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Sylian
2013-06-26, 12:11 PM
I've considered increasing Skill Focus from +3 to +4 in my campaign. Is this a good idea? Would this make Skill Focus worthwhile? If not, could I increase it to +5 or would that make it overpowered?

Temotei
2013-06-26, 12:40 PM
You could have it grant the skill as a permanent class skill. You could also make it scale based on level. Those are the most common changes to Skill Focus.

Scaling would work something like this:

{table=head]Hit Dice|Bonus
1-5|+3
6-10|+4
11-15|+5
16-20|+6[/table]

Fiddle around with the numbers or whatever if you don't like that; I just came up with it on the spot. I'd go higher if you change it.

Giving those flat bonuses wouldn't make it overpowered, though. It would just give a really nice boost early on in levels, then taper off later.

Jeraa
2013-06-26, 12:42 PM
Pathfinders version of Skill Focus is still only +3, but increases to +6 if you have 10 or more ranks in the skill. Converted to 3.5, that would be 13 ranks.

tarkisflux
2013-06-26, 02:06 PM
I've considered increasing Skill Focus from +3 to +4 in my campaign. Is this a good idea? Would this make Skill Focus worthwhile? If not, could I increase it to +5 or would that make it overpowered?

I don't think that it's a particularly good idea to boost numbers even more (particularly on opposed check skills), but it probably won't hurt too badly either.

The worthwhile question is hard to answer though. Worthwhile compared to what? The value of skill focus depends a lot on what you're doing with skills and magic in general in the campaign. In low magic games where there aren't a lot of spells replacing skill checks, it might be worthwile to get it at +3 or +4 instead of another combat option. In games where there's items floating all over the place to do things for you it's probably not worth getting at any value (except for Use Magic Device, of course). In games in the middle (which seem to be most of them in my experience), it's only situationally worthwhile and any bonus large enough to make it attractive more of the time is likely out of line (but an extra +1 won't do that much damage).

If you're willing to not do a bonus, I'll second Temotei's "it's always a class skill (and you're old cross class ranks get promoted retroactively)" bit, because I've seen it work well before. Or you can do something like "you can take 10 on the skill whenever you want". I've seen both of these used in the past, and think they're better at making the feat interesting to people than simply boosting the numbers.

GunbladeKnight
2013-06-26, 04:10 PM
Another option to think about is to allow rerolls for the skill along with a +2 or +3. 3/day is good unless you want to roll it into luck feats.

bobthe6th
2013-06-26, 09:13 PM
free take ten is nice as it opens up options, which is what a feat should always do. Also making it a class skill might almost make it a nice feat.