The Pathfinder Alpha (1) skill system is vastly preferable, in my mind, to the skill system of SW Saga or 4E, where it is impossible to be bad at a skill at higher levels. Indeed, in practice I almost always give both my PCs when I play and NPCs when I DM max ranks in their skills, so it works out like the Pathfinder system. That said, however, there are players who do like to tinker with their skills and assign different numbers of ranks to different skills. 3.5E system supports both: I can assign max ranks to my skills and have it simple, whereas those who like it can really fool around with their skills. As such, I don't see any major benefit of the Pathfinder Alpha (1) system over the current 3.5E skill system that supports both simplicity and detail depending on what one wants to get out of it. (Still, unlike the 4E skill system, the Pathfinder Alpha (1) skill system works fine for me.)
It is a bit of a bad form to quote oneself, but I am doing this, beacause I feel that Paizo have run along with this kind of thinking with the new skill system in Alpha 2, which makes it even easier to max skills than the 3.5E system, but still supports tinkering for those who want it. Kudos to Paizo all around on the new system - I really like it!
If I were to have one suggestion, though, I would recommend increasing the bonuses to class skills with level, so that the distinction between a maxed out class skill and non-class skill at level 20 is not +20 vs +23. I would suggest a progression that increases the bonus to class skills by +1 every four levels, starting with level 2. This would result in the following bonus to class skills:
Level 1: +3
Level 2: +4
Level 6: +5
Level 10: +6
Level 14: +7
Level 18: +8
Why did I chose a progression every 4 levels starting with level 2? I would recommend it, because it meshes well with the other progressions in Pathfinder - it gives a bonus at levels, where the universal progression grants neither a feat nor an ability score increase. It also seems to work out pretty well in terms of final numbers. +28 for a maxed out class skill versus +20 for a maxed out non-class skill is a substantial difference, but maxed out non-class skills can still be useful at that spread.
(If we have a progression of this sort, it could be possible to remove the front-loaded +3 bonus at 1st level in lieu of a +1 bonus, or even a complete absence of an initial bonus, but I think the initial +3 bonus, although a bit front-loaded, is fine.)
I should also mention that a decent idea to prevent dipping a skill point in each class skill just to gain the bonus, might be to rule that the class skill bonus cannot exceed the number of ranks one has placed into the skill.
None of these changes are really necessary - from my perspective the skill point system is already good. Nonetheless, I do feel that especially the first change would improve the skill system further.
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I'm inclined to agree with this. I rather liked Alpha 1's method of handling skills, although it did bring up a few skillmonkey issues that would have required fixing. Of course, I understand the concerns they laid out in Alpha 2 for reverting from the system.
I think Roman's fix would go a ways towards making class skills more significant, which might help balance out the issue.
Another concern I have is that humans seem noticeably weaker under the new skill system. It seems strange to me that a Half-Elf gets a free +3 to any skill at first level, while a Human will only effectively get a +1. I know the Human will ultimately have a higher bonus than the half-elf as levels accrue, but the human just feels weaker to me for some reason.
Perhaps that should still get the deal they received in Alpha 1, where they get to pick a free permanent class skill at first level? This seems in line with their other abilities (free +2 stat, free weapon proficiency) I think this, along with Roman's fix above, would help put the human back up where he needs to be.
Personally I'm all for the devaluing of class skills. Given time and effort any class should pick up any kind of skill, and the cross class penalties that 3.5 imposed were draconic. Still it was important to offer an incentive for people to stick to the stereotype (just like with favored classes,) but not gimp the people who strayed from the norm. The +3 bonus to class skills achieves that, but does not discourage too much from grabbing skills outside your class stereotype.
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I'm inclined to agree with this. I rather liked Alpha 1's method of handling skills, although it did bring up a few skillmonkey issues that would have required fixing. Of course, I understand the concerns they laid out in Alpha 2 for reverting from the system.
I think Roman's fix would go a ways towards making class skills more significant, which might help balance out the issue.
Another concern I have is that humans seem noticeably weaker under the new skill system. It seems strange to me that a Half-Elf gets a free +3 to any skill at first level, while a Human will only effectively get a +1. I know the Human will ultimately have a higher bonus than the half-elf as levels accrue, but the human just feels weaker to me for some reason.
Perhaps that should still get the deal they received in Alpha 1, where they get to pick a free permanent class skill at first level? This seems in line with their other abilities (free +2 stat, free weapon proficiency) I think this, along with Roman's fix above, would help put the human back up where he needs to be.
I definitely agree about the Humans being able to add 1 skill of their choice to their Class Skill list, I think it works well. Not so sure about the increasing class skill bonus, though.