I just wanted to know what everyone's thoughts are on which skills are the most valuable. In general, which skills are the most generally useful to have multiple ranks in? Perception is a no-brainer, but what else is generally good?
Another broken skill tends to be knowledge (local). You can learn a lot of information wherever you tend to go. Personally I do not have many characters who max this skill out. Usually diplomacy can give you the same information and helps.
I always try to get my climb and swim to around 10 (with armour check penalty).
Personally I like acrobatics as well. Helps reduce falling damage, and its cool to easily jump over a 30 foot gap.
I've always found Survival useful: tracking, cross-country movement, weather-forecasting/protection, finding food and water.
As with most skills, magic does all that and better but I prefer mundane approaches to things, even when I play casters. Plus, I can do all of that without expending resources.
Use Magic Device. A few points in this, and one can use all manner of tricks. Wands of Silent Image and Cure Light Wounds always come in handy : )
Sense Motive is another golden star, depending on how tricky your GM like to be. And Bluff will help you out of sticky situations - but also campaign dependent.
Spellcraft - with detect magic it gets you magic item properties, and in combat you know what the enemy spellcaster is doing. In my game right now even the party barbarian put a point into spellcraft so he can at least try.
Survival - a DC 10 check can save you from eating your rations while traveling, and a 15 gives you a bonus on environmental fort saves, and lets you predict the weather.
Swim - no one wants to drown
Heal - most useful if you have a lot of points in it, because you can easily end poisons and diseases without using magic. Saving someone from bleeding out is also a bonus.
After Perception it's probably Diplomacy / UMD one is invaluable for pretty much every scenario written, the other is invaluable for surviving said scenarios.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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Heal - most useful if you have a lot of points in it, because you can easily end poisons and diseases without using magic. Saving someone from bleeding out is also a bonus.
Just want to point out that Heal changed from 3.5 - a Heal check no longer just replaces your save against poison and disease, it just gives you a +4. Which is nice, but is far from "ending" say a DC20 poison on a guy with a +3 Fort save.
Perception is pretty nice, but not as "super required" as some make it out to be. There is no skill that is an absolute "must have." I've had an Int penalty non-human getting one point a level who put it into Profession, and he did just fine.
However, I do like:
Bluff - you can get away with a ton of craziness with a good check
Knowledges - IDing monsters is very string and useful
Sense Motive - your defense against deceptive NPCs
Survival - when it comes up you're glad to have it
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In terms of importance (to me) for a group to have:
1) Perception
2) Diplomacy/Bluff/UMD/Spellcraft
3) Monster identifying knowledges
Most everything else is situational, and depends on your build and what kind of character you want to make, and the campaign.
At the bottom for me are Craft/Perform(unless you're a Bard)/Profession (excepting Profession Sailor or Soldier, which allow you to pilot a boat or command an army and only useful for those situations). Crafting and professions are mostly for flavor, unless you're taking a craft skill to use in combination with magical crafting feats you don't get much mileage out of them.
Oh, and below that is appraise. I'm not even sure what appraise is really supposed to do in game, without having it take a lot of extra time in game to discuss how much stuff is worth. Which maybe that's what we're all supposed to be doing...but I think I'd much rather just remove the skill from the game.
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RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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Oh, and below that is appraise. I'm not even sure what appraise is really supposed to do in game, without having it take a lot of extra time in game to discuss how much stuff is worth. Which maybe that's what we're all supposed to be doing...but I think I'd much rather just remove the skill from the game.
Appraise is very binary in the groups I play with - if anyone has even one rank in it the GM usually just tells us the value of everything. But if no one has it then instead of finding "a gold crown worth 2000gp" you just find a "valuable looking crown."
I will also call for Appraise checks if there is something valuable, but not obviously so, that the party looks like they might overlook. I might roll the check in secret then let the players know "Oh by the way, that rug looks finely woven and imported," or something of that nature. The rug was always in the room description but Appraise gives me an excuse to call it out as worth taking. If done well Appraise can be a good skill for maximizing the party's treasure.
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Oh, and below that is appraise. I'm not even sure what appraise is really supposed to do in game, without having it take a lot of extra time in game to discuss how much stuff is worth. Which maybe that's what we're all supposed to be doing...but I think I'd much rather just remove the skill from the game.Appraise is very binary in the groups I play with - if anyone has even one rank in it the GM usually just tells us the value of everything. But if no one has it then instead of finding "a gold crown worth 2000gp" you just find a "valuable looking crown."
I will also call for Appraise checks if there is something valuable, but not obviously so, that the party looks like they might overlook. I might roll the check in secret then let the players know "Oh by the way, that rug looks finely woven and imported," or something of that nature. The rug was always in the room description but Appraise gives me an excuse to call it out as worth taking. If done well Appraise can be a good skill for maximizing the party's treasure.
I've seen a handy chart around that says the variance of what you can tell players in the price of something depending on their check vs. the DC. For example, if the DC to find the value of an exceptionally rare gem is 20 and the player rolls a 10, I will tell them the gem is really value times %250 or value times %25. If a player gets well over on their appraise check I'll tell them the precise value at multiple fence points.
Thanks for all your responses, guys! I personally think that the three most useful skills are Perception, Sense Motive, and UMD, though that's probably because I'm usually not playing a skill/knowledge monkey, and because my DM and fellow players really enjoy being sneaky, so sense motive is a must in my group.
Perception is king.
Then it depends.
If you plan on using magical device then UMD is essential. If you dump cha and have no need for them. Then it is near worthless.
Sense motive and diplomacy are both very valuable
lots of skills offer benefits to certain areas. For example fighting defensively offers better benefits if you have 3 ranks of acrobatics.
Anything you use so often that it's more efficient to have ranks than replicate with magic.
Knowledge Arcana is basically Detect Plot in some games.
This is probably just me, but one that I've just recently gotten into using a lot is Linguistics. Being able to speak multiple languages is fun and can be very useful (if you pick the right languages) but the most fun part is forgery... sure it's a shady and illegal thing to do, but how many commoners and guards actually have the linguistic skill? Not many I'd bet. So, while they can still role, if you max the sucker out, there's a very decent chance you can do some major work with a simple piece of paper that took a few hours to make.
Also, you can figure out if something's a forgery easier which may come in handy and you can also attempt to read languages you don't know.
Another skill I try to max when possible is sense motive. Not only helps against liars and potentially the ill intentioned, but also (If I recall correctly) against people attempting to speak in code to each other.