Fixed Skill Lists

At present, a character's classes will give him one of three levels of access to a skill:

It could be a class skill, in which case he can build up a high level of mastery.

It could be a cross-class skill, in which case he can get some facility with the skill, but will mostly suck.

It could be an exclusive skill to another class. In this case, the character will have no access to the skill. But, see below.

Anyway, the problem with this approach is that it is fairly foolish for a character to assign lots of points to a cross-class skill. After the first few levels, they're inevitably going to suck. Moreover, classes with lots of skills aren't likely to want to invest in cross-class skills, and classes with short skill lists don't have the skill points to waste.

I'm not 100% sure I like the division of skills into class skills and cross-class skills, since I'd expect characters to learn skills based on their character concept, which would tend to lead to Rogues emphasising Tumble and Disable Device, Wizards favouring Spellcraft and Concentration, and so on. Classes with few skill points don't have them to spread around, so aren't going to replace the Rogue anyway, which renders that a non-issue.

However, it is entirely possible that allowing a free purchase of skills might lead to problems. It is also likely to cause every Fighter to have high ranks in Tumble and Spellcraft, as these are probably the two most useful skills. This latter fact leads me to favour not allowing total freedom of choice.

The point I'm getting to, and that I also mentioned on Saturday, is that I think classes should have more flexible lists of class skills. For instance, perhaps a class would have five skills fixed as class skills for all members of the class, and be allowed to choose a further five from a list of eight choices.

For example: a revised skill list for Fighters:

All Fighters treat the following skills as class skills: Craft (Int), Profession (Wis). Additionally, at first level a Fighter may select five of the following skills as class skills: Balance (Dex), Climb (Str), Handle Animal (Cha), Intimidate (Cha), Jump (Str), Knowledge(nobility and royalty) (Int), Ride (Dex), Swim (Str), Tumble (Dex)

Further, I feel that every class should have Craft and Profession as class skills, and at least one Knowledge in the discretionary list.

Making this change doesn't make a huge difference to the power level of the basic classes (although it will make accessing Prestige Classes easier, and require that a list of class skills for each class be maintained - whereas now you can just look up the PHB). It does make the characters a bit more flexible. For even greater flexibility, allow each PC to choose two of Craft, Perform and Profession as a permanent class skill, regardless of class.

Exclusive Skills

I'm also really not fond of exclusive skills. Frankly, I feel that every skill should be available to all classes, even if they suck at it. Of course, some choices just don't make sense - a Fighter with ranks in Scry has wasted his points since he has no means to actually use the ability. Confusing the issue further is the Bardic Lore ability, which functions like a skill in almost every regard (the Bard gains an automatic rank per level, and can't spend additional points in the skill, but otherwise it is a skill).

I take the view that the game should go one of two ways: remove the exclusive skills from the skill lists, and make them class abilities in the same way as Bardic Lore is, or add Bardic Lore to the skill list, but make all existing exclusive skills cross-class skills for other characters.

The latter approach is dangerous - Use Magic Device is even more powerful than Spellcraft and Tumble.