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View Full Version : [3.5] Spending Skill Points on Other Things... (PEACH?)



Zovc
2010-07-05, 05:54 PM
A mod can lock or delete this thread whenever, I've made a new thread in the proper forum.

Last night I had an interesting idea to make skill points be worth more.

Mind you, I'm a fan of consolidating skills like Jump, Climb, and Swim into one Athletics skill, and doing things along those lines (Open Lock becomes a part of Disable Device, etc); I'm also a big fan of skill tricks. So, I like to make people's skill points go farther without having to give players that many more skill points.

So, similar to skill tricks, I was pondering letting skill points go towards Feat-(or in some cases, 'class ability')-type effects. Obviously, Skills can already do something similar to the Skill Feats, and I'll touch on a potential revision of those later in this post, but they can't do things like some suboptimal (but necessary-to-a-lot-of-characters) feats.

So, for the sake of reference, we'll call these Talents. I'm not feeling too creative at the moment, and I'm generally awful with naming things, so that will have to make due for this example. Here's what a basic entry would look like in a book:

Talents
At first glance, Talents might seem too powerful to include in your game, but consider the perspective in which they are presented. A non-fighter character generally gets one or two feats at level one, and from there, they go on to get six extra feats beyond that without something granting them extra feats. So, a rogue using one of his or her 7/8 feats on Weapon Finesse comes at a great cost. As an attempt to remedy this, Talents enable characters to spend a less finite (but still valuable) resource, skills, on effects that will make them more reliable.
Note: Talents can be treated as feats of the same name for meeting the prerequisites of anything, this includes prestige classes and other feats.

Weapon Finesse
Cost: 4 skill points.
Benefit: With a light weapon, rapier, whip, or spiked chain made for a creature of your size category, you may use your Dexterity modifier instead of your Strength modifier on attack rolls. If you carry a shield, its armor check penalty applies to your attack rolls.
Special: If you already have the Weapon Finesse feat when you gain this talent, you may select a new feat you meet the prerequisites for.

Psionic Meditation
Cost: 4 skill points.
Benefit: You can take a move action to become psionically focused.

Quick Draw
Cost: 4 skill points.
Benefit: You can draw a weapon as a free action instead of as a move action. You can draw a hidden weapon (see the Sleight of Hand skill) as a move action. A character who has selected this feat may throw weapons at his full normal rate of attacks (much like a character with a bow).

Skill Focus
Cost: 4 skill points.
Benefit: Choose a skill. You get an untyped +3 bonus on all checks involving that skill.
Special: You can gain this talent multiple times. Its effects do not stack. Each time you take the talent, it applies to a new skill.
(It is recommended you do not allow this feat and this skill at the same time.)

Milskidasith
2010-07-05, 05:58 PM
First: Wrong section.

Second: weapon finesse lets you use four skill points to take any feat, and you can take it repeatedly. Just take the actual Weapon Finesse feat first.

Third: Making skill focus a skill point tax instead of a feat tax makes many PrCs easier to enter. I assume that was your intent, but frequently it is caster, not martial, PrCs that require skill focus as a prerequisite.

Fourth: Eh. If you want more feats, just hand out more, instead of making it a skill point tax; you already get too few skill points to do anything competently as is.

Snake-Aes
2010-07-05, 05:58 PM
It helps to keep them in theme. Quick draw goes well requiring sleigh of hand, but weapon finesse doesn't have much place as a skill trick. Psionic Meditation could be linked to autohypnosis.


If you stray too far from that, it becomes easier to meld together feats and skills and just give characters a limit of how often they can buy feats instead of skill.

Zovc
2010-07-05, 06:10 PM
A mod can lock or delete this thread whenever, I've made a new thread in the proper forum.


First: Wrong section.

Yeah, probably so, apologies.


Second: weapon finesse lets you use four skill points to take any feat, and you can take it repeatedly. Just take the actual Weapon Finesse feat first.

Yeah, I probably should have just applied the same logic I did to Skill Focus.


Third: Making skill focus a skill point tax instead of a feat tax makes many PrCs easier to enter. I assume that was your intent, but frequently it is caster, not martial, PrCs that require skill focus as a prerequisite.

That was not my intent, that is why it uses the same wording as Skill Focus (only it explicitly gives an untyped bonus). If it allowed you to invest extra ranks in the skill, I'd probably make it at least a 2/1 ratio, similar to cross-classing skills.


Fourth: Eh. If you want more feats, just hand out more, instead of making it a skill point tax; you already get too few skill points to do anything competently as is.

Well, as I said, I like making skill points go farther, so skills would be consolidated if I was using this. I probably would hand out more skill points along with this system, as well.

Calling it a skill tax is interesting, though, because as-is, each of the talents I listed are FEAT taxes. I've effectively made them much more manageable cost-wise, and many players would still skip over them if they could if they were feats. I don't think you see what I'm doing in this respect.