khul's page

We think that the goal is to make all skills equally desirable (like the Pathfinder did with base classes :) ). In my experience local knowledge is very low priority skill for ranking and characters use it rarely. Before our revision it was used for npc's or pc's solely for roleplay purposes. And it should be used that way, but it should mean something, it should give visible benefits. It would prove very useful for local-based adventures or campaigns.

thanks for your feedback.

There is already a thread concerning this knowledge, but I would like to propose our solution that we have playtested for a while now and it works very well.

Ranks in Knowledge (local) would enable your character to use knowledge skills untrained in a specific location (great city, smaller country, barony/province, coast... whatever DM decides that is logical whole). Further, for each five ranks in Kn(local) trained characters would get +1 on the appropriate knowledge checks.

Example:
If Roger Wilco has knowledge (Local) for the Cursed valley (estranged part of a large kingdom) he can try his local knowledge check to see if he would recognize heraldry of local houses (nob&roy), remember the history of the valley (history), tell about local temperatures and terrain (geography), even know something about vampires that haunted the valley 30 years ago (religion), so on.

Roger has studied history for some time now and after a while he became a teacher (Kn(Hist): +6). He now knows a bit more about the history of the valley than his even-leveled colleagues from the great city because he has +2 on history checks due to his kn(Local): +7.

This check can only be allowed by DM for a character to know something from other knowledge skills that is specially tied to the appropriate locale. Other than these conditions it cannot be used to simulate other knowledge skills.

1-5 +1
6-10 +2
11-15 +3
16-20 +4

thanks.

Hi.
This being my first post for Pathfinder I apologize for I must say a few words in general.
First of all I would like to say that my friends and I, hardcore gamers since 2ed D&D (s1994.), regret the current conception of the 4e, its utter commercialization and vulgar simplification (although there are several interesting and progressive ideas like rituals or complex skill checks).
On the other hand, we recently found out about Paizo Pathfinder and we want to express our deepest thanks to the developers and the community that helped its realization. We have only words of praise for the freshness of new ideas and a will to preserve and improve authentic role-playing experience as we know it. Thank you.

We recently started playtesting the system and we think that skill system is the most problematic chapter (as in all DnD editions). We salute the merging of some skills, but we think that Perception skill should not contain Search skill. Further, we think that Search should be an independent skill that will base on Intelligence (or Int/Wis average - see below).

1. Nature argument: Perception represents the use of senses, which are mostly an involuntary reactions of the body. We must block our senses not to feel, but to find something out we must activate our brain. Making perception contain all the senses is a great improvement, but we think that Search is different operation overall. We sure use senses for searching, but primary we use our cognitive functions and experience for finding that which is concealed. Senses are a medium here.
2. Technical argument: Also, we can search the appropriate area by not using only sight, but also a hearing, smell or touch.
3. Gaming argument: I dislike the idea that the best searchers (for trapdoors, traps, hidden compartments...) in my party would be druids and rangers. If the perception skill is maxed for druid, ranger and rogue, certainly that the first two classes will have higher wisdom scores than rogue, and so they will be primary dungeon, city/mansion-investigation :), trapfinding searchers.
4. Balance argument: Making Search an independent skill will make rogues a little less generic. I say this because we realized that rogues can hold max on almost all important skills with search in perception.
5. New idea: There is a more complex idea about designating which attribute should count for an appropriate skill, we thought that for some skills you could use an average between two scores (for example Search (Avrg Int&Wis).

We think that skill system should be made so that all skills have approximately the same weight and usability. This means consolidating skills, but not for consolidation itself (so that there are fewer skills).
There is also, a similar issue with swim and jump (athletics bundle), but that in another thread.

That's all.
I am sorry if this topic was already discussed, but I wasn't able to find it.

thanks.