- The Secondary Skills supplement
- 5e Players Handbook (the free one)
- Tombs and Terrors
- Pathfinder SRD
- This post: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=977&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=10#p56401
A note on the not so obvious columns in the table.
- Class Restrictions: you have to be of that class to get the skill.
- Alternative to/includes: my notes on the similar skills the skill covers or includes. So Acrobatics covers Balance and Tumble from the Secondary Skills supplement. Sense Motive and Insight are the same thing... and so on.
- Untrained: whether a character can attempt to use the skill if they have no training in it.
There is a standard skill (Perception) that all characters have, then class specific skills which all members of the class start with at level 1. Possible further skills can be acquired at level 1 (dependent upon Int mod) and higher levels.
- All characters start with the Perception skill. In addition;
- A Cleric starts with: Knowledge (Religion: Specify), Spellcraft, Turn Undead
- A Fighter starts with: Athletics, Intimidation, Knowledge (Tactics)
- A Magic User starts with: Knowledge (Arcana), Linguistics, Spellcraft
- A Thief starts with: Disable Device, Sleight of Hand, Stealth, Athletics
- All characters start with Int mod number of additional skills.
- A single new skill can be learnt (so long as the character has an opportunity to learn or develop it) at levels 3, 6, 10, 15 and 20.
- Thief skills from p9 of the BFRPG Rules are integrated into this system. See below.
Like many skill systems, this uses the Ability Rolls mechanism from page 153 of the BFRPG Rules.
- The target at level 1 is 17. This indicates a difficult task.
- There is a very difficult target level of 22.
- Some untrained skills cannot be attempted - check the table.
- Attempting a skill untrained carries a -5 penalty to the roll.
- For any attempted skill, trained or untrained, a 1 is always a failure.
- When attempting to use a trained skill, a 20 is always a success, even if the target is higher than 20.
- Tasks with a target greater than 20 cannot be attempted untrained.
- If trained in a skill a roll should only be required when the task is difficult or very difficult, or if failure carries a notable consequence (for example avoiding triggering a trap or picking a lock in combat). Assume that easy (7) and normal (12) tasks are routine for a trained character and do not usually require a skill roll.
- If untrained in a skill a roll should always be required for any task with the untrained penalty.
d20 result + Ability Mod + Thief Mod - Unskilled Penalty >= Target
Thief Abilities
The result of trying to bring Thief Abilities into this system is a modified Thief Abilities table. For each level and Thief Ability, I calculated an additional Thief Modifier for each ability to give a similar chance to rolling percentile dice at the same level. I assumed that the average thief would have a +1 ability mod bonus in the relevant abilities; on that basis, a thief with +3 mod has an advantage, but that makes sense for someone with higher stats. There are one or two anomalies, but they are minor.
Some examples.
A level 5 thief with a Dex of 15 and a +1 bonus is trying to pick a difficult lock (target 15 at level 5) which uses the Disable Device skill. A 14 is rolled on d20 which gives a success as follows:
- Target = 15
- d20 roll = 14
- Plus Ability mod for Dex of +1 gives 15
- Plus Thief mod for Open Locks of +2 gives a final result of 17
An 8th level thief is hiding on a window ledge trying to listen to a quiet conversation about the delivery route for a valuable prize. Listen is based on the Perception skill which uses the Wis mod. While this thief is quick and nimble, Wisdom is not a strong point - a Wis of 9 gives a mod of 0. The target is 13, and a 10 is rolled:
- Target = 13
- d20 roll = 10
- Plus Ability mod for Wis of 0 gives 10
- Plus Thief mod for Listen of +3 gives a final result of 13 - a success (just!)
A fourteenth level thief with a Dex of 17 and a +2 bonus is trying to hide in a small patch of shadow in the corner of a room while a patrol of guards saunters past (using the Stealth skill). A 6 is rolled on a d20:
- Target = 10
- d20 roll = 6
- Plus Ability mod for Dex of +2 gives 8
- Plus Thief mod +1 for a final result of 9. This is a failure, our thief had better act quickly.
Racial Special Abilities
Use the standard d6 method when it comes to things like a dwarves 1-2 chance of detecting traps, unless the chances are better using this system (for example, a level 4 dwarven thief with a Dex mod of +1 needs a 14 or higher to spot a trap; that is a 35% chance of success vs a 33.3% chance of success on a 1-2 on a d6).
Finally... none of this has been playtested, but the numbers seem to make sense. Anyway, I plan to try it out soon and thought it might be of interest to someone out there...