Making skills more versatile (especially the less used ones)

[Kafana]

So I've been thinking about skills - there are a lot of them, but some are clearly far more powerful, often picked up and generally more fun. Now, I'm not talking about power so much as the other two aspects.

Skills that are almost always maxed, at least in the games I play and run are: UMD, Tumble, Diplomacy/Bluff and Spot/Listen.

Skills which are never picked up: Appraise, Decipher Script, Forgery and most of the physical skills (jump, climb, swim), and even gather information.

Now, the problem isn't only in the skills. The DMs usually neglect challenges for these skills, and usually offer an alternative. Say that none of the PCs has Forgery, and they need to get in on a royal party. Find someone who has access to this skill, perhaps someone working with the black market. I wouldn't say this is a bad thing, but it certainly makes these skills only viable for the rogue, and possibly beguilers.

I found this thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?178153-Potpourri-Creation-Contest-V-Check-Yourself&p=9884812&viewfull=1#post9884812 and I was wondering if there are more like it, which boost the less popular skills?

On a related note: If none of the players have gather information ranks, should the DM "punish" them for it? What happens if, say, a villain has a weakness that can make him an average encounter instead of an overwhelming one and the PCs fail to find any info about the weakness? What happens if the party has a rogue who refuses to invest in that skill, should they be punished then? (I use punish loosely, basically what I mean is should they fail a challenge because they were ill prepared?)

[Gildedragon]

One way to increase versatility is to have them be applicable in more situations.
A key step is to fold some of them together (use rope and sleight of hand, for example) or to give more skillpoints.

Cutting down the DC of the epic uses of the skills wouldn't be be bad either. Especially for appraise, balance, and sense motive

[VoxRationis]

I don't know why people aren't picking up Appraise, Decipher Script, and Forgery. Perhaps your campaigns are too dungeon-crawl-heavy for them.
Without Appraise, you have no legitimate in-character reason to know the price of all those gems you're finding in the dungeon. You're going to get swindled by every merchant worth his salt.
Decipher Script's uses are kind of niche, I understand, but you'll appreciate it when you can use it. If nothing else, use it to make codes to communicate with your fellow party members.
Forgery is simply amazing, and well worth taking. With some cheap props, you can completely throw any civilized group into disarray. Guards get laid off or ordered all to the same side of the fortress, new policies put into action, those loggers bothering your druid's grove find a new legal restriction has been put into effect by the king, etc.

[titans4ever]

I honestly think this can be broken down to a few core paper and pencil roll playing issues.

#1 It can really slow down a session and change the momentum of the gaming session completely. You just finished killing the big boss and now you slow down for 20 minutes while everyone searches the room, wait for the rogue to disable device or open lock to move forward. Some parties don't like that part of it. They only want to hack and slash every session. The DM gets it and then slowly removes them from the game. Spending an hour not killing things that gain you XP to get your next level can seem pretty boring. Face it, some parties are more worried about what their character is getting at the next level than what the story line is for the day.

#2 Your party is missing a rogue-ish type character that fills the skills portion for the party. A group of fighter types with one cleric and spell caster will be hard pressed to do anything but hack/slash. Sorry a fighter is not going to spend one of his few skill points in a cross class skill very often unless it truly fits his character. Our DM will sometimes just allow one skill not on the list if it truly fills what a character is on even if it is not one his class skills set. Then it is up to the DM to make him use it wisely.

#3 You may have to actually roll play instead of roll dice in some instances. Our party can spend an hour or more gathering info, convincing the town we just walked into that we are worth having around or celebrities to keep in a hotel for free. If you DM doesn't like this or the party finds it extremely boring, it gets cut quickly. One way to make everyone want to at least give it a try it is to reward individual XP or group XP based on ingenuity or how well they roll play out what needs to be done. Convincing a whole village that you are not the ones who set the town ablaze is worth XP even though you may have never rolled a dice. Sweet talking the shop keeper to give you a line of credit that helps you get that wand of cure light to help you keep going is worth some reward.

Examples from our party that makes our DM great:

- We had some down time in campaign time so I took a job working in a blacksmith shop and I gained 1 skill points in appraisal for every two weeks I worked there. Over the course of the campaign my fighter became pretty good at appraisal just because I though outside of the box.

- I had a character that took the profession gaming and would enter tournaments, teach classes, etc. while on down time and could make extra money for the effort.

- We convinced a village that the people after us were evil and got them to throw them off our tracks until we healed up and could face them again on our terms.

- We are constantly finding ledges, ravines, rivers, etc. that at least one person need to cross and tie off a rope to have any chance of continuing to find the extra chest, map, etc.

It comes down to the DM rewarding the skills portion of the party or individual character or force you to have a well rounded party.

[Milodiah]

As the GM who's called Accounting rolls and Operate Heavy Machinery rolls in Call of Cthulhu (in all fairness, the latter was a direct result of a player's hilariously bad plan involving a dock crane) I believe in using them all. It does, of course, rely on situation.

My campaign I'm running now started off my level one players as being members of the city watch; I've called for Forgery rolls when they try to deduce whether or not a merchant's signed authorization to import rat poison is legit, as well as Decipher Script when they wanted to see if a foreign paladin's warrant for a citizen's arrest was at least correctly formatted and signed (since none of them spoke Orcish).

As for Appraise, yeah, it's always important for you to know how much a thing is genuinely worth. For specific things like weaponry you could make a related craft roll, and for scrolls or whatever it could be Spellcraft or Knowledge (arcana), but at the end of the day it hinges on knowing what things are genuinely worth.

[BaronDoctor]

Bardic Knack + Jack of All Trades is the obvious solution to the problem. ;P

In general, the reason a lot of these skills don't get taken is obscurity and obsolescence. In short, the skill doesn't get a ton of use (Use Rope, Speak Language) or it isn't needed.

Climb/Jump are covered with any sort of flight. Sorry. If you want someone to put skill points there, you really have to put a big juicy reason for them to put points in them. Swim, a single-use item of water breathing in your pockets (a la the thing the Jedi pulled out of their utility pouches in episode 1) and maybe stripping off your armor beforehand and then just making it on dice and baseline strength.

Decipher Script: Scroll of comprehend languages.

Forgery: depends on the game. If you're in the sort of game where an adept paperwork monkey can make things happen, this skill will be in demand (and should probably be cross-classed by guards ;) ). Thing is, probably at least one of your players comes from a background where their real life has plenty of paperwork in it and they don't want to deal with more of it.

Gather Info: divinations, getting intel from friendly contacts, charm person...there's a lot of ways around the sort of problem Gather Info solves.

Appraise: possibly identify will cover magic and players probably expect to be fleeced by merchants. I mean, PCs generally sell for half the item's value per rules anyway, so they're "supposed" to get ripped off and you might want to work towards making that more fair, or just dealing with the fact that PCs will take skills that are in line with what is useful in the game.

[DeadMech]

I was tempted to write up a big rant I've been building up about the skill system. On paper it sounds like fun. You earn points each level and apply them to skills. When something related comes up in game you use those points to help you succeed. You customize what you are good at to your own specifications.

I think the first issue I wanted to rant about was the sheer number of skills vs the number of points you receive. There are 36 skill in the base game. That's before you expand knowledge out into it's 10 subclasses or perform, craft and profession into their... almost uncountable possibilities.

The next is the limited skill list given to some classes.

Any party with a fighter or similar low sp non int focused classes, is just not going to be able to cover all the bases. In fact it probably takes some very specific party builds to literally have someone maxing ranks in everything even without overlap. Not that you need max ranks in everything.


The fact that for a long time into the game the biggest factor is not your characters skill but the roll of the dice is still something I need to get used to as well.

Some skills have really low dc's, other have ridiculously high dc's, and others the dc is an opposed check so even if you max ranks you're probably running into dc's you can't beat often enough that it would be wise to put your life on the line.

[enderlord99]

In another thread, it was calculated that, for a specific process of character building and a specific (and rather broad) definition of "official," a factotum runs out of official things to spend skill-points on at level 1979.