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Just a thought regarding the Human Spirit Half-Elf-exclusive racial feat: Does anyone else think perhaps it should be more powerful?
I'm comparing it to the Open-Minded feat originally introduced in 3.5's Expanded Psionics Handbook (or maybe even the 3.0 Psionics Handbook), which just said, "Here's 5 skill points, knock yourself out! *dumps them on character like confetti*" - and of course, a Pathfinderized version is even better. The "1st-level only" restriction only makes it demand more, of course. My initial thought was simply to raise the limit on how many levels Human Spirit continues to grant skill points to 8 or 10, but it's hard to argue with the Psionics Unleashed version of Open Minded (which I ran into only while I was composing this) being a direct, or even ever-so-slightly weaker, parallel to the good old Toughness feat, since Pathfinder's favored class bonus system makes it clear they're considered 1:1.
Another idea I had was to supplement what the feat already offers with opening up the Human line of favored class bonuses, since most (not all, but most) of those knock the socks off what most other races get from theirs.
Opinions?
The only difference I see between those two feat is that one can only be taken by a 1st level half-elf. What am I missing? I'm not sure what you mean when you say "raise the limit on how many levels Human Spirit continues to grant skill points".
I guess I interpreted that differently. I read it as not being able to gain an extra point if you get 4 or more at a particular level, but you are probably right. That being said, it's not really surprising that third party materials contain a more powerful version of the feat. The seems to be SOP for 3PP materials.
I guess I interpreted that differently. I read it as not being able to gain an extra point if you get 4 or more at a particular level, but you are probably right. That being said, it's not really surprising that third party materials contain a more powerful version of the feat. The seems to be SOP for 3PP materials.
In this case, however, I would suggest that the third-party resource (in this case, the Open Mind feat) is superior in terms of balance and viability, when compared to the Primary resource (in this case, the Human Spirit feat).
As IHIYC noted, with the Favored Class benefits, it's pretty clear that 1 hp is roughly equal to 1 skill point; Toughness grants you three hit points or a number of extra hit points equal to your level; this grants you a number of skill points equal to your level (leaving out the additional +3 minimum part).
Now... that said, I can understand why Paizo would want to limit this stuff; in their case, it's to help retain the "unique" nature of humans, as well as to "balance" with the Skill Focus line of feats (which net you "3" skill points, or "6" at above 10th level)... which makes sense: 4 "anywhere" skills compared to 6 "focused" skills. However, there are a few problems with that (not counting the fact that Skill Focus actually allows you to exceed the normal skill rank cap by either 3 or 6).
First, is that the human variants lack some of this apparent eye for balance. For example:
1) the Focused Study alternate racial trait effectively grants three feats for the price of one. This indicates that Skill Focus is not as potent as most other feats; thus providing three-for-one.
2) the Dual Talent alternate racial trait trades a bonus feat and skill points for a second +2 to an ability score... and these are sort of balanced, but that extra +2 actually does (potentially) far more than a feat or skills: if put into intelligence, for example, it provides a +1 bonus to Appraise, all Crafts, all ten(!) Knowledges [caveat: presuming you have a class that accesses them... like bard], Linguistics, and Spellcraft - that's up to 13 additional skill points plus 1 additional skill per level. If place in Constitution instead, it... also has the effect of granting Toughness plus a +1 to fortitude saves... which is not quite as good as getting Toughness and Great Fortitude (by a +1 bonus to fortitude saves, about the same as a trait gives)... suggesting, of course, that a bonus to 13 additional skills (so long as they're all +1s) is roughly the equivalent of a feat, or that an extra skill point per level is roughly equivalent to half of a feat (i.e. a trait). Placing it into strength compares favorably against weapon focus and weapon specialization (as well as increasing your lift capacity and granting you a bonus to climb and swim), while placing it into Dexterity compares favorably to a combination of the Dodge feat, and traits that grant you: +1 initiative, +1 reflex, +1 on all seven dexterity-based skills. Does this mean that Dual Talent is broken in its power? No. Rather, it's not the hard line "this is how many skill points" that determines an effect's power, but rather how high the cap is that determines the effect's power.
3) The "Heart of" abilities are all slightly-better-than-traits, and replace skilled: usually a +2 bonus to two skills, and a +4 bonus to something else (often a save; note: the Heart of the Slums, Heart of the Streets, Heart of the Fields all buck this, but the above covers more than half). Further, you can take a second "Heart of" racial ability... at the cost of a feat. Again, indicating that the "Heart of" abilities are roughly equal in power to the skill points... and roughly equal in power to a feat.
Of course, we could go the other way, too. For example, humans can (as all creatures) take an extra bonus skill point as their favored class skill. Or... they could take one additional sorcerer spell known... per level, which, when compared with expanded arcana (granting two spells; available at 1st, 3rd, 5th, etc) might give the impression that 1 skill point per level is roughly equal to 1 spell lower than your highest per level. Given that, in general, we know the power of spells is superior to the power of skills, we can know that, in general, this isn't true... but it can certainly seem that way.
Okay, so, let's look at what the extra skill point allows us to do, as opposed to the extra hit point. The extra skill point allos us to do... a lot... sort of! We can pick one additional thing to be good at, or lots of additional things to do okay with! This is actually exceedingly potent at lower levels, when a single skill point in a class skill nets you +4 total to that given skill... but it fades in power over time, as typical DCs grow much higher much more quickly than your forever-after +1/level increase for that skill (though netting a bunch of +4s is theoretically possible, it's not really advised if you've got more than one player).
On the other hand, the hit points... well, they aren't that hot in the earliest levels. That 1 or 2 hit points could save your life, true, but it's less likely when facing a 1d8+ damage that they'll make a difference... though once you hit the +3 mark, you're actually doing pretty well for yourself v. a 1d8+ (about half the potential damage, not counting crits, presuming, of course, that your "plus" works along with the weapon's "plus"), which, you know, lines up with about the power that the toughness feat grants you (a minimum of +3)... which actually puts it pretty close to what 1 skill point per level actually gets you to (a "minimum" of +4, unless you put it in a non-class skill, in which case it's +1... or, averaging out, +2.5->rounds->+3... huh, almost like it was planned or something...).
So... in the end? The extra skill points are more versatile. That's a given. To me, however, the fact that skills are easily trumped by spells, hit points are necessary for everyone (while skills are not) and that many complain about not having enough skills in the first place means that something like Open Mind makes a lot of sense in terms of design, especially compared to Human Spirit. Although, if I wanted to keep the flavor, I might tend to swap Human Spirit (including prerequisites) with Open Mind, and then increase the number of skills gained to about 12 (almost the equal of an INT increase... almost... and pretty much all you'd need for PFS anyway...), ...
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... unless I just wanted to make two feats, which, of course, I do, meaning that Humans or Half-Elves (and maybe Half-Orcs; heck, maybe any race that qualified by having the (human) subtype) could take Human Spirit, and anyone could take Open Mind.
Actually, that'd be a great idea: it'd net humans a total of +4 extra skill points per level (human 1, favored class 1, feat 1, feat 1), net half-humans +3 extra skill points per level (favored class 1, feat 1, feat 1), and net other races +2 extra skill points per level (favored class 1, feat 1). That... works out pretty neatly, actually. I know a new house rule when I see ooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnneeeeee! :D
Anyway, hope that helps! (And, as always, feel free to come to your own decisions!)