Hello all.
I had a bit of an epiphany a few days ago about how to encourage skill usage by making skills more powerful, but requiring a deeper investment. The system I came up with is half inspired by the skill perk system from Skyrim but also the Skill Tricks from 3.5 (published in Complete Scoundrel).
Basically you'd have a lateral skill progression. At certain skill ranks, you can "invest" an additional rank to gain a perk/trick. There are three levels. Apprentice, Journeyman and Master, with a Grandmaster perk unlocked with a Skill Focus feat investment.
Disclaimer: I originally developed this system for an E6 game which is still in the early planning stages. In my game Apprentice is 1 rank, Journeyman is 3 and Master is 5, but it's easily adapted to standard PF levels.
My question to you is what sorts of functionality do you think can be added to skills to make them more powerful or useful? I need the community's help to brainstorm.
Some things I've decided on is making Crafting worthwhile (custom weapons and armor with increased bonuses) and adding a taunt mechanic to Intimidate. I'd also like to use the system as an excuse to bring back old synergy bonuses.
Another good possibility is adding quasi-magical abilities to skills, like Escape Artist (at Master level) being able to wriggle free of encumbering spell effects (entangle, slow, etc.) with a DC 15+ the spells caster level.
Thoughts?
To the top!