How many skill points is a feat worth?

[False God]

I typically play a moderately adjusted 3.5/Pathfinder, I prefer point systems, Skill Points, Health Points, Spell Points they're all my jam, but ya know, sometimes you've got extra skill points and you don't know what to do with them. I do hand out bonus skill points for specific skills based on actual in-game activities and I use Pathfinder's feat progression, so every other level to get a feat.

My gut likes the number 10, because its a nice easy number to work with. But, given that many classes will be getting 6-12 skill points per level, I'm also inclined to say 20, since you get a feat every other level. I could certain go 10/20/40 for an adjustable scale of how difficult I want bonus feats to be to acquire in any particular game.

So as the title says, on average between bad feats and good feats, how many skill points is a feat worth?

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Since I like a more piecemeal approach, as an extra bonus question, how much would special abilities cost, Pounce? Rake? Water Breathing? My gut says 100/200/400; to keep the numbers in line with my gut feeling above, but "special abilities" are much more variable in nature and thus harder to price. I'm not sure a fixed number would be appropriate.

[pabelfly]

As a starting reference, Nymph's Kiss gives one extra skill point per level (and a +1 bonus to saves against spells and spell-like abilities, and a +2 to Diplomacy). I'd say it's a pretty good feat even without the extras attached.

Open Minded gives a flat +5 skill points. This isn't a very good feat. I'm not sure how many skill points it would have to give before I said to myself: "Open Minded is looking like a pretty good choice for a feat."

[Doctor Despair]

So as the title says, on average between bad feats and good feats, how many skill points is a feat worth?

Well, we do technically have a balance point to reference for this. The Open Minded feat (CAd) allows any character to spend a feat to gain five extra skill points. Does this mean that five skills points is the value of a feat? Not necessarily. It means that the value of a feat cannot be less than five skill points, certainly. (Edit: As Pabelfly said, this is not a common choice, so most people would probably agree that a feat is worth more than five skill points.)

Likewise, skill tricks often offer up benefits that are equivalent to what you'd expect from a feat -- but are only usable 1/encounter instead of at will (as most feats are, although admittedly not all). Skill tricks are worth two skill points. Certainly, if we were to allow any feat to be taken for a certain amount of skill points, it would need to be more than two ranks then.

Loremaster is a PRC straight out of the core DMG that allows characters to, at its first level, choose between a feat and four ranks of a skill in which the character has no ranks (assuming the character has at least a +7 int modifier). This is not a direct comparison to our current question, as the feat has steeper requirements (lore master level + int mod = 8) as compared to the ranks (lore master level + int mod = 1), and the ranks must go into a skill in which you have no ranks, but it's neat because it allows you to get ranks, not points, which means you could get a cross-class skill (effectively getting 8 points). It is true, however, that at the level you can select a feat, if you haven't selected the 4-8 skill points, you can select those points.

I'm sure there's more comparisons and reference points we could take into account. Lastly, we have to consider the practicality of the situation. You can't save up skill points between levels, so you need the number to be less than 10 if you want most characters to even have the option. However, keeping the point requirement high could also bar full casters from entering (as they typically have 2 or 4 ranks/level), which could be advantageous. With all that in mind... I'd tentatively suggest 8 points as the requirement to select a feat if you were going to implement a system like this. Maybe 10.



Since I like a more piecemeal approach, as an extra bonus question, how much would special abilities cost, Pounce? Rake? Water Breathing? My gut says 100/200/400; to keep the numbers in line with my gut feeling above, but "special abilities" are much more variable in nature and thus harder to price. I'm not sure a fixed number would be appropriate.

I just wouldn't. Let people get special abilities from templates and racial choices, or pre-existing content. Even the feat choice above is format-warping wrt builds. However, if you were to add them, as I said, you can't save up skill ranks, so ridiculously high requirements doesn't actually work. Likewise, if you make the requirements so high as to be cost-prohibitive, no one will use them, and it will be as if you never actually gave the option in the first place.

[NichG]

In an ultimately very high level campaign I played in where you could buy everything directly with XP, if I remember correctly a skill point was 100xp and a feat was 2000xp. Felt about right. The thing is that you're almost always getting horizontal progression from buying skill points because of skill point caps from level. If you get rid of levels entirely and allow skill points to advance a skill in an uncapped way, they become more valuable.

As far as special abilities, the same campaign let you directly buy a class ability (e.g. ignoring prerequisites) at 10000xp per minimum level you would need to be to get it the normal way. That was almost exclusively used to buy 1-2 level dip sorts of abilities (like Divine Grace, etc), so probably priced high.

[Ramza00]

In later 3rd party and some first party 3.5 and PF it is usually priced around

+5 skill points generic or
+1 skill point per HD even if those Skill points are not generic but all go in the same skill.

[Rebel7284]

I think a flat cost for skills and special abilities is hard to pinpoint due to the scaling nature of the game. This is why Nymph's Kiss is considered an Okay feat and Open Minded a bad feat even though Open Minded is better at level 1. This is also why LA buyoff rules are popular, most special abilities you get from race/template becomes less and less valuable the longer the game is.

With that said, some things are harder to get to scale than others, and of course, the caster/martial divide makes things even harder to balance.

[Biggus]

As a starting reference, Nymph's Kiss gives one extra skill point per level (and a +1 bonus to saves against spells and spell-like abilities, and a +2 to Diplomacy). I'd say it's a pretty good feat even without the extras attached.


I think a flat cost for skills and special abilities is hard to pinpoint due to the scaling nature of the game. This is why Nymph's Kiss is considered an Okay feat and Open Minded a bad feat even though Open Minded is better at level 1.


While not a top-tier feat, Nymph's Kiss is generally considered good to very good in my experience, and you have to remain exalted good or you lose its benefits.



My gut likes the number 10, because its a nice easy number to work with. But, given that many classes will be getting 6-12 skill points per level, I'm also inclined to say 20, since you get a feat every other level.

About 8-10 seems reasonable to me. It also fits fairly well with the cost of magic items; items which grant feats generally cost about 5,000-10,000GP, which is what a +7 to +10 skill item typically costs.

[pabelfly]

About 8-10 seems reasonable to me. It also fits fairly well with the cost of magic items; items which grant feats generally cost about 5,000-10,000GP, which is what a +7 to +10 skill item typically costs.

I think 10 works in terms of immediate payout. I could see myself getting it if I had a spare feat and wanted to fix my skills up.

[Jay R]

At what level, and for what character? I think a few moments thought makes it clear that the ability to swap out skill points for feats helps some characters more than others.

If there were a rule allowing characters to swap out skill points for feats, who does that help the most? Obviously, the ones with the most skill points. While that could include high-level rogues and rangers, they have the extra skill points because their roles require lots of skills. They couldn't afford to trade away a lot of them.

So who else has lots of skill points? High-level characters with high INT.

No matter what the intent might be, the primary effect of this rule will be to help high-level wizards improve relative to other characters.

That seems ... unnecessary.

[Crake]

At what level, and for what character? I think a few moments thought makes it clear that the ability to swap out skill points for feats helps some characters more than others.

If there were a rule allowing characters to swap out skill points for feats, who does that help the most? Obviously, the ones with the most skill points. While that could include high-level rogues and rangers, they have the extra skill points because their roles require lots of skills. They couldn't afford to trade away a lot of them.

So who else has lots of skill points? High-level characters with high INT.

No matter what the intent might be, the primary effect of this rule will be to help high-level wizards improve relative to other characters.

That seems ... unnecessary.

Not all design decisions need to be made around the effect it has on wizards though. This is the same issue that mmorpgs have, when they design content around how the top 1% of competitive players engage with the content, rather than designing around fun for the other 99%

[PoeticallyPsyco]

I think that 8 points (or maybe even less) is the way to go. More than that, and it will only be usable by (Psychic) Rogues, Wizards, and Beguilers.

But it seems like Skill Tricks already fill this design space better than feats would; why houserule it in the first place?

[Telonius]

Unsatisfying answer: it's an opportunity cost, so it depends on which skill points you're getting, and what you'd be spending the feat on otherwise. If you're just getting points to play around with (a la Open Mind) it could be more valuable. If it's "you get X skill points in Y skill" it might be less valuable, or it would at least force you to plan your build around it so you don't exceed the point cap.

The Able Learner feat will probably skew the effectiveness, too. The feat can effectively give you dozens of skill points over the course of a build just as-is (if they're skills you want to take, and are cross-class otherwise). If you're combining it with a pick-your-own feat - especially if you took a level of a skillmonkey class early on to get all the skills you care about on the list - it can be even better.

[False God]

At what level, and for what character? I think a few moments thought makes it clear that the ability to swap out skill points for feats helps some characters more than others.

If there were a rule allowing characters to swap out skill points for feats, who does that help the most? Obviously, the ones with the most skill points. While that could include high-level rogues and rangers, they have the extra skill points because their roles require lots of skills. They couldn't afford to trade away a lot of them.

So who else has lots of skill points? High-level characters with high INT.

No matter what the intent might be, the primary effect of this rule will be to help high-level wizards improve relative to other characters.

That seems ... unnecessary.
I've generally accepted that if I've playing 3.X, casters have the potential to be seriously OP. I'm not interested in rebuilding the system to fix it, heck even just using spell points can be a serious power boost to casters.

As I've written in other threads, I resolve "OP characters breaking the game" by eliminating problematic players rather than specific builds. There's far too many OP caster builds, even without anything I'm suggesting to address that. It's much easier to remove Kenny who's runining everyone's fun, than it is to attempt to ban Kenny's build.


I think 10 works in terms of immediate payout. I could see myself getting it if I had a spare feat and wanted to fix my skills up.

I hadn't actually thought of doing it in the reverse, but yeah, I figure trading a feat for points would be fine as well.


I think that 8 points (or maybe even less) is the way to go. More than that, and it will only be usable by (Psychic) Rogues, Wizards, and Beguilers.

But it seems like Skill Tricks already fill this design space better than feats would; why houserule it in the first place?
I generally find skill tricks dull and of niche use. They're also fairly limited in number, compared to the absolute bonkers number of feats available.

The goal really is to provide choice. I don't expect people to spend all their skill points on feats, though they could, I anticipate that people are more likely to pick up one or two feats to either round out their character or complete a desired build or enter a prestige class that may have a bunch of feat taxes.

[Segev]

In later 3rd party and some first party 3.5 and PF it is usually priced around

+5 skill points generic or
+1 skill point per HD even if those Skill points are not generic but all go in the same skill.

This is very pricey and self-limiting to the point of halting advancement if taken too far, but one possibility would be, "Your current level in sp when you buy it, and -1 sp per level from then on out." This would fall apart once your level exceeds your number of skill points per level, though.


One thing that skill points buying feats will do is make rogues and other "expert" classes have more feats without giving "martial" classes - the ones who usually have feats as their "thing" - that much more access. Alternate currencies might be hit points (as in, your maximum hp is reduced by X amount to buy a feat), since martial classes have hp in abundance, or XP, representing training to learn the feats. XP would also be fitting to trade for skill points. If you're running a 3.5-style game where XP can be spent on magic item creation and as a component cost of certain spells, it even works out decently well to give non-casters something other than levels to spend XP on.