Gaining New Skills

[Michael D Moore]

Glancing around my book, the PRD, errata, and a forum search turned up no results so I'm hoping the community can shed some light on this.

In Pathfinder when a character gains a level they gain X amount of skill points. Now what happens if a character wishes to put some of those points into a skill they have no ranks in? Can it even be done?

My guess is that the character can go ahead with it at the cost of 1 rank for 1 point and they are then trained gaining the +3 if it's a class skill.

P.S. My apologies if I'm just dense and missed something obvious.

[Dissinger]

Michael D Moore wrote:

Glancing around my book, the PRD, errata, and a forum search turned up no results so I'm hoping the community can shed some light on this.

In Pathfinder when a character gains a level they gain X amount of skill points. Now what happens if a character wishes to put some of those points into a skill they have no ranks in? Can it even be done?

My guess is that the character can go ahead with it at the cost of 1 rank for 1 point and they are then trained gaining the +3 if it's a class skill.

P.S. My apologies if I'm just dense and missed something obvious.

No you got it, that's exactly how it works. There are no "cross class skills" and if you put that point in a skill where you had none, you calculate any bonuses immediately, including the trained bonus.

[Chris Parker]

As the book doesn't say that you can't do that, I'd rule that you can, so long as your ranks never exceed your current character level. I'm not aware of anything from the designers that says otherwise I can't think of any good reason why a player shouldn't be able to put all his skill points in one skill, so why not? If he wants to be good at more things at the expense of the things he's already good at, more power to him.