Alternate Skill List for My Campaign - Critiques welcome and encouraged!

[Hodge Podge]

Hey everybody, Hodge here! I finally finished finagling a skill system I hope to test on my group in our next campaign. It's just a basic reworking of the skill space into what seems to me to be a concise and intuitive arrangement (meaning your mileage may vary. Feel free to disagree with my design decisions). I also renamed all skills to be in the form of a simple verb... except Acrobatics. I'm a little stumped on that one.

Before we get started — Yes, I know Constitution is a hard attribute to assign active skills to, but I wanted a somewhat more balanced skill load across each of the six abilities. You will probably disagree with my placing Heal and Handle Animal there. While I'm open to suggestions regarding that, please help me work on other areas of my system too. For example, there are significantly less skills than in RAW, so I might have to tweak the number of skill points each class gets, among other things.

Anyway, please have a read, and tell me what you think!

This is a continuation of my skill system from a few months ago.

Changes from the core skill list::

There is a new "Force" skill, which encompasses a lot of what were previously Strength checks. It can also be used for exceeding normal physical lifting and throwing limits. At high DCs, it can be used on magical force effects.

Climb, Swim, and some 4e Endurance-like aspects are combined into the "Traverse" skill.

Acrobatics is largely the same.

Escape Artist, Sleight of Hand, and weapon feinting are combined into the "Finesse" skill. (not to be confused with the "Weapon Finesse" feat)

Stealth is now "Sneak." Some additional uses are defined.

Handle Animal now includes Ride and is called "Handle". It is now under Constitution.

Heal is largely the same, but is now under Constitution.

The Knowledge skills got a major overhaul, and have been reduced to four. I've heard complaints about the RAW having too many, and that people were loathe to spend points on knowledge categories that may be too circumstantial. Any knowledge related to items is now part of the relevant Craft skill. I also heard some complaints about creatures being in one category or another, so I've tweaked that as well.

Linguistics is a Knowledge skill now, and no longer has anything to do with forgeries. That's now part of the Craft: Document skill.

Sense motive has been expanded into the "Inuit" skill, with some additional uses. If players are really stuck, the GM might allow them to use this skill to get a hint, or to remember character knowledge.

Perception no longer contains Search.

Search is back, and now includes aspects of Survival, such as tracking and foraging.

Diplomacy and Perform have been combined into the "Charm" skill, with some expanded uses.

Intimidate has been expanded into the "Daunt" skill, and can be used for taunting in combat and making creatures feel other negative emotions in addition to fear.

Bluff and Disguise are combined into the "Deceive" skill. It could have applications for Perform: Act. Bluff can't be used to feint with weapons (never made sense to me...).

Craft skills also got a major overhaul, and have been pooled into seven categories. Each Craft skill includes Knowledge and Appraise checks as related to the item category in question.

Craft: Device includes the Disable Device skill, and may also allow the use or piloting of mechanical devices. Note that I'm a little worried that Craft: Device is overpowered. I may move any weapon applications over to Craft: Arms.

Spellcraft is now a craft skill, and includes Use Magic Device, but is otherwise largely the same.

Profession skills are now traits, and modify other skill checks accordingly.

Strength Skills:

Force: Bend, break, budge, lift, and throw objects. Break bonds. Break or move magical force effects.
Traverse: Climb, hold breath, swim, and run.

Dexterity Skills:

Acrobatics: Balance, fly, jump, and tumble.
Finesse: Contort limbs, escape from bonds, feint with weapons, and slight of hand.
Sneak: Hide, move silently, leave no trace of passing, and shake pursuers.

Constitution Skills:

Handle: Tame, raise, care for, and ride animals and similar creatures.
Heal: Administer first aid and long term care, diagnose injuries and illnesses, discern anatomy, stabilize the dying.

Intelligence Skills:

Know: Recall and utilize learned information in a particular category. Race or origin may affect subject familiarity in certain circumstances.(For example, subterranean nature is unfamiliar to most, unless one is a dwarf or otherwise has a subterranean origin.)

• Cosmos
  Creatures: Deities, outsiders
  Subjects: Astrology, astronomy, fate, fortune telling, outer space, philosophies, physics, the planes, religions
  Geography and History: Extraplanar geography and physics, history on a universal timescale, navigating outer space

• Esoteric
  Creatures: Aberrations, constructs, dragons, magical beasts, undead
  Subjects: Ancient mysteries, dungeons & ruins, magical traditions, secret knowledge & symbols, secret societies
  Geography and History: Alternative & secret histories, forgotten civilizations, hidden locations

• Linguistics
  Decipher unknown languages, both spoken and written. Know accents. Learn to speak, read, and write in new languages. Write and decipher codes.

• Nature
  Creatures: Animals, fey, monstrous humanoids, oozes, plants, vermin
  Subjects: Biology, caves, ecosystems, natural cycles, natural food and resources, soil & water, weather
  Geography and History: Animal migrations, climate changes, history on a geological timescale, navigating in the wilderness

• Society
  Creatures: Humanoids
  Subjects: Common people, economics, entertainment, events, laws, nobility & royalty, organizations, personalities, traditions
  Geography and History: Cities & towns, colonies, foreign places, political entities, population migrations, roads, royal lineages, trading routes, wars

Wisdom Skills:

Intuit: Detect lies. Make logical connections. Understand body language, hidden messages and meanings. Use "sixth sense".
Perceive: Actively or passively feel, hear, see, smell, taste, or otherwise sense one's surroundings or stealthy foes.
Search: Actively and systematically follow tracks, forage for food and useful items, and search for hidden areas, clues, or objects.

Charisma Skills:

Charm: Carouse, diplomacise, gather information, haggle, perform, or show proper etiquette.
Daunt: Anger, confuse, frighten, or sadden individuals. Goad individuals into specific courses of action.
Deceive: Disguise one's appearance, mannerisms, and speech. Put on a convincing act, or lie outright.

Craft Skills (I haven't yet decided on whether to have ability score affinities for these.):

Craft: Appraise, create, disable/destroy, identify, and know about objects in a particular category.
Also know about materials and tools as related to the category.

• Arms
  Typical materials: Metal, leather
  Items: Armor, caltrops, gauntlets, helms, melee & thrown weapons, shields

• Device
  Typical materials: Component parts
  Items: Ammo, clockwork, firearms, locks, machines, ranged & siege weapons, toolkits, traps
  Skills: Use mechanical device. Disable Device.

• Document
  Typical materials: Ink, paper, wax
  Items: Books & scrolls, calligraphy, forgeries, currency, drawings & paintings, legal documents, maps

• Finery
  Typical materials: Cloth, fine metals, gemstones, glass
  Items: Bags & belts, baskets & pottery, clothing & shoes, holy symbols, jewelry, musical instruments

• Structure
  Typical materials: Stone, wood
  Items: Boats & wagons, buildings, chains & ropes, chests & furniture, doors & walls, monuments & statues

• Substance
  Typical materials: Animal and plant materials, gasses, liquids, powders
  Items: Alchemical items, chemicals, drink & food, explosives, medicines, poisons, potions

• Spellcraft
  Typical materials: Magical energies, spell reagents
  Items: Magical effects, items, rituals, rods and wands, spells, symbols
  Skills: Use magical device.

P.S. - Yes, this does mean that your Wizard who is a master of crafting rings of vast arcane power also has high ranks in Craft: Basketweaving. You know you love it.

[Hodge Podge]

I'll start asking some more specific questions to get conversation going.

First Question:
For the Knowledge skills, do you think the four that are listed (other than linguistics) cover all useful areas that a player could want or need to know about? Keep in mind that the seven Craft skills also provide information on objects (and magic) in a manner akin to Knowledge skills.
.
Society contains aspects of the following Knowledge skills:

• Geography (nations, people, settlements, travel routes)
  
• History (lineages, wars, population movements, founding of cities, folk tales)
  
• Local
  
• Nobility

It covers Humanoids (including Goblinoids, Giants, and so on) and their habits (commerce, warfare, education, government, customs, etc...), as well as settled areas — from farms to metropolises — and the established land and water routes between them. It also covers the history of these subjects.
.
.
Nature contains aspects of the following Knowledge skills:

• Dungeoneering (natural caves, geology, and natural subterranean life)
  
• Geography (terrain, climate, wilderness paths, natural resource locations)
  
• History (animal migrations, geological history, species origins and relations)
  
• Nature

It covers all natural life in the prime material world and its habits (lifecycles, reproduction, diets, species range, etc...), as well as knowledge about weather, soil, bodies of water, and various landforms. It covers geographical knowledge and pathfinding in wilderness areas. It also covers the history these subjects, including history of the land on a geological timescale.
.
.
Cosmos contains aspects of the following Knowledge skills:

• Planes
  
• History (history of religions and schools of philosophical thought, history on a multiversal scale, creation myths, extraplanar wars, prophecies & possible futures)
  
• Nature (things beyond the main world of the material plane, i.e. outer space and alien lifeforms)
  
• Religion

It covers knowledge of any places beyond the main world with which the players are familiar, and the denizens of such places. This is knowledge about the workings of the very underpinnings of existence: philosophy, religion, physics, and astronomy.
.
.
Esoteric contains aspects of the following Knowledge skills:

• Arcana (everything that is not directly related to spells and casting. see Craft: Spell, above)
  
• Dungeoneering (aberrations, dungeons)
  
• Geography (hidden locations, ruins, places of arcane power)
  
• History (ancient mysteries, lost civilizations, secret histories)

It covers the forgotten, the secret, and the profane; knowledge that is not easily come upon by the common folk. As such, it covers magical and unnatural creatures such as dragons, constructs, magical beasts, aberrations, and undead. It covers places that are neither natural nor civilized: lost ruins, deep dungeons, and the dark corners of the underworld. It also covers the history of these subjects, and the history of magic and certain secret organizations.

---------------------------------------------------

Knowledge: Cosmos is special in that it can be used for general information about distant worlds and planes, or it can be used to lessen the penalty for making one of the other Knowledge checks. Need to know about the wildlife of Hell? Roll Knowledge: Cosmos first, and then roll Knowledge: Nature.

Knowledge: Engineering is now part of Craft: Structure.

Much of Knowledge: Arcana is now part of Craft: Spell (Spellcraft).

[BigDTBone]

I like the overall idea, but I have two concerns. One broad and one Particular.

What about my constitution modifies by ability to treat and cure wounds?

Doesn't a system with fewer skills further gimp the rouge class?

[Hodge Podge]

Hey, thanks. :D

On the Constitution thing, my main reason for putting skills there at all is to balance the skill load out. Constitution doesn't really lend itself to being used to do actions (and any direct actions involving one's physical endurance sort of steps on Strength's toes), so I extrapolated a bit.

Looking at the other stats, you can see they cover related skillsets:

Strength - Skills used to exert physical force, moving yourself or other objects around.
Dexterity - Skills used to finely control your physical movements.
Intelligence - Skills that help you know about stuff.
Wisdom - Skills that perceive your surroundings.
Charisma - Skills that interact with other characters.

So for Constitution, maybe you could say they are skills that require physical and mental endurance, a certain resistance to fatigue and possible contracted diseases. Maybe having more "life force" helps you to impart a bit of that to others? Perhaps even a bit of "keeping your cool" in stressful situations could be a part of it. Think also of the kinds of characters that would have high Constitution, and whether or not thouse skills suit them. Imagine a rugged survivalist who can take a beating. I imagine that as someone who might also be good at first aid and rearing animals. There are a bunch of ways to fluff what is essentially a mechanical consideration. It's not perfect, but it makes enough sense for me to be okay with it (and more sense than some other systems I've seen). Square peg, meet round hole.

I don't think it's too far of a stretch to say that Heal and Handle Animal share a similar range of aptitudes (caring for people vs. caring for animals, etc...), so the same stat should be able to cover them, in my opinion.

[Hodge Podge]

On the Rogue thing.

Consolidating skills into more broad ones actually makes them more powerful. You're not losing any skills so much as getting more bang for your skill point buck. Since any reduction in skill points would apply to classes across the board, it should have no discernable effect on Rogues in particular. Good thing to discuss though. What do you think?

[Chris Kenney]

Actually, who it seriously impacts is the Bard, who now only gets two "free" ranks per level instead of five. With only four knowledge skills their ability to make knowledge checks untrained is also worth considerably less, since even the dumbest fighter can probably take four skill points from favored class bonuses to get the same thing.

There are also some problems with Ki-Rin style, which you're really not supposed to be able to use against anything and everything. It would probably have to be banned.

[Hodge Podge]

Good point on the Bards. It would significantly lessen the effectiveness of Bardic Knowledge (or as we like to call it, Knowledge: Everything). I would probably rule in this case that a Bard can also use the Craft skills untrained and add their half-level bonus, but only when using the Craft skills to make Knowledge (and maybe Appraise) checks.

(That being said, having seen Bardic Knowledge in play, it might be nice for someone other than the Bard to chime in with an answer once in a while. Just saying.)

P.S. - Your point about dumb fighters training in all the knowledge skills has some merit. But they'd only be trained in each Knowledge with (maybe) a +1 bonus. Bards (with their high Intelligence, ample skill points, +3 class skill bonuses, and half-level bonus) will be getting a +20 bonus in these checks by the time they're level 10. :p

[Hodge Podge]

Oh, Kirin Style. Thanks for pointing that out.

I don't know how much more powerful this would make that style. I imagine that anyone focusing on it would be attempting to have max ranks in any creature-identifying Knowledge skills anyway.

There are presently 6 Knowledge skills that can be used to identify creatures (Arcana, Dungeoneering, Local, Nature, Planes, Religion), and this only reduces that to 4. That, along with less skill points and the rank still being capped at the character's level, means that the changes might have little discernible impact on the fighting style.

I'll have to test it out.

I'm not sure I know what you're referring to with the "free" ranks thing in relation to Bards (I've never played the class). Care to elaborate?

EDIT: Oh I think I get it. 10 knowledge skills. Half the Bard's level bonus. Effectively 5 free ranks... Once again, because the knowledge skills are broader, they are more powerful. 1 point in a broad skill is effectively the same as a a point in each of 2 more narrow skills that cover the same area of knowledge. Nothing is really being taken from the Bard. It's just that the knowledge is more accessible to everyone else. (So maybe the Bard loses some exclusivity, actually.)

[Hodge Podge]

Thanks for the two comments so far. Does anyone else see any other potential issues, or want to expand on points already brought up? I'm going to show it to my group tonight.

I'm also considering messing with the way in which skills are gained. I know there are plenty of threads covering alternate skill point/rank systems, but do you folks have any that you believe to be superior?

[Kirth Gersen]

I like it a lot -- it mirrors a lot of what I did with skills in my houserules.

[Hodge Podge]

Ah yes, the eponymous Kirthfinder: World of Warriorcraft. :P
I was looking at it the other day. Good stuff! I especially like the race section.

I definitely see some parallels, namely your Athletics to my Traverse, your Disable Device to my Craft: Device, our respective versions of Spellcraft (I'm thinking of calling it Craft: Magic), and combining Handle Animal with Ride. Most of the other similarities seem to be following in step with the latest trends in PRPG and 4e skill consolidations.

I think maybe our approaches were a little different though. It looks like you started with "What can make the game simpler, more intuitive, and fun?" and is almost minimalist, while I started with "What's the best way to map the skills to the ability scores while still keeping them concise, useful, and balanced?" and is only slightly simpler than Pathfinder. Both good approaches. :D

Thanks for the vote of confidence!

EDIT: Ooh, I just saw your secondary skill lists. Yes, definitely some parallels there too! And it makes your skill system not quite as simple as I'd thought.

EDIT2: Hmm, yeah, I like the idea of having a finite list of core skills and an open-ended category of secondary skills. It's probably not compatible with my approach so far (I'm aiming for a finite, comprehensive list that is useful in all situations), but it's something to consider, for sure. :D