I'd like to discuss the way skills work in 3.X and Pathfinder, or at least, the way that they are selected.

Skills in 3.X are as such:

Appraise
Balance
Bluff
Climb
Concentration
Craft
Decipher Script
Diplomacy
Disable Device
Disguise
Escape Artist
Forgery
Gather Information
Handle Animal
Heal
Hide
Intimidate
Jump
Knowledge
Listen
Move Silently
Open Lock
Perform
Profession
Ride
Search
Sense Motive
Sleight Of Hand
Speak Language
Spellcraft
Spot
Survival
Swim
Tumble
Use Magic Device
Use Rope



The goal here is to cover... well, pretty much everything within the realm of knowledge. You can (and should) add special ones, such as Knowledge: Psionics (if you are playing in such a game), etc.

There's three things that I sort of consider issues with this system:

1)- Replaces roleplaying. If you suck at roleplaying but have a high Diplomacy check, this becomes one of the most frustrating moments to DM. The reverse is also true, though to a lesser extent- an amazing roleplayer often feels hampered by this. I'm not going to talk about this in this post.

2)- Extremely level dependent. Your skill training can cover up to 4 ranks at level 1, and your attribute likely accounts for anything from -2 to +5 in the same skill. By the time you hid mid level, your training far outweighs the rest- a 20th level fighter with max ranks in blacksmithing is legendary at it- it would take a level 15 expert (an NPC class) to be able to be about as good (this assumes that the expert buys the feat about this, and has a better Int score than the fighter). Now, you can solve this by having high level experts in your game, or just allowing that a PC who has dabbled in smithing a few times in the game and has a backstory about it really can be a legendary smith, better than anyone else in the world. Neither of these break your game... but, I mean... doesn't it seem strange? Not really focusing on this one either.

3)- Overly specific. Diplomacy and Bluff cover a WIDE variety of social interactions. Tumble is specific. Profession: Sailor is a pretty broad set of skills, but then you find Use Rope chilling out at the bottom of the list. Does every sailor have to take that? Why is a dizzying array of professional details included in sailing, but possibly not the use of rope? "Tie a firm knot" is DC 10 here.


I'm going to talk about Overly Specific for a sec.

Pathfinder and 4ed both solved the problem in the same way (and I'm not sure who was first). They compressed skills.

Here's their list:

Acrobatics (this is the old tumble, balance, and jump)
Appraise
Bluff
Climb
Craft
Diplomacy (is also now Gather Information)
Disable Device (now includes open lock)
Disguise
Escape Artist
Fly (this is new)
Handle Animal
Heal
Intimidate
Knowledge
Linguistics (this replaces Forgery, Speak Language, and Decipher Script)
Perception (this replaces Search, Spot and Listen)
Perform
Profession
Ride
Sense Motive
Sleight of Hand
Spellcraft
Stealth (this replaces Hide and Move Silent)
Survival
Swim
Use Magic Device

Concentration is now a matter of caster level, instead of being a skill you have to pay for. It is instead a skill you essentially max out for free now.
Use Rope's real application (besides boy scout knots) was to set an opposing check for people to Escape Artist from. That skill is now set by a combat number (CMB) that everyone uses for combat maneuvers- mostly this is base attack plus strength, so the net effect is that everyone is trained in this skill now, as rope use would be elementary for adventurers.


Now, I do like this... but I have some issues with it.

I do not like the Spot/Listen/Search skill, as it is SUPER great. These were all pretty good skills before, but Perception is frigging amazing. I like the Stealth skill more. I don't like that they took stealth down to one roll from two, mostly because it sort of messes up the whole hear/see thing. Say you are blind- you can't make spot checks. Say you are deaf- you can't make listen checks. These are represented by a minus to the Perception check. That really breaks down hard, when you think about it, and rules in Pathfinder imply this silly situation:

Blind Betty sits guarding her pot of stew. She hasn't seen a thing in twenty years! She has a -4 to her perception check. Tiny Timmy wants some thirds, and for whatever reason, has access to second level cleric spells. He coats himself in silence. I think this gives him a +4 to his Stealth. By the rules, I'm pretty sure Blind Betty can still detect Tiny Timmy with some roll of the dice, when this should, in fact, be impossible. We can reach for excuses (she felt the vibrations as he walked across the floor, he has the stench of an unwashed child), but these aren't things that were accounted for- they are grasped on after the fact to deal with a system that isn't modelling reality right.



My thought, back before 4ed and Pathfinder came along with their skill merges, was to simply assume that some skills cost MORE than others. The downside here is bigger numbers, but if it cost you 1/3rd as much to be good at Forgery as Diplomacy, that would make sense, right?

Anyway.

It throws a little power to the rogue (hardly a bad thing), but I like the idea of Stealth replacing hide and move silently, but keeping Spot and Listen separate. Maybe a compromise on those with Spot and Search combined (at least both are usually visual) and Listen separate. I'm sure there's a logical problem with that as well, but it's the first thing that crosses my mind.

I have always thought that Professions are odd. It seems like.... why is that an allowed skill? I feel like there might be two professions a wizard can take - Profession: Wizard or Profession: Adventurer. It's absurd to think you can get to the level of a master crafter, who has spent his life training for this one thing, by killing orcs. I think Professions, if they even exist, should be cross class for everyone who isn't that actual profession. Or perhaps we could just assume that the levels of the actual profession have some different system for acquiring ranks (double skills, for example).


On a side note, something about the math has bugged me. Perhaps this is just the memory of 2nd edition speaking... but opposed checks seem wrong. What I mean by that is that if we were to.... uhhhh... tug of war. Arm wrestle. Something that is almost entirely strength. Let's say I have strength of 17, and you have a strength of 10. I should win virtually every time. I know we don't want D&D to become "your stats are higher, so you win," but you are definitely the serious underdog in this. However, if we roll opposed strength checks... not really. I get nothing but a +3 to my d20. I might be a touch off, but I believe that means I only win 64% of the time. If I were to use the actual strength scores (10, 17), then that goes to 79%, which seems more appropriate.

" but I like the idea of Stealth replacing hide and move silently, but keeping Spot and Listen separate."

In my opinion (and in what I'm debating hypothetically), Listen would be a cheaper skill to buy, and so would move silent, than their visual equivalents. If you do have Stealth as one skill, do you still roll Spot versus Stealth, and then Listen versus Stealth?

Note that listen is "cheaper" in one way- there's a goodly list of classes with listen as a class skill, and not as many with spot.

One more word about the Paizo method- in Pathfinder, there's no bonus skills at first level, and one rank in a skill ALWAYS costs a skill point. If a skill is a class skill and you train it, then you get a permanent +3 to that skill. That's the only difference between class and cross class skills, and I think it makes skills a bit too easy to get... but it's certainly not a bad system. I was just hoping to tweak the 3.X, or maybe just come up with something that feels pretty similar in end results, versus literally every character having max ranks in Perception.

"I have always thought that Professions are odd. "

I think they need the roleplay and the backstory, and I don't think that they work well with the timescale of what's going on in game. Like, I get that you want your character to be the best blacksmith in the world, and he was trained that way from the time he was three until 22, but he just went from his starting 4 ranks of blacksmithing to 15 ranks, and it's been like six months...

Unrealistic, but he's gaining martial skills over that same time that are MORE ludicrous.

I figure it's a wash. It seems an odd thing for a hero to get, but fuck it. And the only profession that is actually exploity are the ones that mean stuff like "I can sail a boat / fly this crazy flying mount" or something, and I don't even give a shit about that personally, because I don't normally care if the PCs want to buy or steal a boat.

" It's absurd to think you can get to the level of a master crafter, who has spent his life training for this one thing, by killing orcs."
It's also absurd to become a master swordsman in just a couple years.

Both of these issues would be solved with real down time enforcement, or spreads between "campaigns". Some of the earlier stuff feature this- after you complete a story arc, that's when you level, over the course of months while you have relationships, learn, barter, create, train, teach, interact, and become an actual person in your society. I tried to do a bit of that with the training, but because I only did a bit, it's only a bit successful. It keeps the PCs in town a few weeks here and there, and they can interact in that time, but it always seems like a short time on the clock before it is back to the killing fields.

I have done large breaks in the story in the past, but normally only one per campaign. I think the best for storytelling would be several breaks of months or years, and that would also get around a wizard going from freshly trained to master of the universe in a year as well.

"tug of war. Arm wrestle. Something that is almost entirely strength."

Then the highest strength wins- you aren't supposed to opposed checks in these cases. Opposed checks are for when there's an element of skill and chance.

(I'm excluding here professional arm wrestlers, or some crazy tug-of-war ninja technique- for most particpants in these activities, this is addressed in the PHB:



( http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/usingSkills.htm under "ability checks" )

I was thinking you would roll a stealth check. Then if someone can hear you, they roll a listen. If they can see you, they roll a spot. If they can do both, super.

I think the single perception idea is even weaker than you suggested. Or rather, I think problems will come up much more often. Let's say you're approaching a castle where they have cleared away the trees in the area (which is absolutely what they would do). When you're 200 yards away, you won't be heard by the guard unless you start shouting at the top of your lungs. But you could easily be spotted. However, you could easily be in a situation where you could be heard but not seen. Particularly in a low level campaign, I think this will come up a lot more often.




Backstory has never worked well with timelines. "Here is the saga of my character... he has zero XP and a single class." I don't know... maybe there could be some reasonable system where you get a little more at first level. Maybe everyone can have a little something extra that remains within balance. Someone can start with a decent ability to track, and maybe someone else starts as an apprentice blacksmith. Not much, but something. Or perhaps these things could be bought with a point system. It would require DM calls to ensure it is all fair, of course.

If the training were months long, then I could see how an adventurer could work into a reasonable set of skills, but the reality is... no. It's just not right. A reasonably intelligent adventurer could end up as the master of 3 professions by the time he settles down. "I am a Master Smith, Master Cooper, and Master Fisherman!" How absurd is that? I would argue there is either a problem with the profession skills or the non-adventurer classes.



Ok, obviously I was unaware that for straight ability score, there is no roll. I maintain that it should give you more of an edge in opposed checks, though. Let's say it's a game where two people stand on two platforms and have a rope between them. The first one to step off loses (it's a fun game, trust me). Maybe it's opposed balance checks, or maybe it's just opposed dex checks. If it's balance, assume both put the same number of ranks in balance. But let's say one person has a dex of 8 and the other 28. The odds of the person with the 8 winning should be virtually zero, but the reality is that it's just a +10. That works out to the same odds as Xenish Parry Ball.

I guess the question is what is the value of a point of ability. I probably value it more because of 1st and 2nd edition. I guess in 3.x it is valued significantly less... but unfortunately they use the same zero point and 10-11 is average.

Of course, this is just whining because there's no good way to fix it. You'd either roll opposed checks on a d10, or use the score instead of the modifier. The problem becomes it double the relevance of size modifiers in a grapple check, for example.