I want to play a skilled fighter and want to know what is a fair trade for skill points. Would giving up armor training and bravery be worth 6 skill points per level?
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I figured out a while back in the Advanced Race Guide Playtest, that +1 skillpoint per level, spread over 20 levels, is worth exactly 1 preselected feat.
http://paizo.com/forums/dmtz4lvy?What-is-a-feat-Worth#31
So giving up a single fighter feat is worth +2 skill ranks/level, if you agree with Paizo that a selectable feat is worth double a preselected feat.
While I appreciate the response, that doesn't really answer my question.
On the other hand, armor training is pretty awesome. Depends on the type of skills you want I guess. I mean if you're looking for stuff armor check is going to mess with then giving up armor training is really going to hurt. If you're looking to do knowledge and junk than not so much. Moving at full speed is really cool too.
Bravery is aight bit its not worth some skills.
Depends on the player I like armor training but if you Pop certain skill such as bluff, acrobatics and other combat useful skill then I say there worth it.
Just go the combat expertise route and your skilled fighter will be grand.
That said I got a high dex character with 23 armor and because it's free hand fighter I had to give up armor training for the boost in Ac and Feint I think it was worth it.
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I just redid the math.
It does answer your question, it just requires a bit of thought to parse it, and I didnt do it for you.
Bravery gives you +1 versus fear. Its worth half as much as a bonus to will saves, and you're getting +5 total. +4 vs fear would be worth one feat, which means its worth +1 skills per level, and you're 1/4 the way to being worth +2 skills per level. Thats added onto the fighter's 2 skills/level. Bravery: (1/4 each time).
Current Tally: 1.25 feats
I imagine giving up armor training would be paying way too much for the 6 skills per level, Lets check.
the reduced ACP from armor training is worth 1 trait by itself (.5 preselected feats), and you get it 4 times(2 preselected feats). The increased max dex isnt worth as much. maybe half that(estimating since we dont have that one in the list of whats been published). So its worth roughly 3 preselected feats total, or another +3 skill ranks per level.
Current Tally: 4.25 feats
If you give up bravery and armor training for skill ranks, your fighter should have 4 skill ranks per level if the GM is nice, and 6 if he's mean (its worth an increase to about 6.25 skills/level). Unless I underestimated the value of increasing the max dex, since its the only one I had to guess for.
So its close, but I think you're being shortchanged a little.
If you still get bravery the first time it should be about right.
Thanks Vallon.
I liked the feats of a fighter but wanted more skill points to flesh out my character, so giving up either was out of the question.
King and Munkir.
Yeah I was looking at UMD, Bluff, Perception etc. I just wanted a fighter with better versatility and customization options (feats and skills)
Gignere
The ranger is cool, but I"m not interested in combat styles or favorite enemies.
The premise of the build was just to create a basic "adventurer"..
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I would say keep bravery the first time, and have it not improve, then ditch your armor training, and its balanced, and point your GM to my math and the thread I linked.
If it were me I would price out the value for weapon training too, and take a smaller hit to armor training, and a bit of a hit to weapon training. Right now you're taking a big hit to defense and no hit to offense. Just pointing out you're making it more of a glass cannon class by dropping ALL of your armor training.
Oh! this doesnt increase number of class skills. this is just an increase in skill ranks/level.
Though if you look at that thread I linked you should be able to come up with the value of an extra class skill.
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I want to play a skilled fighter and want to know what is a fair trade for skill points. Would giving up armor training and bravery be worth 6 skill points per level?
if you want to play a skilled fighter you are looking towards a lore warden. if all you are wanting to do is homebrew a character that gets bonus feats and extra skill points then homebrew away. but you are probably better off just playing a ranger.
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Anyway if I was GM I wouldn't allow it. You are basically creating a fighter archetype that makes the rogue class obsolete.
Say you do trade out armor training for the skill points. So compare to the rogue, you have more hps, better armor options, better weapon options, better dpr and only 2 skill points less.
Why the hell would anyone want to play a rogue with your homebrew skill fighter?
The rogue has been obsolete since the printing of the PF Core. Thats why when people say "Help me make a rogue" you get dozens of posts with bard and ranger archetypes to do so without sucking. Or posts that say "make a ninja".
His "adventurer" archetype, as mathed is balanced against the fighter. The fact that it makes the rogue obsolete isn't a fault with the archetype. Its a fault with the rogue class, which has been proven to be worse than all of the melee classes and all of the magic classes.
The only exception I've seen where rogues are not too bad is if you have a whole party of them working as a cohesive unit. But then, that setup also usually works better with rangers and bards.
Rogue is a class thats better than commoner, and worse than pretty much every other PC class. Monk, Noble, and Expert are classes which may be comparable (though some builds of monk are actually good)
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He's not gaining skill focus. He's gaining the favored class bonus of +1 skill rank per level, which has been shown to be a PFEO(Preselected Feat Equivalent Object) through paizo's published sources in the thread I linked. He's giving up 4 (or 4.25 if he loses bravery completely) preselected feats worth of abilities, for exactly 4 feats of preselected abilities.
The math works out.
If you dont believe me, click the link, read the thread.
Additionally some feats just suck, while other things with the same value as a feat are less crappy (the biggest example I can think of being weapon proficiencies; it was shown that 1 proficiency every 4 levels is worth a feat, which makes 1 proficiency period obviously crap - explaining why everyone hates taking it, its worth 1/5 of a feat.)
I never event thought of the weapon training. I could drop that too?
A lore warden looks like a Student of the Sword rehashed, not bad but I'd hate to use all my skill points on knowledge skills. I'll probably just skip the home brew and just play a simple fighter. I think my idea was gimping me
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Yeah. I'd go for a weakened weapon training, and a weakened armor training, and a weakened bravery, to get your 4 feats worth of abilities, to raise your skill points. Then you'd still get some of each, just not the whole thing.
You could remove a bit more to get more than 4 feats worth if you want more class skills too.
You just need to look at weapon training, see what it actually gives you, and compare that to the stuff in the thread. theres an excel table in there too, which may have more stuff the thread doesnt cover. We worked all that out months ago.
I'm with ya Dark
Rogue is a class thats better than commoner, and worse than pretty much every other PC class. Monk, Noble, and Expert are classes which may be comparable (though some builds of monk are actually good)
The rogue needs help - it's pretty clearly a bottom-tier PC class - but that's really overselling it. The rogue is dramatically better than the Expert and the Aristocrat (I'm assuming that that's what you were going for with "Noble".) In addition to extra skill points, the rogue gets Sneak Attack, a progression of things worth approximately a feat every two levels, and trapfinding. The only thing Expert has over it is customizable class skills and a better good save, and the only thing Aristocrat has is different weapon proficiencies, armor proficiencies and a better good save. A rogue is a fully functional PC in a way that an Expert or Aristocrat are not, even if it's almost totally outclassed by other options.
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I dont know that you really need 6 skills/lv. If you have 4/lv you still get your favored class benefit if you choose fighter as your favored class, bringing you to 5/lv. Then you could grab a couple more class skills, and give up less stuff to get it.
You could also just give up a single fighter feat to get to 4 skills/lv and call it a day (I'd probably do this, its really simple and easy, but you dont get more class skills out of it.)
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Rogue is a class thats better than commoner, and worse than pretty much every other PC class. Monk, Noble, and Expert are classes which may be comparable (though some builds of monk are actually good)The rogue needs help - it's pretty clearly a bottom-tier PC class - but that's really overselling it. The rogue is dramatically better than the Expert and the Aristocrat (I'm assuming that that's what you were going for with "Noble".) In addition to extra skill points, the rogue gets Sneak Attack, a progression of things worth approximately a feat every two levels, and trapfinding. The only thing Expert has over it is customizable class skills and a better good save, and the only thing Aristocrat has is different weapon proficiencies, armor proficiencies and a better good save. A rogue is a fully functional PC in a way that an Expert or Aristocrat are not, even if it's almost totally outclassed by other options.
Ah. See, I see rogue, aristocrat, and expert as classes that are okay to dip no more than a couple levels in. I'd probably stop at 1 level of aristocrat, 2 levels of expert, or 3 in rogue. I wouldnt take more than 3 levels in any of them, under any circumstances.
In my opinion, the rogue is that bad.
And I have seen people dip Aristocrat and Expert to pick up a few things.
Maybe I feel particular rogue dislike because its the class tha lies to you and presents itself as a viable PC class when its just not good enough.
Rogue-4 for uncanny dodge; rogue-4/ inquistor14 was a great campaign for me. I never care for lvl 20 features because I have never played a session of a character higher than 19 in my years o gaming
Not being caught flat footed is huge for a character who relies on Dex for decent AC and avoiding touch attacks
I want to play a skilled fighter and want to know what is a fair trade for skill points. Would giving up armor training and bravery be worth 6 skill points per level?
Depends if you want to play a dex fighter or not, and if you face a lot of fear attcks.
I'm willing to bet they will not represent a significant number of your enemies
@zark
Yeah Dex based
I'm willing to bet they will not represent a significant number of your enemies
@zark
Yeah Dex based
My answer is probably not, but that depends on how you plan to build you character and what kind of armor you plan to use. Perhaps give up bravery and have a slower progression on armor training.
BTW I agree with you UD (uncanny dodge) is great if you are a dex character. If you want UD you don't have to pick 4 levels rogue, 2 level archaeologist (bard archetype) or 2 level barbarian and you get it.
If you want more skill points, but keep the fighter flavor you could multiclass. Look at the Guide (Ranger archetype). It doesn't get favorite enemies, but a sort of simte foe ability called Ranger’s Focus. It's really cool. As for combat styles, that just a bunch of bonus feats. With the APG there are more options even when it comes to combat styles. Or play a fighter/barbarian. Fighter/ archaeologist is actually a nice combination. You don't really need a high charisma score, 12 is enough.
edit:
If your GM is cool with one feat = 2 more skills per level, then go for it.
There is one such fighter feat in a Paizo campaign book. Don't know which. Armor training is far better than one feat
true, but it only works if they arent in one of the uncanny dodge classes above level 4. lol.
Not sure what you mean, but if he has UD he won't lose the dex bonus regardless if the attacker is of higher level. They can flank him, sure, but if you play smart that usually won't be much of a problem.
one feat = 2 more skills per level
on selectable fighter feat is worth that, following the paradigm of paizo's selectable feat = 2 prechosen feats.
I don't know anything about paradigm of paizo's selectable feat. Is that some sort of rule?
armor training is worth 3 feats.
This isn't an exact science. It all depends on the build, the character and class.
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We did a detailed breakdown of what they say stuff is worth when they wanted to price everything out for the advanced race guide.
theres a link at the top. we figured out which things paizo priced with the same value, and from there figured out lots more, and thats where I got the value of 3 feats for armor training. its 2 + a bit, and I estimated the bit at +1.
They value things explicitly independent of build and class.
And yes. anywhere they indicate a price for something, selectable is worth double pre-selected.
OK. Thanks for the info.
Still, this isn't an exact science, since ability A can be more useful to character X than ability B, while if you play character Y, ability B can be more useful than ability A.
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Yeah. But I'm not pricing based on the value in any particular combination, I'm pricing based on the value of any given ability according to how Paizo attributed the value of things in published sources.
Sometimes I flat out disagree. But for consistency I'm not going with "what I think it should be worth" and more "what should this be worth based on the values of other stuff in published products?"
And using that as a metric (its as good/consistent as its going to get without a complete system redesign to match what *I* think stuff should be worth); armor training is worth 2 feats for its armor check penalty features, + the value of raising max dex by the same amount; which I estimated to be worth half that, for a total of 3.
I think I estimated conservatively. Its possible raising maxdex is worth just as much as lowering ACP, which would make armor training worth more than 3. I didnt see a parallel to raising MaxDex in the list of valued items we put together, so its harder to price.