Knowledge Consolidation

[tedcahill2]

Thought I had that I wanted to share for anyone looking to streamline the knowledge skills or reduce the required investment.

Remove knowledge as individual skills and replace with a single Lore skill. Any class with knowledge as a class skill instead has Lore. Each class has a Lore entry that describes which types of Lore they have automatically. A Cleric for example would have a Lore entry that explains their Lore is associated with religion and the planes. Any skill points they spend on Lore would thus apply to both Religion and the Planes. Additional skill points could be spent to add additional knowledge groups into their Lore, like purchasing a language. Once you've purchased an additional knowledge type your Lore skill applies to it as well.

[MisterKaws]

Knowledge is a very powerful skill out of combat. And in combat as well, if someone takes Knowledge Focus. Your change would quickly get out of hand.

Usually DMs don't really like characters who can roll 30+ on every single knowledge check. They make a lot of DM preparation pointless, because they just expose all secrets upfront. You can't have the PCs unwittingly enter a sacrificial temple of a forgotten mad god if your party Cleric rolls a 40 on Knowledge(Religion) and recognizes the architecture of the place and remembers it's a trap. You'd at least have to bait them better so you can have that "You fell in my trap!" moment with the evil god's cultist or whatever, and even then, it wouldn't be much of a surprise, would it?

Now imagine every single surprise you prepare being dismantled by the players because someone can roll 60 on all knowledges and always recognizes(and knows how to bypass) anything the party scout detects. It's as equally frustrating as having someone who's trying to do Batman Wizard on a casual game.

[frogglesmash]

Thought I had that I wanted to share for anyone looking to streamline the knowledge skills or reduce the required investment.

Remove knowledge as individual skills and replace with a single Lore skill. Any class with knowledge as a class skill instead has Lore. Each class has a Lore entry that describes which types of Lore they have automatically. A Cleric for example would have a Lore entry that explains their Lore is associated with religion and the planes. Any skill points they spend on Lore would thus apply to both Religion and the Planes. Additional skill points could be spent to add additional knowledge groups into their Lore, like purchasing a language. Once you've purchased an additional knowledge type your Lore skill applies to it as well.

What are you trying to accomplish by consolidating the knowledge skills, and why?

[tedcahill2]

What are you trying to accomplish by consolidating the knowledge skills, and why?

Reduce the number of skills in the game.

[frogglesmash]

Reduce the number of skills in the game.

In that case I'd suggest consolidating other skills as, imo, the knowledge skills are fine the way they are.
I actually made an aggressively condensed version of the d&d skill list (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HZD6RkWw9rBfHa7Vh-5qAF6cpRgPTRrQ/view?usp=sharing) a while back, though looking back on it I think I may have condensed it too far, but you may consider it worth looking at.

[Recherché]

I'm leery of this because it doesn't allow for characters with backgrounds unusual for their class. For example one of my current characters is a cleric of the goddess of travel who's visited nearly every part of the world. She has a lot of points therefore in Knowledge: Nature and Knowledge: Local and a few even in Knowledge: Geography. Under your system the only thing she'd be allowed to put points into would be lore and she wouldn't have the skills her background and the way I play her says that she should have and I couldn't chose to give them to her.

[The Glyphstone]

Would a 1 level dip in Factotum give Lore( Everything)?