Cheating skill ranks

[Raishoiken]

I vaguely remember seeing some posts discussing a kind of trick along the lines of gaining extra hd somehow either through bardic music, dusk giant nomming, etc, investing skill points, then reverting to your normal form and keeping the ranks.
Does anyone remember precisely how these are meant to be accomplished? Also, after losing the hd wouldn't your ranks have to drop afterwards since the max ranks rule doesn't say that that's the cap "at the time of choosing the skill points". It just says your cap is always your level+3 (disregarding feats). What pieces am i missing?

[daremetoidareyo]

If at level 1, you have templates that boost your intelligence, you can become a spellscale and keep your bonus skill ranks.

And then there is primary contact feat.

[Saintheart]

It takes technical/theoretical optimisation, which may not fly at your table.

That being said (and these are not original, Google Dusk Giant Polymorph on gitp and these will show up)...

Method 1:
Polymorph into a Dusk Giant. When you do, you gain its Cannibalize (Ex) ability. You then eat a load of creatures, ideally chickens since that allows you to roleplay Sandor Clegane, gaining HD. These HD allow you to gain skills and feats, as well as HD based abilities, but not those based on class features. You then dismiss the Polymorph, and you now have a higher HD so a higher maximum limit.

These HD are permanent, non dispellable/disjunctionable, or removable in any way short of level drain attacks, which would then lower your skill limit.

However, this technically doesn't actually increase your maximum limit (so still 3+HD), it just gives you excess HD.

Say your DM rules that the extra HD disappear at the same time the Polymorph effect does and the (Ex) ability it temporarily grants, i.e. while the extra HD disappear, so too do the skill points. No problem: you can take the skill points from wherever you like, leaving your over-max-skill-ranked abilities permanently intact. Other variations include using Psychic Reformation at this point as well to shuffle stuff around. In fact, if the DM rules that the extra HD don't disappear, this is actually problematic since your ECL then rises and accordingly your XP per encounter drops.


Method 2:
1) Hire a Bard of at least 9th level to Inspire Greatness in you (it helps if the bard has, and is willing to use for you, Words of Creation from the Book of Exalted Deeds).
2) While the Bard plays, have a psion manifest Psychic Reformation on you to reallocate your skill points.

When you're done, you had an Instant effect change your skill points around... at a time when you explicitly had extra hit dice. Non-dispellable, because everything involved already expired.


Method 3:
Be an Illithid Savant. Eat brains, get skill ranks beyond maximum level, RAW and legal from level 1 in the PrC. But if your game is allowing that, you should be just pressing for Pun-Pun already :smallbiggrin:

[weckar]

The Laborious Training feat is a thing too, if you're allowed that material.

[Ruethgar]

Also, Bloodlines. There are multiple interpretations on how they work so ask your DM, however, they are not allowed to increase your ECL by the text so however you pay for them, they increase your maximum skill ranks by one per level of the bloodline with no limit on the number of bloodline level you can take(though IDK wtf a decacolored vampire fey devil angel troll lycan omnielemental multigiant blooded thing would look like). If I recall correctly that's another 48ish potential skill ranks. Also note that because they are levels, Humans still gain their point per level(but the Wild template does not due to how its worded).

Common Interpretations

RAW Ridiculous: Can't increase ECL so upon reaching 1000exp you take a bloodline level. But you are still ECL 1 with 1000exp so you level up and take a bloodline level. Repeat ad nausium til you take a normal class level.
Restrictive: Screw the rules they add ECL and are treated like normal class levels without skill ranks or HD. Basically LA you can never buy off.
More Restrictive: As restrictive, but you have to take the bloodline levels at the level when you would start accruing exp penalties.
Relaxed Compromise: They don't add ECL but they essentially use up the experience they require, knocking you back to the start of the last level. So at 3k exp you take a bloodline level and go back to 1k exp.
Less Relaxed Compromise: As relaxed compromise, but you can't take the levels early and MUST take them at the level when you would start accruing exp penalties.


Edit: I personally go with Relaxed Compromise because I feel it is closest to RAW without being broken with the added effect of being limited to one bloodline(but being able to take Welknair's Mudblood if you want mixed blood).

OH! I almost forgot, Awakened Animals. Dragon Magazine #293 is 3.0 content so your DM may update it to be more reasonable, however, by default several Awakened Animals have ECLs set to 0 despite having a minimum of 3 effective RHD(up to 5 for an advanced small monkey). So you could be an ECL 1 with 6HD there-by breaking the cap at least for normal ECLs even if the cap is still the same when looking at your HD. Along similar lines, an Incarnate Warforged may or may not get two levels(and thus HD) for free depending on who you ask.

[ShurikVch]

Well Traveled (regional Greyhawk feat, Dragon #319) give you (among with couple other things) 2 ranks in the Knowledge (local) skill. Since usual skill rank cap doesn't mentioned, it may increase Knowledge (local) up to HD+5 (or +6 - if you, somehow, take Primary Contact at the same level)

Yenejg Togan's Planar Syllabus (Dungeon #88): when you read it, you get set amount of ranks in Knowledge (planes); costs 500 gp per rank; no caps mentioned

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Characters have no knowledge of skill ranks, hit dice, leveling up, etc. Thus no character would ever be able to level up precisely when benefiting from a temporary effect that boosts their effective hit dice. No character would even be aware that an ability increases their hit dice.

The entire idea of putting more ranks than normally allowed into a skill from a temporary effect relies completely on metagame knowledge being used in character. Thus there’s no RAW-legal way to accomplish it, even if the method itself is technically RAW-legal. No character would know how to do it, thus having your character do it despite lacking that knowledge is cheating.

[Thurbane]

Contracting Lycanthropy, investing (possibly cross class) skill ranks until you meet reqs, keep leveling until you meet the ranks without Lycanthrope HD, then get cured... is another method I've seen. Also can be used for BAB and base save reqs.


Yenejg Togan's Planar Syllabus (Dungeon #88): when you read it, you get set amount of ranks in Knowledge (planes); costs 500 gp per rank; no caps mentioned

Same principle with the Codex Anathema (LoM p.214): 5 ranks Knowledge (dungeoneering), 2 ranks Knowledge (arcana) and 2 ranks Knowledge (the planes). Also comes with +2 inherent bonus to Int and -2 penalty to Wis. Has the added benefit that more tables allow hard cover books than Dungeon/Dragon mags.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Characters have no knowledge of skill ranks, hit dice, leveling up, etc. Thus no character would ever be able to level up precisely when benefiting from a temporary effect that boosts their effective hit dice. No character would even be aware that an ability increases their hit dice.

That's the given position in the DMG but it doesn't hold upon scrutiny. From XP costs and their gold equivalencies to HD limited magical effects and faustian pacts, something akin to the nature of the game mechanics can be derived by characters within the confines of the game world.



The entire idea of putting more ranks than normally allowed into a skill from a temporary effect relies completely on metagame knowledge being used in character. Thus there’s no RAW-legal way to accomplish it, even if the method itself is technically RAW-legal. No character would know how to do it, thus having your character do it despite lacking that knowledge is cheating.

Even giving you that the knowledge of the game mechanics is something behind a knowledge (metaphysics) check at dc 80+, the fact that someone who is being inspired to greatness gets better at fighting and becomes substantially tougher but his skills aren't improved at all is something that could easily be observed. Observing further that a powerful psion can allow a person to shuffle his mind such that he becomes more skillful in some areas while simultaneously losing ability with other skills. Getting the two to work together as an experiment in making yourself more skillful in a particular field than you otherwise might be is not so incredibly far-fetched.

The dusk-giant trick along with a few other methods do, indeed, involve some fairly deep knowledge of the game mechanics that would be pretty difficult to justify in-character unless the game mechanics being known in-game is a given.

[Ruethgar]

I would like to mention that there are multiple divination effects who’s output is flat out game jargon. You can tell exactly how much HD someone has through magic and science, their intelligence scores, probably their skills somewhere. Sure the effects of HD might not be common knowledge in a mideaval setting, but there is very little chance that churches, arcane universities and similar institutions of knowledge wouldn’t have at least an idea of game mechanics.