Skill Point System Tweaking

[Riuken]

I've seen a few martial vs. caster discussions that seem to conclude that the issue with martial characters is their lack of usefulness outside of combat. As skills are generally the most universal way to be a useful individual in society, it would seem that an easy fix would be to give martial characters more skill points. Doing this in a mechanically balanced and thematically appropriate way is difficult, though I have a suggestion that I would like reviewed.

"Skill Ranks per Level: # + Int modifier" would be replaced with
"Skill Ranks per Level: # + any single ability modifier, see below"

The see below would read, "Skill Ranks gained due to a high ability modifier may only be spent on skills with the same Key Ability as the one chosen to gain extra skill ranks. Bonus Skill Ranks not spent at a level are lost."

This preserves high skill characters, and keeps each class' general skill set about the same. A fighter with a dexterity of 16 is not going to be able to take 5 Knowledge skills. I'd like to know what you all think of this: does it sound reasonable and are there any classes this is especially unfair to? If some of you could try this out in a game and give feedback I'd be thrilled!

[ShadowcatX]

Seems like a decent fix. Pity there's not more strength based skills.

[thenobledrake]

Here are problems I see:

1) It increases the Rogue skill points per level greatly and they have enough dex based skills they will want that there is no downside to using Dex for skills instead of their (almost certainly much) lower Intelligence to get skills.

Boosting a class nearly at the top of the skill-pile is unneeded.

2) Wizards actually get a net loss out of the deal. Intelligence is where their skills come from, and its also were the majority of their class skills lie... and thanks to only being able to spend the bonus part of their skill ranks (usually 2/3 their total ranks or more) on Intelligence skills you run into less diplomatic, perceptive, sneaky wizards that enjoy a bit of athletic activity and pidgeonhole them all into the "only good for what he knows," sage concept.

Penalizing a class in the low-middle range of the skill-pile is plain weird.

3) Fighters & Clerics, the guys at the bottom of the skill pile, don't actually get that much benefit - I admit that Clerics would have a boost to their perception and sense motive which they might enjoy, but - considering the thin number of points, limited class skill list, and number of skills you figure they might actually be good at that also have armor check penalties... It's disappointing to say the least.

I think your change actually exaggerates the problem of the skill point system - no class gets enough ranks without investing intelligence, and for many classes the investment cost is not worth the gain.

My suggestion? Do to skill ranks per level what Paizo did to hit dice: drop the low end (d4 hit die, 2+ skills per level), leave the high end alone (d10 & d12 hit die, 8+ skills per level), and bump everything else up a step (d4>d6, d6>d8, 2>4 skills, 4>6 skills, and so on).

So Rogues get even better at skills by using their main ability score (dex) to gain skill ranks in their some of their most important skills (acrobatics, stealth, sleight of hand, disable device) and still has 8 skill points per level to spend on whatever he wants... A wizard gets absolutely nothing from the deal except a reduction in ability to use his skill points

[Morgen]

I think a majority of that "problem" is a perception based upon an over-focus on combat and not about actually being useful in other situations. Depends on the type of group you play with of course but that's been my experience.

Just my 2 cents anyway.

[Riuken]

Thanks all for the input so far.

@thenobledrake:
The rogue example is a good point. Being the main skill class it didn't seem unbalancing to essentially "give" them their core skills, though dropping them to 6 or even 4 or 2 base would probably have to be an additional fix to stop them from having every skill ever.

The fighter that picks strength is shortchanged, yes, but he's better off than he was. Really for fighters it just means dexterity fighters are skill fighters and strength fighters are experts of climbing and swiming.

For the wizard, I've always thought it was odd that she got so many skills, often as many as the average rogue by mid levels. A 20 intelligence wizard with this change gets 5 intellegence skills, and 2 skills that can be ride, sense motive, handle animal, or any other traditionally non-wizard skill.

Bumping up the low end of the base skill ranks might also work, but I think it would become a bit too easy to step on the toes of the rogue or even bard. Maybe just removing bonus skills based on any attribute and giving 4-8 base skill ranks a level would work.

[Cheapy]

This would further solidify the bard's lead as the best skill monkey.

I am not a fan of the changes. The current system already handles this with skills being keyed to abilities, and skills are made mostly redundant at higher levels by magic anyways.

[spalding]

I tried something like this once at character creation.

The rules for what I used were:
You got bonus skill points at first level equal to each ability modifier and these skill points could only be spent on skills of that ability (so if you have str 14, dex 12 con 14 Int 12 Wis 16 Cha 12 you would have 2 points to spend on strength skills, 1 point to spend on dexterity 1 to spend on intelligence based skills, 3 to spend on wisdom based skills and 1 to spend on charisma based skills). In addition you got your skill points for your class which could be spent on any skill.

At each level after first you simply got your regular skill point + Int Mod at each level.

In addition I removed: Appraise, Craft and profession and replaced them all with the Trade Skill which had subtypes for each trade there is (farmer, tailor, blacksmith, apothecary, etc). The trade skill handle all the functions of the prior 3 skills for that specific trade, and generally could be used to cover other skills in a specific matter at an increased DC based on GM fiat (for example an apothecary might be able to try what would normally be a heal skill check to help cure poison but at a +5 to the DC -- a soldier might be able to spot an ambush based on his training with a +5 on the DC of the check *or possibly no adjustment based on the GM).

[Crysknife]

Interesting idea, I really like it.
I think it would be good to limit the skill point gained to the modifier BEFORE stats increasing objects.
It may be still too good, maybe something milder wold be significant enough but not unbalancing (such as a bonus skill point for every stat with a modifier of +1 or better, that of course should be spent in skills related to those stats)