Author Topic: Your grievances concerning skills  (Read 20725 times)

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Rejakor

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Re: Your grievances concerning skills
« Reply #100 on: February 26, 2011, 12:51:01 AM »
With skills as written.

Beatsticks can't have the ones they want to have because beatsticks Can't Have Nice Things.

Skillmonkeys try to use the ones they feel they should be using (search, open lock) but instead default to tumble, UMD, spot/listen if they feel like it, and and social skills because even the beatstick can force a lock and the wizard lols at the idea of locks existing at all.

Wizards kind of put points into prestige class prereqs.  And spellcraft, cause it's useful sometimes.  And concentration, because that is a skill that is required to cast spells, i.e. a 'you must be this focused to ride' sign.  And then, they do everything else they need via spells and make skillmonkeys utterly pointless.


What it sounds like you were running into was roll-happy GM (you want to ask someone where a shop is?  DC 35 DIPLOMACY CHECK)/lack of roleplayability/Fighters Can't Have Nice Things/and herp derp you must be this tall to ride spot/listen checks vs hiding/invisible foes.  Wizards have blindsense available from level... 3?  Earlier, maybe.  And life is cheap levels 1-3, so who cares?

Skills aren't good.  Beatsticks just have zero options, especially early in the game when they can't afford scads of magical gear/lots of buffs to cover their gaping flaws. 

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Re: Your grievances concerning skills
« Reply #101 on: March 09, 2011, 08:59:42 PM »
So anyways, here's the problems with skills:

Most skills are worthless. This can either be because the skills do nothing that you care about, or because minimal or no investment does everything that matters, and there's no higher level abilities with that skill worth taking. An example of the former is Use Rope. An example of the latter is Survival.
Skills have Planned Obsolescence. For examples, see any movement skill not named Tumble.
Skills are narrow. This last one is the biggest.

Consider if you will a Rogue. He has 8 + Int skill points, which is of course rather high. He wants to scout, which is a fairly typical thing for a Rogue. Now, let's ignore the whole automatic annihilation of scouts thing, and instead focus on the cost. Well, obviously he needs to be able to conceal himself, and he needs to be able to detect those concealing himself from him. And he needs to be able to do the usual Rogue stuff, both because it's typical in general, and because that's likely to come up while sneaking around. Here's the problem. Just doing these three basic things cost him 7 points a level. And he doesn't even do any of them that well. So if say, you want to also be able to talk to people, or make yourself look like something else, or play with your wands, or break into second story buildings? Fuck you.

So here's this so called skill monkey, who can barely fucking do anything with his skills. That's the biggest problem, both in that the guy who specializes in something ends up walking CAP bait because of it, and because it means the normal characters do even less with them.

And because of this, even the handful of skills that don't automatically fail still do, simply because they are so damn narrow. It is such that there's quite a few classes out there that could not even write their skills down at all, and it'd barely make any difference. Both because of the narrowness, and because most of it goes towards taxes, anyways. As opposed to skills you actually want to take. For example, the Cleric has Concentration, and Spellcraft, and unless he has an unusually high Int, or is human, or Cloistered that is literally all he gets. Now you might be tempted to say something to the effect of "He's a Cleric, he doesn't need any more power." While perhaps true, the Cleric is hardly the only 2 + Int skills class, and in any case the point is that the Cleric literally does not interact with the skill system at all beyond paying taxes.

So, solutions stolen from my own house rules thread:

No one has less than 4 + Int skills. Anyone that would get 2 + Int instead gets 4 + Int.
Start fusing similar skills together. For the full list, see the house rule thread.

Now instead of Mr. Walking Corpse... I mean Scout, spending 7 skill points a level to do 3 basic things, he spends... 4. Perception, Stealth, Search, Disable Device. And still does those things. So now he can talk to people (1 skill) and make himself look like someone else (1 skill), and play with his wands (1 skill) and break into second story buildings (1 skill) and if human and/or Int > 10, he can get more. Yay for actually being able to use skills to do stuff!

Of course, the bad skills are still bad, but fundamental flaws are fundamental.
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Brainpiercing

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Re: Your grievances concerning skills
« Reply #102 on: March 10, 2011, 07:51:49 AM »
Ok it certainly is true that you somehow never have enough skillpoints - even a 20 INT Beguiler with nymph's kiss and 12 skillpoints per level doesn't, even when a number of skills are compacted into one another.

(For example, in a campaign I'm playing:
 Move Silently + Hide =  Stealth (Dex).
Listen + Spot + Search  = Perception (Wis).
Open  Lock + Disable Device + Sleight of Hand + Use Rope = Thievery (Dex).
Jump  + Climb + Swim = Athletics (Str).
Tumble + Balance + Escape Artist =  Acrobatics (Dex).
Disguise + Forgery = Disguise (Int).

Even so, I feel I'm short of skillpoints.

So... at least a Beguiler has other options, but for a Rogue, skillpoints are something like 50% of its class features. With the way skills are right now, that is ridiculous.

Sunic_Flames

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Re: Your grievances concerning skills
« Reply #103 on: March 10, 2011, 12:46:34 PM »
Well with fused skills, and a decent number of skill points it's at least passable.

For example, my Druid has:

Animal Affinity (Handle Animal and Ride).
Knowledge: Nature (and Survival).
Perception (Listen and Spot).
Persuasion (Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate).
Sense Motive.
Spellcraft (and Concentration).

6 skills. So he can actually do something with skills. Not a lot, but it's an improvement over not having Survival, Listen, or any social skills at all, because everything had to go towards skill taxes, Spot, and being able to take care of his mount.

Blah blah blah Druids don't need it... well 6 skill points is a typical enough number, with the rules I set out, and so it applies to other classes as well.

With 12, you can have a fair number of skills. At which point the problem becomes that skills still don't do a lot.
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Sunic may be more abrasive than sandpaper coated in chainsaws (not that its a bad thing, he really does know what he's talking about), but just posting in this thread without warning and telling him he's an asshole which, if you knew his past experiences on WotC and Paizo is flat-out uncalled for. Never mind the insults (which are clearly 4Chan-level childish). You say people like Sunic are the bane of the internet? Try looking at your own post and telling me you are better than him.

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archangel.arcanis

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Re: Your grievances concerning skills
« Reply #104 on: March 10, 2011, 01:00:48 PM »
Sunic a question concerning your skill system, for those merged skills that use different attributes which one do you go with? I could see choosing the one that causes the least MAD but that would change based on what class was taking it.
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snakeman830

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Re: Your grievances concerning skills
« Reply #105 on: March 10, 2011, 01:06:08 PM »
Sunic a question concerning your skill system, for those merged skills that use different attributes which one do you go with? I could see choosing the one that causes the least MAD but that would change based on what class was taking it.
Looks to me that they go with whatever most of the skills used (Perception bein Wis based, since it's made up of Wis, Wis, Int).  In the case of skills where there's an even split (Disguise/Forgery, for example), it goes with what is typically the more useful stat (Int in this case).  I could be wrong, of course.
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Sunic_Flames

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Re: Your grievances concerning skills
« Reply #106 on: March 10, 2011, 03:28:57 PM »
Sunic a question concerning your skill system, for those merged skills that use different attributes which one do you go with? I could see choosing the one that causes the least MAD but that would change based on what class was taking it.

The associated one.

So with Spellcraft, you use the relevant mental stat for Spellcraft, and Con for Concentration. D&D doesn't normally have stat + skill mechanics, but once you get used to it it's easy.

Disguise isn't fused with anything on my list, and Forgery (Int) is only combined with other Int based skills, so I have no idea what snake is talking about. Perception also doesn't include Search, so what?
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Sunic may be more abrasive than sandpaper coated in chainsaws (not that its a bad thing, he really does know what he's talking about), but just posting in this thread without warning and telling him he's an asshole which, if you knew his past experiences on WotC and Paizo is flat-out uncalled for. Never mind the insults (which are clearly 4Chan-level childish). You say people like Sunic are the bane of the internet? Try looking at your own post and telling me you are better than him.

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snakeman830

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Re: Your grievances concerning skills
« Reply #107 on: March 10, 2011, 03:37:21 PM »
My mistake, I got your combinations confused with another's in this thread.
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Brainpiercing

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Re: Your grievances concerning skills
« Reply #108 on: March 11, 2011, 10:23:26 AM »
My mistake, I got your combinations confused with another's in this thread.
These were from my post. The way we did it was that one ability was used for the combined skill.

But it's easy to do differently. An ultra-simplistic skill system could be:

Mental
Mnemonic
Physical
Social
Subterfute
Magical

Depending on the task, you add an ability bonus, and you're done.

But, rather than such an extreme solution, letting skills do supernatural things would be an easier start.

Nytemare3701

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Re: Your grievances concerning skills
« Reply #109 on: May 29, 2011, 03:15:01 PM »
Alright, so what I'm going to do is let the original skills function as is, but add additional effects for people who have RANKS in the skills (Skillmonkeys). These effects will be equal to a spell 1 or 2 levels previous, and the DC will increase per use (until you rest).

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Re: Your grievances concerning skills
« Reply #110 on: May 29, 2011, 08:18:54 PM »
Alright, so what I'm going to do is let the original skills function as is, but add additional effects for people who have RANKS in the skills (Skillmonkeys). These effects will be equal to a spell 1 or 2 levels previous, and the DC will increase per use (until you rest).
Make sure it doesn't turn into Truenaming.

Nytemare3701

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Re: Your grievances concerning skills
« Reply #111 on: May 30, 2011, 01:12:40 AM »
Alright, so what I'm going to do is let the original skills function as is, but add additional effects for people who have RANKS in the skills (Skillmonkeys). These effects will be equal to a spell 1 or 2 levels previous, and the DC will increase per use (until you rest).
Make sure it doesn't turn into Truenaming.

I love truenaming. (I know what you mean though. I'll make sure it's mechanically sound first.)

Catty Nebulart

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Re: Your grievances concerning skills
« Reply #112 on: May 30, 2011, 05:40:30 AM »
One of my beefs with skills (asside from a lot of them being CAP'd by 2'nd level spells) is that int based casters get to many (Wizard and Psion basicly.) Sure they just get 2+int per level but they have a lot of reason for high int, and they don't need the boost. In general casters tend to get more skills per level then other classes (Druids, cleric, and wilder get 4, wizards and psions have int bonus, cloistered clerics and beguilers have 4). Meanwhile most beatsticks get 2 (fighter, paladin, and Psychic Warrior) or 4 (Barbarian, monk, etc) but can't put as much in int because they need the physical stats more, and wisdom to shore up their will save, and the weaker casting classes (sorcerer, psychic warrior, warmage) get 2 and no int synergy.

Also skill monkeys (Rouge, Ranger) just get a few more skill-points than non-skill monkeys, and a half orc ranger would probably get less skill-points than a human wizard. (wizard probably has +4 int, so 7 skills a level, assume the orc has an int of 10 or less...). If you are going to keep the skill distribution as is you need to create skills that the wizard must sink points into, such as having minimum ranks to cast spells from a certain school or something. While some have expressed their annoyannce at having these "You must be this tall to ride" skills they provide one path towards using up those skill points. You must just avoid hitting the lesser caster with the same penalty, or at least not as large a one. Maybe create a skill for each school and have the wizard's caster level be determined by his ranks in that school since he is the learned caster, while the sorcerer with his inborn magic doesn't need the ranks.

So just buffing skills without addressing that makes the tier one classes stronger while weakening the others. Also it will make humans a stronger race choice and the races with an int penalty (half-orc) a weaker choice, which also isn't needed.
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Re: Your grievances concerning skills
« Reply #113 on: May 30, 2011, 06:43:21 AM »
Well, it doesn't really make the T1 casters significantly stronger if you focus on making skills useful instead of stronger. As is the problem is that whatever skills you have they become swiftly obsolete.
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Nytemare3701

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Re: Your grievances concerning skills
« Reply #114 on: May 31, 2011, 11:31:34 AM »
One of my beefs with skills (asside from a lot of them being CAP'd by 2'nd level spells) is that int based casters get to many (Wizard and Psion basicly.) Sure they just get 2+int per level but they have a lot of reason for high int, and they don't need the boost. In general casters tend to get more skills per level then other classes (Druids, cleric, and wilder get 4, wizards and psions have int bonus, cloistered clerics and beguilers have 4). Meanwhile most beatsticks get 2 (fighter, paladin, and Psychic Warrior) or 4 (Barbarian, monk, etc) but can't put as much in int because they need the physical stats more, and wisdom to shore up their will save, and the weaker casting classes (sorcerer, psychic warrior, warmage) get 2 and no int synergy.

Also skill monkeys (Rouge, Ranger) just get a few more skill-points than non-skill monkeys, and a half orc ranger would probably get less skill-points than a human wizard. (wizard probably has +4 int, so 7 skills a level, assume the orc has an int of 10 or less...). If you are going to keep the skill distribution as is you need to create skills that the wizard must sink points into, such as having minimum ranks to cast spells from a certain school or something. While some have expressed their annoyannce at having these "You must be this tall to ride" skills they provide one path towards using up those skill points. You must just avoid hitting the lesser caster with the same penalty, or at least not as large a one. Maybe create a skill for each school and have the wizard's caster level be determined by his ranks in that school since he is the learned caster, while the sorcerer with his inborn magic doesn't need the ranks.

So just buffing skills without addressing that makes the tier one classes stronger while weakening the others. Also it will make humans a stronger race choice and the races with an int penalty (half-orc) a weaker choice, which also isn't needed.

I'm addressing this by doing the following:

Instead of getting Intelligence+X points at each level, you get (Total Stat Mods)+X at each level.  The points derived from modifiers will only be usable on the associated skills. Sure the wizard will have INT points out the wazoo, but he's not getting a free ride on anything physical.

MalcolmSprye

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Re: Your grievances concerning skills
« Reply #115 on: June 01, 2011, 03:51:25 PM »
That system still vastly favors casters.  Think about it: How many Str based skills are there? Swim, Climb, Jump.  So the BSF gets those with his bonus attributes... he'll have lots of points he can't even spend.  Dex based characters fare  better. Tumble, Balance, sleight, stealth, open lock, and escape artist... oh, and use rope. So rogues get to be broader.  You might actually be able to make a friendly, stealthy burglar who also knows something.
Then we come to casters: Druids and Clerics? I hear spot and listen, sense motive, and survival are pretty good, and heal and profession means they're good at all sorts of mundane flavor stuff.  Will they have points they can't spend due to too few associate skills? Yes.  But with Spot, listen and sense motive, I wouldn't fuss much.
Int based casters get:Appraise, Craft, Decipher Script, disable device, Forgery, ALL knowledges, Search, and Spellcraft.  No wasted points here.  Basically, you free up the 2 base points a wizard gets to go into physical or social skills.

If this change strengthens anyone who needed help(sort of), it's the charisma based casters. Bluff, Diplomacy, Disguise, Gather info, Handle Animal, Intimidate, Perform, and UMD. Now the sorcerer can also be the party face, while not suffering MAD.  The Bard gains as much as the rogue... but with additional playing with his wands.

So yah... is this interesting? yep. Do I think it helps balance BSF vs caster? Nope.
« Last Edit: June 01, 2011, 03:53:14 PM by MalcolmSprye »

kikage

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Re: Your grievances concerning skills
« Reply #116 on: June 01, 2011, 04:30:57 PM »
Perhaps sum of Physical attribute mods to physical skills, and sum of mental mods to mental skills?

MalcolmSprye

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Re: Your grievances concerning skills
« Reply #117 on: June 01, 2011, 05:36:45 PM »
Perhaps sum of Physical attribute mods to physical skills, and sum of mental mods to mental skills?

Good god no!  That opens all the charisma and wisdom based skills to wizards, opens the charisma and knowledges to clerics and druids, and knowledge and spot/listen to sorcs and bards.
So the BBF gets to tumble and balance, while the wizard/CoD/Sorc gets to be a scary(intimidate), acute(spot/listen/sense motive), know it all, Diplomancer.

Edit: I realize I have made an error in logic;  This change DOES weaken INT based characters relative to others(minimally compared to a STR based character though), since they were previously able to spend their INT acquired skill points on anything.  However, what I said for Wisdom and Charisma based casters still stands.  They gain waaay more.
« Last Edit: June 01, 2011, 05:42:38 PM by MalcolmSprye »

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Re: Your grievances concerning skills
« Reply #118 on: June 01, 2011, 09:55:56 PM »
The perceived imbalance of having skills just come from Intelligence is something handled by game design itself in 3.5e.  If you look, you'll notice that Wizards, Archivists, and Psions have mediocre skill lists and only 2+int skills per level.  As a result, even with massive Intelligence scores they're simply not suited to being skill monkeys.  On the other hand, if you look at the classes in ToB (the only melee classes worth talking about when we think of game balance), you'll notice that they get a sizable chunk of skill points even without heavy investments in Intelligence.

MalcolmSprye

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Re: Your grievances concerning skills
« Reply #119 on: June 02, 2011, 03:39:53 AM »
The perceived imbalance of having skills just come from Intelligence is something handled by game design itself in 3.5e.  If you look, you'll notice that Wizards, Archivists, and Psions have mediocre skill lists and only 2+int skills per level.  As a result, even with massive Intelligence scores they're simply not suited to being skill monkeys.  On the other hand, if you look at the classes in ToB (the only melee classes worth talking about when we think of game balance), you'll notice that they get a sizable chunk of skill points even without heavy investments in Intelligence.
They don't get a sizable chunk.  They get 4+ int.  Is it better than fighter? Of course.  Is that saying a lot? No.
As for mediocre skill lists: Crusader gets 4+ skill points... but there's only 3 in class skills that are any good. Diplomacy, Intimidate, and Knowledge(Religion).  I guess you put 5 ranks into Balance too.  Warblade fares better with Diplomacy, Intimidate, Know(local), and Tumble... But I wouldn't say either of those lists is particularly better that a wizard's "All Knowledges"

Also, half of a warblade's class abilities literally do nothing without Int.