Talk:Simplified Skills (3.5e Variant Rule)

Ratings

	Havvy likes this article and rated it 3 of 4.
	Though unoriginal, this is still an excellent bookkeeping variant. I try to use it whenever possible in any d20 system.

Why I don't like this variant (A Short Rant)

This is not an indictment of MisterSinister's writeup. Indeed, this is a very good writeup as these things go and avoids the extremely obnoxious changes that Pathfinder went on to include. But I'm not a fan. And since I don't have a blog or a forum to rant about these things in anymore, I'm going to leave it here.

• By removing the x4 from first level, you greatly reduce the ability of a character to be trained in multiple skills at first level. For many characters this isn't a big deal because they were just going to max out a few class skills, but it is a reduction in the character concept space. There are also a couple of weird things that this does:

• The round down rule means that you can't have any cross class skills at level 1. Unless you make an exception to it, in which case your class skills and cross class skills now have the same bonuses at level 1.
• You lose starting character granularity. There aren't "characters who know a bit about a skill" and "characters who have focused on a skill", there's only "characters who have invested in a skill". This is actually problematic in systems that currently differentiate between 1 and 4 ranks, like ToP (yes, I'm somewhat invested and likely biased on this point).

• The +3 bonus leads characters with cross class skills to have a higher modifier than they would otherwise, which means characters who put ranks in cross class skills have a higher combined skill modifier under this system than they would in the old. This isn't really an issue outside of low levels because the rank difference eventually becomes larger and most skill differences get swallowed up by skill boosters anyway.

These issues are relatively minor ones, like the issues this variant aims to correct. Yes, this sort of change does reduce bookkeeping slightly. And yes, this sort of change does resolve weird multiclassing issues where you get more skill points, or just skill points in radically different places, depending on which class you choose first. But I'm not willing to give up skill differentiation at level 1 and reduce the bonus disparity at low levels to resolve these thing. It's a preference call though, and I can understand why other people would want to use this. - Tarkisflux 19:24, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I might have an idea for the last issue what with the +3 bonus, how about lower the DC of any individual skill challenge by three?, it stops a character having one rank in Bluff from having a significant 4 point advantage on the character with no ranks in Sense Motive, this way your still kind of giving them a +3 to checks, without making the difference between PCs and characters who have to make opposition checks untrained too major. Though this may or may not be a problem since being untrained should have a penalty, which may have been your intent.--Stryker 09:45, 19 February 2011 (UTC)