Skill items above +15

[Biggus]

Skill items can go up to +30 pre-epic, but published items above +15 seem to be almost nonexistent. The only ones I can find are:

Boots of Swiftness (+20 to Balance, Climb, Jump, and Tumble)

Mantle of Great Stealth (+30 to Hide and Move Silently)

Rod of The Path (+30 to Survival for tracking)

Ironically, these are all in the Epic Level Handbook, which has rules for creating skill-boosting items over +30, but no items in it over that level.

Are there any others above +15? If not, any idea why not? There are published items up to the maximum level for pretty much everything else.

Reason for edit: realised there are actually several armour qualities which give +15 bonuses (I originally wrote +10)

Edit 2: a few have been found, but all but one are temporary:

Halberd of Vaulting, +30 Jump (AEG, permanent)

Boots of Jumping, up to +20 Jump (MIC)

Salve of Slipperiness, +20 Escape Artist (DMG)

Domain Draughts, several types potentially can give over +15 bonuses at high levels (MIC)

[Thurbane]

Looking at the MIC:


Balance, Greater (armor quality) +15 competence on Balance
Boots of Jumping +10/15/20 competence on Jump

[Biggus]

Ah yes, I forgot about armour qualities, several of them go up to +15, thank you. Will amend my OP.

[Thurbane]

Found one more, again not a wondrous item though. Arms & Equipment Guide:


Halberd of Vaulting (specific magic weapon) +30 untyped to Jump

[Biggus]

Ah, so there is one nonepic +30 item then...

I did turn up one other above +15, Salve of Slipperiness, +20 to Escape Artist.

Still, it seems odd that there are so few, considering that there are explicitly items up to the limit for saves, AC, ability scores etc. I wonder if the designers realised how game-changing +20 to +30 items of certain skills would be (Diplomacy or UMD for example) and intentionally left it up to individual DMs whether to allow custom skill items?

[Kayblis]

IMO it's a case of general vs specific. A boost to AC is useful to every character, and AC bonuses 95% of the time means "AC bonus against all attacks this type covers". It's easy to find items with +2 armor AC, but kinda hard to find items with +2 armor AC versus goblinoids on a full moon. Same goes for attack bonuses, saves, ability scores...

Skill bonuses are the opposite. A +25 Knowledge(History) item is a huge investment that only someone with some good investment on Knowledge(History) is willing to make. There's no point in spending huge amounts of resources on a skill you're not already specced for, and the skill system is much more overspecialized than attacking or rolling saving throws. The floor is zero, and the ceiling is much higher. Skills as a whole are also not used defensively, so there's no point to pumping low/uninvested skills, as opposed to AC or saves.

In short, everyone wants a +8 to AC or a +5 to saves. Almost no one wants a +25 to Craft(Basketweaving).

[Thurbane]

Just offtopic for a moment: my search turned up an item I was previously unaware of while combing through A&EG - Rod of Mimicry.

For 30,000gp, it gives +10 competence bonus to UMD checks (as well as +10 to Disguise and Forgery, and Ventriloquism at will). That's kind of huge, for me anyway. It means you can get a BIG boost to UMD without having to play "Mother may I?" with custom items.

Rod of Mimicry + Admiral's Bicorne means any Joe-schmo with 1 rank in UMD has a modifier of +16, before your innate Cha modifier.

Sure, it's a big chunk of WBL, but I think we all know how great UMD is, and how hard it can be for some characters to get a decent modifier with it. I'm surprised the Rod doesn't get mentioned in more UMD discussions.

Anyway, sorry to digress...

[Biggus]

IMO it's a case of general vs specific. A boost to AC is useful to every character, and AC bonuses 95% of the time means "AC bonus against all attacks this type covers". It's easy to find items with +2 armor AC, but kinda hard to find items with +2 armor AC versus goblinoids on a full moon. Same goes for attack bonuses, saves, ability scores...

Skill bonuses are the opposite. A +25 Knowledge(History) item is a huge investment that only someone with some good investment on Knowledge(History) is willing to make. There's no point in spending huge amounts of resources on a skill you're not already specced for, and the skill system is much more overspecialized than attacking or rolling saving throws. The floor is zero, and the ceiling is much higher. Skills as a whole are also not used defensively, so there's no point to pumping low/uninvested skills, as opposed to AC or saves.

In short, everyone wants a +8 to AC or a +5 to saves. Almost no one wants a +25 to Craft(Basketweaving).

I'd think that was the reason if there were +20 or better items for maybe a dozen or so of the most popular skills but not the others. I'm pretty sure +20 items of Spot, Listen, Hide, Move Silently, Tumble, Bluff, Diplomacy and UMD would all be popular, and Search, Concentration and a few others not exactly niche. Instead we have a grand total of 3 nonepic items at +20 or better, two of which are for Jump and one Escape Artist.


Just offtopic for a moment: my search turned up an item I was previously unaware of while combing through A&EG - Rod of Mimicry.

For 30,000gp, it gives +10 competence bonus to UMD checks (as well as +10 to Disguise and Forgery, and Ventriloquism at will). That's kind of huge, for me anyway. It means you can get a BIG boost to UMD without having to play "Mother may I?" with custom items.

Rod of Mimicry + Admiral's Bicorne means any Joe-schmo with 1 rank in UMD has a modifier of +16, before your innate Cha modifier.

Sure, it's a big chunk of WBL, but I think we all know how great UMD is, and how hard it can be for some characters to get a decent modifier with it. I'm surprised the Rod doesn't get mentioned in more UMD discussions.

Anyway, sorry to digress...

No need to apologise, that is pretty huge. I've searched more than once for UMD-boosting items without ever coming across that one. Nice find!

[Duke of Urrel]

Does Glibness potion count?

[Biggus]

Does Glibness potion count?

I was originally thinking of items which give a constant bonus, but as it appears they're almost nonexistent yes, please do mention any temporary bonuses too.

Edit: just realised (much later) than there's no such thing as a potion of Glibness, as it's a personal-range spell.

[AvatarVecna]

Here's some temporary stuff, although only the Salve Of Slipperiness is guaranteed bigger than +15.



Item
Source/Page
Skill/Bonus/Type


Salve Of Slipperiness
DMG 206
Escape Artist +20 (competence)


Domain Draught (Diabolic)
MIC 156
Bluff/Diplomacy/Intimidate/Sense Motive +[class level] (untyped)


Domain Draught (Halfling)
MIC 156
Climb/Jump/Move Silently/Hide +[Cha] (untyped)


Domain Draught (Magness)
MIC 156
Any Wis-based check +[half class level] (untyped)


Domain Draught (Truth)
MIC 156
Sense Motive +[cleric class level] (untyped)



The "Diabolic Domain" doesn't specify that it's based on cleric class level, just "class level", but that's the assumed class. Alternatively, for the various "based on class level" domain draught options, the item has CL 20, so could be assumed to operate as if used by a Cleric 20...but that's a harder sell, I think.

There's probably some spells that could be put into wands/potions/etc that could give more than +15. But I feel like "you're allowed to make staves that can cast any spell so technically it could give you that bonus" is a bit too custom for what you're asking for - this post feels more like it's seeking out explicit points where WotC gave the ability to purchase a big skill bonus. And tbh even the domain draughts up there don't really meet that criteria, I'm more including them because otherwise they'd get completely missed.

[Biggus]

There's probably some spells that could be put into wands/potions/etc that could give more than +15. But I feel like "you're allowed to make staves that can cast any spell so technically it could give you that bonus" is a bit too custom for what you're asking for - this post feels more like it's seeking out explicit points where WotC gave the ability to purchase a big skill bonus. And tbh even the domain draughts up there don't really meet that criteria, I'm more including them because otherwise they'd get completely missed.

Thanks, I hadn't thought of Domain Draughts. And yes, originally I was thinking of permanent items like Boots of Elvenkind, but as only one of those has been found, I'm now also interested in temporary items.

After Duke of urrel mentioned potion of Glibness it did occur to me there are probably other spells which give a big skill bonus but I haven't actually thought of any...

EDIT: found one, potion of Jump can give +20 or +30 if cast at a sufficiently high caster level.

EDIT2: weirdly, just noticed that while several other potions are listed at different caster levels for stronger effects, the potion of Jump is only listed in its basic CL1 form. Presumably you must be able to make the stronger versions but they're not actually published items...

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Hmm. The only thing that comes to mind (that hasn't already been mentioned) is Legacy Weapons, and they're borderline. They cap out at +15 to a skill, but they can provide that +15 to multiple skills (3 or 4 IIRC), +10 to another 6 or so, and +5 to another 6. That's with a custom Legacy Item dedicated solely to boosting skills, but I'm sure some of the default ones give +15, and a few levels in Legacy Champion will let you add more.

Oh, and with a feat (which you can also pick up as a bonus from Legacy Champion), you can give yourself an extra +2 by expending a daily use of one of the abilities, so that does bring you up to +17.