The Gaming Den

In 3.5 D&D, some skills are more valuable than others, so I decided to combine some of them.

Craft and Know (Architecture & Engineering) are now Craft.

All Craft sub-skills are put into Craft.

Knowledge (Nature, Geography, and Dungeoneering) become Know (The land).

Knowledge (History, Nobility and Royalty, Local) become Know (People and Governments).

Knowledge (Arcana & The Planes) become Know (Arcana).

Know (Religion) remains the same.

Listen and Spot become Notice.

Hide and Move Silently become Stealth.

If one class has one skill (ex. Arcana), they gain said applicable skill as a class skill, and can use the other functions of said skill (ex. a Sorcerer can use THe Planes function of Arcana).

Cross-class skills are bought on a 1-1 skill point basis. The maximum ranks still remain the same, but rounded down (ex. 11 instead of 11.5 at level 20).

What do you guys think?

Well first off you are generalizing two much. Second of all, Wizards become more awesome because now they literally have all knowledge skills/cross class spot/listen (and take 1 level of a PrC with one of them as class skill) and cross class tumble.

Secondly, Clerics still get the shaft because the worst knowledge out there (Religion) stays crappy, and the Wizards Arcana becomes more awesome when merged with (Planes) which has the most monsters you need to knowledge check against to beat, and the Druids nature gets him tons of other stuff. Meanwhile Clerics see undead and say, hey guys, this undead has undead traits, oh and fort save or die/stun/nausea/negative level/paralysis.

There have been a number of proposed consolidations of skills, and they tend to run along similar lines. I was actually just thinking about the same issue, but from the opposite side: sometimes there's good reason to keep listen and spot or hide and move silently separate. It really depends on the level of granularity you're going for.

In 3e, there's a lot of granularity anyway, and it's kinda cool to have fighter good at move silently but not hide, and samurai good at listen but not spot.

I do like how you did knowledge skills, although I would combine 'planes' with 'religion' instead of 'arcana', and maybe combine 'arcana' with Spellcraft. Craft is a little weird because now every chemist knows how to design buildings, but that can be handwaved for NPCs.


With that in mind, for my current D&D game I superglued the skills that don't tend to get taken onto those that do:
Knowledge and Craft are useless alone; Professions are necessary to get anything out of them. For example, profession (wizard) gives you knowledge of famous wizards and arcane monsters along with the ability to fashion the tools of the trade. Profession (apothecary) gives knowledge of healing and crafting alchemical items. Profession (diplomat) gives knowledge of nobility & royalty, etiquette, and local. You get the idea.

I'll try to think it out more, then.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:In 3e, there's a lot of granularity anyway, and it's kinda cool to have fighter good at move silently but not hide, and samurai good at listen but not spot.

Yeah. Except what often happens is that stealth characters just get hit with 2 chances for failure from one stealth action. That is why many groups just use stealth (hide and move silently) and perception (spot and listen) skills.

I think that I'll just use my Stealth and Notice idea...

SphereOfFeetMan wrote:

CatharzGodfoot wrote:In 3e, there's a lot of granularity anyway, and it's kinda cool to have fighter good at move silently but not hide, and samurai good at listen but not spot.

Yeah. Except what often happens is that stealth characters just get hit with 2 chances for failure from one stealth action. That is why many groups just use stealth (hide and move silently) and perception (spot and listen) skills.

Good point, but average failure rate can be adjusted to take that into account.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Good point, but average failure rate can be adjusted to take that into account.

In other words, you need to push both skills farther from a tight RNG. Which means that the stealth character needs two magic items which give an inordinately large bonus. As per the default Dmg stealth magic items.

It works, but it isn't pretty or good game design.

SphereOfFeetMan wrote:

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Good point, but average failure rate can be adjusted to take that into account.

In other words, you need to push both skills farther from a tight RNG. Which means that the stealth character needs two magic items which give an inordinately large bonus. As per the default Dmg stealth magic items.

It works, but it isn't pretty or good game design.

No, good game design would involve keeping both skills on the RNG, and making sure that the relative success and failure rates are where you want them. One way to accomplish the second goal is attaching significant concealment and shade bonuses to Hide, and ambient noise and cover penalties to Listen. Distance is another factor used by 3e. Facing, unfortunately, has to exist in the game to work.

At any rate, if you want things skewed in favor of sneaky characters instead of alert characters, that's an effective way to do it.

Not necessarily true on the Hide/Move Silently case.

People tend to specialize in one, either never being heard, and sometimes not being seen (Or grab a way to be invisible); or never being seen and sometimes not being heard (or grab a silence effect of some kind, there's a bard spell that has a 5-foot radius of silence effect).

I've had people in games that i've run make their hide checks, but make a noise.

They were heard, but not seen. So the enemy was alerted, but didn't know what was going on.

I've had PCs be unhearable and if they botched their hide check, the still weren't noticed; the enemy didn't roll high enough on their spot check.

I prefer the granularity; I can have characters that can speak, but are impossible to be seen. Since they're amazing at hiding.

Jerry, try reading through older threads. You'll find many topics have been discussed in years before.
Sometimes, reading those old threads gives new insight, and answers questions before you ask them.

Calibron, for instance, proposed the exact same idea months ago.

But personally, I'd rather use the 4e version of "rankless skills" where untrained = +0 and trained = +5, add half your character level to all skill checks regardless of trained status.

sigma999 wrote:But personally, I'd rather use the 4e version of "rankless skills" where untrained = +0 and trained = +5, add half your character level to all skill checks regardless of trained status.

The only problem there being multiclassing.
One solution might be to gives a character additional skills to bring her base number to the max of all her classes, plus one per multiclassing. Prestige classes wouldn't grant additional skills.

So a rogue (8 skills) multiclassing into fighter (6 skills) would gain a single skill from the fighter skill list, while a fighter multiclassing into rogue would gain three skills from the rogue list.

Massively multiclassed characters would have a huge number of skills, but only if they didn't take prestige classes. That still fits pretty well into a 'jack of all trades' framework, and honestly the 4 extra skills of a barbarian/fighter/monk/knight/samurai still don't make her any better than a single- or dual-classed character. Overlap puts the 5-classer pretty close to having no new class skills to invest in.

IMO all classes should have the same number of skills anyway. Same list to choose from too.

Draco_Argentum wrote:IMO all classes should have the same number of skills anyway. Same list to choose from too.

Why?

sigma999 wrote:Jerry, try reading through older threads. You'll find many topics have been discussed in years before.
Sometimes, reading those old threads gives new insight, and answers questions before you ask them.

Calibron, for instance, proposed the exact same idea months ago.

But personally, I'd rather use the 4e version of "rankless skills" where untrained = +0 and trained = +5, add half your character level to all skill checks regardless of trained status.

Thanks for the advice, Sig!

CatharzGodfoot wrote:

Draco_Argentum wrote:IMO all classes should have the same number of skills anyway. Same list to choose from too.

Why?

Classes should have the same number of skills because it is easier to balance, and because it is more fun for the players. In 3.x the Rogue has 8sp and the Fighter has 2sp. If you supposed that the classes were balanced against each other, you would need to make some bad choices. Either the Fighter is better than the Rogue without regard to skills, or the fighters choice of skills are inherently better.

It should be obvious that characters from different classes should have a similar number of things to do in and out of combat. It should also be obvious that since there are overlapping skill lists, all skills should be of equal value. No 3.0 Jump vs UMD.

Whether classes have similar or different lists is personal preference.

Hmm. I'm not sure about that one. They should have things to do, but I'm not convinced they have to have the exact same number of things to do.

2 vs 8 and jump vs umd is an extreme. Its ridiculous that it exists, but I don't even care that a barbarian has 4 skills while a ranger has 6. That level of variation isn't necessarily bad.

SphereOfFeetMan wrote:

CatharzGodfoot wrote:

Draco_Argentum wrote:IMO all classes should have the same number of skills anyway. Same list to choose from too.

Why?

Classes should have the same number of skills because it is easier to balance, and because it is more fun for the players. In 3.x the Rogue has 8sp and the Fighter has 2sp. If you supposed that the classes were balanced against each other, you would need to make some bad choices. Either the Fighter is better than the Rogue without regard to skills, or the fighters choice of skills are inherently better.

It should be obvious that characters from different classes should have a similar number of things to do in and out of combat. It should also be obvious that since there are overlapping skill lists, all skills should be of equal value. No 3.0 Jump vs UMD.

Whether classes have similar or different lists is personal preference.

Assuming that all skills are of equal value, and that one class is better (without skills) than another, isn't it possible that once you include the 'worse' class' skills, they're equally good in combat and out? What's wrong with that sort of balance?

In addition, if skills aren't all equally good and skill lists are different but with overlap, what's wrong so long as all overlapping skills are equally good, and the extra skills are gained through extra skill points?

Finally, skills being 'equally good' is a class dependent thing. If one class has a bunch of abilities that key off of being stealthy and another has a bunch of abilities that key around being persuasive, stealth and persuasion skills are going to be values differently by each class. That sort of thing is unavoidable unless you completely divorce skill use from other aspects of the game.

Voss wrote:Hmm. I'm not sure about that one. They should have things to do, but I'm not convinced they have to have the exact same number of things to do.

The value of things that two different characters can do should be equal. The easiest way to achieve this is to have each skill equal in usefulness to every other skill, and to give each class the same number of skills.

Voss wrote:2 vs 8 and jump vs umd is an extreme. Its ridiculous that it exists, but I don't even care that a barbarian has 4 skills while a ranger has 6. That level of variation isn't necessarily bad.

The fact that you personally don't care about the difference between 4 sp and 6 sp is irrelevant. You've acknowledged that 2vs8 sp are bad, so you have acknowledged that classes with significantly different numbers of skills are bad. It is simply a matter of reduced scale going down to 4vs6 sp. It isn't as bad, but it is still inherently poor design, and doesn't have redeeming qualities. Therefore it should be changed.

The same argument about the scale of the problem is applicable to Jump vs UMD and every other skill.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Assuming that all skills are of equal value, and that one class is better (without skills) than another, isn't it possible that once you include the 'worse' class' skills, they're equally good in combat and out? What's wrong with that sort of balance?

In addition, if skills aren't all equally good and skill lists are different but with overlap, what's wrong so long as all overlapping skills are equally good, and the extra skills are gained through extra skill points?

It is possible to have equally powerful classes with vastly different skill points. That is not the point. The point is that such a situation is inherently poor design which causes many problems. If it is better and easier to have a 1=1 skill point system, why not have one?

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Finally, skills being 'equally good' is a class dependent thing. If one class has a bunch of abilities that key off of being stealthy and another has a bunch of abilities that key around being persuasive, stealth and persuasion skills are going to be values differently by each class. That sort of thing is unavoidable unless you completely divorce skill use from other aspects of the game.

True. Although if you were designing a new game (TNE for example), it wouldn't be that difficult to divorce skills from combat abilities.

Maybe I'm just paranoid at the moment, but when people start talking about 'everything being equal', I get disturbed. Because 4e managed the 'everybody is equal' part, and as a partial consequence, its boring as shit.

4 vs 6 doesn't bother me because of the intent (though the execution fails in places) behind them. The barbarian is better at combat than the ranger, but the ranger is better at noncombat stuff. Neither is, in theory, completely useless at either. Thats enough of a balance point for me. Admittedly the ranger needs some work, but if you honestly make them equal at combat and noncombat applications, you might as well merge the classes and have one 'wilderness guy'.

Bringing the fighter and rogue back into it, these classes are a problem because the fighter is only somewhat useful in combat, and useless outside it, while the rogue can be finessed to be excellent all the time. It has more to do with bigger design failures than the skill system. UMD is a prefect example of that, since it allows you to turn gold into the ability to mimic multiple classes, and other skills simply don't.

One more question: the Craft skill in a Tome game; discard it, combine all Craft skills into one skill (like someone suggested), or leave as is?

Jerry wrote:One more question: the Craft skill in a Tome game; discard it, combine all Craft skills into one skill (like someone suggested), or leave as is?

Somewhere, Frank defended "one skill", IIRC. I suppose you'll hear differently from others. I'm tempted to use Alchemy, Build and Craft.

Bigode wrote:Somewhere, Frank defended "one skill", IIRC. I suppose you'll hear differently from others. I'm tempted to use Alchemy, Build and Craft.

Any reasons why he suggested such?

Personally, I'm all fort it; being an expert blacksmith/tailor isn't going to come up much, especially when you can use spells to make items/similar effects in a shorter amount of time. Why use Craft (Tailor) when you can use a Hat of Disguise? Why build a bridge over a chasm when you can cast Fly?

Jerry wrote:Any reasons why he suggested such?

Can't say for sure; would bet on "it's so minor that people can have as many of them as they want".

Jerry wrote:Personally, I'm all fort it; being an expert blacksmith/tailor isn't going to come up much, especially when you can use spells to make items/similar effects in a shorter amount of time. Why use Craft (Tailor) when you can use a Hat of Disguise? Why build a bridge over a chasm when you can cast Fly?

Anything involving comparison to magical items' untrue at low levels, and even somewhat later (i.e. before wishes) you might prefer to spend elsewhere. As for bridges: when you want an actual fvcking lot of people to pass, and don't have mass teleport (which's only common at very high levels IIRC). But I do say that/those skill(s) would need special attention to be worth it.