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coming out of this thread I've found the current skill system to be... well, flawed
not that flawed, but mostly in the way that there are still too many useless skills that only certain classes bother to take, unless you play a campaign that specifically requires you too
for those campaigns, sticking to the current system is fine, remember the most important rule is this is your game, play it how you want, and i want my characters to have more options role playing ans skill wise without having to give up on their min-maxing optimizing ways
so i have compiled a list of revised skills and a new system that i think might be worth trying in a campaign to see how others like it (otherwise i wouldn't be posting it)
heres the list:
Athletics[STR]
Articulate[DEX]
Business[WIS]
Diplomacy[CHA]
Intimidate[CHA]
Knowledge(Anthropology)
Knowledge(Arcana)
Knowledge(Dungeoneering)
Knowledge(Nature)
Knowledge(Planes)
Knowledge(Religion)
Knowledge(Technology)
Perception[WIS]
Spellcraft[INT]
new skills have absorbed the missing ones from the past
Athletics- this should be obvious, i have combined the acrobatics skill with swim and climb, so players who have physically fit characters don't have to waste all their skills being physically fit
Articulate- sleight of hand, stealth, disable device, use rope, fly, and even certain aspects of heal. all of these come from how well you can coordinate, and usually being able to do any one of these things means you should have some skill in the others
Business- this skill, like Profession and Crafting before it, can be divided into separate trades, it incorporates the aforementioned skills as well as Appraise
Diplomacy and Intimidate have absorbed Bluff, because in any matter of using bluff, you are either trying to get someone to cooperate with you (Diplomacy) or coerce them into believing something they otherwise wouldnt (intimidate)
Nobility, Local, and History have all been compiled into Knowledge(Anthropology) and Geography is now part of Knowledge(Nature)
Engineering has been replaced with Knowledge(Technology) but it remains mostly unchanged
the big thing about the knowledges is that now each of them has an associated pokedex and none of them can be considered useless
Anthropology- Humanoids
Arcana- Magical Beasts
Dungeoneering- Oozes and Abbarations
Nature- Animals and Plants
Planes- Outsiders
Religion- Undead and Ghosts
Technology- Constructs and Machinations
in addition, Knowledge(Anthropology) has also taken on the Linguistics skill, allowing you to gain a new language for ranks into the skill, and you can otherwise dictate what anthropological knowledge you have based on what languages you know, making it a lot easier to role play imo because it gives you a baseline for just how much your character would know about a particular group or area based on what they can speak
Perception has absorbed sense motive and the identifying part of heal
Use magic Device is now incorporated into spellcraft, any player who can use spellcraft effectively can also figure out how to UMD
ALL of these skills can be used untrained now. A player is no longer limited by a book telling them they cannot have a character trained to do something that they could arguably have due to a background or event happening in the campaign itself
the next big rule i would introduce is what makes me able to say that all of these skills can be used untrained. Skill Affinity by Class
every base class will have a list of skills with Positive (+3 to the skill) Affinities and Negative (-3 to the skill) Affinities. This will replace Class Skills, and whenever a character attempts a particular skill he or she has an Affinity with, it will apply
Multi-Classing will affect Skill Affinities. Any character who has a class with a particular affinity will retain that affinity for the duration of that character. Like Affinities will not stack, but unlike Affinities will cancel each other out.
Example:
A fighter has a Negative Affinity with the Spellcraft skill. so he will take -3 to that skill whenever he attempts it. Should he take levels into a class that has a positive affinity (such as Wizard) the training required will be slow and he won't accell at that skill like other members of that class will because they've been trained in it the whole time. He will receive both the Positive and Negative Affinities for that skill, and they will cancel each other out. At the same time, a fighter who abandons his ways of physical prowess will lose his Positive Affinity with the Athletics skill, and the wizard training with the Negative Affinity will cancel it out as well. That character cannot however, take levels in a third class that has an affinity in either of these skills and apply that affinity to his skill modifier, regardless of whether that 3rd affinity is positive or negative.
Other Skills (such as Survival, Handle Animal, and Perform) never really get used outside of choice classes that the skills are designed for. Those characters will have that skill replaced with a class feature that functions nearly identically to the revised version of Concentration
All classes will have both Positive and Negative Skill Affinities, thus a character will never be able to multi-class and get a positive or negative affinity on all skills
there could be the introduction of new feats and character traits that affect skill affinities, in ways like we have traits that offer class skills to players
so what do you think of my system?
I'd move Acrobatics from Athletics to separate category called Acrobatics which would also include Escape Artist and possibly Fly to make two movement-related skills, one Strength- and one Dexterity-based without making a superwide Dexterity that would merge such completely different aspects of dexterity as whole body movement and fine manual manipulation (which Articulate seems to be).
Merging identifying aspect of heal with Perception is missing the crucial point that diagnosis is primarily knowledge, which Perception is not providing. Also, I don't think that merging Perception with Sense Motive is a good move. While they are related they are significantly different. I would expect wilderness stalker to be highly proficient with Perception but how would it make him perfect judge of human behavior when he sees an average of three and a quarter of a human per year.
Your monster lore association with knowledge groups omits some types. Also "Undeads and Ghosts" is redundant because Ghosts are Undead (unless you are using homebrew rework of types).
I am surprised that you didn't decided to merge Knowledge [arcana] with Spellcraft.
Survival and Stealth being rarely used and relegated to the role of class features?! Whoa, what?! I have seen characters of every class using Survival and characters of various different classes using Stealth with the sole exception of heavy armored Fighters and Paladins.
Dotting... this is interesting.
One thing I'm curious about is why keep Diplomacy and Intimidate separated, but lump Bluff into them? I'd kind of think they all work similarly enough in an Oratory skill or something. Actually, I'd call them Articulation, but that's been taken :P
Anyway though, I like the looks of this.
BTW: It's very close to Star Wars SAGA/D&D 4th edition skill list.
D&D 4th edition: Acrobatics (Dex), Arcana (Int), Athletics (Str), Bluff (Cha), Diplomacy (Cha), Dungeoneering (Wis), Endurance (Con), Heal (Wis), History (Int), Insight (Wis) [seeing past bluff, sensing motives, sensing attitudes, sensing outside influence as per Sense Motive plus recognizng illusions], Intimidate (Cha), Nature (Wis), Perception (Wis), Religion (Int), Stealth (Dex), Streetwise (Cha), Thievery (Dex).
Which reminds me that I disliked putting Sleight Of Hand/Picking Pockets together into one skill with Opening Locks and Disabling Devices. Quite different processes - open lock/disable device should be covered under mechanics (I think that SW Saga done so).
Now I think that Bluff could be kept as separate ability from Diplomacy and Intimidate merged with Disguise into a single Deception skill.
Call Diplo/Bluff/Intimdate Manipulation maybe?
Eh, naming is probably the least important. Articulation just seemed most fitting to me for the speaking type of skills (actually, when I first saw Articulate, I was confused by the Dex thing, because I thought of the speaking stuff first).
2. The formation of clear and distinct sounds in speech: "the articulation of vowels and consonants".
I could actually see the Dex-related skills being called Manipulation though (in the fine/physical sense), if it sticks to the careful movements such as Disable Device/Sleight of Hand, while moving some of the others like Fly/Acrobatics into an Acrobatics catchall, like Drejk suggested (and which seems like a good idea, in my opinion).
I'm up for splitting the skills up a bit more, I considered calling my DEX skill coordination before
I once played with a house rule that spell craft didn't exist and you just rolled respective knowledge checks, but considering that spells often use the same somatic components and that the skill can be used for crafting as well as for replacing umd I decided to keep it
Idk why I said ghosts and undead in the same thought, I guess that's what happens when you don't proof read enough
I like having acrobatics and athletics a separate skills
I'm iffy still on the sense motive thing, but I do like insight
What are peoples thoughts on skill affinity? And on having all skills and taking a negative if you don't have it opposed to only getting positives, I felt it punished power gamers who try and stack them selves with all the skills and made sense
Acrobatics[DEX]
Athletics[STR]
Business[WIS]
Deceive[CHA]
Intuition[WIS]
Knowledge(Anthropology)
Knowledge(Arcana)
Knowledge(Dungeoneering)
Knowledge(Medicine)
Knowledge(Nature)
Knowledge(Planes)
Knowledge(Religion)
Knowledge(Technology)
Mechanics[DEX]
Perception[WIS]
Socialize[CHA]
Spellcraft[INT]
Stealth[DEX]
Tame[CHA]
where respective knowledges offer information on combating certain enemies:
Anthropology: Humanoids
Arcana: Dragons, Magical Beasts
Dungeoneering: Aberrations, Oozes
Medicine: Diseases, Poisons, Status Ailments
Nature: Animals, Fey, Giants, Monstrous Humanoids, Plants, Vermin
Planes: Outsiders
Religion: Undead
Technology: Constructs, Machinations
To replace Heal, i added in a new knowledge(medicine), and it can be used to identify health conditions, as well as know about diseases, poisons, and ability drains/ curses/ anything that could be affecting you that isnt a direct enemy basically
replaced diplomacy and intimidate with Socialize, and i liked the deception idea
i liked the idea of insight, but i wanted to take it one step further, and give it full intuition, it could perceptibly be used at any time to see if the PCs actually suspect something, even if its not a social interaction, as well as satisfying the need for sense motive
brought back stealth, because mainly i remembered the need for Hide and Move Silently from 3.5, probly should have it incorporate sleight of hand
Combined Handle Animal and Ride together and created Tame
in the end we get 3 skills that use DEX, 3 that use WIS, 3 that use CHA, 1 that uses STR, and 2 that use INT, for a total of 12 skills
of course, knowledge can be broken up into various sub skills
Affinities:
Barbarian
+Athletics
+Acrobatics
+Knowledge(Nature)
+Perception
+Tame
-Mechanics
-Socialize
-Spellcraft
Bard
+Acrobatics
+Business
+Deceive
+Knowledge(All)
+Intuition
+Perception
+Socialize
+Spellcraft
+Stealth
-Athletics
-Tame
Cleric
+Intuition
+Knowledge(Anthropology)
+Knowledge(Arcana)
+Knowledge(Medicine)
+Knowledge(Planes)
+Knowledge(Religion)
+Spellcraft
-Athletics
-Mechanics
-Stealth
Druid
+Acrobatics
+Athletics
+Knowledge(Medicine)
+Knowledge(Nature)
+Perception
+Spellcraft
+Tame
-Business
-Knowledge(Technology)
-Mechanics
-Socialize
Fighter
+Athletics
+Knowledge(Dungeoneering)
+Knowledge(Technology)
+Tame
-Acrobatics
-Knowledge(Arcana)
-Spellcraft
Monk
+Acrobatics
+Athletics
+Knowledge(Anthropology)
+Knowledge(Medicine)
+Knowledge(Religion)
+Perception
+Stealth
-Business
-Deceive
-Knowledge(Technology)
-Spellcraft
Paladin
+Intuition
+Knowledge(Anthropology)
+Knowledge(Medicine)
+Knowledge(Religion)
+Socialize
+Spellcraft
+Tame
-Deceive
-Mechanics
-Stealth
Ranger
+Athletics
+Knowledge(Dungeoneering)
+Knowledge(Medicine)
+Knowledge(Nature)
+Perception
+Spellcraft
+Stealth
+Tame
-Business
-Knowledge(Technology)
-Socialize
Rogue
+Acrobatics
+Athletics
+Business
+Deceive
+Intuition
+Knowledge(Anthropology)
+Knowledge(Dungeoneering)
+Mechanics
+Perception
+Socialize
+Spellcraft
-Knowledge(Arcana)
-Knowledge(Religion)
-Knowledge(Nature)
Sorcerer
+Acrobatics
+Business
+Deceive
+Knowledge(Arcana)
+Spellcraft
-Athletics
-Mechanics
-Tame
Wizard
+Acrobatics
+Business
+Knowledge(All)
+Spellcraft
-Athletics
-Mechanics
-Tame
How are we doing?
Overall I like it. It combines simplicity I need with the customization I crave.
That said, I've been thinking about it and Sorcerer/Wizards, etc shouldn't get acrobatics. I assume it's there for Fly.
Here's the thing: classes with climb, jumb, swim, tumble etc, spend a lot of time and energy moving around. They know how to move through the air, they know how to deal with gravity.
The other guys, do nothing but walk. And they wouldn't do that if they could figure out how to use Floating Disk as a sweet ride.
The only reason they get Fly as a class skill in PF is because they have fly on thier spell list.
As for Articulate I suggest renaming it to Adroitness or Finesse.
As a second issue, do we really need to have the various knowleges as seperate skills?
Some, I think, should just be given for the appropriate classes. Religion should be trained (or possible a level check like concentration) for clerics and paladins.
For DnD purposes, people who know a lot about 1 subject are either specialists (like clerics) or generalist who know a lot about everything.
I don't know maybe condense down to 5 skills
Religion
Arcana
Anthropology
Enviroment
Engineering
and treat monster lore as Lore (specialization)
Overall I like it. It combines simplicity I need with the customization I crave.
That said, I've been thinking about it and Sorcerer/Wizards, etc shouldn't get acrobatics. I assume it's there for Fly.
Here's the thing: classes with climb, jumb, swim, tumble etc, spend a lot of time and energy moving around. They know how to move through the air, they know how to deal with gravity.
The other guys, do nothing but walk. And they wouldn't do that if they could figure out how to use Floating Disk as a sweet ride.
The only reason they get Fly as a class skill in PF is because they have fly on thier spell list.
As for Articulate I suggest renaming it to Adroitness or Finesse.
Agreed. And it is worth noting that the fly spell grants a bonus of 1/2 caster level on fly checks anyway. Similar to find traps. One could then argue that Clerics should have Perception...
Also, how 'bout Persuasion for the diplomacy-intimidate skill? That is what it's called in SW Saga, and it makes sense.
Regardless of the actual definitions, to me "articulate" refers to speaking, so I don't like it as a physical skill name. Finesse fits, but makes people think of Weapon Finesse.
Agility? Admittedly generic, but strangely unspoken for in Pathfinder...
i renamed articulate 'Mechanics' not exactly what Drejk was suggesting, but i liked the name for it, i was gonna call it 'Fine Motor', 'Fine Motor Control', 'Coordination', 'Precision', and a lot of combinations of using the words Fine Motor, but i liked the work mechanics, because it deals with disabling devises as well as anything technical one could be doing with their hands, which to me included surgery-like things for Heal checks
Persuasion would be a good rename for Socialize, especially if i keep deception as a separate skill, though personally i still like the idea of only having one social skill, being opposed by Intuition
designing affinities is gonna be the hard part, and i expect good input from people
i suppose if you wanted to condense Knowledges down it could look something like this:
Anthropology- same
Arcana(Absorbing Technology)- Constructs, Dragons, Machinations, Magical Beasts
Environment(Combining Nature and Dungeoneering)- Abberations, Animals, Fey, Giants, Monstrous Humanoids, Oozes, Plants, Vermin
Religion(Absorbing Planes and Medicine)- Diseases, Outisders, Poisons, Undead
and that cuts the number of knowledges by half
now concerning acrobatics, yes the reason i gave it to wizards and sorcerers is because they get Fly, and i don't like them having the tumbling option, but why make fly a separate skill
the fly mechanics could be gotten rid of all together, or we can come up with a new way to calculate you Fly check (say, add you CL instead of your Fly skill check, add your DEX mod? Even then your Fly check is still going to be lower than it would be) and any creature that has a natural fly speed would be given acrobatics naturally as a Positive Skill Affinity. Would that be a fix?
the point of not having heal was to consolidate skills so that they would ALL be considered useful EVERY game, so im lost on how important you guys feel Heal is. doing more research
Suggestion: Make Heal REALLY matter in gameplay. Something like a heal check made after a given combat heals a number of HP equal to the check result, divided by 5, multiplied by the Healer's rank.
(So at level 1, a Healer with it as a class skill and 1 rank would heal between 1 and 5 HP for no resource cost, level 2 between 2 and 10, etc, with continued investment eventually increasing the base value as well.)
In fact... I want to put something like that in my own houserules now (though since it was just a spitballed idea thrown out for feedback, it likely requires refinement.)
best thing i can come up with without making the math too difficult would be a self healing mechanic with scaling DCs, but it would of course, NOT include the diagnosis factor unless we just create a skill called Medicine
lets say, you make a Medicine or a Heal check DC 15, you get back 1 HP
DC 20 you get back 2, DC 25 you get back 3
you can keep increasing the DCs and increase the amount you heal by 1 HP, but unfortunately, a character wouldnt have a limit on how much they use the skill, unless we did something like x times per day, where x was your CON modifer, you could just keep doing it, OR even better, make the mechanic of the skill take the whole day
would make it CON based, and it might be a good thing, since there isnt a CON based skill anymore
or increase the DC, which is effectively the same thing
but the thing about heal is it becomes borderline useless unless you are playing a no magic campaign, don't have access to healing magic, or the DM is just being a jerk
the most useful thing ive seen Heal's mechanics be attractive for, is undergoing a ritual to engrave an Ioun Stone into your flesh so it cant get attacked or stolen in combat
and again, this is meant to be a streamlined list that has no skills that one could deem 'worthless'
now we could create a 'Medicine' skill, and tie it directly in to using healing magic in some way, meaning the better you are at using the medicine skill, the better you will be at using healing magic
THAT might make it attractive
I'd make a successful medicine checks a prerequisite to efficient use of healing spells that remove afflictions and conditions - with no medical examination (or failure of one) there should be penalty or in some cases even outright inability to use proper countermeasures.
doing so is a nice touch imo, but its exactly like having FLY as its own skill, it forces you to take it to use that magic
and being able to heal 20 HP after a fight without using the wand or other magic is OP as hell, i mean, really, really OP
if you make a wand of CLW look like a waste of money, then its a problem
and diagnosing afflictions is exactly what Knowledge(Medicine) was designed to do, and incorporating it into Knowledge(Religion) would mean its still there, but not separate from anything your healer would do, thus not forcing him to go out of his way to learn how to heal
this is about making the game simpler, not more complicated
coming out of this thread I've found the current skill system to be... well, flawed
not that flawed, but mostly in the way that there are still too many useless skills that only certain classes bother to take, unless you play a campaign that specifically requires you too
for those campaigns, sticking to the current system is fine, remember the most important rule is this is your game, play it how you want, and i want my characters to have more options role playing ans skill wise without having to give up on their min-maxing optimizing waysso i have compiled a list of revised skills and a new system that i think might be worth trying in a campaign to see how others like it (otherwise i wouldn't be posting it)
heres the list:
Athletics[STR]
Articulate[DEX]
Business[WIS]
Diplomacy[CHA]
Intimidate[CHA]
Knowledge(Anthropology)
Knowledge(Arcana)
Knowledge(Dungeoneering)
Knowledge(Nature)
Knowledge(Planes)
Knowledge(Religion)
Knowledge(Technology)
Perception[WIS]
Spellcraft[INT]new skills have absorbed the missing ones from the past
Athletics- this should be obvious, i have combined the acrobatics skill with swim and climb, so players who have physically fit characters don't have to waste all their skills being physically fit
Articulate- sleight of hand, stealth, disable device, use rope, fly, and even certain aspects of heal. all of these come from how well you can coordinate, and usually being able to do any one of these things means you should have some skill in the others
Business- this skill, like Profession and Crafting before it, can be divided into separate trades, it incorporates the aforementioned skills as well as Appraise
Diplomacy and Intimidate have absorbed Bluff, because in any matter of using bluff, you are either trying to get someone to cooperate with you (Diplomacy) or coerce them into believing something they otherwise wouldnt (intimidate)
Nobility, Local, and...
I prefer more tightly defined skills to fewer broader skills. Mostly because being Michael Phelps, doesn't make you Michael Jordan, or Michael Piazza, or Michael Ditka, or good at any other unrelated athletic ability.
unless we did something like x times per day, where x was your CON modifer
already suggested that one bro
imo healing magic should trump mundane medicine, and heal checks would require some sort of scaling to make them easy and prevent them from being so complicated that no one can use them
i do like the option of DC 15 for 1 HP of heal, and +5 to the DC for each HP past that, usable a number of times per day as your CON modifier, but it really doesnt sound like a skill at that point, because its a numbered resource
its a mechanic that ive only recently really had to do something with while playing a low level (and thus low magic atm) campaign, so i do understand the merit of heal in certain aspects of the game, but again i want this to look like no skill is any less valuable than all the others (to a certain extent)
coulda sworn that you needed a healer's kit that had 'charges' in it, the same way that to use disable device you needed a thief's kit
perhaps lower the DC?
or create a new system that makes it somewhat equal with lower level healing spells
DC = 15 - CON modifier of the "Healee"
naturally, the tougher my wounded person is, the easier it is to heal them
max damage that can be healed, CON modifier x HD
the amount healed is the difference between the check and the DC
lets look at an example
John the cleric (5th level) wants to Heal his buddy, Joe the fighter (5th level)
Joe is pretty hurt, only at 3 HP, his CON is 16
so John gets out his handy dandy healers kit (which will be mandatory for healing checks) and uses some supplies from it (equal to 1 "charge" of the kit) and takes 10 on his check
John is a pretty powerful cleric, with an 18 WIS, and Heal has a positive affinity for his class
the DC to heal Joe is 15-3, for a total of 12 for the DC, and the max HP Joe can be healed for is 15 (his CON times his HD)
John takes 10 and gets (10 roll + 3 skill affinity + 4 WIS modifier + 5 ranks) = 22
22- the 12 DC = 10 HP
so by taking 10 on this check, John the 5th level cleric can restore 10 HP of Joes
had he rolled a 15, he would have gotten a 27, and would have been able to heal him for his full amount of possible healing for the check
should someone be able to use this more than once a day? will it be OP if we do that? remember healing kits are cheap compared to magic wands, and even if you invest in a Masterwork one (which would add +2 circumstance bonus) it still wouldnt cost anywhere near as much to do that kind of healing basically without having to do any effort, because remember, we took 10 on this check
Im ok with mundane healing doing this kind of thing, because i placed a limit on how much HP you can recover per day, NOT a limit on how much you can use the skill
of course, if you have already used the skill that day, the DC should go up +5 each time, but even if you make the check, you still cant heal for more HP per day than HD x CON modifier
the DCs stay static, but the amount you can Heal, and the maximum that can be healed scale with your level, and naturally those with higher CON bonuses are tougher and easier to heal this way
how do you like that design?
or just keep raising the DC and forget about a maximum number of checks? that sounds like the best solution to me
There also needs to be elaboration in how long the skill takes to use, I'm thinking something along the lines of 1 hour per 10 hp healed
i suppose it depends on the means of treatment
personally, id prefer to treat it as generic healing and not go into specifics about medicine, that is, avoiding things like arteries and broken bones inhibiting movability
1 round per HP sound ok?
10 hp = 1 minute
25 Hp = 2.5 minutes or 25 rounds
well, then lets look at something like this:
20th level "Healer" healing a 20th level "Healee" at +8 CON
max HP that can be healed = 160
heal check rolls natural 20
heal check is 8 (WIS modifer) + 20 (ranks) + 3 (class affinity) = 51
DC = 7
HP healed = 44
i guess letting him heal 44 HP in one minute is okay by me
so the mechanics for heal are reworked, anything else i need to look at before i organize a play test?