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At what point do you feel any more bonuses to a skill is offers minimal returns? When do you feel that Skill X with Bonus +Y is enough for your PFS adventuring needs?
Appraise
Bluff
Climb
Craft
Diplomacy
Disable Device
Disguise
Escape Artist
Fly
Handle Animal
Heal
Intimidate
Knowledge
Linguistics
Perception
Perform
Profession
Sense Motive
Sleight of Hand
Spellcraft
Stealth
Survival
Swim
Use Magic Device
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Most skills: +10-15. That will let you take 10 and beat the DC 20-25 skill checks.
On some skills more is better and you shouldn't stop. Ex: Acrobatics to avoid AoO, Knowledges to identify monsters, Perception.
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I think the answer would be totally different depending on the character, by a lot.
For example, my Bard has ranks Perform (dance) to fuel her masterpiece (Dance of the 23 steps). The more ranks I can get it in the better! so almost no cap.
For almost all my melee builds, I find 3 ranks in acrobatics for extra AC when fighting defensively/total defense is a worthy investment. For my ninja, I try to max acrobatics to keep up with monster's CMD's for tumbling purposes.
Here are some ideas:
Acrobatics: 3 ranks for bonuses to FD and total defense. Max if you want to tumble a lot.
Climb: Do you have a knotted rope and a grappling hook? Then a +4 modifier should be all you need. +9 if you want to fast climb it.
Craft: I would only max for craft (alchemy) if I was an Alchemist.
Disable Device: I have seen up to a DC 40 trap. So either 1 rank to be able to assist others, or go max ranks.
Fly: Usually, I want as much modifier as to be able to tap the hover check, so +19 after maneuverability modifiers.
Handle Animal: Assuming you are a pet class, you want +9 minimum to tap handling an animal, eventually +24 to tap a "push" if needed.
Heal: Usually a +10 is all you need so you can take 10 for treating deadly wounds. Beating a poison/disease DC can also be useful, but for disease you may be allowed to take 20, with a +10 that's a DC 30 disease.
Knowledge: Here it varies a LOT. Obviously, the knowledges used to identify monsters are more valuable than the other ones. It depends on your class. If you are a wizard specialized in fire spells, you REALLY should know if your enemies are immune to fire, so the investment is more worth it to you.
Perception: Never goes out of style. If you have Perception as a class skill you usually want to max this sucker.
Perform: Usually for bards only, you want to put some heavy points into any perform skills you are using for Versatile Performance and/or probably one for Countersong.
Spellcraft: Usually max as well. Identifying spells is useful but also identifying items using detect magic. +19 identifies all spells up to level 5 spells, and +29 should identify almost all items you find in PFS.
Survival: +5 and taking 10 prevents you from becoming lost in most conditions.
Swim: Assuming you have NO way to get a swim speed, I'd shoot for a non-negative score. Allows you to then take 10 in calm waters to swim. Failing by 5 or more is the bad one. Usually it's better to have a way to get a swim speed.
Use Magic Device: This is the big one. My characters with UMD have either 1 rank (for characters who only need it to use wands/scrolls outside combat, like for longstrider) or I try to get them to +19 so I can't fail to activate wands. If you rely heavily on scrolls you may want a bit more.
Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate, Sleight of Hand, Sense Motive: These are used almost exclusively with opposed rolls, so the higher your mod the higher your chances of pulling off what you are trying to do. Sense Motive has the exception of DC 15 to tell if someone is dominated or 25 to sense other enchantments.
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Depends on the skill, and what you are using it for.
Craft/Perform/Profession- if they arent your Day Job or you dont need them for something specific, then you probably dont need to worry about getting it really high.
Swimming, generally, only gets so difficult, so if you can reliably make a difficult Swim check, then you could probably stop. You dont get faster in the water by having a high check.
Survival and Handle Animal dont seem to get much harder than the basic DCs listed in the book, so it would depend on what you think you are going to encounter.
Climb is kinda irrelevant if you have a knotted rope, a grappling hook, and a minor bonus.
Climb is kinda irrelevant if you have a knotted rope, a grappling hook, and a minor bonus.
So true. Played MotFF the other day. Taking Ten on my DC 0 climb check (Knotted rope + wall for brace). Sink 1 point in climb.
Handle animal
at +9, don't need to roll for tricks it knows.
+11, don't need to roll while the animal is hurt
+15, you can take 10 outside of combat to push the following tricks, meaning you effectively don't need the tricks anymore
Defend, Guard, perform, stay, track, work, detect, entertain, hunt, watch.
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Handle animal
at +9, don't need to roll for tricks it knows.
+11, don't need to roll while the animal is hurt
+15, you can take 10 outside of combat to push the following tricks, meaning you effectively don't need the tricks anymore
Defend, Guard, perform, stay, track, work, detect, entertain, hunt, watch.
If you're only using the skill for your animal companion, you can reduce all the values required by four.
For my characters that do summons, Linguistics tops out with knowing all the languages for summoned creatures. So that's the four elemental languages, celestial and whatever demons and devils speak. So seven ranks is all one needs.
Agreed with Lab Rat. +10-15 is enough to let you make 90% of skill checks for most skills.
And then you get to Perception, where it starts chuckin' DC 31 checks at you by level 6.
For a heavy armor martial character three ranks of acrobatics.
A lot of the lesser used skills you are best off making 1 point wonders for the class skill bonus, if they are class skills.
As an alchemist, you need to make DC 30 checks to craft the hardest items.
Taking 10, and using Crafter's Fortune (and why wouldn't you?), you need a 15, and with your class bonus and a +2 lab, that's easily level 4 or 5.