Shinwasha's page

With Improved Sniping
Benefit: You take only a -10 penalty to your Stealth skill instead of -20 when sniping.

and Stealth Skill Unlock
With sufficient ranks in Stealth, you earn the following.

5 Ranks: Reduce the Stealth penalty from sniping by 10.

Does that make the penalty for sniping 0? Or are they both competence bonuses and cancel each other out?

The way it could be read is that with Improved Sniping you take only a -10 penalty instead of the -20 and then with the skill unlock it reduces the penalty by 10.

Also I realized just now Wizard's get hammered harder now with keeping spells. Take 10 damage and you have a DC of 20. In pathfinder to hold the spell it's caster level plus int mod so for a 2nd level wizard with int of 19 that's 2+4=6. So you have to roll a 15+. In 3.5 Caster Level + Concentration. So for the same wizard having a con of 15 with max concentration that would be 2+5+2 = 9. So you need an 11+.

Decipher Script is covered by Linguistics, which has the added bonus of giving you free languages with every rank.

Concentration is indeed no longer a skill, but it's your level+your casting stat, so unless you had some crazy thing giving you bonuses to the skill (which can almost definitely be converted to something that gives a bonus on concentration checks), the practical upshot is that you just get a free skill point per level out of the deal.

Things you are likely to miss if you're overly familiar with 3.5 and just skimming over the Pathfinder rules looking for changes:

Non-class skills no longer cost you double the skill points. All class skills give you now is a one time +3 bonus to the skill if you have at least one rank in it. So, particularly at higher levels where you have massive skill check overkill going on, it's really not at all a big deal to have non-class skills.

There's this whole "favored class bonus" thing where for each level in your favored class (which works out to just "each level" if you aren't multiclassing) you get a choice of either an extra skill point, or an extra hit point (or some third option based on your specific race/class combo).

AS for the traits we are running a house rule game and all we have right now is the Core Rulebook.
Wizards have d6s for HP.

Rather than a familiar you aren't necessarily going to do much with, you can start off with a special magic item that gives you a free wild card spell slot every day. As in, once per day, regardless of what's memorized, you can use it to cast any spell in your spellbook.

You get a set of nifty innate bonuses based on what school you specialize in.

Spells from prohibited schools are no longer prohibited, they just take up two spell slots when memorized.

I actually choose wizard for the familiar, because I do a lot of things with a flying familiar and I like how in pathfinder it doesn't hurt you if the familiar dies. I have an owl which when we are traveling is our rear guard scout. Familiars are very handy.

Wizards do look pretty good after reading many things in pathfinder I just feel they don't get as many benefits as the other classes. That extra hit point at lower levels is great but I'm already running into having too many skill points. But then again when I hit 10th level (going pure wizard as my character wouldn't be interested in any of the prestige classes i've seen. [His whole goal in life is to obtain as much magical knowledge as possible]) I could go rogue and get the +3 in all my cross class skills, and never change back.

Uh... you should go look at traits in the future... this can be found in the free section of this site here... and putting ranks in cross class skills is hardly as punishing as it used to be so I would consider atleast branching out if you are having issues using all of your skill points. And I'd hardly say Wizards got screwed Skill point wise. I converted a 3.5 Wizard to Pathfinder and absolutely loved the outcome.

Keep reading everything, you'll find that it'll work out for the better.

That's the problem with the cross class I have a problem with. you multiclass and you magically know how to use the skill better. I'm pretty sure we aren't doing anything with traits.

I like how specializing actually does something now, and the DM is letting me do it with the conversion and I'm going to take Transmutation as I'm going as a buff wizard. I just feel Wizard skill wise in 3.5 get screwed and in this get bent over even further. Having an INT Mod of +4 I just have too many skill points to use.

So my friends and I started with 3.5 D&D and are not converting to pathfinder. I'm finding Wizards get the absolute least benefit in converting, especially with the sever lack of class skills. I have never and don't plan on it taking cross class skills because I consider it as something my characters would never do. The fact that concentration is no longer even a skill just makes me mad. I got three skills that don't convert over in Deciper Script, concentration and Diplomacy (GM) gave as class skill for background. Is it worth it put those into Knowledges or just ignore the skill points all together?