Skill ranks with 30 Hit Dice?


Advice


I am building an NPC/Enemy for a campaign I'm running who is an awakened animal 20 racial Hit Dice (after awakening) and also a 10th-level wizard. Normally when I make monsters with class levels, I mostly give maximum ranks in a group of skills. However, at 30 HD, I'm wondering if there are any skills that are worth putting 30 ranks into, or if I should cap most of them at 20 and spread them out wider. So, what skills is it worth having 30 ranks in, particularly for a wizard who is a very large and powerful animal? I know I want ranks in Spellcraft, Knowledge (Arcana), and some social skills (intimidate, sense motive, maybe bluff and diplomacy) with options for linguistics and other knowledges, especially planes. I'm just wondering where diminishing returns on more ranks catches up.


social skills are always good to max, they are similar to bab in that you can never have enough. Knowledge are interesting when maxed out at extremely high levels because it implies you know weird stuff. Finally craft. A high craft is not all that impressive, as you can just buy that stuff for relatively cheap anyways. However a ridiculously high craft implies you can create nearly impossible things. For example if you have +50 to craft weapons say (some spells would help him get there as he is a wizard you can do this easily), you could take ten and get 60. With a craft check of 60 you could easily make a non magical steam powered gear-box melee weapon with a ridiculous damage dice. craft ship 60 you could make a ship that could fly mundanely. craft stonemason 60 and you could invent a material stronger than adamantine with a hardness of 30+.

Have fun with it.


spellcraft with 30 ranks and all the other bonuses with arcane crafter universalist wizard and start work on an artifact? Acrobatics might make sense to to tumble through any threatened zone


Any contested skill might need max ranks.
Examples include Stealth, Perception, Bluff, Sense Motive, Acrobatics, and Ride (if you have Mounted Combat).


#1 - Perception. It is the gift that keeps giving. couple that with almost all high HD animals have skill focus perception.

All the ones that Gauss mentioned + diplomacy.

In my home campaign Disable Device and Use Magic Device get some very high targets. YMMV

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