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View Full Version : [3.5] Getting rid of predefined class skills?



Mnemnosyne
2010-07-28, 11:10 PM
The basic point of my post and question would be: What are the potentially unbalancing ramifications of allowing any character to choose their own class skills, rather than predefining them as a class? I can think of Use Magic Device as a potential problem, but none of the others jump out at me. Essentially, this variant rule:


As a 1st level character, you may choose a number of class skills equal to those listed in your class description. If your class requires a particular skill for a class feature (for example, Wizards requiring Spellcraft in order to learn spells) that skill must be a class skill for you. If your class receives all knowledge skills, you may not exchange them for other class skills, but if it receives only specific knowledge skills, those may be chosen as other class skills.

That's probably not worded as well as it could be, but I think the intention is obvious. Use Magic Device sticks as a potential outlier for this since it's so useful, but other than that I can't see what issue there might be with allowing a Fighter access to Gather Information rather than Handle Animal, or a Rogue having access to Ride instead of Perform as class skills.

Temotei
2010-07-28, 11:29 PM
There's a house rule floating out there fairly commonly that is to just get rid of class skills altogether, allowing any class to take any skill.

This seems to work just fine, but I don't understand why you can't trade Knowledge skills out if you have all of them. It seems like an arbitrary penalty to characters that normally have all of them, but don't want them.

Mongoose87
2010-07-28, 11:52 PM
Take a look at Pathfinder's skill system. They didn't ditch class skills, but they made the thing a lot more elegant, and made cross-class skills a lot less punitive.

Mnemnosyne
2010-07-29, 04:09 AM
This seems to work just fine, but I don't understand why you can't trade Knowledge skills out if you have all of them. It seems like an arbitrary penalty to characters that normally have all of them, but don't want them.
I suppose it does seem like it might be a pretty odd restriction. I basically put it in because there's a lot of potential knowledge skills that aren't just the ones in the PHB, and I've seen a lot of them listed in other products, so Knowledge would seem to be a sort of wide open 'pit of class skills' for someone with all of them. Plus, even in the PHB there's 10 different knowledge skills listed under the description.

Add to that Knowledge: Psionics, plus pretty much any other knowledge skill that might be introduced anywhere else (and I'm sure I recall at least a couple being mentioned in various places, like prestige class descriptions - I think Knowledge: Underdark is one, for instance) and it seems that without that restriction you could kind of abuse that to get damn near every other skill as a class skill.

I'll take a look at the Pathfinder skill system, so far I haven't really looked into that at all since with a couple exceptions like this I'm pretty happy with 3.5 as it is.

Morph Bark
2010-07-29, 04:24 AM
Hmmm... Scout 1/Ninja 1/Rogue 1/Spellthief 1 with max ranks in Hide, Move Silently and Iaijutsu Focus...

lesser_minion
2010-07-29, 06:53 AM
Hmmm... Scout 1/Ninja 1/Rogue 1/Spellthief 1 with max ranks in Hide, Move Silently and Iaijutsu Focus...

IF is a special case in that it's just nowhere near robust enough to have a place in the game (even though abusing it doesn't cause a problem).

I think we can safely ignore it here.

In any event, I might consider converting UMD into a rogue class feature, if only for tradition's sake, but I'm not convinced there are any obvious balance issues, even with characters who have access to all of the good skills in the game.

Zeta Kai
2010-07-29, 07:40 AM
If your class requires a particular skill for a class feature (for example, Wizards requiring Spellcraft in order to learn spells) that skill must be a class skill for you.

This line is unnecessarily punitive for the Truenamer. Why force them to take the worst skill in the game, when they could trade it out for something that they could actually use? This is a joke, of course.

jiriku
2010-07-29, 09:09 AM
You won't a shift in balance because of specific skills, but you will see a shift because the assumptions about access have changed. The changes are minor, but they are measurable.

The factotum and expert becomes less desirable, because their unique skill lists are now less unique. In the case of the expert, no one will really care though.
Classes with small or highly themed skill lists (barbarian, druid, fighter, paladin, ranger) gain considerably more versatility. You'll see wilderness classes whose skills have nothing to do with the wilderness. Of course, if you're using the Cityscape web enhancement, that's already happening a little. These classes become more desirable, and you may see concepts that diverge widely from the original archetype, such as social rangers, scholarly druids, wilderness-oriented paladins, and the like.
Obscure skills like Autohypnosis and Iaijutsu Focus will show up more often in your games.
Classes with more skill points or with terrible class skill lists get a relative power boost, because they can make more profit from the change.


If you do this, I'd suggest that you also give all non-casters and half-casters a 2-point per level increase in skill points, so they can get into the skill system and actually develop some competencies.

Hadrian_Emrys
2010-07-29, 11:22 AM
The house rule I've come to love is to ditch the notion of class skills and grant every class four more skill points per level. I don't see how making Autohypnosis and UMD available to all is a bad thing. Think about it, the classes that gain the most from the alternate system are the ones that need it the most. Heck, it even makes the Gonk at least 1/4th more viable as an option!

Bogardan_Mage
2010-07-30, 04:23 AM
I suppose it does seem like it might be a pretty odd restriction. I basically put it in because there's a lot of potential knowledge skills that aren't just the ones in the PHB, and I've seen a lot of them listed in other products, so Knowledge would seem to be a sort of wide open 'pit of class skills' for someone with all of them. Plus, even in the PHB there's 10 different knowledge skills listed under the description.

Add to that Knowledge: Psionics, plus pretty much any other knowledge skill that might be introduced anywhere else (and I'm sure I recall at least a couple being mentioned in various places, like prestige class descriptions - I think Knowledge: Underdark is one, for instance) and it seems that without that restriction you could kind of abuse that to get damn near every other skill as a class skill.
It's simple. The DM just has to put a limit on what knowledge skills exist in the campaign. Knowledge (all) becomes Knowledge ([predefined list]) and there's no problem. There's no reason why even under the proposed rule a player should be allowed to swap out, for example, Knowledge (psionics) in a setting where Psionics doesn't exist. They should simply not be deemed to have the skill in the first place.

ericgrau
2010-07-30, 10:44 AM
If you let players select their list you might as well make every skill a class skill, because they will select the skills that they plan on maxing out.

I remember when I first made my consolidated skill system I left out UMD because I deemed it so worthless, and that it was better to dip into a level of wizard instead for a far better chance of success. Because at low levels it's hard to make any checks and at high levels any scroll or wand that isn't super low level is prohibitively expensive. Then I noticed that you have to fail by 10 or more to botch UMD, and that you won't loss the scroll, so that makes UMD great for out of combat low level utility spells when you can retry on all but a natural 1. Theoretical Op people like UMD because in theory any class could use any spell. In practice, this is nonsense.