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The role of "skill monkey" is one that's often neglected but deserves some extra attention. So, I decided to try and create a class whose primary ability is skills. Here's what I came up with.
SAVANT
ROLE: Savants are individuals of extensive and impressive talent. There's no telling what a savant might know how to do, or how he might choose to apply his skills.
ALIGNMENT: Any
HIT DICE: d8
CLASS SKILLS: All skills are class skills for a savant.
SKILL RANKS PER LEVEL: 8 + Int modifier.
WEAPONS AND ARMOR: Savants are proficient with all simple weapons, light armor, and with shields (except tower shields).
BAB: 3/4 lvl
GOOD SAVE: Reflex
1:Savant Technique
2:Bonus Feat
3:Savant Technique
4:Take 12
5:Savant Technique
6:Bonus Feat
7:Savant Technique
8:Take 14
9:Savant Technique
10:Bonus Feat
11:Savant Technique
12:Take 16
13:Savant Technique
14:Bonus Feat
15:Savant Technique
16:Take 18
17:Savant Technique
18:Bonus Feat
19:Savant Technique
20:Take 20
Savant Techniques
At each odd level, a savant learns a new application of a known skill. A savant may choose any technique as long as he has at least one rank in the associated skill.
Bonus Feats
At 2nd level and every four levels thereafter, a savant may select a bonus feat from the following list: Acrobatic, Additional Traits, Alertness, Animal Affinity, Athletic, Breadth of Experience, Cooperative Crafting, Cosmopolitan, Deceitful, Deft Hands, Magical Aptitude, Martial Weapon Proficiency, Master Alchemist, Medium Armor Proficiency, Mounted Combat, Persuasive, Self Sufficient, Shared Insight, Skill Focus, Sociable, Stealthy, Stone-Faced, Taunt, Underfoot. A savant does not need to meet any racial or size prerequisites to select a feat on this list, but he must meet all other prerequisites.
Take 12
At Level 4, a savant becomes more adept at everything he does. Whenever he chooses to take 10 on a skill check, he treats the check as though he had rolled a 12 instead of a 10. This action is otherwise identical to the Take 10 action. Every four levels thereafter, the savant adds an additional +2 to his Take 10 attempts. At Level 20, he can take 20 on any skill check as though he had taken 10.
Acrobatics: Whenever a savant moves more than 5 feet and makes a melee attack, he may make a leap at his enemy as part of his movement. The savant rolls an Acrobatics check in place of his attack roll. In addition, the savant treats this as a charge and adds the +2 bonus, as well as the +1 bonus for attacking from the high ground unless the enemy is at least two size categories bigger or would otherwise have the high ground over the savant.
Appraise: The savant may cast Beguiling Gift as a spell-like ability. Using this ability requires a DC 25 Appraise check. This ability may be used a number of times per day equal to 3 + the savant's Int modifier.
Bluff: The savant gains Improved Feint as a bonus feat. He does not need to meet the prerequisites for this feat.
Climb: The savant no longer takes a size penalty on grapple checks made against creatures larger than himself, and can make grapple checks against creatures of any size category. In addition, when grappling a creature two or more size categories larger than himself, the savant gains the +1 high ground bonus on melee attacks against that creature and against any adjacent creature not larger than the one he is grappling.
Craft: The savant adds his savant level to any caster levels he possesses for purposes of qualifying for item creation feats.
Disable Device: The savant adds his total ranks in Disable Device to all damage rolls against constructs.
Escape Artist: The savant adds his Escape Artist ranks to all Reflex saves.
Heal: The savant may cast Cure Light Wounds as a spell-like ability. Using this ability requires a DC 25 Heal check. This ability may be used a number of times per day equal to 3 + the savant's Wis modifier.
Knowledge(all): Whenever the savant successfully makes a Knowledge check to determine a monster's weaknesses or abilities, he may add his total ranks in the relevant Knowledge skill to all damage rolls made against creatures of that type. This ability lasts for one minute per savant level, after which point he must make a new Knowledge check (even if he remembers the abilities and weaknesses of the monster in question).
Linguistics: The savant adds his total ranks in Linguistics to all saves made against language-dependent effects.
Perception: For each rank in Perception, the savant adds 10 feet to the range increment on all ranged weapons he wields.
Perform: The savant gains Inspire Courage +1, as the bard ability of the same name. He may use this ability for a total number of rounds per day equal to his ranks in the relevant Perform skill, and must make a DC 10 Perform check each round he chooses to maintain the performance. This technique may only be taken for one Perform skill.
Profession: The savant adds his total ranks in Profession to all Bluff, Diplomacy, Sense Motive, Intimidate, and Perception checks against members of the relevant profession, and to Disguise checks if the savant is savant is disguised as a member of the profession.
Ride: The savant adds his total ranks in Ride to all damage rolls made while mounted. This ability does not stack with the Disable Device or Knowledge savant techniques.
Sense Motive: The savant adds his Sense Motive checks to all Will saves.
Sleight of Hand: The savant gains Well-Prepared as a bonus feat. He does not need to meet the prerequisite for this feat.
Spellcraft: The savant may attempt to counterspell as though he were a spellcaster. This action works exactly like normal counterspelling, except that the savant is always treated as though the spell in question were one of his spells known and prepared. The savant can only attempt to counter spells with caster level no greater than his total ranks in Spellcraft.
Survival: The savant adds his ranks in Survival to all Fortitude saves.
What do people think? Does it look horribly under- or over-powered? Does it look like it'd be worth playing as? Any ideas for new savant techniques? I tried to think of good ones for Intimidate, Fly, and Use Magic Device, but couldn't.
Thanks in advance for the input!
Or, when the Savant uses the Use Magic Device skill to activate a potion or scroll, he may use his number of ranks in Use Magic Device in place of the caster level of the magic item he is activating.
Maybe come up with several Techniques for each skill? That way, different savants can specialize in different ways in the same skill.
You might even want to come up with different tiers of Techniques. Maybe available at levels 1, 7, 13, and 19? Or 1, 9, and 17?
Dotted. I like what I've read so far, and agree with what the others have contributed. It's like an expert Expert with more actual PC plausibility.
There's a class in FantasyCraft that's somewhat similar, and I can't recall the name for the life of me, though I THINK it's the sage.
Dotted.
Damn those mindprobing class-stealing saturn magpies! I was thinking of designing savant class two night before...
Very interesting. When designing the techniquest, though, you should probably evaluate which skills are good and which are bad already - and give stronger techniques to weaker skills.
Personally, i think these skills are powerful:
Perception
Acrobatics
These are good:
Ride
Knowledge (religion, arcana, )
Bluff
Diplomacy
Intimidate
Sense Motive
Spellcraft
Escape Artist
Disable Device (depends on game style)
The rest are mediocre to bad.
Giving perception and sense motive - two of the better skills - very strong abilities while giving Heal, a skill that's mediocre beyond the very first levels, a really weak ability seems... odd. Or, well, to be honest Heal isn't bad if taken as the first or second technique, but beyond that it's just awful.
Evaluate the strength of techniques compared to feats. Given the other abilities of the class, I'd say each technique should be worth about 1.5 to two feats, provided they are good feats.
FYI: Kobold Quarterly presented a Savant in a recent issue. A bit different to what is presented here but might be worth looking at. I think it took abilities from other classes etc...
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Thanks for all the feedback! The responses have been interesting so far.
Perception: I think I severely underestimated the usefulness of increasing range increments. I know that Perception is pretty much the most-used skill in the game, and that most players try and keep max ranks in it just for that alone. I really wanted the Perception technique to be the weakest one-- weak enough that nobody would really look forward to taking it, but some people would just because they planned to put ranks in Perception anyway. I guess I goofed on that one. What's a really subpar effect that still makes sense as being connected to Perception?
For the saving throw techniques, would it be more balanced if the savant could use a skill check in place of a saving throw, instead of adding his ranks to the saving throw?
As for the different tiers of techniques or allowing multiple techniques for one skill, consider this: the savant gets 8+int skill ranks each level, and gets a total of ten techniques over the course of his career. If he takes the skill rank as his favored class bonus, he only needs 12 Int to keep ten different skills maxed out from level 1 straight to 20. Does a savant really need to narrow his focus down any more than that? There are 26 different skills after all.
Also, does anyone have any comment on the bonus feats or Take 12/14/16/18/20 mechanics? Does anyone have an idea for a suitable capstone for this class, or is Take 20 good enough?
For Perception, what if you cut the penalties you take to seeing things far away in half?
Also, does anyone have any comment on the bonus feats or Take 12/14/16/18/20 mechanics? Does anyone have an idea for a suitable capstone for this class, or is Take 20 good enough?
In my own version of Savant I am working on I introduced an ability that grants +1 circumstance per four levels that applies each time the Savant takes 10 or takes 20 on an ability check or a skill check. He also gains skill mastery (i.e. ability to take 10 on skill check regardless of circumstances) for one skill per level. I haven't got capstone ability yet - I thought about ability to take 20 on any skill checks but I think that is not enough. Probably something similar to alchemist bonus to Intelligence and/or Wisdom.
I like the list of bonus feats.
For the saving throw techniques I would say make it so they can use the skill roll instead of a saving throw x times a day, maybe equal to the int modifier.
On perception, how about for every four ranks you get +10ft of low light vision. Good for cahracters that don't have low light vision and better for characters that already have it, but not that great. If you have darkvision you can instead add +5ft of darkvision range.
About making multiple techniques for each skill, the savant doesn't need to specialize, but what if he wants too?
And the capstone... how about something like this:
Master and professor: At each morning the savant can nominate one student for each point of his (int or maybe cha, I don't know) modifier. He can share one of his techniques with these students. All of the students have to have at least 10 ranks in the skill referent to the technique and the bonuses they gain are based on their own skill ranks instead of those of the savant. The savant also learns one more techinque.