Consolidated skills and skill unlocks do they work together and how ?


Rules Questions


Consolidated skills and skill unlocks do they work together and how ?


some more context and explanation would be helpful


The ultimate answer is "it's up to your GM".

If you want to make them work together, you have two options:

1. You consolidate the Unlocks as well. Take Skill Unlock Athletics instead of Climb+Swim+Acrobatics.

2. You leave the Unlocks separate, and simply apply Skill Unlock: Climb to their Athletics skill when they use it to climb something.

They weren't explicitly designed to work together, but if you want to use them together go for it.


ojamojallo wrote:
some more context and explanation would be helpful

Consolidated Skills and Skill Unlocks are two new rules concepts in Pathfinder:Unchained, skill unlocks grant extra abilities associated with different skills, and consolidated skills combines many skills into one (see the above mentioned athletics).

The issue is that their are no skill unlocks for the skills created from the consolidated skills option.


Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

As Kestral says, you could very easily grant the skill unlocks abilities for all the (old) skills now subsumed under the consolidated skills category.

Personally, I hate the consolidated skills option, because for me skills and frequent skill use are such an integral part of the games I play, which are at most about 20% combat oriented, and 80% interaction, roleplay, investigation, diplomacy and the like.

I like the skill unlocks concept, but find many of them very underwhelming, like the perception unlocks that seem mostly to be about perceiving things whil you're sleeping. Doesn't seem worth a feat, so I guess I'll just use them for any future rogues in my games.


Sorry for not clarifying, but you all answered what I was trying to ask. I guess what I'm confused about now is how do you fit the unchained rogue into the consolidated skills rule set ?


Personally I think Perception is one of the better skill unlocks. The big thing is the reduction for the ranged penalty. At 15 ranks you only take a -5 penalty for being 200’ away instead of -20. A person with 15 ranks without the skill unlock is at a net of -5 to notice something, where with the skill unlock you are +10.

The problem with using them together is that consolidated skills are designed to reduce the role of skills, where skill unlocks are designed to increase the role of skills. As such they don’t really work together.


First: I have not checked out the consolidated system closely. However...

Just because the role of skills becomes less complicated, doesn't mean it's less important... If the consolidation makes it easier to boost skills high, then you might be able to make more use of them. Also instead of looking down a long list of skills "aehm... where is x... hm..." to look up your bonus (or press a button if you're playing roll20) you could now have rolling skills work a lot faster (theoretically) - thus increasing the ease at which making them important in the game could play out.

I like both the idea of granting the edge to one of the "sub" skills (i.e. old skill) of a category, as well as just allowing it to apply to all in the category.


Wheldrake wrote:
I like the skill unlocks concept, but find many of them very underwhelming, like the perception unlocks that seem mostly to be about perceiving things whil you're sleeping. Doesn't seem worth a feat, so I guess I'll just use them for any future rogues in my games.

Perception is amazing for the boost to detection range. At five ranks it doubles how far out you'll detect somebody. At max it's something like six times the range.

While there's some adjustment for stuff like lightning conditions, in a default open field, a level 20 character with 20 ranks, 10 Wis, Perception not as a class skill, no special bonuses to the skill, automatically knows where everything within 1260' of his location is unless it's deliberately hiding from him-- if he rolls a 1 on his check. 1800' on a ten.

That's already a solid walking radar dish, but some investment (20 Wis, Perception as a class skill, Eyes of the Eagle, a +1 trait bonus) means that on a ten you're at 44*60=2640'. If it's within half a mile of you, you know it's there.

That's awesome.

Some of them do kind of suck though. Appraise is just silly.

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