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When I first got the new Unchained book, I didn't expect to like, or even really look at, the Grouped skills option. And given the dearth of threads on the option, I suspect that this apathy might be shared by others. But I started playing around with the system recently, and I've found myself falling in love with the "Grouped Skills" option.
Here are some reasons why. Feel free to add your own!
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Avoids the Narrow Skills Problem:
I suspect that many of us have been in situations like the following:
- DM: "OK, so you move to peer into the deep pool that fills the southern half of the room. As you do, the door behind you slam shut and the walls start moving in. You have about 5 rounds before the walls crush anyone not in the pool."
- Holtor the Heavily Clad Cleric: "Is there any space above the walls?"
- DM: "Now that you mention it, there's about 3 feet of clearance above the walls, and the walls of the chamber look rough enough to climb."
- Wizzle the Weakling Wizard: "Great! Many Moves can climb it, and then drop a rope ladder down so we can climb to safety!"
- Many Moves the Monk: "Uh, that might take a while. I don't have any points in Climb."
- Wizzle: "Wait---you can back-flip over an ogre and tightrope walk through a hurricane, but you can't climb a wall?!"
- Many Moves: "Well, I needed to max out Perception and Acrobatics, and I needed Use Magic Device to get my Wand of Mage Armor going..."
- Wizzle: "Nevermind. OK, new plan: we jump in the pool, and Many Moves finds a way out before Holtor sinks."
- Many Moves: "Um, I don't have any points in Swim either."
Enter Grouped Skills! At 1st level, Many Moves can select the Physical and Thievery groups, and take Perception as his specialty skill. And viola! He can do all of the things you'd expect a Monk to be able to do.
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Allows A Wider Range of Character Ideas: Say you want to create a smart and knowledgeable Fighter, a la Roy Greenhilt from the Order of the Stick, a party leader who can who knows about pretty much every kind of critter you might run into. With 2 skill points a level, this is hard to do. And spreading these points out among the six or so knowledge groups leaves you with skill levels too low do identify anything with a high enough CR to be a threat.
Or say you have the idea of creating a sorcerer who's a bit a con man---he can cast real magic, but he uses magic tricks to convince people that he's more powerful than he is, and has a knack for tricking, sneaking or talking his way out of situations when he gets in over his head. At a first pass, you might like him to be reasonably competent in, say, Sleight of Hand, Bluff, Sense Motive, Stealth, Perception, as well as the standard spell-caster skills like Spellcraft and Know (arcana). With 2 skill points a level, this is hard to do.
Enter Grouped Skills! At 1st level Roy can pick Scholarly as one of his two initial groups, and Sneaky the Sorcerer can pick Thieving and Scholarly as his two initial groups. Viola! You've been able to create the characters you wanted to play without a hastle!
Avoiding Decision Paralysis: Here's a description of a process I go through every time I create a character; say, a 1st level sorcerer.
"I've got 2 skill points. Hrmm. That's Perception and ... well, I want Know (arcana) to identify things. And of course I want Spellcraft. But it would be nice to use my charisma bonus for something, so maybe some ranks in Diplomacy. And if I'm the party face, it'd be good to have some Sense Motive as well. OK. But what do I get at first level? Do I get Perception and Diplomacy, and thus effectively know nothing about the magical arts until I hit 2nd or 3rd level? Or do I start with Know (arcana) and Spellcraft, even though these skills probably won't be useful for a while? Hrmm..."
And these painful decisions continue as I gain more levels, at each stage having to decide what to boost next, and by how much. Some decisions are important: feats, spells. Some decisions don't matter nearly as much: skills. But, as things stand, I end up spending more time on my skill selections than I do picking feats or spells.
Enter Grouped Skills! Now picking skills is a breeze. Pick the Scholarly and Social group skills for my Sorcerer, with Perception as my specialty skill. Viola! And since all of these scale with my level, I don't have to fret every level about how to allocate skill points. I can just occasionally choose what specialty skills to add every couple levels, and (at 10th level) what extra group to add. Easy!
Well, if anything you certainly convinced me to read over that chapter again.
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I like it for games where I want everyone to have multiple skills, such as if everyone is part of some special-ops team.
For my normal games I am going to either use the non-adventure skill rules or just bump the 2 skill classes up to 4 skills.
While a nice idea, I prefer Shadowrun's method of having skill groups. You can buy the whole package of skills. Then you level the package up just like a normal skill, but if you ever break it by improving one skill inside the skill group only, you can no longer improve the whole group as a whole unless you fix it.
Kinda a middle ground. You can still easily get the package that is just "athletics" for cheaper bundle price, but can only get one type of gun if you dont care for the others.
Well, if anything you certainly convinced me to read over that chapter again.
Glad to hear it! It's one of those things that looks kind of boring at first glance, but (IMHO) really comes to life when you start using it!
I like it for games where I want everyone to have multiple skills, such as if everyone is part of some special-ops team.
Yeah, good call! I actually just implemented this system as an optional choice in the Way of the Wicked Adventure Path, and it's working great for that very reason---everyone can take the Thieving skill group, and so be a bunch of sneaky bastards together. Since a party is only as stealthy as their least stealthy character, it's hard to implement the "stealthy party" idea without having everyone take it. Ditto for infiltration and the Disguise and Bluff skills.
This system makes it much easier to run this kind of party without requiring everyone to belong to one of the small handful of 6+ skill points/level classes.
Nice! Another reason to adopt the Grouped Skills set-up!
While a nice idea, I prefer Shadowrun's method of having skill groups. You can buy the whole package of skills. Then you level the package up just like a normal skill, but if you ever break it by improving one skill inside the skill group only, you can no longer improve the whole group as a whole unless you fix it.
Kinda a middle ground. You can still easily get the package that is just "athletics" for cheaper bundle price, but can only get one type of gun if you dont care for the others.
I'm not familiar with Shadowrun. But that seems like a neat variant of Grouped skills one could try!
I take it the idea is something like this? Allow players to trade (say) a group of skills for 2 more specialty skills, or trade 4 specialty skills for another group of skills? And allow players to take a specialty in the same skill twice, if they want it at full strength without having to get the relevant skill group as well?
I tried this system on my Bard at lv 11. Took all items off and this is the difference.
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Statistics
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Str 18, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 13, Wis 10, Cha 16
Skills Acrobatics +17 (+13 to jump), Appraise +15, Bluff +17, Climb +9, Craft (Enter Choice) +7, Diplomacy +17, Disable Device +12, Disguise +17, Escape Artist +7, Heal +5, Intimidate +11, Knowledge (arcana) +20, Knowledge (dungeoneering) +20, Knowledge (engineering) +20, Knowledge (geography) +20, Knowledge (history) +20, Knowledge (local) +20, Knowledge (nature) +20, Knowledge (nobility) +20, Knowledge (planes) +20, Knowledge (religion) +20, Linguistics +17, Perception +14, Perform (act) +17, Perform (comedy) +11, Perform (dance) +17, Perform (keyboard instruments) +11, Perform (oratory) +17, Perform (percussion instruments) +17, Perform (sing) +11, Perform (string instruments) +11, Perform (wind instruments) +11, Profession (Enter Choice) +8, Ride +4, Sense Motive +17, Sleight of Hand +13, Spellcraft +15, Stealth +13, Survival +5, Swim +6, Use Magic Device +17
Languages Abyssal, Aquan, Auran, Azlanti, Celestial, Common, Custom Language, Daemonic, Draconic, Dwarven, Elven, Gnome, Halfling, Ignan, Infernal, Orc, Osiriani, Polyglot, Protean, Shoanti, Skald, Sylvan, Terran, Undercommon
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Statistics
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Str 18, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 13, Wis 10, Cha 16
Skills Acrobatics +9 (+5 to jump), Appraise +5, Climb +5, Disable Device +12, Escape Artist +3, Knowledge (arcana) +10, Knowledge (dungeoneering) +10, Knowledge (engineering) +10, Knowledge (geography) +10, Knowledge (history) +10, Knowledge (local) +10, Knowledge (nature) +10, Knowledge (nobility) +10, Knowledge (planes) +10, Knowledge (religion) +6, Linguistics +9, Perception +14, Perform (act) +17, Perform (comedy) +7, Perform (dance) +9, Perform (keyboard instruments) +7, Perform (oratory) +17, Perform (percussion instruments) +17, Perform (sing) +7, Perform (string instruments) +7, Perform (wind instruments) +7, Sense Motive +17, Sleight of Hand +3, Spellcraft +13, Stealth +3, Survival +1, Use Magic Device +15
Languages Common, Custom Language, Draconic, Dwarven, Elven, Orc, Skald, Undercommon
I feel like this might be a little too easy to get everything.
Shadowrun does it pretty well also. You have points for individual skills, and points for groups skills.
I tried this system on my Bard at lv 11. Took all items off and this is the difference.
I wasn't able quite track what your group and specialty selections were... Mind spelling those out?
(I also didn't quite see how one could get skill bonuses that high, or in that many skills. For example, each knowledge skill is a different specialty, so it would take 10 specialty skill slots (as well as the Scholarly group) to get max ranks in all knowledge skills alone, whereas a 11th lvl Bard with a 13 int will only have 6 specialty skill slots... (I also wasn't quite sure how the bonuses were calculated---given no items, it seems a 11th level bard with a 13 int will have a max know bonus of 11(lvl)+1(int)+5(bard lvl/2)=+17... what am I missing?...))
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Makes Special-Ops Games Viable (noted by wraithstrike): It can be a lot of fun to play special-ops style games, where the party uses Stealth, Disguise and Bluff to infiltrate enemy strongholds, and use lies and trickery to wreck havoc from within. But it's hard to get this to work in practice. For a party is only as stealthy as their least stealthy member, and only as good at disguise as their party's worst disguise check.
So if the party is trying to sneak into a fortress with a Fighter with the stealth bonus of a blind elephant, or trying to persuade the watchmen that they're the guard replacements with a dwarven Cleric whose disguise bonus is on a par with the Tarrasque's... it ain't gonna happen. And for classes with fewer than 6+ skills points/level, it's almost impossible to fit in substantial skill-point allocations to things like Stealth or Disguise. This makes it hard to run anything like a special-ops-style adventure in Pathfinder.
Enter Grouped Skills! Since every class gets at least 2 skill groups to start with, it's viable for everyone in the party to start with the Thieving skill group. And even if some players want to play mid-to-low skill classes like Fighters and Clerics, playing special-opts-style adventures becomes a viable option.
I tried this system on my Bard at lv 11. Took all items off and this is the difference.I wasn't able quite track what your group and specialty selections were... Mind spelling those out?
(I also didn't quite see how one could get skill bonuses that high, or in that many skills. For example, each knowledge skill is a different specialty, so it would take 10 specialty skill slots (as well as the Scholarly group) to get max ranks in all knowledge skills alone, whereas a 11th lvl Bard with a 13 int will only have 6 specialty skill slots... (I also wasn't quite sure how the bonuses were calculated---given no items, it seems a 11th level bard with a 13 int will have a max know bonus of 11(lvl)+1(int)+5(bard lvl/2)=+17... what am I missing?...))
Actually, I am going to have to back up a bit. I was using Herolab and I am going to have to bring into question how things like Favored Class Bonus, the Fast Learner feat, the Finding Haleen and other traits that give skills, a Headband of Intelligence item, etc. will effect this system.
Actually, I am going to have to back up a bit. I was using Herolab and I am going to have to bring into question how things like Favored Class Bonus, the Fast Learner feat, the Finding Haleen and other traits that give skills, a Headband of Intelligence item, etc. will effect this system.
Fair enough!
(And it sounds like there might be bugs in Hero Lab's implementation.)
I actually love group skills as a concept, much for the same reason that you did, but I ran one game with them and my players all begged for me to go back to skill ranks.
Why?
We're playing relatively high-level (8+) and everyone has a similar number of skill ranks per level, so they all have the same number of skill groups. And all of them, almost ALL of them, picked the exact same groups for everything. Namely, they picked the scholar group because it includes a massive 14+ skills. (It has EVERY Craft, EVERY Profession, and EVERY Knowledge.) All of my characters wanted to try and retain the knowledges that their respective character class were good at, the Knowledges they invested in, and ultimately felt that doing so made them too similar. Conversely, NONE of them picked the Perceptive group, so no one was trained in Perception or Sense Motive.
Ultimately, my group gave me the feedback, "It felt like you were trying to set us up to know everything, but fall for every trick and ambush in the book." I like the extreme amount of skill bonuses that it gives, but the lack of customization is a problem. The system also doesn't address how it works with feat/prestige class prerequisites, the skilled racial trait, and the +1 skill rank favored class option. And ultimately, after a lot of careful debate, I agree with them. So I took the whole system and I'm going back to the drawing board with it.
Lots of interesting stuff...
Really interesting comments.
Re: lack of diverse skill options.
A lot of good points here. One worry was that you might someone with max ranks in a skill in a group, but little or no skill in the other skills in that group. That seems right. (Re your example: Sense Motive is grouped with Perception instead of Diplomacy, but, of course, your point still holds.)
Another worry was that you might want someone who is competent in some, but not all of the skills in a group. This seems largely right, and I worried about this as well.
One way to address the first worry would be to allow players to use two specialty skill slots in the same skill, allowing them to get the full bonus without having to get the group. So a player could get a max skill without having the group. Do you think that would address this worry?
Regarding the second worry, I toyed with the idea of allowing players to adopt Disadvantages which made them unskilled in one of the skills in their skill groups. (So, for example, you might model someone who has the Scholarly group but is illiterate by giving them the Disadvantage: Unskilled in Linguistics; or model someone who is athletic but terrified of water (and unable to swim) by giving them the Disadvantage: Unskilled in Swim.) Do you think that would allow for enough flexibility?...
Re: Perception.
Hah! This is yet another place where we had precisely the opposite impressions! In fact, I'll post my next reason for being excited about the Grouped Skills system below this post, since I already had it typed out...
I'm not sure what to think about this now. Alexander's players seemed to think that taking the Scholarly group is a no-brainer, and none of them picked the Perceptive group, while you're inclined to think that taking the Perceptive group is a no-brainer. (And I'm a bit surprised by both reactions, though I do think that taking *either* the Perceptive group or a skill specialty in Perception is probably something almost everyone will want to do.)
Re: Suggested Modifications.
Interesting proposals. I agree that associating certain classes with a default group of skills would give one a way to get the first benefit of the Grouped Skills approach sketched above (the "Narrow Skills" worry). If that was the *only* way to get a skill group though, then one wouldn't get the ability to construct a broader range of characters, or the ability to easily run a special-ops-style adventure. What about pairing class skills with an additional optional skill group the player can adopt? (Or perhaps allow them to use a Feat, or a pair of traits, to get an additional skill group?)
Interesting suggestions I need to think more about...
#5. Weakens Perception Dominance: As it stands, not putting maximum ranks into Perception qualifies as borderline insanity. Perception is much more frequently used than virtually any other skill, and given that it's no more expensive than any other skill, it's hard to see any reason not to maximize it. This leads to a disappointing amount of homogeneity, and gives skill-starved classes even fewer choices about how to allocate their skill points.
But in the Grouped Skills framework, maxing out Perception is no longer a no-brainer. The Perceptive group is effectively much more expensive than the other groups, since it covers a much smaller group of skills. And so you're giving up a lot more to take it.
Consider Many Moves the Monk at 1st level. If Many Moves picks the Physical (Acrobatics, Climb, Escape Artist, Fly, Ride, Swim) and Thieving (Disable Device, Disguise, Sleight of Hand, Stealth, Use Magic Device) groups with a specialty in Perception, they get a lvl/2 bonus in all of these skills. Now, they could replace (say) the Thieving group with the Perceptive (Perception, Sense Motive) group in order to max out Perception. But is it worth trading competence in Disable Device, Disguise, Sleight of Hand, Stealth, and Use Magic Device, for an additional lvl/2 bonus in Perception? One can reasonably think it's not.
Of course, it's still probably the case that one wants to have either the Perceptive skill group or Perception as a specialty skill to get the lvl/2 bonus---it is an important skill, after all. But picking both (to get the full lvl bonus) is no longer clearly the best option.
I actually love group skills as a concept, much for the same reason that you did, but I ran one game with them and my players all begged for me to go back to skill ranks. ... So I took the whole system and I'm going back to the drawing board with it.
Very interesting. It's helpful to hear how this is going in people's games. I can certainly see how everyone having the same skills is not a desirable outcome. And if the players themselves are begging you to drop it, then that's an overwhelmingly good reason to do so!
I didn't run into this particular problem with my group (only one person choose the Scholarly group, and two (out of four) choose the Perceptive group). But I don't know how representative this is...
Out of curiosity, have you thought of any tweaks or modifications one might employ?
[I.e.: "So what are you drawing on your drawing board?" :) ]
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I like it for games where I want everyone to have multiple skills, such as if everyone is part of some special-ops team.
For my normal games I am going to either use the non-adventure skill rules or just bump the 2 skill classes up to 4 skills.
I like the 2 extra 'non adventure' skills, also. Especially for campaigns like Kingmaker with a lot of downtime. It give the characters more ways to be involved in the world, other than Bob the fighter and Ed the wizard.
I actually love group skills as a concept, much for the same reason that you did, but I ran one game with them and my players all begged for me to go back to skill ranks. ... So I took the whole system and I'm going back to the drawing board with it.Very interesting. It's helpful to hear how this is going in people's games. I can certainly see how everyone having the same skills is not a desirable outcome. And if the players themselves are begging you to drop it, then that's an overwhelmingly good reason to do so!
I didn't run into this particular problem with my group (only one person choose the Scholarly group, and two (out of four) choose the Perceptive group). But I don't know how representative this is...
Out of curiosity, have you thought of any tweaks or modifications one might employ?
[I.e.: "So what are you drawing on your drawing board?" :) ]
After a discussion on the topic, we came up with several notable flaws with the skill group system, aside from my previous points. (How it doesn't sync up well with existing rules.)
1) It weakens abilities that allow you to make X checks untrained, especially things like bardic performance, esoteric study, and keen recollection.
2) It isn't customizable for player tastes and leaves characters feeling homogenized.
So in order to remedy that, I'm working on a system I'm calling Everyman Skills that acts as a combination of background skills, skill groups, and the standard skill ranks system.
Basically, you get skill ranks standard for your class at every level. Beginning at 1st level, you gain 2 bonus skill ranks per level to spend on background skills. "Background" is a skill group that consists of all of the skills listed as background skills in that section of Pathfinder Unchained, and it is by far the largest skill group by design.
At 2nd level, 6th level, 10th level, 14th level, and 18th level, you pick a skill group, for a total of five skill groups plus the universal background skill group. In order to select a skill group (aside from the background group), you need to have a number of ranks in one or more of that group's included skills equal to half your character level.
At 2nd level, you gain 4 extra skill ranks to spend on skills that belong to your skill groups (including background skills, if you want). At each level, you can put a maximum number of extra skill ranks (including background skills) equal to the number of skill groups that skill is included in. For instance, if you have Craft in the background group and a second skill group, you can put a maximum of two ranks into a Craft skill at each level. If you have Stealth in one skill group, you can only put one rank into Stealth. And if you don't have a skill included in any of your skill groups, well, you get the picture. Ultimately, you can put a maximum of four skill ranks into a background skill (if you have it included as a group skill in four places) or two skill ranks into any other skill.
I'm still working on fine-tuning the rules, but I think that this system is going to work well for us. If my players react positively, I'll likely make it available for purchase as an Everyman Gaming product.
#6. Makes High-Level NPCs Creation EZ(er): Say I want to stat out a couple NPCs in the town you're players will be spending the next several months, NPCs who might, depending on what the PCs do, become recurring characters I want them to roleplay with. For example, I might be trying to stat out Domino Don, the 10th level local mob boss.
I spend 10 minutes laying out class, race and stats. Then I get to their skills. "So, he needs, let's see, Perception, Sense Motive, Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Know (local). Probably some Know (nobility). And from his past, working his way up, he'll need some ranks in Stealth, Disable Device, Climb and Acrobatics. So how many points should I assign to each of these? Well, at what level did he make the switch from Burglar to Higher-Up, who doesn't get his hand dirty? Well, maybe somewhere around level 5-6... Though it wouldn't be a sharp break---he'd probably keep doing some burglarly stuff until, say, levels 7-8... OK, so how should I divy these up..."
And next thing I know, I've spend 30 minutes trying to work out the skill point assignment of a NPC boss who will probably get cut down by the party before he can finish introducing himself. Argh!
But using Grouped Skills, this part is a breeze! Give him the Thieving, Physical, Perceptive and Social groups, and specialties in any skills that might actually come into play, and that round him out: Appraise, Know (local), Know (nobility), Perception, Bluff and Sense Motive. Done!
In light of the feedback I've gotten on this board, I've implemented the following tweaks to the Grouped Skills system I've been employing in my Way of the Wicked campaign. I thought I'd list them here. (I'll mention an alternative tweak which leaves the skill system much closer the standard one in a following post.)
Tweak #1: Group/Specialty Conversions: A PC can trade a group skill for two skill specialties.
Tweak #2: Double Specialties: A PC can use two skill specialties in the same skill to get a total of lvl ranks in that skill. (So characters don't *have* to get that skill group in order to be maximally skilled in that skill.)
Tweak #3: Skill Disadvantages: A PC can take, for any skill in a skill group they have, the Untrained (Skill Name) Disadvantage (using a disadvantage system similar to the one given in Ultimate Campaign). They gain no ranks in this skill. In return, they get a +1 (non-stacking) trait bonus in another skill, subject to two conditions: (i) it must be in the same skill group as the disadvantaged skill, and (ii) it can only be a background skill if the disadvantaged skill is also a background skill.
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I've also been thinking a bit about the kinds of worries that Alexander Augunas raised, above. I haven't encountered those problems with my players, but it's certainly something I could easily see arising.
For campaigns in which the players prefer to use a slight tweak of the standard skill set-up, which still has many of the advantages of the Grouped Skills framework, one might try the system described by Alexander Augunas in the post above. Here's a simpler alternative I've been thinking of using. (This system independent of the Background skills option. I personally would add that, allowing players to get two bonus skill points per level in Background skills.)
Skills #1: Standard Skill Points: At each level, a PC gets the standard number of skill points, and can allocate them in the usual way.
Skills #2: Bonus Skill Group: At each level, a PC gets to choose a skill group. They gain 1 rank in each skill in that group in which they have less than lvl/2 ranks (or, at first level, in which they have less than 1 rank).
Skills #3: Group/Point Conversions: A PC can trade two skill points for a group skill bump identical to the one just described above. Alternatively, a PC can trade their Bonus Skill Group for two additional skill points.
In my eyes, this seems to strike a nice balance between customizability, and while keeping many of the perks of the Grouped Skills system. Any thoughts?
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I don't like the loss of flexibility in the grouped skills system, but I do like the idea of giving players a "discount" on closely related skills so I may implement your ideas in my next campaign, possibly with tweaks to the groups involved (for example moving Knowledge Nature into the "Natural" group).
Allows A Wider Range of Character Ideas: Say you want to create a smart and knowledgeable Fighter, a la Roy Greenhilt from the Order of the Stick, a party leader who can who knows about pretty much every kind of critter you might run into. With 2 skill points a level, this is hard to do. And spreading these points out among the six or so knowledge groups leaves you with skill levels too low do identify anything with a high enough CR to be a threat.
As a "smart fighter," Roy's got an intelligence bonus, an extra skill point from being human, and (in the PF system) probably a FCB spent on a skill point. Possibly even the lore warden archetype (though he'd have to spend feats buying back the armour proficiency he obviously has). That's 5-8 skill points per level, which is enough for at least half ranks in the 6 knowledge skills that deal with monsters - with Lore Warden and Int 14 he could afford full ranks in all monster knowledges (and they'd be class skills, for a level+5 bonus) and he could still put 2 ranks a level in other skills. Smart fighters aren't easy in PF and the fighter class really could use a base of 4 skills per level, but you can pull it off if the concept is important to you. Actually, with the FCB and Lore Warden it's easier to do in PF than it was in 3.X (I can't recall how reliable Roy's monster knowledge was but it may have been exaggerated beyond what the system allowed for purposes of characterization).
I don't like the loss of flexibility in the grouped skills system, but I do like the idea of giving players a "discount" on closely related skills so I may implement your ideas in my next campaign, possibly with tweaks to the groups involved (for example moving Knowledge Nature into the "Natural" group).
Cool! If you try it out, I'd be interested in hearing how it goes with your group, and of hearing what tweaks you end up making to ensure things run smoothly.
As a "smart fighter," Roy's got an intelligence bonus, an extra skill point from being human, and (in the PF system) probably a FCB spent on a skill point. Possibly even the lore warden archetype (though he'd have to spend feats buying back the armour proficiency he obviously has). That's 5-8 skill points per level, which is enough for at least half ranks in the 6 knowledge skills that deal with monsters - with Lore Warden and Int 14 he could afford full ranks in all monster knowledges (and they'd be class skills, for a level+5 bonus) and he could still put 2 ranks a level in other skills. Smart fighters aren't easy in PF and the fighter class really could use a base of 4 skills per level, but you can pull it off if the concept is important to you. Actually, with the FCB and Lore Warden it's easier to do in PF than it was in 3.X (I can't recall how reliable Roy's monster knowledge was but it may have been exaggerated beyond what the system allowed for purposes of characterization).
I believe Roy is called out as having 18 Int, so he's at six points just from that and the baseline. FCB wouldn't surprise me, but Roy doesn't seem the Lore Warden type to me.
I might be missing something here actually because I haven't binged OotS in a while but... aside from the one-shot gag with the hydra that probably requires Knowledge (Nature), and Knowledge (Engineering) against Thog, what knowledges do we know Roy has?
I think part of Roy's shtick is being a "plain fighter", so, like kestral287, I suspect he doesn't have any archetypes. But Roy clearly has a high intelligence, and FCB is likely, so he'd get an extra bunch of skill points coming from that.
As to what Roy's knowledge skills are in OOTS, I agree that it's hard to say, especially given that so many of the jokes play on the members of OOTS (like typical D&D players) having a lot of meta-gaming knowledge regarding the rules. This makes it hard to tell what parts of what they know are due to skills in Knowledge, and what parts are due to meta-gaming knowledge... (E.g., when V is insulted that the Mind Flayer pursues Roy instead of him/her, is this because he/she has Know(Dungeoneering), and so knows how Mind Flayers work? Or is this just part of what most D&D players know, and thus part of V gets to know for free?)
[In the motivation for using something like Grouped Skills that I sketched above, I was just appealing to the idea of a knowledgeable fighter, who gets an edge by knowing a lot about the kinds of creatures they're facing to get a tactical edge, rather than necessarily wanting to play a character *exactly* like Roy. But you knew that!]
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Yeah, it's less that I think he's a Lore Warden (the strip is pretty intentionally fuzzy about their exact abilities anyway) and more that that would be my first choice for making a smart fighter who gets a tactical edge from their knowledge of the creatures they fight.
I don't like the loss of flexibility in the grouped skills system, but I do like the idea of giving players a "discount" on closely related skills so I may implement your ideas in my next campaign, possibly with tweaks to the groups involved (for example moving Knowledge Nature into the "Natural" group).Cool! If you try it out, I'd be interested in hearing how it goes with your group, and of hearing what tweaks you end up making to ensure things run smoothly.
I'll let you know if I try it out anytime soon, but life's a bit crazy right now so I don't know if I want to be testing out a new game mechanic (even a minor one).
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Again, I wasn't trying so much to model Roy exactly as to take a stab at how you'd build the fighter concept Pudding identified - intelligent, tactical, and familiar with a broad variety of monsters.
I'm familiar with OotS but I don't follow it closely enough to try any remotely faithful PF character conversions.
So, Porridge's group suggestion, modified slightly:
Skills #1: Standard Skill Points: At each level, a PC gets 2 additional skill points.
Skills #2: Skill Group: A PC may spend 2 skill points to buy a skill group. They gain 1 rank in each skill in that group in which they have less than lvl/2 ranks (round up).
Skills #3: Background skills: A character may spend a skill point to gain two ranks in Appraise, Craft, Perform, or Profession skills.
Acrobatics - Acrobatics, Escape Artist, Fly, Ride
Athletics - Climb, Ride, Swim
Trickery - Bluff, Disguise, Sleight of Hand, Stealth
Devices - Craft (any one), Disable Device, Kn (engineering), UMD
Influence - Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Sense Motive
Society - Kn (history, geography, local, nobility), Linguistics
Nature - Handle Animal, Kn (dungeoneering, nature), Survival
Magic - Kn (planes; pick one of arcana or religion), Spellcraft, UMD
Ministry - Diplomacy, Heal, Kn (pick one of local or religion), Sense Motive
Some skills intentionally appear in two groups. Perception intentionally left out.
I'm not 100% happy with Ministry but Heal didn't make sense in Nature to me, and it felt like a good group for priestly characters.
Since players will only use this option if it's a good deal compared to buying skills separately, I'm not too worried about them getting less for each group. Every group except athletics grants 4 skills, which means you could spend 2 skill points and get 4 ranks with the "package discount."
So a con-man sorcerer could spend 2 skill points every level keeping the Trickery and Magic (arcana) groups at 1/2 level bonus, and have 2 ranks per level to spend on other skills (or improving skills such as Spellcraft above 1/2 level).
There's not really a monster option but I'd probably make that a feat (maybe just change the prerequisite for Improved Monster Lore to some number of ranks in different Knowledge skills and turn it into a competence bonus.)
I wonder what would be easiest way to convert Shadowrun grouped skills to Pathfinder.
Acrobatics - Acrobatics, Escape Artist, Fly, Ride
Athletics - Climb, Ride, Swim
Trickery - Bluff, Disguise, Sleight of Hand, Stealth
Devices - Craft (any one), Disable Device, Kn (engineering), UMD
Influence - Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Sense Motive
Society - Kn (history, geography, local, nobility), Linguistics
Nature - Handle Animal, Kn (dungeoneering, nature), Survival
Magic - Kn (planes; pick one of arcana or religion), Spellcraft, UMD
Ministry - Diplomacy, Heal, Kn (pick one of local or religion), Sense Motive
I quite like what you've done here, but it'll make keeping track of people's spent skill points quite tricky, wouldn't you say?
I'd be inclined to alter Devices to include Appraise at the expense of Craft, so that all Craft/Profession skills are background only (which makes bookkeeping easier).
I'd alter Influence to add Perform to that list and then specify that you can choose four skills each time. That way, Perform would not be a background skill and people can choose between Diplomacy and Intimidate if they so wish.
I'd change Magic so that either you automatically get Arcana can choose from Planes or Religion or so that you get two choices from all three. I'm leaning towards the first, simply because of the name of the group.
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Not bad suggestions, but let me offer my reasoning:
Craft is in the Devices group because it fits the theme of understanding how things physically work. While swapping it with Appraise may simplify things, it's more of a departure from the theme of the group. Also, I'm not sure if you mean to take Appraise out of background skills but that would prevent you from spending a rank to get Appraise + (a Craft or Profession) which would I think be a good use of the background skills as presented in this variant.
I'm leery to allow more than a handful of specific choices because it minimizes the two downsides built into skill groups: being unable to choose exactly the skills you want, and the 1/2 rank cap on these skills. As is, a character who really wants to be good at one of the Influence skills will have to spend normal ranks on that skill instead of or in addition to buying the group, because the group alone won't give you a high enough modifier. If you can choose 4 of 5, then you may have people deciding to take, say, Bluff, Intimidate, Sense Motive, and Perform, and then buying max ranks in Diplomacy separately. Getting an extra 1/2 level ranks in perform isn't a big bonus compared to taking the group and wasting the group boost to Diplomacy, but it makes a strong skill group stronger.
The Magic group is intended to have either an arcane or divine focus. A cleric should be able to take Kn (Religion) instead of (Arcana) for that group. Planes is relevant to both. I'm OK with pick 2 of 3 in this case, though, since the choice between Arcana and Religion already allows, say, a wizard to select Religion as their group skill and max out Arcana separately, and I don't think it's that big a deal to let them select Religion and Arcana as group skills and max out Planes instead.
(Society[including history, local, and nobility], Nature[including nature, dungeoneering, geography], Planes[including planes and religion], Arcana), mix them into those skill groups where appropriate.
Geography and Dungeoneering are weird.
Geography includes not just terrain and astronomy but settlements and people - one of the examples of a Geography question is "identify a creature's ethnicity or accent" and that sounds much more like Society than Nature to me.
Dungeoneering includes both geology and aberrations - some of the most unnatural creatures that exist.
It is tempting to split the functions of these skills between Local, Nature, and Arcana.
I'd suggest adding an extra "Background" group then, which comprises Appraise, Craft, Perform and Profession, and use that as your background skills option entirely. That way, people can get their extra points in background (which, in my experience, they don't tend to have at high levels) and prevents the Bard running away with things by munching up loads of Knowledge and Perform ranks dirt cheaply.
When using the Background group, I'd still replace the Craft skill in the Devices group with Appraise, but then you have two groups by which to get Appraise ranks and the background skills are available just as you wanted. This group would also allow you to select multiple Craft, Profession or Perform skills with different skill points at your option.
Skills #1: Standard Skill Points: At each level, a PC gets 2 additional skill points.
Skills #2: Skill Group: A PC may spend 2 skill points to buy a skill group. They gain 1 rank in each skill in that group in which they have less than lvl/2 ranks (round up).
Skills #3: Background skills: A character may spend a skill point to gain two ranks in Appraise, Craft, Perform, or Profession skills.
Acrobatics - Acrobatics, Escape Artist, Fly, Ride
Athletics - Climb, Ride, Swim
Trickery - Bluff, Disguise, Sleight of Hand, Stealth
Devices - Craft (any one), Disable Device, Kn (engineering), UMD
Influence - Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Sense Motive
Society - Kn (history, geography, local, nobility), Linguistics
Nature - Handle Animal, Kn (dungeoneering, nature), Survival
Magic - Kn (planes; pick one of arcana or religion), Spellcraft, UMD
Ministry - Diplomacy, Heal, Kn (pick one of local or religion), Sense Motive
Lots of interesting stuff here. I like the cleaning up you did w.r.t. the three conditions. And lots of interesting stuff regarding this alternative way of grouping skills. Among other things, it's one natural way to address the problems Alexander Augunas had with his group.
One thought about the disjunctions that appear in the Devices, Ministry and Magic groups. Although allowing choices w.r.t. what skills one gets in a group allows one to make group choices more flexible, it also makes things harder to keep track of. Instead of just keeping track of what groups one's chosen, one also needs to keep track of which options in that group one took. (If one didn't want choices like this come in, one might replace the "or"s in the characterizations of the above groups with "and"s.)
On the flip-side, if one *is* going to allow for player choices of this kind, and so is going to have to keep track of things anyway, then it might be natural to stick with larger groups of skills, and then allow for choices among them. I.e., one can get even more flexibility by following something like Alexander Augunas's suggestion from above, and allowing players to (say) pick 3-4 skills of their choice in a group every time it's picked. (Of course this also has some drawbacks---in addition to having to keep track of more, it makes it easier for players to not bother purchasing skills which are rarely useful when purchasing groups, leading to situations a bit like the scenario I described above under "Avoids the Narrow Skills Problem"...)
P.s. Just to chip in on the "how to break up groups" topic. I'm inclined to prefer going with groups that are a bit larger than (say) groups with 3 skills, since this makes it easier to get the skill system to do some of the kinds of things sketched above (like avoid the Narrow Skills problem). That said, like Weirdo, Seerow, Arakhor, etc, I recognize the slightly awkward grouping of the skill groups in Unchained. And I think the proposal to ditch Perceptive group is a good idea given something like this system in any case.
With that in mind, here's way of dividing up skills into broader groups (and without disjunctions or repetitions):
Physical: Acrobatics, Escape Artist, Ride, Climb, Swim, Fly
Thievery: Appraise, Disable Device, Sleight of Hand, Stealth, Disguise
Social: Diplomacy, Intimidate, Bluff, Sense Motive, Know(History, Local, Nobility)
Mystical: Spellcraft, Use Magic Device, Knowledge(Arcana, Planes, Religion)
Natural: Survival, Heal, Handle Animal, Knowledge(Nature, Dungeoneering, Geography)
Any further condensing of skills is an absolute non starter in my book. If anything a few need to be further divided.
...and just to be clear (for those who haven't read these parts of Unchained yet), the "grouped skills" option is (despite the potentially confusing name) a completely different beast than the "condensed skills" option.
The latter bundles two or more skills into one skill. The former doesn't bundle skills together. It just groups skills together in a way that allows characters to buy ranks in entire groups for a discounted price.
(Now, of course, one can adopt *both* options, as the side-bar in Unchained notes. But the question of whether to condense skills is largely orthogonal to the question of whether to adopt a grouped skills option.)