skill modifiers from your characters past (3.5 ED)

[grimbold]

Hello this is my first post,

Anyway earlier today I had a good idea for skill bonuses. You can take skill bonuses and penalties based on your characters past. So if for example your character had strict parents who demand silencethey might get a +2 bonus to move silently checks. Then a -2 penalty should be added to another skill to balance this out, the DM must approve which skills get a bonus and a penalty so that you can not do a bonus to an often used skill like +2 to bluff or move silently for a penalty to a less often used skill like escape artist or use rope. So the bonuses and penalties should be to skills of similar importance.
So what does anybody think of my first ever homebre suggestion

[Siosilvar]

Have you looked at Traits from Unearthed Arcana?

[grimbold]

very cool, and i agree that has a lot of value however this is not so much based on a characters personality as much as their past life and what they did in their past life, if maybe they had a job by a temple they could have picked up some tips as a healer, i needed to clarify that thankyou

[Satyrus]

But if you were to give skill modifiers that way where do you draw the line and balance it versus other players histories?

For example one character might have led a single life until they became an adventurer, say a farmer. They get Knowledge(nature), profession and handle animal skill bonuses. Another character has been on the road all their life and has spent several years dedicated to a dozen skill sets getting bonuses in many many areas.

You would have to create a standardized system for how many bonuses can be applied per character or a max number total. Something suspiciously familiar to the ranks already in place.

[grimbold]

Thats were the dms approval clause comes in, however i believe that a wise dm would allow no more than one or two bonuses and penalties because of this variant.

[Ashtagon]

By analogy with the Unearthed Arcana flaws system, the total penalty should be twice as large as the total bonus; players will naturally choose penalties on skills that they don't plan on using much anyway.

At a bare minimum, the penalty may only be applied to a class skill, and the character must spend enough skill points to buy it back to zero. Otherwise, I can see fighters cheerfully taking a penalty on Spellcraft.

[Milskidasith]

By analogy with the Unearthed Arcana flaws system, the total penalty should be twice as large as the total bonus; players will naturally choose penalties on skills that they don't plan on using much anyway.

At a bare minimum, the penalty may only be applied to a class skill, and the character must spend enough skill points to buy it back to zero. Otherwise, I can see fighters cheerfully taking a penalty on Spellcraft.

So... wait, you want players to spend two skill points in order to get a +1 on a skill?

How is that useful? That's just buying cross class skills but without the benefit of ranks.

[Ashtagon]

So... wait, you want players to spend two skill points in order to get a +1 on a skill?

How is that useful? That's just buying cross class skills but without the benefit of ranks.

Why, yes it is. It's also exactly the same standard used in the flaws system, which is generally considered a power-gamers paradise.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/bu...acterflaws.htm

while a feat affecting skills grants a +2 bonus on two skills, its counterpart flaw might impose a -4 penalty on two skills.

[Milskidasith]

Why, yes it is. It's also exactly the same standard used in the flaws system, which is generally considered a power-gamers paradise.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/bu...acterflaws.htm

No, it isn't. Flaws don't require you to go and buy back whatever you lose; your suggestion did.

Flaws: Take -4 to spot, -4 to listen. Gain power attack. Notice: You don't have to buy back the ranks in spot and listen.

Your suggestion, as worded: Take a -2 penalty on a class skill, get a +1 on any skill. Spend two skill points to bring the class skill back up to where it was beforehand.

Your suggestion is basically like traits, and those are already pretty bad (save the one that gives a bonus to initiative); forcing you to buy back the ranks you sacrifice with traits just makes it worse.

[ericgrau]

IMO the best way to make it roleplaying and not more min-maxing is to let the DM ad hoc a +2 or -2 whenever a situation fits a player's backstory. There are already fuzzy rules that allow this, but now you formalize it so all your players know it will happen often.

[grimbold]

eric is right. The formal rule could be worded as.
To better bring back the powers your character learned in their past you can take the +2 to any skill and take the -2 penalty to any class skill each character may use this no more than three times and each of these put in place modifiers must be accepted by the DM too be allowed in plasy

[Maroon]

What's the difference between this method and just taking two extra ranks in one skill and not taking two ranks in another? What is the "(X+Int mod)*4 skill ranks at first level" if not skill ranks attained before adventuring? As a referee, I'd ask a player why he took Use Rope and not Forgery anyway (if only to find out if he expects to tie up a lot of officials).

If you want to include nebulous backgrounds, how about this: allow players to save a few skill points and only invest them permanently when confronted with a need for a particular skill. If your players need to sail a ship back to port, one of their characters could say "I used to be a first mate on this kind of ship, you know" and invest a few skill ranks in profession (sailor), or, when they have to sneak past a guard, "I remember creeping out the university gates when I was a young apprentice to drink beer at the tavern" and put some points in move silently.

[Ashtagon]

What's the difference between this method and just taking two extra ranks in one skill and not taking two ranks in another? What is the "(X+Int mod)*4 skill ranks at first level" if not skill ranks attained before adventuring? As a referee, I'd ask a player why he took Use Rope and not Forgery anyway (if only to find out if he expects to tie up a lot of officials).

If you want to include nebulous backgrounds, how about this: allow players to save a few skill points and only invest them permanently when confronted with a need for a particular skill. If your players need to sail a ship back to port, one of their characters could say "I used to be a first mate on this kind of ship, you know" and invest a few skill ranks in profession (sailor), or, when they have to sneak past a guard, "I remember creeping out the university gates when I was a young apprentice to drink beer at the tavern" and put some points in move silently.

This is actually a very good idea. Some things I would do to limit the more obvious abuses though...

* Limit the number of reserve skill points to some fraction of what you start with. Maybe 1/3 or 1/4.
* Skill points received after 1st level must be spent immediately; your pool of reserve skill points never increases. (Character activity after 1st level obviously was defined during play; the reserve skill points system reflects pre-game activity, and as such wasn't explicitly defined).
* You can't raise a skill rank to higher than 4 (what it theoretically could have been at 1st level) by spending these reserve skill points.

[grimbold]

good additions ashtagon i will use them to revise my rule