My friends and I were looking into creating some custom characters just to have fun with. I read the section near the back of the rulebook regarding the rules/parameters of making your own character, and I've even seem some info around this site about it too. One thing I can't figure out:
Is there a defined value set for how many skill bonus points can be distributed among the 5 different skill bonuses that you can have? Looking at characters in RotR, Harks has 4 bonuses, which give a total of +9 to his skills, and he also has a power (from a role card) that adds a 5th bonus bringing his total to +10 skill bonus points.
I don't want to break the game by giving a character 9-10 skill points spread out among 5 skills, but I really just wanted to see if someone knew more info about this.
Thanks so much in advance!
General advice is no more than 5 distinct skills totaling up to no more than +9. An individual bonus shouldn't go higher than +3, and you shouldn't give out +3's to d12-based skills (cap those at +2). Breaking these rules is ok, but should be very rare.
See also this post and the following posts in that thread.
(Also, flagged thread for wrong forum. This belongs in the Homebrew and House Rules section)
My bad, I thought having it under the rules and what not was acceptable. Thank you for the answer and guiding me to that other thread! I couldn't find anything on my own search. I appreciate the help.
Another note to consider: In general, skills are more powerful when associated with better abilities (ie bigger dice). If you're going to give a character +8 or more in skills, make sure at least a few of them are on weaker abilities to balance it out.
Also, number of skills is often correlated with the number of skills their class gets in the Pathfinder RPG. For example, Rogues have one of the highest skill totals, and you'll note most rogue characters have 4+ skills, with decent numbers for each. On the other hand, fighters have one of the lowest skill totals, and they usually only have 2-3 different skills.
As skizzerz said, there are of course exceptions, but hopefully those pointers help. And be sure to post sample characters in the Homebrew section. There's usually a few people there happy to give feedback.