Consequences of removing the usage restriction on Skill Tricks.

[Blackhawk748]

So, Skill Tricks are usable 1/encounter or about every 10 minutes (afb so this is from memory). Looking at them... Why? Like, oh no, you can spend a swift action to jump another 10 feet! Or, you can keep using Acrobatic backstab!

If you can't tell by my sarcasm I don't understand the limit here. Is there something silly you can do if you just let them be used as often as is legal for them?

[Khatoblepas]

You could use Never Outnumbered to intimidate groups of enemies constantly.

You could concentrate on a spell as a swift action, every round. (Swift Concentration)

Walls become a mere formality with Walk The Walls, or become a platform hero's best friend with Wall Jumper.

Sudden Draw with Iaijutsu Focus and Robliar's Gambit/Karmic Strike means you're drawing concealed weapons like nothing and hitting for massive damage, combining it with Mosquito's Bite means they don't even know they've been hit, with any of the attacks you do.

I mean, nothing too fantastic, but a little too powerful for just 2 skill points?

[Blackhawk748]

You could use Never Outnumbered to intimidate groups of enemies constantly.

You could concentrate on a spell as a swift action, every round. (Swift Concentration)

Walls become a mere formality with Walk The Walls, or become a platform hero's best friend with Wall Jumper.

Sudden Draw with Iaijutsu Focus and Robliar's Gambit/Karmic Strike means you're drawing concealed weapons like nothing and hitting for massive damage, combining it with Mosquito's Bite means they don't even know they've been hit, with any of the attacks you do.

I mean, nothing too fantastic, but a little too powerful for just 2 skill points?

Honestly? No, simply because all of those are just boosting things that already require fair amounts of investment.

Except Walk the Walls, but that stiller requires you to start and end on a flat surface, so... Meh. Go ahead and enjoy your mundane Spider Climb

[AsuraKyoko]

I like the idea of being able to use skill tricks more than once and encounter, but if making them repeatable is worth more than 2 skill points, then perhaps allowing you to take a trick multiple times to increase the use limit would work? That way if you really want to be able to do something frequently, you have to really invest in it.

[Telonius]

There's a couple of them that would be a little bit silly to allow more than once an encounter; Social Recovery or Second Impression come to mind, but they're both called out as having a longer "cooldown" period in the descriptions.

I suspect they looked at the whole system, and thought to themselves, "Now, I can't think of any way that this could be broken, but somebody on the internet will find something. So let's just limit it to once per encounter to be sure."

[Silva Stormrage]

Honestly? No, simply because all of those are just boosting things that already require fair amounts of investment.

Except Walk the Walls, but that stiller requires you to start and end on a flat surface, so... Meh. Go ahead and enjoy your mundane Spider Climb

Never outnumbered is much more of a problem than you are thinking of. Intimidate is incredibly simple to invest in and make it usable as a move action. That is really the only one that I would say is a major problem though, the one skill trick to let you disguise your spellcasting would be obnoxious though as it would basically make spellcraft useless.

[Blackhawk748]

Never outnumbered is much more of a problem than you are thinking of. Intimidate is incredibly simple to invest in and make it usable as a move action. That is really the only one that I would say is a major problem though, the one skill trick to let you disguise your spellcasting would be obnoxious though as it would basically make spellcraft useless.

Ok, so maybe that one needs to keep the 1/encounter, but the rest don't.

[Troacctid]

The main consequence is that it would make skill tricks more powerful. Some of them not by much, some of them by a lot. It's easy to imagine tricks like Never Outnumbered, Swift Concentration, and Acrobatic Backstab having dangerous ripple effects.

If I wanted to do this, I would definitely increase the skill point cost to compensate for the increased power. I'm not sure what the goal of the change is, though. When I buff something, it's usually because I am consciously trying to incentivize players to play with that thing, often promoting options that are underutilized or that tie into the themes of the campaign. What does buffing skill tricks accomplish?

[Blackhawk748]

The main consequence is that it would make skill tricks more powerful. Some of them not by much, some of them by a lot. It's easy to imagine tricks like Never Outnumbered, Swift Concentration, and Acrobatic Backstab having dangerous ripple effects.

If I wanted to do this, I would definitely increase the skill point cost to compensate for the increased power. I'm not sure what the goal of the change is, though. When I buff something, it's usually because I am consciously trying to incentivize players to play with that thing, often promoting options that are underutilized or that tie into the themes of the campaign. What does buffing skill tricks accomplish?

I'm giving them free to a Rogue redesign, so I was just checking for anything I may have missed.

Also the restriction always felt weird for a bunch of them

[PraxisVetli]

We let people do them at-will, and haven't noticed any problems so far. It's been high magic nd low magic, and up to level 34, and haven't seen an issue.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Never outnumbered is much more of a problem than you are thinking of. Intimidate is incredibly simple to invest in and make it usable as a move action. That is really the only one that I would say is a major problem though, the one skill trick to let you disguise your spellcasting would be obnoxious though as it would basically make spellcraft useless.

Disguising your spellcasting is already possible without limit, it's one of the functions added to sleight of hand in RoS.

[nedz]

Concealed Spellcasting in the hands of a Beguiler in the context of a social setting is already quite scary even with a 1 minute cooldown. In combat who needs Concentration ?

[Seward]

Honestly the whole idea of 1/encounter abilities in 3.5 was stupid, it was 4e thinking that crept into late-stage 3.5.

Why in the world could you do something and not be able to do it again the next round, and only do one time if you only have one really long combat encounter (like a battle) but 10 times if you have 10 encounters with a 30 second gap between each one?

Also, frankly, skill tricks are pretty weak. Maybe 2-3 do anything significant (like never outnumbered, but there are a zillion ways to get a fear effect on opponents within 10' of you, so what? There are also a million defenses against intimidation and fear). 3.5 uses per-day limits, if you want to make it a limited resource for some of the more powerful ones, that might actually be a way to get some of the less powerful ones actually used.

Personally I'd make them all unlimited in a heartbeat (so what if you can keep concentration as a swift action? If the caster is being annoying with that, all you have to do is shoot him in the face to break it). Even at their best they're maybe worth as much as a typical pathfinder trait, and at their worst they are so minor a bump it is likely nobody but the person using the trick will even notice.

Anything you think is pretty weak, like most in the jump/climb/balance category, make them unlimited.

Next tier up give a generous number of uses per day.

The very best, give a limited number of uses per day.

You could maybe treat it a bit like a luck pool, but more generous. More tricks you invest in, the more uses/day you get of the better ones. So pick a good one, plus a couple unlimited use ones and get more value out of the better one. Larger the investment in skill points, the more you can use the better ones.

Now I do buy skill tricks, because 2 ranks in a skill also rarely makes or breaks a character and sometimes they fit the flavor of my character more than tossing a couple points into profession soldier or whatever. But the encounter restriction is just bizzare.

Edit - making them unlimited to rogues and maybe rogue-type PRCs might be good. Honestly rogues are stupidly weak in d20 until about Unchained Rogue in P1e, which was close to making them on par with other classes because their primary combat feature finally was no longer nerfed by a smokestick and some of the feat taxes came for free. Their primary other feature is slightly more skill points than anybody else, so spending them on unlimited use tricks might be a decent compensation for crappy hitpoints, crappy saves, weak BAB, no combat feats, typically low strength because of other needs on a martial combatant and sneak attack that is less and less likely to work at all just when you start getting more than 1 attack/round and more than a couple dice to throw with it.

[Troacctid]

Honestly the whole idea of 1/encounter abilities in 3.5 was stupid, it was 4e thinking that crept into late-stage 3.5.

Why in the world could you do something and not be able to do it again the next round, and only do one time if you only have one really long combat encounter (like a battle) but 10 times if you have 10 encounters with a 30 second gap between each one?
Uh, because you had the chance to rest? Because you're fighting new enemies who haven't seen the trick before? Because tracking binder-style recharge cooldowns is a pain in the butt? Take your pick.

[Balthanon]

Personally, I took skill tricks and used them for class revisions maneuver style, where you have a refresh mechanism that you can pick up through a class. Luck feats are actually another candidate for that in my mind, they're pretty terrible for the most part for the price of a feat, but not bad as something you'd select and ready as a maneuver.