I have been playing RPG games for over 25 years and I have played many variations. my question is what is the issue with D&D in all incarnations giving players skills?
I have house ruled the skill system a great deal I have always wondered at this logic. I admit pathfinder has gone a long way to remedy some of the issues but still they persist. No character should come from a vacccuum and there seem to be minimal rules to create that background from the rules as written. Especially the longer lived races.
Sorry if this is a rehash that has been beat to death.
While in hindsight it seems kind of strange that it took until 2000 before D&D had a single comprehensive skill system and even then the first level characters didn't necessarily have skills based on any "zero level" activity, I think for the most part the reason is that it just didn't really matter. For a lot of games, in particular combat focused ones, the fact that I knew something about the astral plane or could play the bagpipes wasn't important.
That said, I've been kicking around a variant skill system to use for a more classic style D&D variant and this thread gets me thinking I should be sure to include some kind of influence on skills from the characters background/childhood. I've already figured on certain universal skills being there for things all characters have some ability to perform like perception, sneaking around, jumping and so forth.
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I have stopped using them but the old 1st/2ed rules for Percepion as a stat and Appearance were useful. Unfortunatly my group now is "limited" in there ability to handle anything outside of the book. They sometimes wonder why I give cool abilities and items to people who give me a great backstory. We play a lot of hack and slash at times but at least they usually play in character and are not min/max (optimized).
I usually find myself giving away many profession, knowledge and craft skill ranks based on backgrounds. It seems right to me that they do have a history before it started.
I am not sure what your asking; I give my players 10 freebie points to spend on non combat skills in 3.5 for character background and might give a feat or such; the whole feat/skill thing doesnt appear to be well thought out in the gaming system; we all did just fine back in first end with one skill from the background table; 2nd ed worked well as it was pretty much what a lot of us were doing anyway; I was using paladiums skills for my 1st ed d&d games. Feats just dont make sense; some feats should be skills; some like "you are royalty" ok; mabye that should be a feat; but seems more backgound; the range of what Feats cover and Feats that are really skills and skills in general is all mixed up; then add that there are literally hundreds of them to choose from and players only get a handful; well; no wonder they opted for a new rewrite as this is totally a mess.
The reason why i think it took so long for skills to be added was.
You did not need skills. If you had a cleric, then when they went to tend to people wounds, it was assumed that they had the ability to do so. Likewise it was assumed that the fighter did not have the ability to do so. All cleric had knowledge about religions, because they were clerics.
Ranger could track, while fighter could not. Rogues could hide and move silently while other could not, (ranger could only do so in wilderness). If you needed a knowledge check, you asked the bard or wizard, and they would know.
Skill in 2nd ed opened up and allowed players to know stuff outside there class concept. Now if you were not a cleric, you might know stuff about religion.
Skill in 3rd ed, expanded in scope, but now limit what your character can do. If you do not have knowledge (religion), you can not make a check, even if you are a cleric.
Anyway thats the way i see things, over the years.
some like "you are royalty" ok; mabye that should be a feat; but seems more backgound.
I tend to agree, but to play devil's advocate, I could see an argument which stated if the acquisition of a reasonable in-game bonus requires approximately X amount of time and effort (and is an ability which the character essentially either has or doesn't), then it is an acceptable feat. I.e., if being royalty gives significant bonuses to Diplomacy, or some other mechanically-describable ability, and it seems like learning to have that ability would require an equivalent amount of time and effort as, say, learning to trade accuracy for force (Power Attack), then it's an acceptable feat. I do concede even that raises questions of where the line lies; what should be available only through feats, and what can you simply do via background? However, my intent is only to show another possible justification for the creation of such a feat. If the game designers think it would be cool to add something measurable into the game to reward a player's background but don't want to create an entirely new and possibly inconsistent system, just calling it a feat is a good compromise.
As for the larger question of skills, especially in relation to long-lived races. This gets into a whole world of messiness often referred to as the super-elf problem. If my character can go, in newer editions of the game, from level 1 to 20 in a year or two, why aren't all elves epic level? (Answer: the same reason all humans aren't epic level, because that time table would mean every bar tender with above average IQ should be able to learn to sling a meteor swarm at some point in their life, too, but they don't. Same with elves and dwarves, etc.)
Tied to that issue is the question of why a 1st level elf, who is already usually over 100 years old, only as good at any given skill as an essentially teenage human? And what about elven smiths and dwarven tradesmen? What about their skills vs. a human's?
Okay, the second one strikes me as easier to answer than the first. You think that an elf or dwarf, by virtue of their lifespan, should be far more experienced at their craft than a human? Makes sense! So make them higher level. Say the average human smith is 3rd level. It's completely arbitrary and depends on what your concept of 1st level vs. 3rd level vs. any other level represents. But just bear with me.
In that case, all dwarves in the same position would be 5th level. All elves 7th, perhaps. They've been at what they do and are just that much more experienced by virtue of literally hundreds of years more practice.
"But why are their hit points higher too?" Why does a wizard get more hit points per level? I'm an academic, and I can tell you spending all day going through musty tomes does NOT makes you hardier! :) Higher level people are more vital, in many senses of the word. Why should the PCs be the only ones to reap that benefit?
"But how do they gain experience?" By experiencing things. The game is oriented toward combat, and therefore by the RAW only rewards XP for combat encounters, though the 3.x DMG does allow for ad hoc rewards as well (and I'm pretty sure that's in the PFRPG RAW, too). Many publications, including the estimable Dungeon, have made use of that in the past to reward non-combat experience. I'm of the opinion that making even NPCs conform to that incredibly arbitrary method of personal development is senseless. Master smiths become masters by smithing things, not adventuring. It's still experience. I actually award tiny XP bonuses for crafting mundane items, to make this more equitable between PCs and NPCs in my games, though the reward is inconsequential relative to that for old fashioned adventuring.
The trick in this view of the game world is to figure out why your character is different. Why is it that your elf has only the same skill set as a teenage human, rather than that of a trained professional elven smith? There's the background story/role-playing challenge.
Alternately, and I enjoy this method, tinker with the races. Not in the usual, shallow "Maybe these elves have a different skin color and like pie instead of cake" tinkering that most people stop at. How does an elf's perception of the world and time differ from that of a human's? From a dwarf's? What is their social and legal and economic structure like at a young age? What systems would explain the mechanics they end up with? Rather than just observing the mechanics don't make sense, and/or trying to fix them (dangerous), I find it far more satisfying and interesting and manageable to play around with the fluff of the races to make it fit the bonuses the game prescribes.
Sorry for the rambling nature of this post. I haven't the time to craft it into a well-worded thesis. :(
Actually, the weapon proficiency and non-weapon proficiency point system was in AD&D from the beginning. There was a non-weapon proficiency skill system presented as optional in the DMG. It was expanded in Unearthed Arcana and Oriental Adventures - to the extent that Samurai were required to take Calligraphy proficiency, etc.
As far as the original question, many of the campaign settings out there have provided background feats that give bonuses in skills to reflect your early experiences. For my part, I use these whenever possible and I feel that they are sufficient for my campaign. Perhaps you can modify this system for your campaign, maybe increasing the bonuses or adding an extra skill to the feat. Or include a feat that makes a skill or two class skills because of your background.
The problem with giving out more skill points is that you might find players have too much esoteric knowledge. Adventuring heroes probably don't have piles of time to diversify much - which leads to multi-classing. The whole purpose of class vs. cross-class skills and limited skill points is to clarify a character's role and to a lesser extent enhance that role. It's also more challenging if you keep skill points in check and it requires teamwork.