
Gather Information
Sense Motive
Disguise

The very first 3.0 character I created (and still haven't gotten to play, dang it!) had those and Innuendo. And took skill focus for some of them... See a theme here?

The Auld Grump

 

[Len]

When I'm playing my Shadowdancer character, my favourite skill is Hide. Mainly because I'm pretty much permanently invisible to the party's fighter.

Tumble, Spot and Listen are right up there. Oh, and Bluff was great when we had an NPC cleric who wouldn't heal us unless we prayed for healing. :\

With my ranger archer, I like Hide/Move Silently, Spot and Survival.

Survival- not only can you gather food but you can predict the weather along with myriad other usefull tasks.

Um, yeah, predicting the weather. The only use I've found for that so far, is that my DM uses DM Genie, and he's addicted to the feature where you click a button and it generates a weather report. He's forever telling us that it's sunny and warm, or it's raining, or whatever.

So I've started to ask him what tomorrow's weather is going to be, just so that he has to keep track of his weather reports and make them consistent.

 

[haiiro]

For pure utility? Spot, hands-down. Probably comes from playing too much CoC.

 

[Morte]

Sense Motive.

Knowing things you're not meant to is deeply satisfying (and quite useful).

 

[Celebrim]

I don't really have a favorite. As a DM I'm tempted to say 'craft(masonry)' just because its something that PC's never seem to take which would seem (at least to me) to have alot of application in environments which are generally made of worked stone.

In terms of what I as DM tend to call for most, without a doubt its balance. Alot of my combat environments are heavily 3D, non-tradiational, and/or ruined. Moving quickly about them requires low level balance checks.

As a PC, I put skills into whatever I think the DM is going to ask for, and my favorite skill is always the one that the DM asks for at the moment and I have skill points in - simply put, "Woo hoo, I get to use my stuff." I think player's like to use thier skills on a regular basis. I know I do.

As both a PC and a DM, I think Diplomacy is by far the most powerful skill.