Pathfinder a Bite at a Time: Skills

New to U20's bite at a time series? If so, welcome to Unnatural20.com and allow me to guide you through the noteworthy changes, both good and bad, that come when you upgrade to Paizo's Pathfinder from your 3.5E experience.

Let's talk about skills.

Building Blocks

Skills have always been an important part of Dungeons and Dragons, defining whole classes and allowing deeper customization. With each iteration of the game we've drawn closer to a balance between ease-of-use and depth, and I believe Pathfinder is the best example yet (although if you're looking for simplicity 4E definitely has the edge).

Streamlined but not Truncated

The full list of Pathfinder skills is 36 long if you count each of the 10 Knowledge skills separately (as they are listed). Much longer still if you count each possible Profession and Craft discipline, but who would bother?

Hide and Move Silently have turned into Stealth. Concentration has become a simple caster-level check (adding your appropriate ability modifier) to maintain a spell while distracted. Gathering Information is now accomplished with your character's social skills (Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate). Speak Language has become the simplified Linguistics while Use Rope is absent from the list. Spot and Listen have become simply Perception relating to your character's senses. The Fly skill has been added for Pathfinder, and it governs a creature's ability to move through the air under its own power or magic. Tumble is gone in favour of being a part of the VERY deep Acrobatics skill (which covers jumping and balancing, too).

The result? A shorter, more efficient list allowing characters to learn more with fewer skill points.

Not really topical here, but wow—great art!

Nuts and Bolts

The biggest, most welcome changes are in the basics—how skills are earned at 1st level, and how class skills function.

You'll remember that 1st-level characters in 3.5E would quadruple their 1st level skill points to account for the 15-80 years of experience they had before us gamers dreamt them up for play. No more! There is now no reason to make every multi-classing rogue a rogue at 1st level to maximize the breadth of your skills (I suspect at least part of the impetus for making this change). Naturally you're probably wondering how the designers could balance out losing so many skill points right off the bat, though, and the answer to that lies in how class skills function.

Each class has its own set of favored skills, or class skills, and whenever you initially train in that skill (put your first skill point into it), you gain a +3 bonus to that skill, representing your ongoing training and experience. Pow! The result? Even dummies are moderately skilled in ways they are expected to be.

Better yet, there are no longer cross-class skills, so even the most heavily-armoured knight can learn to move with a degree of subtlety if you're willing to spend your skill points on stealth. You don't receive the +3 bonus for training cross-class skills, but there are no penalties, either, encouraging a greater breadth of training among all classes. Great changes!

Familiar, Comforting Territory

The Pathfinder skill list isn't mind-boggling, but it does cover the things outside of swinging swords and casting spells very well. The changes are all very welcome, and I'm looking forward to playing fighters who can ride, train their mounts, speak more languages than common, and even maintain their gear without being geniuses among their peers. I'm betting you feel the same way (or not), but I welcome your comments either way.

Thanks for reading, and good gaming.

Comments

[wrathofzombie]

I really like the skill changes in PF! As you pointed out it allows more flexability for players and creativity. So many times there was frustration in the party because the clunky fighter didnt' have stealth because they wanted to put their valuable points into class skills and not sacrafice the 2 for 1 point cost.

I'm really excited to see what my players come up with!

[Swordgleam]

It always annoyed me that Spot and Listen are two different skills. So my man-at-arms is better at hearing things sneaking up on him than seeing them? That makes less sense than it doesn't.

I still like the Iron Heroes skill system best of anything.