Curious what people think of a house rule I ran once?

[souridealist]

One campaign I ran, I had a rule that I called "hobby points." Essentially, you get one extra skill point per level, but it must be spent on something totally irrelevant to your character build; IIRC I treated it as a class skill, but I don't really recall now. Obviously, this is something that requires a certain amount of good faith between you and the player, especially since I also let people make up skills when an existing one didn't cover what they wanted. The idea was to add an element to characters and encourage unconventional problem-solving; there was some definite inspiration from Belkar's cooking his way out of trouble those times. We had:

- A halfling cleric who sang (only came up once or twice, but it was cool)
- An extremely flamboyant elf wizard who created the skill Bodypainting and had all kinds of fancy warpaint-type stuff going on (never plot-relevant, but it was cool characterization)
- An Oread monk who had either Craft (Knitting) or Perform (Unsettling Crone Behavior), I don't recall which because they came to the same thing. This was not exactly what I had in mind, but it worked. (Again, never plot-relevant, but helped flesh her out).
- A second, Tengu monk with a vow of poverty, who put her hobby points into Sleight of Hand and played some serious internal conflict involving "I am a monk, I must not accumulate material possessions and I especially must not steal... but shiiiiiiiiiiny." Once shoplifted a few items in town, then gave them away and curled up on the beach to feel terrible about herself; the party had to come and get her, and I had to look up cold damage because this was overnight in pseudo-Scotland.
- A rogue who put his ranks into Craft (Drawing). He used it really well too: some social/flirtatious stuff, in his backstory he mentioned he'd get hired as a portraitist and use the opportunity to scope out houses, and when they got a fetch quest for certain objects with which the quest-giver was familiar, he did police-style sketches of them to give to his contacts.

So, what do you guys think? A rule you'd find entertaining, or pointless? Any suggestions for how I could fine-tune it?

[Gracht Grabmaw]

That's what skill points are normally for though. That's why in PF you can only have as many ranks as your current level in one skill, so you unless you're playing a character with subnormal intelligence you should always have some points left to put into stuff just for the character's sake anyway. At leas that's my interpretation of that rule.

[Alex12]

That's what skill points are normally for though. That's why in PF you can only have as many ranks as your current level in one skill, so you unless you're playing a character with subnormal intelligence you should always have some points left to put into stuff just for the character's sake anyway. At leas that's my interpretation of that rule.

Really? I'm playing a pegasus Sorcerer with 15 Int (decidedly not subnormal, I think) and every level I'm having to juggle skill points. I'm the party face and the only one with positive Charisma (and my bloodline grants Diplomacy as a class skill, so friendly pony sorcerers are clearly at least somewhat intended), so I need some ranks in the social skills. I need to keep a decent number of points in K(arcana) and Spellcraft for what I hope are obvious reasons, and I need to have some ranks in Fly because not doing so when I've got a racial flight speed seems pretty stupid. I don't think 4 skill points per level is enough to do all that and have some points left over, at least not at the level I've reached so far.

As for the actual rule, I'd love it. I'd almost require the Hobby skill be a non-class skill, just to represent that it's not something your character is normally supposed to be doing. You don't let the Bard put his Hobby skills in a Perform skill, or the Wizard put them into K(arcana), but a Craft or Profession skill is almost always going to be fine, and if the Fighter wants ranks in K(arcana) I say go for it.

[Jlerpy]

That's what skill points are normally for though. That's why in PF you can only have as many ranks as your current level in one skill, so you unless you're playing a character with subnormal intelligence you should always have some points left to put into stuff just for the character's sake anyway. At leas that's my interpretation of that rule.

I've mostly just seen people buy the number of skills that they have skill points and increment them all by one each level. That's not your experience?

[Zaydos]

That's what skill points are normally for though. That's why in PF you can only have as many ranks as your current level in one skill, so you unless you're playing a character with subnormal intelligence you should always have some points left to put into stuff just for the character's sake anyway. At leas that's my interpretation of that rule.

Played an elf rogue with 18 Int, favored class bonus every level was skill points, I still had issues with not enough skill points; although I did sink some ranks into linguistics (it actually ended up probably the most used skill in the campaign).

I've mostly just seen people buy the number of skills that they have skill points and increment them all by one each level. That's not your experience?

As noted above, I had to juggle skill points to do everything I needed to as a skill character, I definitely did not have ranks left over for Craft/Profession/Perform.

To the OP proper: I've ran games with Hobby Skills (as I called them) in 3.0/3.2ish (it was the year or two after the update where I didn't actually have the 3.5 PHB and we were running something awkwardly half updated). I made them just Craft (I think it specifically disallowed poisonmaking and Alchemy was its own skill still)/Profession/Perform (unless you were a bard) and it pretty much worked out fine. Most of the players didn't care (many of use were in middle school), but it won't unbalance the game and the RPer will be happy, so all in all I think it's a fun rule. Be careful with more useful skills and keep a firm "Ask first" policy. In 3.5 I also tended to encourage Profession skills by giving Synergy bonuses, like Profession (Private Investigator) gave synergy bonuses to certain Knowledge checks, most Gather Information checks, and depending upon situation some social checks which made it worth taking for the PI without hobby ranks, but the two could be combined.

[dragonjek]

Have... skill points left over? I've played Int-based human rogues and still need more skill points.

I haven't played a game with "Hobby Skills", but I did play one that gave everyone one of those nearly useless feats that are usually passed up for something more important (Athletic, Stealthy, Survivalist, etc.) as a free bonus feat. This was a 3.5 game, so the bonus didn't scale like it does in PF (although I still don't think they're much more attractive than they were in 3.5), but it didn't remotely unbalance anything and served as a nice bit of in-game reflection to the character's backstory & personality without forcing them to give up a feat.

[Tanuki Tales]

I made a build with a 19 in Int and a class that gave 10+Int mod each level and that still wasn't enough. So I'm totally for this house rule.

[Fitz10019]

I like it.

Similarly, as DM, I told players to spend 5 extra skill points on an un-related skill (one skill) at character creation, to represent what they learned from their parents/village/upbringing.