bosssmiley
2008-12-20, 09:12 AM
Seen elsewhere and reposted with permission:
An idea you might want to consider in order to keep characters within sight one another at high levels (definition: within an RNG or two): limit bonuses to skills to an amount equal or less than the number of Ranks the character has in that skill.
Eg: a character with 12 ranks in a skill could have no more than an extra +12 to their skill from the various bonuses (attribute, circumstance, luck, etc.) available.
The rationale for this tweak: someone with only limited skill cannot co-ordinate all possible beneficial factors on offer to their best advantage.
Spell and magic items might follow a similar rule. You could rule that no-one can safely use a skill-enhancing spell/item with a greater bonus than their native skill ranks. Any attempt to do so results in Sorcerer's Apprentice-style hijinks.
The net result should hopefully be the end of skill abuse cheese, and is the death of the Diplomancer, or the +220 bonus at 10th level, really a bad thing?
I've been thinking about this post in connection with the excellent Calibrating Your Expectations (http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/d&d-calibrating.html) article (hat-tip: Justin Bacon), and it kind of makes sense to me in a "smells like the better bits of 4E" way.
Let's be honest, in many respects the bonus and modifier stacking system (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/thebasics.htm) in 3.X is b0rked. If you have a 1st level character (4 skill ranks in a skill) then no way should he be consistently making DC 50+ checks thanks to bonus stacking exploitation. That's just not level-appropriate and makes a mockery of verisimilitude.
Personally I'd exclude ability mods and racial bonuses from the list (why penalise someone for being born good at what they do) and write it something like this:
Max Skill = Skill Ranks + Ability Mod + non-magical bonuses (circumstance, competence, luck, etc.) bonus* + magical bonuses (enhancement, sacred, profane, etc.)*
* both limited to a maximum of Ranks
How Insight bonuses and various other quasi-magical bonus types would integrate into this system I haven't quite worked out.
I wondered what any of the maths & stats mavens on the boards thought of this?
An idea you might want to consider in order to keep characters within sight one another at high levels (definition: within an RNG or two): limit bonuses to skills to an amount equal or less than the number of Ranks the character has in that skill.
Eg: a character with 12 ranks in a skill could have no more than an extra +12 to their skill from the various bonuses (attribute, circumstance, luck, etc.) available.
The rationale for this tweak: someone with only limited skill cannot co-ordinate all possible beneficial factors on offer to their best advantage.
Spell and magic items might follow a similar rule. You could rule that no-one can safely use a skill-enhancing spell/item with a greater bonus than their native skill ranks. Any attempt to do so results in Sorcerer's Apprentice-style hijinks.
The net result should hopefully be the end of skill abuse cheese, and is the death of the Diplomancer, or the +220 bonus at 10th level, really a bad thing?
I've been thinking about this post in connection with the excellent Calibrating Your Expectations (http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/d&d-calibrating.html) article (hat-tip: Justin Bacon), and it kind of makes sense to me in a "smells like the better bits of 4E" way.
Let's be honest, in many respects the bonus and modifier stacking system (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/thebasics.htm) in 3.X is b0rked. If you have a 1st level character (4 skill ranks in a skill) then no way should he be consistently making DC 50+ checks thanks to bonus stacking exploitation. That's just not level-appropriate and makes a mockery of verisimilitude.
Personally I'd exclude ability mods and racial bonuses from the list (why penalise someone for being born good at what they do) and write it something like this:
Max Skill = Skill Ranks + Ability Mod + non-magical bonuses (circumstance, competence, luck, etc.) bonus* + magical bonuses (enhancement, sacred, profane, etc.)*
* both limited to a maximum of Ranks
How Insight bonuses and various other quasi-magical bonus types would integrate into this system I haven't quite worked out.
I wondered what any of the maths & stats mavens on the boards thought of this?