Not a good idea to screw with the internal math of the game without carefully figuring out how it will affect things.
Also, your example isn't accurate. No body gets to 20th level by hanging out in a library all their life. Unless they're a 1000 years old. In that case, they probably could take on a twenty-something-year-old fighter. I'm not reeally understanding your logic here.
Seems problematic. I would advise against tracking fractions, and let them trade 1 point of base attack bonus for a set number of skill points, say 3. It's a poor trade in my opinion and I don't see why anyone would want to.
With the scaling nature of opposition every point of BAB is precious.
A free feat would be a better trade. Still likely not worth it.
Ninja'd : I see it's for NPCs, no worries then.About the trade value and needing to be able to hit things.
I understand. I still advise just making it a set value trade. 1 BAB for 3 skill points or a feat. That way there's less to worry about in terms of differing values for differing BAB progressions.
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It sounds like you don't understand how the math of the game works.
It sounds like you don't understand how the math of the game works.How so?
The game designer behind 3rd Edition deliberately built the math with the assumption that the greatest humans of real life would be roughly 5th level characters. Anything above that is superhuman by our standards. Justin Alexander explains it in this article (see Crafting and Knowledge). A great blacksmith that spent all his life as a smithy would not be a 20th level character. As shown by Alexander's math, Albert Einstein would be a 5th level expert, making his BAB only one higher than a fighter.
Your proposal also largely ignores many other important factors that contribute to a character's power, such as ability scores, feats, and wealth. A non-combat character will spend their feats on things like Skill Focus. You ignore the numerous ways a non-combat character can increase their preferred skill, such as having masterwork tools and assistants. You don't need to give them arbitrary bonuses.
Finally, this is a combat game. If someone makes a purely non-combat character, they will likely not be as effective as other characters. Even so, the game doesn't stop them from being really good at non-combat stuff.
A few things:
1- You don't need a 20 level expert to get a +25 Knowledge bonus. A 10 level one with Knowledge(history) as a class skill, the feats Skill Focus Knowledge(history) and Scholar: Knowledge(history) and some other Knowledge, and an int of 14 has +25 Knowlegde History bonus. Higher if he puts more points in int. So you started from a flawed proposition.
2- If, somehow, you get an expert to twenty level without a single fight in his life (practically impossible with the way experience works), he probalby has read enough health and fitness books and martial arts manuals that he can wipe out most tenth level fighters. a 20th level anything is a demi-god and the demi-god of historians being able to beat the barely superhuman fighter is something that should be able to happen.
3- You're not accounting for the combat feats and class abilities the fighter has. Like a +3 from weapon training or a probable weapon focus feat, and also the fighter will have a much higher strenght score since PCs have way more points to buy attributes than NPCs. A fifteen level fighter will have a much higher BAB than a 20 level expert. You cannot claim to be sistematic while ignoring huge swats of the system.
4- Why in the name of Nethys would you need a +25 bonus to knowledge? The highest DC you can get on a Knowledge(history) check is 30, and that is for something absurdly ancient and obscure like the name of a minor azlantean noble from before the starstone fell. You can reach that with a +20 bonus and taking 10.
A half elf of any class that has Know(history) as a class skill can have a +X to it at level 1.
Skill focus adds 3 + class skill adds 3 + 5 from a high int + 1 rank + the feat Master of Knowledge (weird requirement for deity but lets ignore that) will allow you to reliably achieve a 22 know(history) check by taking 10. Once per day, this person can treat their know(history) roll as if they'd rolled a natural 20, giving them a 32 skill check.
As stated, a DC 30 is pretty much the hardest check you could make. And our level 1 PC can do that once per day.
It sounds like you don't understand how the math of the game works.How so?The game designer behind 3rd Edition deliberately built the math with the assumption that the greatest humans of real life would be roughly 5th level characters. Anything above that is superhuman by our standards. Justin Alexander explains it in this article (see Crafting and Knowledge). A great blacksmith that spent all his life as a smithy would not be a 20th level character. As shown by Alexander's math, Albert Einstein would be a 5th level expert, making his BAB only one higher than a fighter.
Your proposal also largely ignores many other important factors that contribute to a character's power, such as ability scores, feats, and wealth. A non-combat character will spend their feats on things like Skill Focus. You ignore the numerous ways a non-combat character can increase their preferred skill, such as having masterwork tools and assistants. You don't need to give them arbitrary bonuses.
Finally, this is a combat game. If someone makes a purely non-combat character, they will likely not be as effective as other characters. Even so, the game doesn't stop them from being really good at non-combat stuff.
The article you cite is a good exercise, and an interesting perspective. It is also an opinion whose supporting evidence is based almost entirely on hit points, and how many average 1st level Orcsiz Aragorn can kill. (EDIT: This is a deliberate exaggeration. I find much of the number crunching "evidence" in his article skewed in supporting a predetermined outcome.)
"The game designer" behind 3rd Edition did NO such thing.
3rd Edition DMG, page 36 under NPC classes, "The fact that each NPC class has differing levels provides the DM with a means to measure NPCs against each other. A typical blacksmith might only be a 3rd-level commoner, but the world's greatest blacksmith is probably a 20th -level expert. The 20-level blacksmith is a capable person with great skill, but she can't fight as well as a fighter equal to her level (or even one much lower in level), nor can she cast spells or do the other things that characters with PC classes can do."
Now it goes on to say that most NPCs don't rise to more than 3rd level, and I am not suggesting that 20th-level experts are common...or rare...or even make sense. But the classes were provided as tools for GM's to make the NPCs they want and need.
Also, the 3.x DMGs have demographics tables, missing in PF, that generate "naturally occurring" commoners of up to 20th-level. In fact, the average "highest level commoner" in a thorp, is 7th! In a metropolis, the average "highest level commoner" is 20th (higher than 20 is reduced to 20).
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A half elf of any class that has Know(history) as a class skill can have a +X to it at level 1.
Skill focus adds 3 + class skill adds 3 + 5 from a high int + 1 rank + the feat Master of Knowledge (weird requirement for deity but lets ignore that) will allow you to reliably achieve a 22 know(history) check by taking 10. Once per day, this person can treat their know(history) roll as if they'd rolled a natural 20, giving them a 32 skill check.
As stated, a DC 30 is pretty much the hardest check you could make. And our level 1 PC can do that once per day.
While what you are stating is true mechanics-wise, it is pretty extreme. In D&D, it used to be considered that the IQ of a character would be ten times his intelligence score; so you are talking about a character with a 200 to 210 IQ putting him in a very small group of the most intelligent people in the world, well above the Stephen Hawkings and Einsteins of our little world.
Take that score down to 14 where he is only very intelligent (but more believable) and your calculations change quite a bit from a 32 skill check to 19. Still good, but not outrageous.
'High level' non-adventurers is one place where game mechanics fall short and GMs would need to step in and place limitations for the purpose of balance.
After all, a person who has worked all their life as a cabinet maker and eventually becomes a highly skilled master craftsman may not know a lick about swinging a sword around...and let's not even talk about hit points.
All in all, I think that while the position of the article is certainly not the same as the designers of d20, it is practical enough to account for most, if not all, needs. The only example I think that fails that position is the scholarly priest archetype, that needs to cast high level spells without being a combat powerhouse, which is covered (considerably less elegantly) in the follow-up article.
Don't get me wrong, if you agree with that article, and it brings value to your GMing, then more power to you. I'm just tired of the claims of the absolute fact that "normal" stops at 5th level.
Be careful with your words because "D20" is a game system, but d20 is also the name for any RPG that uses a twenty-sided die. They're not necessarily the same. Neither Pathfinder nor D&D 3.5e belongs to the D20 System.
All in all, I think that while the position of the article is certainly not the same as the designers of d20, it is practical enough to account for most, if not all, needs. The only example I think that fails that position is the scholarly priest archetype, that needs to cast high level spells without being a combat powerhouse, which is covered (considerably less elegantly) in the follow-up article.
The high level clerics and wizards in cities are typically retired adventurers. It's difficult to challenge and strengthen one's faith by sitting in the comfort of a church all day, reading scripture. Even great prophets of real-world religions that healed and performed resurrections traveled the world and went on adventures. Also keep in mind that most of a church's clergy in Pathfinder are actually commoners, experts, or low level clerics. Most servants of a god don't cast spells. Only a select few do and they are either very old or have seen action.
No matter how you look at it, you're not going to find a character who got 9 cleric levels by spending their whole life doing priestly duties in a church. That's not a flaw. This is a game that reinforces a world where triumphing over adversity makes you stronger.
...this article...Actually this was a great article and beyond making me understand what was going wrong with my thought, it provided answers to many similar considerations. The part about crafting was particularly helpful and the title of the article states exactly what I needed: a claibration of expectations.
Thanks for all responses!
EDIT: Thinking about what led me to have such a distorted view, somewhat shameful, considering I've been storytelling in d20 for the past 15 years, I understand that a big part of it were the demographics rules of cumminity generation in 3rd. They were quite clear on having a couple 8-10 level characters in almost every notable city, rather than them being a one of a generation occurence, along with a host of all levels between 1 and max. The Forgotten Realms campaign setting provided a similar view, if not even more extreme.
It makes sense if you consider that in a magic rich environment more people are born above average and that in a high adventure world there are more chances and paths for talented people to rise above others and become better.
If you compare NPC arrays with point buy and Arrays for PCs and important NPCs you'll notice that in universe these are people who are simply naturally born with higher attributes.After all, a person who has worked all their life as a cabinet maker and eventually becomes a highly skilled master craftsman may not know a lick about swinging a sword around...and let's not even talk about hit points.
A person who has worked all their life as a cabinet maker and eventually becomes a highly skilled master is still a 5th level character. You need 2,400,000 experience points to reach level 20 on the fast track. There are no rules for getting experience from working or even training. Even if the expert cabinet maker gains points for defeating social and skill encounters, if he lives a mundane life he will NEVER find an encounter that gives him the 5,000 thousand xp needed for sixth level much less the 2.4 MILLIONs needed for twenty levels. With normal CR1 and CR1/2 encounters, which would only hapen once on twice a month (a cutpurse trying o get his cp, a hardy bargaining noble) he would take thousands of years to reach high level.
That there is another reason that can explain why the best of our world is level six once a generation but Golarion has hundreds of them in every city. We just don't have high CR challenges to give enough XP in one lifetime to break that barrier. It took the Theory of Relativity encounter to get Albert Einstein to sixth level. It took most of WW2 to make badass like Simo Hayha and Audie Murphy.
Be careful with your words because "D20" is a game system, but d20 is also the name for any RPG that uses a twenty-sided die. They're not necessarily the same. Neither Pathfinder nor D&D 3.5e belongs to the D20 System.
D20 is not a stand alone game system, it is the unified underlying framework of several game systems. Chief among these is most definitely 3.0 and 3.5 D&D, as this was where "the designers" codified d20. Plus there's the D20 System logo on the cover. The reason Pathfinder is not a "d20 System" product is because it requires WotC's permission to fly that flag.
Be careful with your words because "D20" is a game system, but d20 is also the name for any RPG that uses a twenty-sided die. They're not necessarily the same. Neither Pathfinder nor D&D 3.5e belongs to the D20 System.D20 is not a stand alone game system, it is the unified underlying framework of several game systems. Chief among these is most definitely 3.0 and 3.5 D&D, as this was where "the designers" codified d20. Plus there's the D20 System logo on the cover. The reason Pathfinder is not a "d20 System" product is because it requires WotC's permission to fly that flag.
It's still a game system. The last sentence there is why I brought this up in the first place