Problem with Perform setting the DC of bard abilities.

[Estrosiath]

Hi, a friend of mine pointed out a major problem within the system.

If you let the result of a perform check set the DC for saving throws against bardic abilities, such as deadly performance, you absolutely need to either point out that spells/magic items that add bonuses to the perform check do not work on such a roll, or either change the way those spells/magic items function. Otherwise a 20th level bard is an absolute death machine, much worse than any pre-pathfinder necromancer could have ever hoped to be.

This is also true for skills like Acrobatics, which actually provide bonuses in battles, like not getting hit by AoO. The modification you did was very much in the right direction (it is now harder to move through the threatened area of opponents with high BABs), but it is rendered useless if you can easily obtain items that grant up to +30 to the check.

This also holds true for classes who gain a lot of skill points per level - it supposed to give them an edge over the others in a certain way, but if you keep the price of a +10 magic item the way it is now, their advantages are easily nullified. Same deal if you keep the level/duration of spells that grant bonuses to abilities at the same level.

Spells/Magic items like that ensure that feats like Skill focus, which grants a modest +3, are almost never taken by spellcasters, unless they are needed to reach a prestige class. And it is my opinion that "Waste a feat" should not be a pre-req for any PrC - I'd like every feat to be useful, although I realize some will remain more useful than others.

Case in point, glibness vs Skill focus Bluff - +30 vs +3.

I would also like to point out that I prefer the skill system where no class has a set of skills set in stone. Much better, in my opinion, to have a system where every character picks which skill he has learned. I see no reason to limit access to skills based on class.

[hogarth]

Estrosiath wrote:

Hi, a friend of mine pointed out a major problem within the system.

If you let the result of a perform check set the DC for saving throws against bardic abilities, such as deadly performance, you absolutely need to either point out that spells/magic items that add bonuses to the perform check do not work on such a roll, or either change the way those spells/magic items function. Otherwise a 20th level bard is an absolute death machine, much worse than any pre-pathfinder necromancer could have ever hoped to be.

Jason has indicated in another thread that the bard's "DC = skill check" abilities are probably going to be changed.

[Estrosiath]

The other points remain however valid - the skill items definitely need to be somehow modified, as long as skills like Acrobatics or Spellcraft (at epic levels) remain so essential to combat mechanics.

[Quentyn]

I have seen problems with that - if only because skills increase indefinitely, and often at +1 per level, while saves progress far more slowly. Beyond a certain point anything less than a natural-20 autosuccess will fail.

[Agamemnon2]

Items that give peranent skill bonuses are pretty much universally broken, it has always seemed to me. It's fairly cheap to boost, say, Diplomacy or Intimidate into roleplaying-destroying levels, after all.

A part of the problem is PC-designed magic items, of course. It's pretty darn hard to have both a system that lets you make your own items and a system that doesn't give access to combos that could potentially degenerate the game.