D&D v3.75 [Skills]

[Vorpal word]

After some time to revise things, I came to a few conclusions about my v3.75 homebrew plan. The first of which is the fact that it should be posted in several different threads for different topics. There are now five threads, for races, classes, mechanics, skills, and feats. Please post comments on appropriate threads only.

This is the skills thread of the project. Skills are currently an issue as I am not at all sure how to handle them. The 4e prospect of grouping similar skills seems good to me, but the current problem is how classes and races affect them. I personally disapprove of the 4e "trained" system, and my idea is to remove class skills entirely and instead have every class get a bonus (anywhere from a simple +2 to half their level) to certain skills.

[lesser_minion]

It breaks the principle of minimising absolutes a little, but you could always give classes a few extra tricks to perform with any given skill - e.g. allowing Rangers and Barbarians to heal people.

It would encourage people to pick certain skills for a given class without being excessive like the existing system.

Possible tricks associated with skills include:


Athletics (climb/jump/swim) - Increased running speed (replaces the Run feat)
Acrobatics (balance/tumble/escape artist) - Probably an AC bonus, replacing Dodge.
Stealth (Hide/Move Silently) - Hide in Plain Sight
Sabotage (Open Lock/Disable Device, maybe Search as well) - something cool
Perform (oratory or poetry) - Inspiring stuff. Maybe with a feat allow healing.
Heal (herbalist, first aid) - free heals (depending on your outlook)
Knowledge skills - find weaknesses of appropriate monsters


For even more brownie points, you could make all of these extended uses available to all characters or with a feat and have certain ones synergise better with certain characters.

[Devils_Advocate]

You mean stuff like Track or Trapfinding or Bardic Music, lesser_minion?

Sounds like a good idea to me!

[lesser_minion]

That could work, yes.

A few of the ideas I suggested are more along the lines of "meet the prerequisite, get the bonus" - e.g. automatically gaining Dodge at 5 ranks of an Acrobatics skill and Cloak Dance at 9 ranks of another skill.

I would suggest also tying existing abilities into skills - e.g. the herbalist ability allowing you to heal people for free.

[Vorpal word]

Sounds interesting, here's what I've thought up so far:

-Paladins can add to the total hp/day for their Lay on Hands ability with Heal ranks; +1 hp for every 8 ranks in the skill (but you can only get ranks equal to 3+level, as usual)

-Rangers and Druids can use Nature to travel faster, doubling the party overland speed with a good check (say, DC 25) in an above-ground, Material Plane, natural area.

-Clerics and Favored Souls can stack their Heal ranks for Cure spells, adding in +1 hp/8 ranks for every use.

-Rogues can find traps with no prerequisites, while other classes must have 8 ranks in Thievery/Sabotage to do so.

[lesser_minion]

Those are pretty good ideas, although I suspect that all heal ranks may as well add into cure spells - cheap healing isn't necessarily all that powerful.

I was going to suggest offering free healing through herbal lore - you could even grab a copy of Maelsrom from ebay and use the herbal information there as a starting point.

The sabotage one is the only one I really have an issue with - trapfinding may as well just be built into the game, 4e-style. It also has little effect - characters without a certain number of ranks in Sabotage aren't going to be finding traps anyway.

[StormingMarcus]

Use the Pathfinder skill system, it rocks.
As far as merging, it depends on how far you want to go.