Jefferson Krogh's page

Hi Jason,

I agree with your rationale about upgrading base classes vis a vis the prestige classes. (Count me as someone who looks at the PrC experiment as a well-intended misstep.)

However, power creep is also evident in each of the races, as well as the progression of base feats and skills granted to all classes as they rise in level. What is the rationale here, and is it really necessary? To maintain backwards compatibility, you need to keep power creep to an absolute minimum. Granting feats that much faster will break a lot of higher-level things in pre-Pathfinder publications.

If your rationale is avoiding "dead levels", then perhaps you could do something like this:

* Keep feat progression as it is in 3.5 now: level 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18.

* Pick up additional skills at levels 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20. (This would address my concern about high-level PCs having far more skills than in 3.5.)

* Ability boosts stay at 4, 8, 12, 16, 20.

This leaves "dead levels" at 7, 13, and 19, but those can be addressed by changes to the base classes, as you're already doing.

-j

I'm in the camp that doesn't see the benefit that skill points give for all the time they take, especially when you add multiclassing, the possibility of INT increases from levelling up, etc.

On the other hand, I'm concerned that the Alpha rules give characters too many skills as they go up in levels.

It might be a good idea to present the Pathfinder skill system as the "standard" one, and then offer the more granular skill points option for those who want the extra customization.