Background Skills as GM


Homebrew and House Rules

Dark Archive

Do you use the Background Skills optional rule in your campaign? Do you update the creature and NPC skills to match (updating the stat block) or do you leave them as is, only having the PCs use the optional rule?

Thinking of using this optional rule or the Consolidated Skills option for my next campaign.

Grand Lodge

I use Automatic Bonus Progression and Background Skills in my games. I generally keep the background skills PC only. I think my players have enjoyed the extra skills. I'd recommend it.


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The background skills are largely irrelevant for NPCs. NPCs know exactly what they need to know because plot. I keep them PC only.
Also really good optional rule - I like it both as GM and player.

Dark Archive

Awesome, thank you!


I use both consolidate skills (pc and npc) and background skills (pc only). I really like both options (in fact most of the options in Unchained have become "the norm" in my games). Consolidated skills is kind of a pain in the ass to implement (especially if you run a bunch of homebrew/3rd party classes), but IMO the extra work is worth it.

Dark Archive

Childeric, The Shatterer wrote:
I use both consolidate skills (pc and npc) and background skills (pc only). I really like both options (in fact most of the options in Unchained have become "the norm" in my games). Consolidated skills is kind of a pain in the ass to implement (especially if you run a bunch of homebrew/3rd party classes), but IMO the extra work is worth it.

Curious why you would include background skills. Is it to include the 4 skills consolidated skills eliminated (appraise, craft, engineering, profession)? Many of the background-assigned skills appear to have been rolled up into consolidated skills, so shouldn't the 2 options be exclusive to each other?


ckdragons wrote:
Childeric, The Shatterer wrote:
I use both consolidate skills (pc and npc) and background skills (pc only). I really like both options (in fact most of the options in Unchained have become "the norm" in my games). Consolidated skills is kind of a pain in the ass to implement (especially if you run a bunch of homebrew/3rd party classes), but IMO the extra work is worth it.

Curious why you would include background skills. Is it to include the 4 skills consolidated skills eliminated (appraise, craft, engineering, profession)? Many of the background-assigned skills appear to have been rolled up into consolidated skills, so shouldn't the 2 options be exclusive to each other?

There's also the 2 BG skills introduced in Unchained (artistry and Lore). Plus, it gives me a place to put other skills (knowledge (martial) from path of war, or knowledge (psionics) from ultimate psionics), etc.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I trade off GMing with my partner, and we always use background skills and the Artistry and Lore skills, but not the consolidated skills. I really like them because they can add some more flavor to a character (my slayer at the moment has a bunch of ranks in Craft [woodworking] and my wizard has Perform [violin]). It doesn't often have in-game effects, but when it does, it's pretty neat. It can also help low skill point classes (looking at you, sorcerer) get a little more rounded.

We don't use them for NPCs/creatures, though. I wouldn't really consider it necessary.


We haven't been using background skills in my campaign, but I wish we had. My players are luckily pretty skill-heavy, so they don't feel bad about sinking a couple ranks into Profession (cobbler) for RP, but I wish I'd known about the system from the get-go.

I wonder how much of a pain it'd be to make the transition mid-campaign.


DrunkInRlyeh wrote:

We haven't been using background skills in my campaign, but I wish we had. My players are luckily pretty skill-heavy, so they don't feel bad about sinking a couple ranks into Profession (cobbler) for RP, but I wish I'd known about the system from the get-go.

I wonder how much of a pain it'd be to make the transition mid-campaign.

Real easy. I did it level 11 or so in a campaign from 1-17 with no problems.


I love background skills, often they open up character niches that I wouldn't otherwise see.

I'm also a fan of variant uses for Craft and Profession to substitute for various other skill checks, so it opens things up a lot to characters to delve into other roles without needing to gimp their characters by wasting feats or other resources on rp stuff.

I'm looking to see about incorporating a house rule that opens up background skills to also include skills attained from traits. For instance, if someone took a trait to get Perception as a class skill, they could use bg skills on it instead of normal skills. This has yet to be tested.


I really like background skills and use them in all of my games. :)

DrunkInRlyeh wrote:
I wonder how much of a pain it'd be to make the transition mid-campaign.

It's super easy! If your players haven't invested in any background skills, they just get level * 2 extra skill points that can only be invested in background skills.

If your players have already invested in background skills, they get a 1-for-1 refund in skill points for those skills, that they can put in other skills. :)


I just recently picked up Pathfinder Unchained, and so far, Background Skills is the option I'm most likely to consider implementing in my current campaign (currently at 3rd, and on hiatus, but intended to go to 20th). My wife's been complaining for ages that hardly any 3.5/PF classes can afford to "waste" a few skill points for RP reasons without becoming dangerously sub-optimal. ;)


Welcome to the fold! Some of my favorite content from Unchained was:

Unchained Rogue, a straight upgrade to the class that solves a lot of the issues the original class had.

Fractional base attack bonuses, really nice if your players love multiclassing.

Background skills, allowing fighters to pick up "RP skills" without hosing their character.

Unchained Diseases and Poisons, much more lethal than the baseline variants. As a GM I love them, as a player I'm a bit less enthusiastic.

Automatic Bonus Progression, really shakes up how players think about magic items and it smooths out the power level a bit since PCs can't invest all their wealth in boosting a single aspect of their character. It's a little bit more work to manage WBL if you play APs, but in my opinion well worth the hassle.

Finally, all of chapter 5. If you want to try your hand on making your own monsters this rules set makes the process very easy. :)

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