[3.5] House Rule: Monster Skills

[Thurbane]

Hey all,

I'm tpoying with the idea of a house rule, that gives creatures with RHD some base skills based on type. FOr instance, I might decide monstrous humanoids have Climb, Jump, Listen & Spot as "class skills" (for RHD) in addition to any specifically mentioned in their entry. A little like how true dragons work.

I'm thinking it would make NPC monsters a little more interesting, and creatures with RHD slightly better as PCs (although RHD/LA is still awful, I know - skills aren't the issue there).

Does this sound remotely like a good idea? If so, what skills would you recommend for which creature types?

Cheers - T

[fishyfishyfishy]

I don't think it would change things up too much. You could get away with this without even effecting CR in most circumstances. I don't always bother to worry about class skills vs cross class skills on NPCs. I even sometimes swap out class features and such. I tend to be pretty open to allowing PCs to do the same with their skills too.

[OldTrees1]

I think Types are too broad for this to work without very weird results. However RHD should come with reasonably sized skills lists(more than Fighter but less than Rogue).

[Enran]

I think Types are too broad for this to work without very weird results. However RHD should come with reasonably sized skills lists(more than Fighter but less than Rogue).

Some part of me wants to disagree with the idea that just being part of a certain race (other than exceptional stuff like dragons and Outsiders, the latter of whom are usually tailored to a specific role anyway) gives you a wider range of skills than being a trained professional in a set of skills, but then the smart part of me looks at the Fighter skill list and point allocation and remembers that the only sane way to interpret the writeup of Fighters is that they are intended to be pretty much the opposite of a trained professional. So yeah.

[Thurbane]

Maybe there should be a couple of basic skills added to every creature's skill list, regardless of type. Stuff like Spot, Listen, Jump etc?

I was creating an Equiceph with class levels as an NPC foe one time, and was struck by it's truly awful skill list (Intimidate and Survival - both of which aren't very useful without the right feats to make use of them properly), which became even more pronounced after it had a decent Int score...