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Do away with skill points, good idea, making it so it's a single one time training, not my cup o' tea.
Here's my suggestion:
Make it so you can build levels of skill. Perhaps 4/5 categories.
(Apprentice)this would default to the cross-class level d20+1/2 CL+Racial
Journeyman d20+CL+Racial+2 an second skill point to a cross-class.
Expert d20+CL+Racial+4
Master d20+CL+Racial+6
Grandmaster d20+CL+Racial+8
This isn't as complicated as full skill points, it is easy to track on skills.
Skills:Apprentice Acrobat, Master of Perception.
(Shortform): Acrobat(A), Perception(M), Diguise (GM).
Make it so it's not quite so level dependent to have decent skills, thus making NPCs with low levels completely worthless for craft purposes.
In addition, no class should only have 2+int trained skills. Minimum should be 4+int in my opinion. Or..give certain classes training in 2+int in addition to certain class granted skills, 2 knowledge skills for wizards, Perception for Rangers, etc.
What do you guys think?
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Don't raise the number of points by class. It's just another excuse to make them more powerful. It's not an improvement.
(In my opinion, of course.)
Do you really feel that 2+ int for wizards seems appropriate? How does 4+int break it in your opinion?
I know to me, Fighter Skill points has always been a major thorn.
I like the appreantice to master idea, it gives the PC's alot of stuff to spent their new skills on. and remedies problems like the rogue being trained in too many skills.
While I'm increasingly undecided about the specifics, I have to agree with the OP's overall point:
If Pathfinder drops skill points, there needs to be more granularity than just all or nothing. And part of that granularity should involve training above and beyond that you can gain at 1st level.
While that might be the case, whatever is developed needs to be as backwards compatible to 3.5 as possible, so I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.
I for one though think Alpha's suggested progression works well enough as is, considering very few of my Players ever actually didn't max out their skills, and those that didn't did so because they were having to split things into Hide and Move Silently, or Listen and Spot, or Balance Climb Jump and Tumble. (If you can't figure out where I'm going with this I'm preaching to the deaf anyway.)
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While I'm increasingly undecided about the specifics, I have to agree with the OP's overall point:
If Pathfinder drops skill points, there needs to be more granularity than just all or nothing. And part of that granularity should involve training above and beyond that you can gain at 1st level.
While that might be the case, whatever is developed needs to be as backwards compatible to 3.5 as possible, so I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.
I for one though think Alpha's suggested progression works well enough as is, considering very few of my Players ever actually didn't max out their skills, and those that didn't did so because they were having to split things into Hide and Move Silently, or Listen and Spot, or Balance Climb Jump and Tumble. (If you can't figure out where I'm going with this I'm preaching to the deaf anyway.)
Actually it's still backwards compatible, you just figure that most never get past the Journeyman level. It's as backwards compatible as the alpha system as I see it.
Here's my dilemma with 2+int for fighters in Pathfinder...
In 3.5 with my 10INT Fighter I could take my (2+int)x4=8 skill points...and buy the basic level of skills in more than TWO class-skills... I might only have 1 rank, but at least I had a few trained skills, or possibly a few trained cross-class skills...
In Pathfinder my Fighter is now limited to 2 skills...OUCH!!!!
THAT is why I'm suggesting 4+int
Basically Rogues now have 8+int skills and all of their skills have been consolidated. There is NO reason to have that many skill points for them now. With no int bonus a rogue can get Climb, Acrobatics, Escape Artist Linguistics, Stealth, Theft, Disable and Perception. What else do they really need? Rogues used to be built with at least a little int extra...no need to now.
This will lead to a lot of Rog1/XX19 characters...
I say make it 4+int for all except bard.
There have been a lot of proposed "gradation" skill systems with Journeyman skills, "hobbies," etc. To my mind, these are a "worst of both worlds" scenario: combining the complexity of skill points (with the added difficulty of remembering different types of skills and the rules for each) with the lack of flexibility of the Saga system ("you must pick some skills to max out. You may not assign individual ranks"). This combination seems sure to alienate the substantial number of people who advocate the Saga system for its simplicity, and ALSO alienate the not insignificant portion who want to be able to assign skills on a rank-by-rank basis.
Then again, someone once said that a compromise is a solution that makes neither side happy.