Posting this now so I don't forget when we get around to skills & feats in November...
This weekend, I've put a lot of work into typing up both the new character creation guidelines and skill section of my campaign wiki. While I love what PfRPG does with races, classes, the skill point mechanics, and CMB, like many others here, the actually skill lists/consolidations haven't always struck the right chords with me.
After reading and contributing in many threads on the topic, I thought I pretty much had my house rules for skills all figured out. However, I was taking another look thru my 'final' skill list, and I was still feeling reservations over a few skills that don't deliver as much return-on-investment as power-houses like Acrobatics, Diplomacy, Linguistics, Perception, and Stealth.
Escape Artist and Sleight of Hand both presented themselves as stumbling points.
For a while, I thought I'd just do the simple thing and let Acrobatics absorb Escape Artist. Still, even if Jump is moved into the 'Athletics' skill that many people have proposed, it just seems like too good of a skill.
Next I thought of combining Escape Artist and Sleight of Hand into a 'Finesse' skill. After all, how many times has Batman escaped due to both guile and a hidden set of lockpicks? Even so, I didn't like how the merged skill implied that the ability to escape manacles was tied to having concealed a tool in advance, and what bearing would sleight of hand have on escaping a grapple? Sure, getting a dagger into hand is helpful, but...
Then name 'Finesse' stuck with me though, and I got to thinking about the Weapon Finesse feat. "Hmm, could cause confusion in players having a skill with a name so similar to a feat..."
A feat?
Putting Sleight of Hand out of mind, I looked at Escape Artist, and thought, "This is one of those skills that basically becomes irrelevant if you don't keep it maxed-out, because its ranks have to compete against BAB. However, Use Rope has already been tied into the CMB mechanics, why not Escape Artist?"
My thoughts on the matter are this: Escape Artist ceases to be a skill and becomes a feat:
ESCAPE ARTIST (Combat)
You are skilled at escaping bonds and slipping out of grapples using practiced agility where brute strength fails.
Benefit: You get a +3 bonus to CMB when trying to resist or escape bindings, a grapple, or a pin. In addition, your CMB to resist or escape bindings, a grapple, or a pin is calculated using your Hit Dice instead of your BAB.
Naturally, this change would require a modification to the revised Stealthy feat. Either the bonus from Stealthy would add to the benefits of the Escape Artist feat, or its benefit would instead apply to another skill (my suggestion would be Sleight of Hand).
Also, to make up for the loss of Skill Focus, an Improved Escape Artist feat could easily take its place:
ESCAPE ARTIST, IMPROVED (Combat)
You are a master of slipping bonds, and escaping seizure.
Benefit: Your bonus to resist or escape bindings, a grapple, or a pin increase from +3 to +6. If either your BAB or your Hit Dice is 7 or higher, the bonus is instead +10.
Thoughts?
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
|
Not a bad idea, but I do have two thoughts.
First, you've lost the escape artist use to squeeze through narrow openings and tunnels.
Second, the characters who use the escape artist the most (rogues) are already feat hungry and skill heavy. To take this from their skill selection and move it to their feat selection makes it a lot harder for a rogue to take this ability. It also will make many rogues have an extra skill point to figure out what to do with (especially human high Int rogues).
Because of the second point, I'd be inclined to leave escape artist as a skill, even if it has limited functionality - for those characters that max it out, it works pretty well for them.
Not a bad idea, but I do have two thoughts.
First, you've lost the escape artist use to squeeze through narrow openings and tunnels.
Second, the characters who use the escape artist the most (rogues) are already feat hungry and skill heavy. To take this from their skill selection and move it to their feat selection makes it a lot harder for a rogue to take this ability. It also will make many rogues have an extra skill point to figure out what to do with (especially human high Int rogues).
Because of the second point, I'd be inclined to leave escape artist as a skill, even if it has limited functionality - for those characters that max it out, it works pretty well for them.
Good points, thanks.
I have some other skill changes in my house rules cause the rogue to have the exact same number of class skills as in PfRPG (21). In terms of many classes being feat poor, this could easily be a rogue talent and a monk bonus feat (personally, I'd like to see the Bard receive some combat enhancements too). Another compromise might be to grant the +3 bonus only to the Bard, Monk, and Rogue, and adjust the Improved version to require 10 HD period.
As for your first point, I'm suggesting that CMB would handle all uses of the Escape Artist skill. It's just that I've never had a character employ that usage before so mentioning it slipped my mind.
Alright, I've finalized the feats I was speaking of:
Escape Artist Feat
Skill Focus Replacement
Note that I've revised the Skill Focus feat to grant its incremental bonus ever 5 levels instead of +3 at level 10. Otherwise, Improved Escape Artist would function identically to Skill Focus.
Lastly, I was contemplating the issue of feat-poor classes...
I know that Complete Adventurer has a feat called "Open Minded" that lets you spend a feat to gain skill points. To compliment this, I'm thinking of adding a rule that allows you to spend skill points to gain a bonus feat.
My first thought was to create a Linguistics-style skill that allows you to select a new feat for every 5 ranks. However, it then becomes a skill that everyone would use, and it therefore wouldn't allow the feat-poor classes to address the issues mentioned in prior posts above.
Another possible mechanic would be to create a character Flaw. You would sacrifice 5 skill points but gain a bonus feat. The only catch here is that characters are limited to just 2 flaws and typically it's preferable for flaws to have some sort of a conditional roleplaying aspect that goes along with them.
The last mechanic I'm thinking of would be a general feat with a prerequisite that requires you to spend 4 skill points on it. In exchange, you can then pick two other feats (i.e. One feat being your normal general feat, the other being the feat you just paid skill points for). The skill could be taken multiple times, but each time the cost would increase by 1 skill point.
Thoughts?