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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wulf Ratbane" data-source="post: 486077" data-attributes="member: 94">A feat is always more valuable than skill points, because feats are rarer and practically infinite in their possibilities. (Mongoose will soon print a collection of over 1000 feats...)Now, it may happen that a character CHOOSES to spend a feat on the equivalent of 2 or 3 or even 4 skill points, but that is a very situational choice. There are a lot of good feats, so many that a character must be fairly certain in the direction that he wants his character to go that he would spend one.On the other hand, nearly every player, given the opportunity, would gladly trade 2 or 3 or even 4 of his skill points for a feat.I trust that you are not under the impression that balance and good game design means there must be a 1-to-1 equivalence between the value of skills and feats. The game is more dynamic than that.Why the repeated insistence that the level limit on skill ranks was included so that you could balance prestige classes? You are really referring to limiting a prestige class to a certain level, you're not talking about balancing it in any way. There is so much more to the role that skills play in actually balancing a prestige class. It goes beyond a simple query of how many ranks you have. I understand, I agree with you, and I also use ranks to limit the level at which a PC can pick up a class. But obviously you understand that where you force the player to spend his skill points is far more important than simply worrying about whether or not he has 10 ranks of something, and therefore he must be 7th level, and so suddenly the class is "balanced." If the class is balanced, it's balanced whether the character picks it up at 7th level or 5th level, 10th or 15th. The skill rank requirements of prestige classes limit the classes to higher levels, true enough, but they also serve to take discretionary skill points away from the player and force them into skills that he might not ordinarily pay much attention to. That's where balance begins: give with one hand, take away with the other.I do not have the luxury of adding a line or two of text to every feat, but more importantly, the caveat, "This book requires the use of the Players Handbook..." covers me in that regard. I don't think it's a huge leap of faith to expect readers to know how to spend skill points. That's why there is an entire chapter devoted to Skills in the PHB; I think it is far from obscure. As I said before, if I think that the rule can be harmfully misinterpreted I am eager to provide a line or two of clarification. I do not believe that this example warrants it, first because the information is already provided in the PHB and second because a misinterpretation-- in this instance-- is not going to break the game.Heh... Them's fightin' words, mister. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Wulf</blockquote>

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