House rules against Linear Warriors - Quadratic Wizards?


Homebrew and House Rules

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Good stuff on the skills. I would still like to see rules for what you can do if you take -30, -50, -70 to a skill.

Had a rogue with a 88 in disable device. I let him pick locks as a swift action for -50 and free action for -70. Still a move action to open the door.


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Mathius wrote:
Good stuff on the skills. I would still like to see rules for what you can do if you take -30, -50, -70 to a skill.

I prefer "if you have X ranks as a class skill" to "if you take -Y to the check," because if PF it's easy to rack up really insanely gigantic skill bonuses with very few ranks. A minimum rank requirement allows you to keep the abilities level-appropriate, and specifying it as a class skill makes rogues feel special.

Dark Archive

I'd go one further (to protect skill classes) and have skill tiers. Mechanics (Novice): You can id mechanical devices and can attempt to disable simple devices, Mechanics (Proficient): You can attempt to disable moderate to Complex devices, etc, etc.
This eliminates the "this stat boost gives me +X" or "this spell gives me +X" that effectively negates the skill investment system.

So a spell that gives you climbing gives you X bonus and climbing at you already invested skill level - so it would probably be better to cast it on a tier invested character(Rogue or someone with climbing) vs. the wizard with an Str of 8.

I've always hated the overly simplistic "I throw numbers at it" approach of 3rd ed based games.

It also wouldn't hurt to cap some things off of base stats - Aka the Cha 8 guy with 10 ranks in Diplomacy should not be making checks at 9, or if he is doing it at a 9 it should be a restricted in results as a 9 because he is a Cha 8 character.


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Kirth Gersen wrote:
Mathius wrote:
Good stuff on the skills. I would still like to see rules for what you can do if you take -30, -50, -70 to a skill.
I prefer "if you have X ranks as a class skill" to "if you take -Y to the check," because if PF it's easy to rack up really insanely gigantic skill bonuses with very few ranks. A minimum rank requirement allows you to keep the abilities level-appropriate, and specifying it as a class skill makes rogues feel special.

Not only that, without magical augmentation it is impossible to obtain such huge checks.

Far better to hand this stuff out based on ranks. Unfortunately, skill ranks coming off of the Int Stat mandates some of the best stuff be locked behind your 'as a class skill' clause lest Wizards and Witches get goodies intended for martials.


Wow, those skill abilities went over way better than I expected. I will make a thread about them so everyone can explore them further and make suggestions. Also I think I will move the climb and swim speed ones down in ranks so that they activate at 5 ranks, improve at 10, and improve again at 15. Thank you Gunsmith Paladin for that suggestion.


Adam B. 135 wrote:
Wow, those skill abilities went over way better than I expected. I will make a thread about them so everyone can explore them further and make suggestions.

We had a similar thread not too long ago, that I stopped posting similar suggestions in because I stopped getting feedback.


Kirth Gersen wrote:
Adam B. 135 wrote:
Wow, those skill abilities went over way better than I expected. I will make a thread about them so everyone can explore them further and make suggestions.
We had a similar thread not too long ago, that I stopped posting similar suggestions in because I stopped getting feedback.

Oh? Do you think I should necro it instead of making my own? Also I made a googledoc for them in case anyone wants access to them (with the new climb and swim talents mentioned earlier)

Skill Talents


Adam B. 135 wrote:

Skill Talents

I'd make the greater versions of swim and climb give a climb and swim speed equal to your land speed. It's level 15. Casters have access to 8th level spells. I sincerely doubt you'll hear the words, "A 30 foot climb speed?! That's straight broken!", at any table.

Hiker, Greater could probably allow them to take a 5 foot step in rough terrain without any real balance issues that I can think of.


Gunsmith Paladin wrote:
Adam B. 135 wrote:

Skill Talents

I'd make the greater versions of swim and climb give a climb and swim speed equal to your land speed. It's level 15. Casters have access to 8th level spells. I sincerely doubt you'll hear the words, "A 30 foot climb speed?! That's straight broken!", at any table.

Hiker, Greater could probably allow them to take a 5 foot step in rough terrain without any real balance issues that I can think of.

I think I will go through with that for the swimming and climbing talents.

However, since these rules exist for my own house ruled games, that kind of change to hiker would actually step on the toes of something I already house ruled in my game. Like, for vanilla pathfinder that is cool, and you should definitely let Hiker do that. But in my home game, all the difficult terrain feats were combined into one scaling feat.


Adam B. 135 wrote:
Kirth Gersen wrote:
Adam B. 135 wrote:
Wow, those skill abilities went over way better than I expected. I will make a thread about them so everyone can explore them further and make suggestions.
We had a similar thread not too long ago, that I stopped posting similar suggestions in because I stopped getting feedback.

Oh? Do you think I should necro it instead of making my own? Also I made a googledoc for them in case anyone wants access to them (with the new climb and swim talents mentioned earlier)

Skill Talents

I straight up merged Swim and Climb into Athletics. You can make EITHER an athletics OR acrobatics check to jump (jump used to be str based and now it's dex based with Acro). Some of the skill perks give you Run and Endurance as feats, which are neat to have but not worth a feat slot 99% of the time.


Adam B. 135 wrote:
Kirth Gersen wrote:
Adam B. 135 wrote:
Wow, those skill abilities went over way better than I expected. I will make a thread about them so everyone can explore them further and make suggestions.
We had a similar thread not too long ago, that I stopped posting similar suggestions in because I stopped getting feedback.

Oh? Do you think I should necro it instead of making my own? Also I made a googledoc for them in case anyone wants access to them (with the new climb and swim talents mentioned earlier)

Skill Talents

Hmmm... Mind if I steal some of these ideas? :)


Lemmy wrote:
Adam B. 135 wrote:
Kirth Gersen wrote:
Adam B. 135 wrote:
Wow, those skill abilities went over way better than I expected. I will make a thread about them so everyone can explore them further and make suggestions.
We had a similar thread not too long ago, that I stopped posting similar suggestions in because I stopped getting feedback.

Oh? Do you think I should necro it instead of making my own? Also I made a googledoc for them in case anyone wants access to them (with the new climb and swim talents mentioned earlier)

Skill Talents

Hmmm... Mind if I steal some of these ideas? :)

Go for it? Thats what these forums are supposed to be for after all. Change anything you want!

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