Does a Cleric with a Religion rank of 15 define a character who has a religion role of 5? Yes but only a "small" amount providing there are 2 clerics in a party. In the over-all outlook of a character again, NO.
I disagree entirely. A 12th level cleric with a rank of 15 in knowledge (religion) is one who wants to understand his faith (and those of others). The same cleric with only a rank of 5 is one who approaches his faith as a gift to be accepted and cherished, but believes that understanding of his patron deity's wishes will come without effort, equally a gift. To me, that's very much defining of these characters.
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I'd say that giving some players a penalty with one use of a skill and others a bonus and at the same time give different DCs is definitely a problem.
If you give Player A a +2 on swim, and lower the DC by 3, you've given him a +5. If you raise the DC by +5 on Player B and give him a -5 on his check, you've raised the DC by 10.
Those are big differences. Now, sure, as DM you can do what you want, but that isn't going to fly in my game.
In my game, swim is swim, climb is climb, and right now jump and tumble are the same, but I think that they should be separated. I don't have to modify DCs, I don't have to give some people a special penalty or bonus when they use one aspect of the skill, and I don't have to remember for them since those kinds of things are hard to mark on a character sheet. This means that a character that wants to swim spends his skill points on swimming and doesn't get any other benefit (he doesn't become better at climbing, for instance). I don't have a problem with that. I think that swimming is about as useful as other skills in the game, and I don't mind that he has to give something else up for that.
For myself personally, at this point we give all players a base of 4+Int skill points as a minimum, so the fact that rogues have some combined skills and fighters do not works. We also give humans 2 bonus skill points/level. We like skill points, and it works for us. It works for us better than combining skills does. So, that is my suggestion for those that think more skills should be combined.
I like having someone who is an expert climber but can't swim at all. Combining the skills makes that impossible, unless I decide to gimp myself by declaring myself unable to use a skill despite having paid for it.
I think your missing the whole point.
To use your example of 2 12th level clerics, one with a religion of 15 ranks the other with 5. For arguements sakes lets say they both worship/serve the same deity. It's an easy skill challenge in regards to know something of thier own faith. The Religion skill primarily would come into play with regards to knowing another deity's dogma.
Heres were I still say it doesn't define the 2 clerics "over-all" because you are totally focued on one small aspect of these 2 clerics (thier religion rank). Theres the role-playing aspect, the attributes, feats, other skill ranks, ect. Religion ranks alone would not define one cleric from the other, same deity or not.
Throw in the element of the d20 and a difficulty of 20 as another example: both clerics "could" still know the same thing if they bolth made a good roll. Does one have a better chance than the other? Of-course he does, but ranks in just religion for these 2 clerics would not define the characters as a "whole."
"Over-all and whole" are the key words here.
A few skills grouped together would not hurt the game in the least bit. This includes "over-all" character development.
What these clerics "could" know is really not that important to the character. What they "should" know OTOH is. What defines a character is not what he can when all things go his way. What defines a character is what you can reasonably be expected of him. On any given day, it's possible that character A with a lower rank does as well as or better than character B with a higher rank. But also on any given day, it's likely character B will do better.
Moreover, you're looking at purely from a mechanical POV. I'm looking at what's appropriate for a character, skill checks and dice rolls aside. Rank X doesn't just mean "this is the best result I can possibly get at a corresponding skill check". It also means "this is the amount of training/effort/time/trouble I invested in this". Besides, what doesn't go in skill A ends up in skill B or a combo of several other skills. A cleric who doesn't increase his rank in knowledge (religion) might put his points in another skill instead, highlighting another aspect of his personality.
Is this only partly defining for a character? Obviously, but that doesn't mean it's not a significant part.
Going back to my example of jump, swim, climb being combined into one skill group called Athletics:
I have 5 players...one is a pirate, multi-classing with the fighter/rouge classes. Unlike the other 4 characters, this "pirate's backround" comes from having few years at sea before he went adventuring. Again for arguements sakes lets say they are all 6th level and all of them have the Athletics Skill at max rank of 9. Perhaps the pirate should swim better then the rest of the characters? I say yes for this character and he makes a little note with a +2 for swimming and -2 for jumping when he uses his athletics skill.
As a continued example, perhaps 1 player's backround comes from an inland kingdom and he's never seen a major water source before per his backround. Perhaps he can't swim at all. So I either increase the difficulty rank for this 1 player when swiming or just take out swim all together till he is taught from the pirate. Being the character has a maxed rank in Athletics it shouldn't take to long till he learns.
"Over-all" the grouping of those 3 skills saved time because 3 didn't have to make any modifications at all.
"Overall" you actually lost time, since you spent twice as much time considering these skills each player separately but probably simultaneously did. You're still thinking in terms of the non-consolidated skills anyway, so why consolidate them in the first place?
Moreover, should it fall to you as the DM to decide that a character should get a bonus to swimming and a corresponding penalty to jumping, or should that fall to the player? I'd say the latter, and it's a lot easier for him to get things exactly the way he wants them if these skills are kept separate.
The easiest solution is not changing the characters rank in Athletics at all for any of the characters. As my final example: 5 players all from previous example. They are on a ship...ship rolls over in a storm...all characters have to make a difficult swim check of 15. For the pirate I make the difficulty a 12 (because hes been at sea) and from the one who doesn't know how to swim I make it a 20 because regardless hes a good athlete. I'm the GM so my word is god (in pertaining to the game).
This would all take all but 2 secounds to do. It was also the characters "backround that defined the characters more than any of thier skill ranks."
Except that this a) has nothing to do with the skills specifically (you're applying circumstance modifiers, which in itself is good but also means you're tampering with ability and that's bad: you can make it easier on the pirate because he's more familiar with the situation - good - or you can make it easier because you think he should be better at this sort of thing - bad, since how good or bad he is should be determined by his skill rank) and b) doesn't define the characters but rather how easy or difficult they have it in a given situation. The characters themselves are already defined by their background, and that should be reflected by their skill ranks.
Even when skills are grouped it's easy to make fast alternations ingame (a very important aspect). Out of game, it's faster for players to assign ranks when creating and adjusting for new levels, for GM's its faster for npc creation, monsters creation and all of thier uses.
Once again I will state that I fail to see how the grouping of some skills would remotely hurt the game (including character development) other than to make it simpler and faster "over-all and as a whole."
Your own examples already show that you (and consequently it can be presumed the same goes for your players) still think in terms of the separate skills rather than in terms of the consolidated skill. This means you're going to be de-consolidating the skills depending on the situation at hand, which makes things neither simpler nor faster but rather the opposite.
I like skill consolidation. In fact, I don't think the Alpha have gone far enough in the direction of consolidating skills. Personally, I would like to see Climb and Swim (and the effects of the Jump skill) rolled up into an Athletics skill. On the other hand, I'd like to see Concentration come back with some explicit non-spellcasting applications. I already know that Fly is sticking around, but I don't like it, and I won't be using it. >_<
Otherwise, kudos on how much has been done for skill consolidation so far; keep it up.
Jeremy Puckett
I would say that there are strong opinions both for consolidated skills and unconsolidated skills( I am clearly in the consolidated skills camp) but this is an issue which won't be resolved.
The best method is for Pathfinder to have the Consolidated skills with the unconsolidated sub skills underneath them which would deal with every option I'd have thought.
For example
Acrobatics
Tumbling - details for tumbling DC's
Balance - details for Balance DC's
Jump - details for jump DCs
And so on. They would also do well to put two first page character sheets with consolidated and unconsolidated skill options on their website. This should enable all choices to be made by the individual without adding anything into the main book.
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First of, I am in the "Consolidation is Good!" mindset. It was one of the things that Star Wars saga did right, and I looked forward to it in 4th edition.
Unfortunately, 4E became a completely different game, but that is a post for another time (insert dead horse to beat here.)
The biggest disappointment of 4E has been that complete lack of background type skills. If it doesn't work for hack and slash, it ain't in 4E! Gone are Profession, Craft and Perform (though I expect to see it return if the Bard does). Heck, gone are NPC classes(which I always thought were overly complex - StarWars Saga just used a Non-Heroic generic class, but that is for later). So, characters can't make anything now. They must buy it, steal it or kill something and "earn" it.
I think that skill consolidation makes sense when aproached sensibly, with little change to "backwards compatibility", even if running older adventures. And I should know, we playtested pathfinder through the old 3E modules like Sunless Citadel and The Standing Stone. I think it would be a welcome change.
I would agree with the OP but only under the condition that all classes (save *maybe* the rogue) get a boost in skill points. I've always thought that people knowing 2+int mod was far too limited and in some ways hindered character building and perhaps even role playing. Perhaps upping everything by 2 and using said list would be a good quick-fix but if a longer list was to be kept at least beef up the skill points.
My friends and I agree. There should not be a skill consolidation; the current lists of consolidations are too general.
Listen, Search, & Spot into Perception. There is no reason to think that someone who is good at anyone of these things is also good at another. Listen is a completely different sense then the search and spot. Is it not possible that someone could be good at listening and bad at the other two?
Decipher Script, Forgery, & Speak Languages into Linguistics. Once again these are using to very different skill sets. Decipher Script is all in cognitive reasoning and Forgery is almost all manual dexterity. Speak Languages has been the method to learn new languages. Changing this one makes sense, but it's not really about combining skills here, but in correcting terminology. Linguistics should be about learning a specific language, i.e. its speech, and written patterns.
Balance, & Jump into Acrobatics. While these are somewhat related they are not the result of the same type of training and a person may bad at one. A person may have very good balance, a result of good muscle control and application of dexterity. Jump however uses mostly strength and a little dexterity to land correctly. I do think there should be an Acrobatics skill and balance could probably become part of it, but jump should not be.
Hide, & Move Silently into Stealth. As hide is currently explained, it is not only hiding yourself but used in hiding others and objects. Hiding is mostly another cognitive reasoning skill with a little bit of dexterity, did I hide quickly enough, and 3D spatial reasoning thrown in, will the item/object/person fit in there. Move silently is a little bit cognitive reasoning, you only have to be not heard to be silent, you could still make noise it just must be quieter than the other noise. Move Silently is mostly dexterity, did you bump something, step on a rock/branch, squish a gnome?
Bluff, & Sense Motive into Deception. Bluff is more of a charisma skill, trying to make another believe something is not at all related to whether or not you can figure out if the other person is lying or figuring out what they want.. Sense Motive is used for determining whether someone is lying, whether someone wants something else or if they're trying to manipulate you. Being good at one does not make you good at the other.
Gather Information into Diplomacy. Gather Information has always been useful in our campaigns. Its use is more than just convincing someone to spill their knowledge. Sometimes it involves listening to another's conversation, noticing that the Baron has started buying many more weapons then he has troops, watching people from afar. Being able to convince someone into something isn't related to any of these things.
Open Lock, & Sleight of Hand into Theft. These might be things a thief is good at but not every thief is good at them and not everyone who is good at these are thieves. Open Lock uses manual dexterity, cognitive reasoning, & 3D spatial reasoning to manipulate a mechanical object into doing what you want. Slight of Hand is using your hands to pickpocket or perform "mundane magic" tricks, basically do something quickly with your hands without being noticed.
Concentration into Spellcraft. Concentration is the ability to maintain your train of thought while distractions are present. Spellcraft is intimate knowledge of spells and how they're cast. How are they related? We've used concentration for many different things, not just ignoring the interrupt during spell casting.
Use Rope? Where'd it go? If someone thinks that using a rope effectively is inherent to having a rope, I beg to differ. We have heard of no good reasons to remove skills from the game.
Changes we'd like to see.
Currently we think there are two few skill points at each level.
Also we would like the ability to pick all of our character's class skills. We don't mean from the listed class skills, we mean from all skills. There is no in game reason for one class to always be trained in the same skills. For example, the Fighter gets 12 plus Intelligence modifier class skills. This allows players to pick their favorite skills and play their character how they envisioned it.
Also, bring back skill points. Everyone trained in a skill is not going to perform equally well.
We'd like a roleplaying game that has combat, not a combat game that has roleplaying.
The 3.5 OGL doesn't evaporate upon the publishing of Pathfinder. People who prefer the unconsolidated skills can still use the 3.5e ones. People like me who prefer the 3.0 facing rules to the 3.5 ones and the PFRPG ones can still use them, too. A new edition doesn't necessarily invalidate substitutions from previous editions.
I like that the Pathfinder rules give examples of how to consolidate skills. Personally, I've done it a bit differently than they did, but the example is extremely helpful. I intend to retain "save-or-die" effects, but I think it's cool they've provided an alternative; its presence in the Pathfinder rules doesn't hurt my game at all.
What's awesome is that 3.0 and 3.5 and 3.PF are all close enough so that we all have almost perfect freedom to mix and match the pieces.
I think there should be some skill consolidation, just not too much, keep stealth and perception but if they don't change a thing it won't keep me from playing, I kind of like the OP's suggested list. Again, provided there was an increase in skill points.
This is an interesting discussion. I must say I would be happy either way (so long as modes of movement are not 'consolidated' doing so crosses the red line for me and I would have to house rule it back).
Wow, there sure is a lot of debate here...and I'm a bit too tired to read it all. *cough* Anyway, here's my brief thought:
I don't mind combining some skills (spot & listen -> perception, hide&move silently -> stealth). However, I strongly feel that there must be a good number of skills available to both diversify characters and to justify classes with high skill points. That being said, if there are too many skills, then the skill points per level should be increased for each class. Overall, though, from what I've seen, things still seem to be mostly in balance. I think I stand somewhere between the original poster and Alpha 3.
Kayn