Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
I think most would agree that intelligence is a fairly useless stat. Trained is very easy to get (you get 2 trained skills from a rogue dedication alone). It does not scale with the game, and ends up being a stat very few take if they don't have to for their class.
I have been playing Starfinder recently, and really like how intelligence works there. It basically lets you max out on additional skill for each point of intelligence.
With that being said, I suggest the following house rule. It might make intelligence close to competitive with dex/wis/con. Basically it makes it as useful as Starfinder does.
"At level 5, you may increase a number of skills from trained to expert equal to your intelligence bonus. At lvl 9 you may increase a number of skills equal to your intelligence bonus from expert to master. At lvl 17, you may increase a number of skills equal to your intelligence bonus from master to legendary. This is retroactive if you gain intelligence later. If for any reason you do not have enough skills at the required level, you may increase a lower level skill up one degree of proficiency."
I assume this would apply only to intelligence-based skills?
Although I think INT could use a slight boost, I think this wildly devalues skill increases and classes that get them.
A wizard at level 5 would have 6 expert skills from INT alone which is way better than the Rogue with 10 INT.
Now if you got a free increase a skill at fifth and every five after if you increased intelligence that level, then it might be fine balanced wise.
I personally feel like skill feats with int prerequisites are going to be the way INT matters (potentially “Expert/master/legendary” training skill feats)
I have to agree with Midnightoker. This is way too much. Maybe a better approach would be at level 5 and every three levels after gain a skill increase as long your intelligence modifier is greater than the number of skill increased gain this way.
In other words:
Min Level - Min Int mod
5 - 1
8 - 2
11 - 3
14 - 4
17 - 5
Might be good to make it more of a benchmark thing? Like, with 14 you get one Trained -> Expert at Lv 2 or later, with 18 you get one Expert -> Master at Lv 7 or later, with 20 you get one Master -> Legendary at Lv 15 or later, and 22/24 are simply an extra skill increase each when you reach them.
Or you could just go with your idea but make it half of your Intelligence modifier instead of full. Or even give skill feats instead of skill increases, with the above idea of more powerful skill increase feats gated behind higher Intelligence. Lotta ways to bake that cake.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Jared Walter 356 wrote: I have to agree with Midnightoker. This is way too much. Maybe a better approach would be at level 5 and every three levels after gain a skill increase as long your intelligence modifier is greater than the number of skill increased gain this way.
In other words:
Min Level - Min Int mod
5 - 1
8 - 2
11 - 3
14 - 4
17 - 5
I was trying to keep it simple. May I ask why you think it is too much? It is basically working the same way it does in Starfinder this way, and no one thinks int is too good there.
Frankly, even with this change I think int is still worse than wis/con/dex just because saves are so valuable in this game, but at least it could compete.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Midnightoker wrote: Although I think INT could use a slight boost, I think this wildly devalues skill increases and classes that get them.
A wizard at level 5 would have 6 expert skills from INT alone which is way better than the Rogue with 10 INT.
Now if you got a free increase a skill at fifth and every five after if you increased intelligence that level, then it might be fine balanced wise.
I personally feel like skill feats with int prerequisites are going to be the way INT matters (potentially “Expert/master/legendary” training skill feats)
Well, a rogue at lvl 6 would have 5 expert skills and 6 skill feats. A wizard woud have 6 expert skills and 3 skill feats. That is with zero investment in int by the rogue. The point is to make int worth investing in. If the rogue put just 4 points into int, the rogue would have 7 expert skills and 6 skill feats to the wizards 5 and 3. The rogue is still a better skill monkey with minimal investment.
This isn't really directed directly at wizards, more to make the int stat worth actually investing in for everyone else instead of being a dump stat like it is now.
The problem is it rewards INT based classes far too much and creates a type of skill inflation that I don’t think the game is necessarily built to handle (it kinda almost makes people “same-y” when increases are that cheap) IMO.
Like sure wizard vs Rogue but what about Investigator? They just became god tier and they were already really good. With this change Investigator overtakes Rogue on Skills and they really have no business taking it from the skill class.
As I mentioned, I kinda agree in the INT being too weak and wish it had more of an impact on skills, but this would be an over correction.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Midnightoker wrote: The problem is it rewards INT based classes far too much and creates a type of skill inflation that I don’t think the game is necessarily built to handle (it kinda almost makes people “same-y” when increases are that cheap) IMO.
Like sure wizard vs Rogue but what about Investigator? They just became god tier and they were already really good. With this change Investigator overtakes Rogue on Skills and they really have no business taking it from the skill class.
As I mentioned, I kinda agree in the INT being too weak and wish it had more of an impact on skills, but this would be an over correction.
A valid point with investigator, I had not considered that. I don’t think it would be too samey, most classes will still take dex/con/wis, but int probably would be the next one taken. Investigator would probably have to be tuned to adjust somehow.
I do think that rogue should get some benefit from investing in int, it would give mastermind rogues a reason to exist!
Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
I think having skill ranks in PF2 is a fair bit more valuable than it was in Starfinder/1e/3.5. Certainly I never cared about my skill ranks in 3.5 beyond needing them for PrCs.
Half your INT mod seems more reasonable than full INT mod for additional max rank skills in PF2e.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Exocist wrote: I think having skill ranks in PF2 is a fair bit more valuable than it was in Starfinder/1e/3.5. Certainly I never cared about my skill ranks in 3.5 beyond needing them for PrCs.
Half your INT mod seems more reasonable than full INT mod for additional max rank skills in PF2e.
Interesting thought, but would prefer to avoid making int only good at 14 and 18.
Perhaps cap the bonus at 18int, so the int main classes don’t get too out of hand.
Perhaps adjusting the levels too. Instead of 5, 9, 17, make it 5, 11, 19
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my own houserules pertinent to Intelligence are those:
Quote:
• For every +1 modifier in Intelligence over +2 (not including +2) gain the skill feat “Additional Lore” on a Lore of your choice
• For Medicine, Nature, and Religion skills you can use either Wis or Int, choose at character creation and the choice can’t be changed (it represents initial learning through experience or books)
• Abilities that grant “you get +X proficiency on all/some skills even if not trained” (like Untrained Improvisation or Investigator’s Keen Recollection and etc) apply only to non-Lore skills.
I find it thematic to have an abudance of different, auto-scaling, Lores for a high Intelligence character.
As well as making all "knowledges" accessible to Intelligence, without devaluing classes that have more skil rank gains like Rogue since those can actually put those in much more diverse skills.
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