Compremises and Solutions on Skills


Skills & Feats


ok, seeing at least 3 posts...and seeing so much talk on both sides on the fence, I think the best solution is a compremise between them...I dunno if this post is generate such but I figured I try.

first...I think that Naughty Jester's suggestion in the Skill post works well...and seems to solve most of the major complaint from the skill pointers

Naughty Jester wrote:

I like the new skill system in many ways, but I can see the desire for a measure of "not automatically max skilled" as well.

What if the number of Skill Choices were doubled, and instead of having Cross-Class and Class levels of ability, those same values were used for Trained and Mastery.

Spend 1 Skill Choice, and you have skill bonuses at Trained level (the Cross-Class bonus now). Spend a second Skill Choice on the same skill, and you get it at Mastery level (the Class bonus now).

Instead of the level of the skill being based on whether it is a Class Skill or not, the *cost* of the skill is based on that. The basic cost (1 Skill Choice) above is for Class Skills; Cross Class Skills cost double (2 Skill Choices for Trained and 2 more for Mastery).

It would make it possible for a character to master a Cross Class Skill, but it would cost 4 Skill Choices to pull that off (or optionally, no more than 2 Skill Choices could be spent in any one skill, so a Cross Class Skill can never be mastered).

Then at the current Skill Levels, characters get 2 more Skill Choices, but maybe they can't raise any skill more than one increase. So a character can go from Untrained to Trained or Trained to Mastery in one level, but they can't go from straight from Untrained to Mastery in that same time.

There were also some worries about Prestige Classes and Multiclassing.

1)for Prestige classes, probably the easiest adjustment(as been suggested) is to change it from "skill at x level" to "trained in X skill" which can be "Mastery at X skill" if something like Naughty's suggestion somehow was added

2)for Multiclass, to me the easiest way for the system to work it would be that the level bonus of the skill is equal to the level of the class that it was trained under.

RPG Superstar 2009 Top 16, 2012 Top 32

Yet another skill thread! Time for some more cut and paste.

As I've remarked elsewhere (and people are surely tired of me pointing out by now), I agree with the basic premise of Naughty Jester's suggestion, as stated above: a skill can be Untrained, Trained, or Mastered.

I would implement such a system thusly: class skills chosen on 1st level are Mastered; cross-class skills chosen on 1st level are Trained. After 1st level, class and cross-class doesn't matter any more. A chosen skill improves to Trained if it was Untrained or Mastered if it was already Trained.

Skill selection would be slightly front-loaded, so the starting skill choices of the various classes should all probably be within four points of one another (either add 2 choices to low-skill-choice classes or knock 2 choices off high-skill-choice classes to balance things out).

EDIT: Note that this particular implementation of three-tiered skills doesn't have any problems with multiclassing. Since the class/cross-class distinction only matters on 1st level, multiclass characters and single-classed character gain skills in exactly the same way. No extra bookkeeping necessary.

Alternately, if you wanted to emphasize the differences between characters with different class combos, you could add the ease-to-implement stipulation that a character cannot Master a skill unless he belongs to at least one class listing it as a class skill.

(Okay, I'm done spamming this idea now. Even if someone starts another skills thread. I promise.)

Scarab Sages

I think, considering this update is supposed to be backward-compatible with existing 3.5 material, there shouldn't be a major rewrite of the Skill mechanics.

Possibly the best compromise solution is to have them work as-is, with some changes to the list of skills and class skill lists. Anyone who wants to play skills more like the Pathfinder alpha rules can simply max out a number of skills and keep them maxed out. That doesn't give you the "new skill every so often" deal, but it's less overhead than spreading your skill points thinner.

A sidebar in the final Pathfinder RPG book could recommend alternate systems, like the Untrained/Trained/Mastered idea, with notes on how to adjust existing monsters and NPCs accordingly.

( or, just had idea, possibly an "alternate rules" section in the final product of stuff that didn't make it in )

While I have my own ideas about updates to the Skill mechanic (posted somewhere else here on the boards), I think the key for any revisions in Pathfinder RPG is one simple question: how well does this integrate with existing 3.5 mechanics? You don't always have to err on the "less change the better" side, but if there are going to be major updates to mechanics that involve more than simply layering new things on the existing rules foundation, it will be important to understand how that will affect people who (like me) intend to include non-Pathfinder 3.5 material in their Pathfinder RPG games.


Epic Meepo wrote:
I agree with the basic premise of Naughty Jester's suggestion, as stated above: a skill can be Untrained, Trained, or Mastered.

I would like to see the DC for skill in a range between 1 and 20 and forgot about the class/level bonuses. Also, spending a feat on a skill should matter. It does not if a 20th level character get +20 to his roll.

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