After my recent first playtesting for the group I call Alpha Crew, we sat around and discussed what we liked and what we thought should be changed about Pathfinder. Now all four of my players have been playing various RPGs for at least 15 years, and they all have dome some time behind the screen as a GM too, so there was a lot of experience here.
One of Mark's characters was a Gnome Cleric who had an 8 Int, and it frustrated Mark to no end that he had all of one skill (choosing Knowledge: Religion) that his character was familiar with. We discussed this, and came to an idea that we will playtest to see how well we like it. I wanted to post it here to get the thoughts and opinions of others as well.
Here is the rationale and the rule. A first level starting character has spent their adolescence learning a trade, represented by a character class. They have more than likely been learning the basics of their class for at least a couple of years, and we think that first level skills should reflect this. Therefore we decided on the following rule:
At his or her first character level, every character will have four skill points to distribute among their class skills only. These skill points are not modified by racial or attribute modifiers. These represent the skills they have picked up during their training and apprenticeship. A first level character will also gain the standard number of skill points listed for their class that can be applied wherever the character desires.
For example, Mark makes a Gnome Cleric character with an 8 Intelligence. At first level, Kirkee the Gnome has 4 skill points for class skills, and 1 skill point that can be applied anywhere. Mark decides that Kirkee will spend his points for Knowledge: Religion, Knowledge: Arcana, Craft: Gemcutting, and Heal. With his one class skill point he buys a rank in Perception.
We have also discussed whether the starting points should be four or two. We'll test it out and see what we think. Please consider this and post any thoughts or ideas you have about it as well. Thanks!
And for those who may be interested, the first play test session for Alpha Crew can be found here: Alpha Crew