Let's talk about skills.
Before we get into the main purpose of this one, I'd like to address an issue I've long had with the distribution of skill points amongst the classes. In my opinion, the only classes that should get 2 + Int mod skill points per level are Int-based classes. For anything else, the floor should be 4 + Int mod. There is simply no good reason for a Fighter to only have 2 + Int mod skill points aside from reinforcing the "Big Dumb Fighter" stereotype.
Okay, we can move on.
Primarily, what are skills supposed to be? What role do they fulfill within the game system?
My answer? Skills are the things that every person should be capable of at least trying to do, even if they haven't spent a feat to try it out. Climbing, jumping, swimming, what have you.
Why then, are a subset of skills listed as "Trained Only"? Sure, some stuff is harder to do without training, but can you honestly say that any of them are impossible to do without it? And why is it that Heal can be used untrained but not, say, Handle Animal? Madness.
So, I propose a solution. Instead of that "Trained Only" barrier, we can instead add a "Difficult" tag.
Difficult means that instead of being entirely prevented from using the skill if you didn't mark a skill point into it, you take a penalty to the skill check. We'll invert the +3 trained bonus to a -3 untrained penalty to start with.
So, what effect does this have? Well, that means that a completely average person would be able to hit a maximum of 17. You'd need to be pretty gifted to hit a 20 without training. Sounds good to me, but let's see how that affects the different skills.
Disable Device
Looking at the standard DCs, with this system a completely untrained person (let's call them Lester), has a 40% chance to jam a lock and a 15% chance to sabotage a wagon wheel. Any type of lock is beyond his capability to pick.
Handle Animal
Here, Lester has a 40% chance of handling an animal, a 15% chance for training an animal for a simple purpose or teaching it a simple trick, and either a 5% and 10% chance to rear a wild animal with 2HD or less.
Knowledge
Knowledge already has a built-in exception to the "Trained Only" rule. Evidence that it's silly. That said, this system does make it a bit harder to make easy Knowledge checks untrained, but I'm okay with that. Lester has a 40% chance to correctly answer an easy question about anything and a 15% chance to answer a basic question. Furthermore, with this ruling, Lester has a 60% chance of being able to identify a goblin, which makes sense because they've been killing his horses for the last three months. He might have a 30% chance to identify a zombie, but he's more likely to just think it's his drunkard of an uncle.
Linguistics
Well, there had to be at least one. Linguistics checks are just too high for poor old Lester to be able to reach. However, he could still try to forge a document. It might be hilariously bad, but if everything lines up as fortuitous as possible, he could be looking at an effective 29. Not likely, but possible.
Profession
So, let's get this straight. Lester can try to weave a basket underwater without training, but he needs special training to rent people rooms? *sigh* In fact, Profession is one of the better skills to use my system, because the money you make is tied directly to your check result. Lester may not know anything about farming, but with some direction he can earn (on average) 3 and a half gold pieces per week.
Sleight of Hand
Lester may not be able to pull a coin from behind someone's ear yet, but he's been at enough gambling tables to be able to occasionally slip a coin into his sleeve. There's still no chance for him to pick someone's pockets, though.
Spellcraft
Lester might be able to identify a magic missile or glitterdust. Maybe. Anything beyond that is beyond his untrained capabilities.
Use Magic Device
This is my favorite one. Chances are, when Lester activates a magic item blindly he's gonna cause a mishap. It's gonna be a lesson to not play with shit he doesn't understand. It's a good thing Heal isn't tagged as Difficult. ^_^
So there. You get a short one this week. At a couple points I was thinking that the penalty should be a bit worse, but I like it at -3. Let me know what you think.
Until next time.
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