In the old system, you needed huge bonuses to get meaningful effects out of your skills. It wasn't uncommon for characters to gain as large a bonus from an item as they did from ranks. In this system While your ranks are very importantfor providing a level of competence and opening up new abilities, but equally important is your total bonus to these ability checks. Each skill ability is designed to be usable , but not necessarily reliable , when you first acquire them in order to offset the fact that you can basically use them all of the time. Old style items, with their large numeric boosts, are a problem in such a setup. If we account for them and expect them, then you need a skill item for all of the skills that you care about or you won't be able to meet the DCs that we would need to set to maintain the same usability requirements. And if we don't account for them, then a single large item bonus destroys the balance we've put in place for these unlimited use abilities. Since neither of these options is actually workable or interesting, we just aren't going to use old style skill items and old style skill bonus types that used to stack to the heavens.

In this setup, the '''only''' bonus type that can be added Bonuses to a skills are broken up into four groups: skill is a competence bonusranks, key attribute bonuses, conditional bonuses, and these do not stack with any other competence bonuses granted. This means that all racial Skill ranks and key attribute bonuses are now competence bonusesderived from your character. Likewise, all masterwork item Conditional bonuses are now competence bonusesthose gained based on actual conditions when you use a skill ability, and so don't do anything for are generally detailed in the racially giftedskill descriptions. Feat bonuses are competence bonuses. If it's a bonus for a skillThe DM may apply the miscellaneous +2 or -2 conditional modifier to these as well, it's going to though this should be a competence bonus and it's reserved for special cases where the existing condition modifiers do not going to stack with any other competence bonusadequately cover the situation.

Having limited the options The final bonus type for raising your a skill is competence. This category includes every other type of skill modifiersbonus, be it a racial bonus, we're also going to limit the size of these bonuses. No an itembonus, a featbonus, or ability a spell bonus. Since competence bonuses from different sources do not stack, only the largest of them applies to any particular skill check. Further, no competence bonus may grant larger more than a +3 competence on any bonus to a skill, no matter what your actual modifier would be in the old skill systemorder to keep success rates within expected progressions. This leads us to some rather is a substantial changes to deviation from the skill SRD bonus systemstructure, which are and discussed in more detail below. {{Underbar |Hey, what about synergy bonuses? |Synergy bonuses exist to give characters a reason to take similar sets of skills and only work to provide larger bonuses. Since there's no reason in this work to push people into taking similar sets of skills and we are really concerned about stopping people from stacking bonuses up where they cause problems, we left them out.}}

As Races granting a +2 bonus to one or more skills is a common ability. These may need to be adjusted, however, since some skills have been removed and others merged, the racial skill bonuses presented in a race may need to be adjusted. If, after adjustment, the race grants a bonus to only 1 skill, that bonus is set at +3. If the race grants a bonus to 2 skills, those bonuses are set at +2. Races that grant bonuses to more than 2 skills should allow the player to select 2 skills from among the options to gain the bonus. As with any other bonus to a skill, these are competence bonuses. Races that offer skill bonuses in excess of +2 or +3, or that offer other skill benefits may require more extensive adjustment. Suggestions for replacement abilities appear below.

Some class features offer bonuses to skills outright. These suffer the same issues as the old skill items and need to be dropped entirely or rewritten into a form similar to the new skill items. Granting free ranks in a skill is generally not a good idea, but a competence bonus, reroll ability, or similar minor adjustment is perfectly fine. Suggestions for replacement abilities appear below.

While it is impossible to cover every published scenario, some guidelines and suggestions for how to replace the abilities flagged as inappropriate is very are useful. Here are some general guidelines and suggestions to replace these abilities in your game:*If a race or class grants a +5 or greater jump bonus, you should replace it with a +3 competence bonus to the skill and a total jump distance bonus equal to half the previous bonus. For example, if a race granted a +30 jump bonus that would be replaced with a +3 competence bonus and a +15' jump distance bonus.

Even though we will not using SRD magical {{Sidebar |Retaining Masterwork Skill Items| Many players remain attached to masterwork skill items, there and may be resistant to simply removing them from the game. If strongly limited, they can be made to function with the Tome of Prowess skills and bonus changes. Here is still an option for their retention:'''Masterwork skill items:''' A masterwork skill item grants a place for +2 bonus to one skill ability, not every ability within a type of magical skill item. They just need to work within may not grant this altered system and not allow people who use them bonus to gain extraordinary benefits any skill ability with 6 or perform well above the expected mark for their levelmore required ranks. These }}Masterwork skill items need to be useful for characters who don't substantially invest in a particular skill, and this can be done by giving ranks really fit with the items instead spirit of the new skills. In the SRD system, they grant bonuses. They also need to provide some utility to characters who have already invested heavily in a very focused skill, and this can be done with competence bonuses, take X abilities, or rerollsare rather narrow in use. Example Here each skill items that offer benefits grants several abilities and it is difficult to justify a single tool granting bonuses to those who have the skill as well as those who all of them. We also don't appear in need minor number boosts like this anymore and they conflict with the [[Tome of Prowess (3revised racial benefits.5e Sourcebook)/Running As a Skilled Game#Skilled Gear|Running a Skilled Game]] sectionresult, masterwork skill items have been removed from this work and do not exist.

Masterwork Like masterwork skill items, the SRD magical skill items have also been removed. There is still a place for magical skill items , however, they just need to work less within this altered system and not allow people who use them to gain extraordinary benefits or perform well, howeverabove the expected mark for their level. These items need to be useful for characters who don't really fit substantially invest in a particular skill, and this can be done by giving ranks with the spirit items instead of the new skillsbonuses. In the original system, they granted bonuses They also need to provide some utility to characters who have already invested heavily in a very focused skill and were rather narrow in use. In the Tome of Prowess, however, each skill grants several abilities and it is difficult to justify a single tool granting bonuses to all of them. We also don't need minor number boosts like this anymore and they conflict can be done with the revised racial benefitscompetence bonuses, so they could just go away entirely. Many players remain attached to them"take X" abilities and variations, howeveror re-rolls. So while we suggest that you simply remove them, here is an option for their retention:'''Masterwork Example skill items:''' A masterwork skill item grants a +2 bonus that offer benefits to one those who have the skill ability, not every ability within as well as those who don't, appear in the [[Tome of Prowess (3.5e Sourcebook)/Running a Skilled Game#Skilled Gear|Running a skill. They may not grant this bonus to any skill ability with 6 or more required ranksSkilled Game]] section.

{{Sidebar|Why no skill spells?|The main problem with these sorts of spells is a thematic one. Spells are supposed to just ''do'' things that the truly skilled can attempt with a lot of practice. The revised skills don't even do anything that spells don't already generally do anyway, though we have tried to make them go about it in a different fashion. There Since there already is substantial overlap between skill abilities and spells, so making a spell that grants skill abilities just dilutes the feel of the individual systems for no benefit.

The above topics cover the most common direct skill bonuses and at least offer suggestions on dealing with the more unusual cases. But it doesnthey don't talk about indirect bonuses at all, like the bonuses you get from the attributes that you will be increasing as you level. Between +6 enhancement bonuses from items and +5 inherent bonuses from wishes or books and +5 more from simple levels, you can get an extra +8 bonus on an attribute modifier (or more) fairly easily in some games. And in other games, you never see even half of that. This isn't as large a modifier as you used to get from skill boost items, but suffers all the same problems of deciding whether to expect it in the base DC or not.

Unfortunately, because of large variances in when these stat jumps hit and by how much they grow, this isn't really something we can plan around. And removing these stat jumps from the game entirely isn't a particularly workable solution for a large number of play styles. The best that can be done is to point out that we do not assume '''''any''''' large attribute boosts in our base DCs, because we don't want attribute boosters to be necessary to get reasonable use out of your skills at higher levels. Since that still leaves holes out there for some play styles, we have included several suggested solutions to the potential problem for use in your own games.

If you don't want to scale the DCs but you also don't want to worry about players using higher level skill abilities more reliably than expected, you can simply put a cap on their attributes or the attribute bonuses that can be applied to skills. We recommend setting the limit at 20 + their racial attribute modifier for each attribute, and just using whatever that modifier is if you're going to cap skill adjustments and not attributes entirely. For races in the SRD, this gives a maximum range of 18 to 22 on attributes, or a +4 to +6 bonus. This That gives players some room for growth, but since these numbers are within expected ranges they will work with the skill ability DCs over all levels of the game. It also pushes players to grow multiple attributes, as they begin to see the combination of attribute boosters and attribute ceilings causes diminishing returns for continued attribute investment after a point and would get a larger benefit out of raising a different attribute.

If your games don't involve large, universal attribute boosts or you don't care if higher level attribute focused characters get better results more reliably on their shiny new high level abilities than they did when they got their lower level skill abilities, then you don't need to do anything at all. The DCs listed in the skills chapter should serve you just fine; you probably won't see major divergence from the expected success rates until higher levels anyway.{{Underbar|Hey, what about synergy bonusesWhy all these skill bonus changes?|Synergy In the SRD skill system, you need huge bonuses exist to give get meaningful effects out of your skills. It is not uncommon for characters to gain as large a bonus from an item as they do from ranks, and then stack on a reason class feature bonus, masterwork item bonus, and a racial bonus. Those who really need a couple of extra points can even burn a feat for a it. The inclusion of all of these different bonuses would make it difficult to take similar sets meet our reliability goals. If we account for them and expect them, then you ''need'' a skill item or class feature or assorted other things for ''all'' of the skills and only work that you care about. Without them, or without whatever level of them we decided to account for, you won't be able to meet the higher DCs that we would need to set to provide larger bonusesaccount for them. Since thereAnd if we don't account for them, or don't account for enough of them, then a large bonus destroys the balance we's no reason ve put in this work to push people into taking similar sets place for these unlimited use abilities. Since neither of skills and these options is actually workable or interesting, we are really concerned about stopping people from decided to strip the stacking and large bonuses up where they cause problems, we left them outinstead.}}