Depends on the build. Of my 6 characters in play, 2 of them take skill points every level. A ninja and a skill starved summoner. 2 others take HP every level, while the last 2 mix. I didn't mean for them to be symmetrical in that respect. It just depends on what the build's priorities are.
Me. I think I would use it even with a rogue. Currently I have ranger/inquisitor and int 15, a still use my inq's favored bonus for skill pts.
I would have to go do a survey of my characters to be sure, and I'm far too lazy to do that, so I'll have to just guess and say that since I started playing Pathfinder, I've been about 50/50 on skill vs hit points, and it boils down to the personality and backstory of the character I created.
Of my active characters I'd say that my druid has put all of hers into hit points, my bard has put half of his into skill and half into hit points and my witch has put all his into skill points.
Almost always the racial favored class options
I chaned.
Originally I always went extra hp. But then I started playing PFS, buck when each scenario had cool faction missions. From there I kept taking skill points over hp.
More skill point means my characters can actually do more :)
Mix of hp, skill points and racial bonus, depending upon race and class combination.
If I'm playing a human inquisitor I use it for spells, but otherwise, yeah, skill points. Even my ninja!
All depends on the character I'm building. Quite often I take alternate favored class though. Some of those are great. Like Half Orc Inquisitor.
Right here. All the time, every time.
-Matt
Depends. If I like the racial option, I choose it. But I'll always pick skill points over hit points. In my experience, it's much harder to get skill points than Hit Points.
I've unilaterally always chosen the extra skillpoints. Every character, every level.
Almost always HP for me. But then I usually play classes with decent skill points to begin with, or good int.
I don't usually mix with a single character just so I don't have to keep track. Enough of that already.
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Looking at my 3 PFS characters:
Fighter/Monk (Favored class fighter) 2 times +1 to CMD for grapple/trip (mostly to make grapple harder to escape early levels), 3 for hp
Paladin/Wizard/Eldritch Knight: hit point (but only got 1 level of favored class bonus)
Bard (Aasimar): 2 times hit points, rest (until 12) will be favored class bonus (+1/2 bardic performance: Naturalist).
So I'd say overall my order is 75% "other", 25% hp. But all of my characters have 6-8 skill points/level, which is more than most get (I do enjoy skill points conceptually; though mechanically they tend to not be as good as we want).
I almost ALWAYS get HP, unless theres a skill falling behind, or a class skill i have yet to train.
I live by the adage, work smarter not harder, so I always take the skill points.
Hit points are boring.
so is the grave
Hit points are boring.
Agreed. It's a rare situation that, at 9th level, I would be dead if not for 9 extra HP. But 9 extra skill points can enable me to do a LOT of cool stuff.
I am somewhat intrigued by the folks who say they ALWAYS take skill points.
To me it's always a role play choice. What sort of character am I playing, and what sort of skills would that character have picked up, or be interested in?
There are a few really important skills in the game. Perception. UMD. Spellcraft. Knowledge: Something.
Other than that (and even those, to a point) skills begin to become overshadowed by spells at a pretty low level. Equipment also makes up for a lot.
I am infamous in our group for being the skill-monkey even when I'm NOT the skill-monkey, so I tend to invest in very useful skills. But I've never really found the extra skill point per level afforded by the favored class bonus to be a big deal for the majority of my characters. I can think of several characters I've played over the years, primarily full casters, who would snicker at the need for skills when they can just wiggle their fingers and be assured of success on most things a skill check could fail on.
I'm rolling a witch for book 4 of RotRL. Having seen 100+ damage crit attacks, I'm going all HP for this build and I still feel squishy with 76 HP.
I am really surprise to see the responses. I am an "always hit point" guy and I just assumed everyone else thinks the same.
Interesting. Not at all what I expected.
Depends on class & level. IMC the sorcerer with 9 Int takes skill points and the rogue with 12 Con takes hp. Otherwise it's typically hp at very low levels where a couple of hp can save your life, and skills thereafter because healing is cheap.
I'll tell you my darkest secret: not only I never even considered assigning those points to something different than skills, but when I did my personal errata-revisions for Bestiaries 1, 2 and 3 (most of which you can see in the related threads), whenever I found a creature with class levels who assigned the favorite class bonus to HP, I ripped off that page of the book and burned it over a pentagram.
All the time, every time, no exceptions?
Can't recall ever using it for extra hp at any point...
I can't recall not using it for hit points. Except on human sorcerers.
*Puffs in*
Always skills. I like being able to do something outside combat
*Puffs out*
I don't think I've ever taken hp or skills. I use racial all the way.
We just pretend the racial options don't exist.
My fighters and paladins always use either skill points or racial bonuses. My fighter can take toughness for more HP, and the paladin has lay on hands. The one rogue I played used it for skills, but that was because there was a barbarian and a ranger. Combat was covered. If I played non-combat characters, they'd probably take the HP. But fighting without using a sword isn't my thing.
I like characters with skills, but I have gone the hit point route before. Sometimes I just want to do damage.
