*Not* Using Intelligence to Determine Bonus Skill Points per Level: Thoughts?

[BlackOnyx]

Just looking to get a general feel for people's thoughts on this one:


Do you believe doling out bonus skill points for high intelligence (as per RAW) is a good practice? Or might game balance/enjoyment be better served if each class was to receive two more skill points per level across the board?


(Suggestions for other alternatives are welcome.)


Looking in particular at arguments like "wizards already use INT as their casting stat" and "should a martial's aptitude for swimming, jumping, and climbing be a factor of their intelligence score?"

[Gruftzwerg]

The unbalance comes here more due to some classes getting so few skillpoints for imho no real reason. "I'm looking at you poor fighter and other classes with 2+Int skillpoints."

That is not the fault of the "Int bonus". So imho, if you want to address the issue go for +1 or +2 skillpoints for all classes. Or +2 for the "2+Int" classes and all others only +1.

edit: to clarify. I think the Int bonus only feels so strong because many classes don't get enough skillpoints while being MAD (multiple attribute dependent). And SAD (single attribute dependent) classes with Int as their sole stat feel thus really strong.

[Kurald Galain]

Do you believe doling out bonus skill points for high intelligence (as per RAW) is a good practice?
Yes, because otherwise, int becomes an automatic dump stat to all classes except wizards (and other int-based casters) - precisely like how int is completely useless in 4E and 5E, except to int-based casters.

[Zaq]

Yes, because otherwise, int becomes an automatic dump stat to all classes except wizards (and other int-based casters) - precisely like how int is completely useless in 4E and 5E, except to int-based casters.

I agree with this except for the assertion that INT is useless in 4e. 4e's practice of actually making your secondary stat matter is laudable and really does lead to every stat being potentially quite valuable.

Otherwise yes, in 3.x, without feeding into skill points, INT doesn't have much across-the-board reason to be invested in, and that's kind of unfortunate. It also means that you can't CHOOSE to invest heavily in INT to make your skill-heavy character more skillful, and I don't really like that.

I do think you should apply more skills across the board. 2 extra points per level to everyone, no questions asked, would break nothing. Honestly 4 more points to everyone is probably not entirely unreasonable. But that should be in addition to keeping INT to skill points, not instead of. Increase the skill point baseline to make it so you don't NEED to invest in INT; keep INT to skill points to reward you if you CHOOSE to invest in INT.

[Kayblis]

I'm siding with keeping Int to skills too. The base stats are already very uneven, physical stats are always a plus but if you don't actively use a mental stat, you dump it most of the time. That's why almost every Fighter and Barbarian in existance has 8 Cha or less. If you take away the reason to have a stat, you don't improve skills, you create another dead stat for most people. The problem is not that Int-based classes are too good, it's that everyone gets too little skill points.

If you want to improve skills though, you have options - give everyone +2 skill points per level for free, and give all non-fullcasters a choice of any three skills to have as extra class skills. This gives more options to the people that need the most, and doesn't change the fact that the Wizard is still investing his 10 skillpoints per level into 6 Knowledges and his obligatory casting skills. Now, the Fighter can have Tumble, the Barbarian can have Spot, the Monk can have UMD and the Rogue can have Iaijutsu Focus if he really wants to. It's not game-breaking at all, and the actual players will feel better about their characters.

[lylsyly]

4 extra points for each class and keep INT bonus and eliminate the whole class/cross class nonsense is the way I run my games.

My fighter's father was a member of the Kings Guard! Why is it that I can't have knowledge of the city and knowledge of the royal family?

Tried a different system for starting skills once: Choose ranks in CHA based skills equal to your CHA score - Choose ranks in DEX based skills equal to your DEX score, ect.... Player's didn't care for it because they had to spend points on skills they had know interest in so I dropped it.

[ShurikVch]

The unbalance comes here more due to some classes getting so few skillpoints for imho no real reason. "I'm looking at you poor fighter and other classes with 2+Int skillpoints."
Well, firstly: Fighter also have downright tiny skill list - just seven skills
(For comparison: Commoner have 10 class skills)
On what, exactly, you want to spend those extra skills?
(Especially considering the fact Human Fighter with Int 13 already would be able to max 4 out of their 7 skills)

And secondly: the last time I checked, Fighter have the same amount of skill points as a Binder of the same level and with the same Int; if the Fighter have lowish Int - then whose fault is it?



My fighter's father was a member of the Kings Guard! Why is it that I can't have knowledge of the city and knowledge of the royal family?
Noble Born (Dragon #333) - 1st-level feat Diplomacy and Knowledge (nobility & royalty) are always class skills, and +2 bonus on Leadership score
May even be an Academy Graduate (paizo.com/dungeonissues/SavageTide/SavageTide_HR.pdf) - any 3 Cha- or Int- based skills are always class skills


And finally: if the number of skill points is a big problem for you, but you don't want to play any other class - then how about the class variants?
Thug (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#fighterVariantThug) - lose Medium and Heavy armor, get 4 skill points

Or Watchman class (Kingdoms of Kalamar): same full BAB, all Light and Medium armor (and non-Tower shields), d8 hp, good Fort and Ref, 6 skill points, and some actual class features...

[Biggus]

Agreed that giving all classes an extra two skill points isn't a bad idea (I've been considering doing that myself) and that making intelligence an automatic dump stat for most classes is.

One variant I've heard is to give all classes except tier one casters an extra two skill points. Wizards certainly don't need any more, and low skill points is one of the very few weaknesses of Clerics.

Also, if you're giving most/all classes extra skill points, some of them (Fighter being the obvious one) will need some more class skills to make them worth having (something else I've been considering adding to my own games).

[Crake]

I personally give 2 extra skill points, plus an additional two as background skills as per the pathfinder optional rule.

[lylsyly]

Noble Born (Dragon #333) - 1st-level feat Diplomacy and Knowledge (nobility & royalty) are always class skills, and +2 bonus on Leadership score May even be an Academy Graduate (http://paizo.com/dungeonissues/SavageTide/SavageTide_HR.pdf) - any 3 Cha- or Int- based skills are always class skills


Also, if you're giving most/all classes extra skill points, some of them (Fighter being the obvious one) will need some more class skills to make them worth having (something else I've been considering adding to my own games).


4 extra points for each class and keep INT bonus and eliminate the whole class/cross class nonsense is the way I run my games.

No need for my players to take feats to get skills added, as I said I've eliminated the whole class/cross-class skill nonsense.

[Kurald Galain]

I believe this issue is largely limited to the Fighter and Paladin. Those classes do need more skill points and a wider skill list, but I'm not convinced anybody else does (assuming PF's skill list and rules for cross-class skills, that is).

[NigelWalmsley]

Do you believe doling out bonus skill points for high intelligence (as per RAW) is a good practice? Or might game balance/enjoyment be better served if each class was to receive two more skill points per level across the board?

What problem are you trying to solve? Don't just ask "what if we did X", explain why it is that you are considering doing X in the first place. Especially if you're going to ask for alternatives. There's no way for people to tell you if there's a better way to solve your problem if you don't tell them what that problem is.

[Berenger]

Drop INT bonus to skill points, drop cross class skills, +2 skill points per level for everyone (perhaps +3 for classes that are not full spell casters).

[Eldan]

One interesting homebrew suggestion I've seen is that you get skills from every stat, but they have to be skills that use that stat. I.e. if you have 18/+4 strenght, you get 4 skill points for use in strength skills.

I have no idea how it actually works in practise, mind you. Probably not enough skills to make some stats useful.

[Morty_Jhones]

ummm... droping INT as a feature for bonuse skill points..
ummm.... Droping class/cross class skills costs..
Ummm... unaltery bosting Skill points available so as to easyer hit max skill cap....



Dud thats the same **** as 4th ed pulled and we all know what happened there.


If you whant a skill monkey Fighter stack Int, thats what its for the only thing INT affects is number of skill and knolage skills. for anything elce it might as well be dump stat.
but then it is the stat of LEARNING.
Its the reasion animals are INT 1-2 but WIS 12, this is why its posable to train animals. they don't learn without repition and practise, slowly coming to recognise that this action brings this reward and as a bonuise even if the reward is not forthcoming onece the stimules is given.. they prform the action anyway cuss they cant know that the reward wont happen.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Tried a different system for starting skills once: Choose ranks in CHA based skills equal to your CHA score - Choose ranks in DEX based skills equal to your DEX score, ect.... Player's didn't care for it because they had to spend points on skills they had know interest in so I dropped it.


One interesting homebrew suggestion I've seen is that you get skills from every stat, but they have to be skills that use that stat. I.e. if you have 18/+4 strenght, you get 4 skill points for use in strength skills.

I have no idea how it actually works in practise, mind you. Probably not enough skills to make some stats useful.

Per-stat skill points can be helpful in spreading more skill points around and making all characters more well-rounded, but whether the idea turns out well or poorly is heavily implementation-dependent. Handing out only per-stat skill points as in these two suggestions will make classes much better at skills associated with their specialty but make characters a lot more rigidly archetypal, since if your fighter doesn't have a Cha bonus, well, he's not getting any social skill bonuses any time soon.

If you hand out a base amount of skill points and provide bonus skill points on a per-stat basis, that avoids that problem and allows much more customization for all characters, but dramatically impacts skillmonkey classes because, now that everyone has a ton of skill points, their main differentiation comes from class features and feats like Trapfinding and Track and those aren't particularly impressive--and, as mentioned, Int loses a lot of utility and becomes a dump stat for all classes besides Int-based casters and factotums.

Probably the best approach is some sort of middle ground--for instance, increased base skill points and a bigger bump for Int (2×Int points instead of 1×Int points, say), plus a flat bonus for skills related to each stat for having a certain bonus or higher in that stat--so Fighters get a big of a boost with Str-based skills and have more points to spend on other skills without either making all Fighters too cookie-cutter or making the Rogue jealous of the Fighter's skill points.

[BlackOnyx]

The unbalance comes here more due to some classes getting so few skillpoints for imho no real reason. "I'm looking at you poor fighter and other classes with 2+Int skillpoints."

That is not the fault of the "Int bonus". So imho, if you want to address the issue go for +1 or +2 skillpoints for all classes. Or +2 for the "2+Int" classes and all others only +1.

edit: to clarify. I think the Int bonus only feels so strong because many classes don't get enough skillpoints while being MAD (multiple attribute dependent). And SAD (single attribute dependent) classes with Int as their sole stat feel thus really strong.


A fair assessment.




Yes, because otherwise, int becomes an automatic dump stat to all classes except wizards (and other int-based casters)


Also a fair point.




I do think you should apply more skills across the board. 2 extra points per level to everyone, no questions asked, would break nothing. Honestly 4 more points to everyone is probably not entirely unreasonable. But that should be in addition to keeping INT to skill points, not instead of. Increase the skill point baseline to make it so you don't NEED to invest in INT; keep INT to skill points to reward you if you CHOOSE to invest in INT.


True; it would be a shame to limit options for those willing to make the sacrifices necessary to excel in a certain area.




If you want to improve skills though, you have options - give everyone +2 skill points per level for free, and give all non-fullcasters a choice of any three skills to have as extra class skills. This gives more options to the people that need the most, and doesn't change the fact that the Wizard is still investing his 10 skillpoints per level into 6 Knowledges and his obligatory casting skills. Now, the Fighter can have Tumble, the Barbarian can have Spot, the Monk can have UMD and the Rogue can have Iaijutsu Focus if he really wants to. It's not game-breaking at all, and the actual players will feel better about their characters.


Interesting idea. Allowing characters to "tag" an extra skill or two could open up some interesting avenues for customization that might not otherwise be practical.




4 extra points for each class and keep INT bonus and eliminate the whole class/cross class nonsense is the way I run my games.


In the last campaign I ran, we kept the class/cross class dynamic but eliminated half ranks and the like. (Every PC/NPC was essentially treated as having Able Learner.) It seemed to work out fairly well.




Well, firstly: Fighter also have downright tiny skill list - just seven skills
(For comparison: Commoner have 10 class skills)
On what, exactly, you want to spend those extra skills?
(Especially considering the fact Human Fighter with Int 13 already would be able to max 4 out of their 7 skills)



Fair point. Perhaps allowing players to "tag" one or two additional cross class skills as class skills (as suggested earlier) could help alleviate this to some extent.

Tapping into cross class skills is always an option as well. (Even a little bit of tumble is probably preferable to no tumble at all.)




And finally: if the number of skill points is a big problem for you, but you don't want to play any other class - then how about the class variants?



Also valid. There's a reason many of those variants exist.




I personally give 2 extra skill points, plus an additional two as background skills as per the pathfinder optional rule.


Interesting. Didn't realize pathfinder had an optional rule dedicated to this. (Offered something similar in the last campaign I ran as well.) I like how they break up the two skill types.




What problem are you trying to solve? Don't just ask "what if we did X", explain why it is that you are considering doing X in the first place. Especially if you're going to ask for alternatives. There's no way for people to tell you if there's a better way to solve your problem if you don't tell them what that problem is.


No specific problem in mind.

Just interested in hearing what people's thoughts were on the system as written and whether or not anyone had adopted alternatives in their own campaigns.




Per-stat skill points can be helpful in spreading more skill points around and making all characters more well-rounded, but whether the idea turns out well or poorly is heavily implementation-dependent. Handing out only per-stat skill points as in these two suggestions will make classes much better at skills associated with their specialty but make characters a lot more rigidly archetypal, since if your fighter doesn't have a Cha bonus, well, he's not getting any social skill bonuses any time soon.

If you hand out a base amount of skill points and provide bonus skill points on a per-stat basis, that avoids that problem and allows much more customization for all characters, but dramatically impacts skillmonkey classes because, now that everyone has a ton of skill points, their main differentiation comes from class features and feats like Trapfinding and Track and those aren't particularly impressive--and, as mentioned, Int loses a lot of utility and becomes a dump stat for all classes besides Int-based casters and factotums.

Probably the best approach is some sort of middle ground--for instance, increased base skill points and a bigger bump for Int (2×Int points instead of 1×Int points, say), plus a flat bonus for skills related to each stat for having a certain bonus or higher in that stat--so Fighters get a big of a boost with Str-based skills and have more points to spend on other skills without either making all Fighters too cookie-cutter or making the Rogue jealous of the Fighter's skill points.


An interesting idea, though it sounds like it might take a bit of work to fully hammer out.

[Kurald Galain]

One interesting homebrew suggestion I've seen is that you get skills from every stat, but they have to be skills that use that stat. I.e. if you have 18/+4 strenght, you get 4 skill points for use in strength skills.
The likely outcome of that is that every class (other than int-based casters) will dump int to the absolute minimum. You basically end up with five ability scores instead of six.

[Gnaeus]

I believe this issue is largely limited to the Fighter and Paladin. Those classes do need more skill points and a wider skill list, but I'm not convinced anybody else does (assuming PF's skill list and rules for cross-class skills, that is).

That last sentence should really be bolded highlighted and underlined.

PF nonhuman rogue w/ 10 int and FCB not used on skills
Stealth
Perception
Disable Device
UMD
Slight of Hand
Know Local
Bluff
Acrobatics.

That’s basically a rogue right? Scouting. Traps. Stealth. And some basic thief stuff. Might wish for a few extra points for languages/intimidate/swim/climb/appraise etc.

3.5 rogue
Hide
Move Silently
Spot
Listen
Search
Open Locks
Disable Device
Tumble

So he can essentially do his core party job of sneaking and traps and nothing else. He needs a 20 int to match the PF rogue who used int as a dump stat.

[NigelWalmsley]

The likely outcome of that is that every class (other than int-based casters) will dump int to the absolute minimum. You basically end up with five ability scores instead of six.

You mean like they already dump Charisma? In my experience, people are already perfectly happy to have an 8 or 10 Intelligence. If they get more it's to take Combat Expertise.

[Thunder999]

This would just make int as useless as charisma, either you cast spells with it or you just dump it as hard as you can because it literally does nothing.
2-4 more base skills for everyone would be nice too, most classes feel pretty skill starved, particularly if you're taking ranks in a skill just to qualify for a feat or PrC.

[Kurald Galain]

You mean like they already dump Charisma?

Yes, except that there are more classes that care about cha, than that care about int.

[Zaq]

Yes, except that there are more classes that care about cha, than that care about int.

Also worth mentioning is that many of the most potentially powerful skills in the game rely on CHA. Diplomacy, Bluff, Handle Animal, UMD... the other CHA-based skills are also generally pretty good, but if you dive hard into any of those four, they can be defining.

But yeah, the reason CHA is a designated dump stat is because, RAW, the only time you have to care about it in a circumstance that's not within the player's control is when you're making opposed CHA checks to resist a magical compulsion you've already failed your save against. Which is... not super duper common. Basically every other time you want CHA is within the player's control, so if the player chooses not to use any of those CHA-based options, they're pretty safe without it. Contrast with the other stats: STR drives melee attacks without investment, DEX drives AC/Ref/Init/ranged attacks, CON drives HP/Fort, INT drives skills, and WIS drives Will, even if you're not using any skills or class features tied to the stat in question. (STR, of course, is the second most easily dumped stat if you don't use melee attacks or if you have a workaround.)

I'm a fan of the system, used by both Legend and 4e, that pairs up stats for saving throws: use the better of your STR and your CON for Fort, the better of your DEX and your INT for Ref, and the better of your WIS and your CHA for Will. Means, among other things, that if you don't have any particular class features tied to a given one of the pair, you can still choose which one you want for your residual save bonus, adding a bit of customizability. (There are other benefits as well.)

This ties back to the original topic, of course. INT is valuable to everyone because of skills. Take that away and it becomes proportionately less valuable. If the problem you're trying to solve isn't "INT is too valuable," then the original proposal doesn't solve your problem. (I think this has been more or less agreed upon by this point, but sometimes it's worth spelling it out!)

[Kurald Galain]

Also worth mentioning is that many of the most potentially powerful skills in the game rely on CHA.
Agreed. Conversely, knowledge/spellcraft are fairly good but only one PC in the party needs them; and nobody much cares about appraise/decipher/forgery.


I'm a fan of the system, used by both Legend and 4e, that pairs up stats for saving throws:
I'm not, because that means every character will automatically dump the other one of the pair. Almost every 4E character I've seen has three dump stats (sometimes four). And in the case of int-and-dex, both of them give AC and Reflex, but dex also gives better skills and init.


INT is valuable to everyone because of skills. Take that away and it becomes proportionately less valuable. If the problem you're trying to solve isn't "INT is too valuable," then the original proposal doesn't solve your problem.
Fair point. The thread is basically "people tend to underinvest in int, how can we make int less useful to people?" That's the wrong approach. A better approach might be to give PCs a number of defensive rerolls based on their int mod (because they're predicting your tactics), and a number of offensive rerolls based on their cha mod (because they're bluffing or intimidating enemies into using bad tactics). Make both stats more useful in combat.

[gijoemike]

A side note:
The skill point base number appears to be derived as a percentage of total number of class skills. I just want to make sure numbers get shown in this thread. I have found it to be eye opening for some people.

Fighter - 7 skills with base 2 pts = 28%
Barbarian - 9 skills whith base 4 = 44%
Wizard - 6 skills with base 2 = 33% (knowledge is listed considered 1 skill which we all know is complete BS as it has 12 categories)
Rogue - 29 with base 8 = 27%
Artificer - 10 skills base 4 = 40% (3 knowledge rolled into 1 skill. Otherwise 12/4 = 33%)
Paladin - 9 skills base 2 = 22%
Swashbuckler - 12 skills with base 4 = 33%
Warlock - 11 with base 2 = 18%


From above you can see the design is to have skills close to 33% but slightly lower for int base classes.
1. We can see figther and rogue are on the low side but they aren't int based. That should be addressed.
2. Barbarian should have been only 3 skil pts.
3. Rogue has 29 class skills... WTFH? The design failed. PF is better by rolling a bunch of skills into one. They have the 2nd lowest% coverage in the list. They should have a 10 base in 3.5.


The actual problem comes from the fact that certain skill groups are broken into 2 skills. Without both its mostly worthless. Hide+move silently, search+disable device. Spot+listen. Ride + Handle Animal. Take fighter again. Climb, Jump, Swim. Why does a fighter have to spend 3 skill points to be able to do athletic strong guy stuff? Oh look, to actually control the horse s/he is on requires the entire skill allocation.

Some skill areas need to be combined. Some classes just need more base points. To truly fix this. Many players praise the skills system of 13th age and fate. Those cover conceptual areas of skills instead of explicitly stating the exact skill. How can one be a sailor without any use rope? How can one be a blacksmith or specifically a weaponsmith without any craft?

[Biggus]

No need for my players to take feats to get skills added, as I said I've eliminated the whole class/cross-class skill nonsense.

Personally, I don't consider the concept of class skills nonsense. While there are certainly some skills that it makes sense to be available to everybody equally (Knowledge (Local) being the most obvious one), there are also plenty which would be difficult to learn without having access to a good teacher/library/appropriate resources. Guilds and the like jealously guard their trade secrets.


I believe this issue is largely limited to the Fighter and Paladin. Those classes do need more skill points and a wider skill list, but I'm not convinced anybody else does (assuming PF's skill list and rules for cross-class skills, that is).

PF does improve things, but in 3.5 there's definitely an argument for giving most/all classes more skill points.



A better approach might be to give PCs a number of defensive rerolls based on their int mod (because they're predicting your tactics), and a number of offensive rerolls based on their cha mod (because they're bluffing or intimidating enemies into using bad tactics). Make both stats more useful in combat.

That's an interesting idea. I'd been considering giving action points or something similar for high Cha to stop it being an automatic dump stat for most classes, but that might work better.

[Asmotherion]

Well, you can homebrew what you want but, Skill points as they are make a lot of sence IMO

One idea I'd be down with is having separate skill point for each stat that apply for skills that key off that attribute. For example, you have you Str bonus in skill points each level to invest between Str Skills (Climb, Jump). You cannot invest more skill points than your class skills per level, calculated with your highest stat.

It's not neccessary per say, but I feel it would make a nice alternative mechanic.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

The actual problem comes from the fact that certain skill groups are broken into 2 skills. Without both its mostly worthless. Hide+move silently, search+disable device. Spot+listen. Ride + Handle Animal. Take fighter again. Climb, Jump, Swim. Why does a fighter have to spend 3 skill points to be able to do athletic strong guy stuff? Oh look, to actually control the horse s/he is on requires the entire skill allocation.

The fighter doesn't have to invest in three skills to be able to do athletic stuff or riding stuff, only to be noticeably exceptional in those areas, and being merely competent in those areas is sufficient most of the time.

Something that a lot of people forget or never noticed when it comes to skill system discussions is the following sidebar in the PHB:


When you create your character, you will probably only be able to purchase ranks in a handful of skills. It may not seem as though you have as many skills as real people do—but the skills on your character sheet don’t actually define everything your character can do.

Your character may have solid familiarity with many skills, without having the actual training that grants skill ranks. Knowing how to strum a few chords on a lute or clamber over a low fence doesn’t really mean you have ranks in Perform or Climb. Ranks in those skills represent training beyond everyday use—the ability to impress an audience with a wide repertoire of songs on the lute, or to successfully scale a 100-foot-high cliff face.

So how do normal people get through life without ranks in a lot of skills? For starters, remember that not every use a skill requires a skill check. Performing routine tasks in normal situations is generally so easy that no check is required. And when a check might be called for, the DC of most mundane tasks rarely exceeds 10, let alone 15. In day-to-day life, when you don’t have enemies breathing down your neck and your life depending on success, you can take your time and do things right—making it easy, even without any ranks in the requisite skill, to succeed (see Checks without Rolls, page 65).

You’re always welcome to assume that your character is familiar with—even good at, as far as everyday tasks go—many skills beyond those for which you actually gain ranks. The skills you buy ranks in, however, are those with which you have truly heroic potential.

People often say that cross-class skills are nonsense, that investing in skills with a cross-class cap is never worth it, and so forth, but that's not really true. Most non-opposed skill tasks have DCs in the 10-20 range, with only a few 25-and-above tasks meant for specialists, so a lot of the time a character with a good stat modifier (+3 to +5) can get by with putting just 5-10 ranks in the skill for their entire career because the base skill DCs are set assuming cross-class skill or scattered investment in class skills rather than requiring maxed class skills.

Climb? Anything less than climbing a smooth brick wall or monkey-bar-ing along a ceiling is DC 20 or lower, less if you can brace yourself, and the max DC is a slippery brick wall at DC 30. Jump? Unless your DM sends you to the Dungeon of Nothing But Wide Bottomless Pits you're not going to need to make extreme jumps very often, and matching the world record long jump (29 ft 2.5 in) and high jump (8 ft 0.25 in) can be achieved with DC 30 and 32, respectively. Swim? Swimming in stormy water is a flat DC 20, and even swimming in full plate only increases that to an effective DC 32. Ride? Nothing above DC 20, unless you're wearing full plate again after swimming in it, in which case Fast Mount/Dismount is DC 26--and rearing and training one's mount with Handle Animal maxes out at DC 20, only rising to DC 25 or higher when Pushing it to do something it doesn't know or doesn't want to do or rearing a wild animal with a ton of HD.

So a fighter with high Str who wanted to be really good at those five skills but was cursed with only a 10 Int could invest in Handle Animal and Ride and be able to cover most Climb, Jump, and Swim tasks while taking 10, and after 7th level the fighter could stop investing in Handle Animal and Ride because he succeeds on basically everything when taking 10 and could start investing in something else, either Climb/Jump/Swim if he wants to shore those up or Hide/Move Silently if he wants to PrC into something more stealthy or Profession (Underwater Basketweaver) if he's planning to retire soon and wants to get a jump on some new hobbies.


Now, would it be a bad thing if the fighter got more skill points and class skills? Of course not, everyone could use more skill points, if only to be able to sprinkle a few ranks around into trained-only skills or invest in the mostly-opposed skills that actually have continually-increasing DCs. But focusing completely on "A [class] gets N skill points per level so it can only max out N skills, and must be completely and totally useless otherwise" not only ignores what the skill DCs actually are, but starts you on a vicious cycle where (to use Spot vs. Hide as an example) the average guard is a 1st-level fighter with a +2 to Spot and a party rogue who maxes Hide can eventually auto-succeed against that so a DM raises his guards' Spot modifiers to "keep things challenging" so the rogue feels forced to max Hide to keep up so the DM raises the guards' Spot and so on until everyone's myopically focused on the case of Nth-level PCs with optimized Hide vs. Nth-level NPCs with optimized Spot and thinks that anything less than that is pointless.

Consolidating skills (or not) is actually completely orthogonal to this issue. The more relevant thing in the Pathfinder setup is not the fact that Hide and Move Silently were condensed into Stealth but that characters get +3 for investing 1 rank into class skills. If you used that part but kept the 3e skill list and expanded class skills (either for every class or by letting players choose more with backgrounds or traits or whatever), a fighter's 8 starting skill points would go a lot further even though they're still trying to invest in Climb/Jump/Swim/Spot/Listen/Handle Animal/Ride instead of Athletics/Perception/Animal Handling (and note, by the way, that even PF didn't merge Handle Animal and Ride).

Heck, you could actually add more skills to the 3e list--split Spellcraft into subskills for each kind of magic, add a Sprint skill for moving faster and an Endurance skill to use for the overland travel-related Con checks, split Diplomacy into 3 skills for persuading vs. mediating vs. making friends, and so on--and so long as you kept skill points proportional and/or added ways to ensure minimum competence in various skills (using the PF solution or otherwise), the actual number of skills doesn't matter. (Doing that would obviously be a weird decision, but you could make it work.)


Skill consolidation is not the be-all end-all fix for skill problems, especially if the particular consolidations chosen still leave lopsided/overpowered/pointless/overly-niche skills (lookin' at you, PF Fly and Heal), you need to think about the particular end result you want to get and figure out the best way to achieve that.

(Yes, rolling 2 stealth skills against 2 perception skills makes for lower success chances than rolling 1 skill vs. 1 skill, but (A) that's an issue particular to those pairs of skills, since Search and Disable Device DCs are low and fixed and no other pair of skills is commonly rolled together like that, and (B) most monsters don't have maxed Spot and Listen modifiers, if they have ranks in either or both of those at all, so while consolidating those would be a good idea it's not much of an issue beyond those two and you don't need to consolidate them for stealth chances to be reasonable.)


One idea I'd be down with is having separate skill point for each stat that apply for skills that key off that attribute. For example, you have you Str bonus in skill points each level to invest between Str Skills (Climb, Jump). You cannot invest more skill points than your class skills per level, calculated with your highest stat.

It's not neccessary per say, but I feel it would make a nice alternative mechanic.

Ahem. :smallamused:


Per-stat skill points can be helpful in spreading more skill points around and making all characters more well-rounded, but whether the idea turns out well or poorly is heavily implementation-dependent. Handing out only per-stat skill points as in these two suggestions will make classes much better at skills associated with their specialty but make characters a lot more rigidly archetypal, since if your fighter doesn't have a Cha bonus, well, he's not getting any social skill bonuses any time soon.

[PraxisVetli]

I let Animals, Beasts, Magical Beasts with <2 Int, Plants, and non-sentient Undead use Wisdom, with the caveat that they only get things like Climb, Swim, Move Silently, Hide, Spot, Listen, etc. It works out alright, and makes ambushes a little more plausible. So far it hasn't screwed the game at all.

[Eldan]

The likely outcome of that is that every class (other than int-based casters) will dump int to the absolute minimum. You basically end up with five ability scores instead of six.

Probably, but I trust my players to then play their character as kind of dumb, so that works fine for me.

I also eliminated cross-class skills in my games (never had a problem with, say, an athletic wizard or a knowledgeable barbarian, backstories can be made to fit), and I tend to require things like knowledge rolls rather a lot.

[Psyren]

I personally give 2 extra skill points, plus an additional two as background skills as per the pathfinder optional rule.

This; The root problem is classes with not enough skill points and too much skill bloat to spend them on, not the fact that more Int gives more points.

In our games, 2+Int classes are all bumped up to 4+Int (either innately or via things like Advanced Weapon Training), and we consolidate skills further (e.g. Jump/Climb/Swim = Athletics, Tumble/Balance = Acrobatics etc.)