Which are the most underused skills? What are some nifty tricks they can pull off?

[martixy]

So...
We all know the 3.5 skill system is rather silly in many regards.

One of these quirks is how some skills barely get any use at all and are utterly pointless to put any or beyond 1 rank in.
(This of course discounts the various compound skills like Perform(Harmonica) or Craft(Basketweaving) or Profession(Stablehand).)

Skills that come to mind are:
Use rope
Heal
Decipher Script
Forgery

I've barely seen these used in game, if at all.

At best they're a one-shot deal, where you either find someone to do it for you or cast a spell to get a high roll that one specific time, or a skill tax to get you into some PrC.

Is there however some reason you'd want to count any of these among your main skills, not for fluff reasons?

Like for example I could see Heal being marginally useful in a party without a divine caster, in case someone got poisoned. Even then often times people just go for scrolls of Neutralize Poison or Remove Disease...

[thethird]

Forgery is great in an urban setting where letters of mark or credit are commonplace, it is opposed via forgery and as you said no one puts ranks in it.

[ExLibrisMortis]

(swordsage up there, watch yourself)

I've heard that Forgery can emulate Bluff, under certain circumstances, especially in towns and cities (forge letters of credit, orders etc.). Forgery is opposed by Forgery, not Sense Motive, so almost nobody can oppose your roll. The rarity of Forgery makes it useful. It's int-based, as well, which may be nice for some classes.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

If your DM is lenient enough I think you could have fun with use rope. Cross gaps and climb obstacles (make sure you have a grappling hook or are allowed to tie the rope to an arrow or thrown weapon), set simple traps, trip people in a fight, tie hostages up, improvise bolas and nets, build shelters, bridges or lookout platforms in trees. I figure the right character could do some cool stuff with it. Then again, I'm practically a rope ninja in real life, I might see some more possibilities than most...

[OPG]

I knew a Factotum who put ranks into Profession (Cartographer) as fluff and the DM let it open a great many doors. It earned him a good bit of extra cash and the party got some better sidequests out of it.

Iaijutsu Focus could use a bit more love imo, especially combined with the Samurai's Ancestral Weapons (quasi-discounted Eager & Blurstrike, anyone?)

[Dread_Head]

Heal is pretty terrible compared to using any magical healing. It is however pretty useful at low levels for treating poison and disease as with a few skill ranks and a good modifier it generally be a higher modifier than the save would be. Also of note is the Healing Lorecall spell (SC) which with sufficient ranks in the heal skill allows your conjuration (healing) spells to cure some status effects as well.

In general if you can hit the DC's the epic uses of skills are pretty interesting.

[ericgrau]

Heal: Yes, definately heal. Preventing character death at low level. This one is huge as anyone in my old gaming group with a cruel DM can attest. Even with a party cleric with magical healing, we needed at least half the party to be able to stabilize, if not more, in case the cleric was busy or disabled. It also helps heal ability score damage with resting faster. Also dealing with poison and disease at low to medium level because many campaigns start before 4th level spells. And scrolls of neutralize poison have failure risk and a 700 gp price tag. The standard answer is delay poison and run to town, but you better hope one is near and you aren't stuck in a dungeon.

Decipher script, forgery and use rope require in depth plot, which is often sadly lacking. The substitute is usually smash it and kill it, which you can't do if there's any real investigation, foes that deserve capture rather than depth, and so forth.

I like a few ranks in ride even though it's not often used except on focused mounted builds. There are some basic things that make it nice to be able to auto-pass a DC 5 check on a cheap mount, and making the higher DC checks at least part of the time can be nice too. Like getting a cheap easy +4 to AC. Even cheap disposable mounts can give mobility (and a little extra with a passed check), a +1 to hit in melee, +4 to AC, a source of minor added damage and therefore a target that isn't you, and far shorter travel (assuming your game isn't 100% at the speed of plot).

I think mounts get a bad rap because people do focused mounted builds and invest a bunch of feats and so forth into offense, and then the mount dies. I've actually had the opposite problem where I was a squishy caster and my easily restorable and tough mount wasn't taking enough damage away from me. But he still provided mobility and so forth. Don't knock a cheap easy bonus; I think most characters should have a mount. Just not necessarily the mounted combat feat.

[Jormengand]

If you take a level in Disciple of the Word, and manage to polymorph into a garbler, you can jump any distance you like, and land on a cloud. You can use a similar trick to pass all reflex saves. All of them.

The reason this works is that a garbler always passes truespeak checks, and DotW can use truespeak in place of jump/balance/tumble/reflex as well as rolls against enemy disarm/trip/bullrush. You can also pull off a modified jumplomancer by using this trick and taking 5 levels of exemplar, so you can truespeak at people to make them love you, and can't fail the check.

EDIT: Actually, sorry, the first trick doesn't work; you only pass truespeak checks when making utterances. Oh well.

[Inevitability]

Diciples of Mammon can make Appraise checks to increase the value of a gem, art object, or piece of equipment by a percentage equal to their check result.

Then again, you have to be a Disciple of Mammon to do it...

[Chronos]

Use Rope is incredibly useful, and if I'm playing a skillful character, rare is the session where I don't use it for something or another. It's just that all of the DCs for it are quite low, and it can be used untrained, so there's little incentive to actually take any ranks in it.

Every character of level 10ish should be able to take out an army single-handedly, and Forgery is how a rogue pulls it off. An army following garbled orders is worse than no army at all.

And Sleight of Hand gets some love, it's true, but not nearly enough. With even a fairly small amount of optimization, it's campaign-smashingly powerful.

[Curmudgeon]

Sleight of Hand will obscure not just somatic but verbal spellcasting component use; no feats or skill tricks are required. Spellcraft cannot work to identify the spell you're casting if the enemy does not see or hear the components. Rules in Races of Stone.

Balance will let you avoid being tripped. Because skill ranks can increase faster than STR bonus, your skillful characters can become untrippable even against dedicated trip specialists. Rules in Complete Adventurer.

[bean illus]

Perform Oratory? I thought it could be used quite well with a face/bard. Instead of playing music for fascinate or suggestion you give a speech, and maybe you could cast some magics in public without folks knowing you were spellcasting.

[Strigon]

A lot of the knowledge skills; architecture allows you to find structural problems in buildings to bring them down, for example.

[Deophaun]

Perform Oratory?

Perform in general, because it can be used in place of a Diplomacy check. The only downside is the comparative lack of buffs, otherwise it works exactly the same.

[elonin]

I've used the use rope skill in many games, just cause it's good for hindering captured enemies among other things. Heal is OK at lower levels if just to get a clue about what status effect your dealing with.

Balance is a 5 ranks and no more skill, just your not automatically flat footed in slick conditions.

[Belzyk]

I've seen extensive use of forgery. Last game I was in our dread necro made tons of stuff with it. Lol every Indra's he had had their own permits for stuff.

[Necroticplague]

Lucid Dreaming. Fairly handy skill, but kinda obscure. AFB, but among some uses, you could assassinate people in their sleep by dragging them over to a "die in dream, die in real life" part, do some minor divination and information gathering via interpreting dreams.

[frost890]

So...


Skills that come to mind are:
Use rope
Heal
Decipher Script
Forgery

I've barely seen these used in game, if at all.

I have not seen use rope used much besides tying off a rope or a person/animal. I had to use it a lot when I was a acrobatic artificer with a animated grapple hook. I used it mostly for flanking.
Heal I have seen used for investigative purposes. The wound was freshly closed after his death to disguise that he died by... I have also seen someone having to use a heal check to see if something was poison, a disease or a spell.
Decipher script was used in a game about spies and espionage. since most GM's that I have seen do not go in to spy games. This is often limited but can be used if you TRY and seek it out. it is often also helpful when sending messages between party members.
Forgery is useful if you want to get in to places you normally could not without making a lot of noise. You can copy a painting worth a lot of money or write up a license to do a certain kind of business. Getting the money for a land grant can prove tricky. but if done right you can be "Given" the rights to a area along a busy merchant route.

I have found that as with a lot of the game it is often how you use something rather then just what you have.

[Talionis]

The first level spell Undersong Bard Spell Compendium lets you replace Concentration checks with Perform checks. This can be useful with many of the Diamond Mind Maneuvers.

A Justicar from Complete Warrior can use his Use Rope check instead of a grapple check to hogtie opponents. It's easy then to coup de gras them. Incarnate Sailors Bracers can help increase Use Rooe checks.

[martixy]

Making will saves with perform checks... ugh, that hurts my head...

Dance a domination away.
Argue a weird out of existence.

The mental images this conjures are hilarious.

[Deophaun]

Making will saves with perform checks... ugh, that hurts my head...

There was the one about using Perform (Weapon Drill) to cut a fireball in half with your sword.

[frost890]

There was the one about using Perform (Weapon Drill) to cut a fireball in half with your sword.

Now that would be interesting. How did it work out?

[Jowgen]

There was the one about using Perform (Weapon Drill) to cut a fireball in half with your sword.

Tell me more! Tell me more!



Sleight of Hand can get rather broken even without lightning thief shenanigans. The best thing is the Master Pickpocket feat from City of Stormreach; which makes Free-action sleight of hand very achieveable and upgrades the whole skillit. Optimize it enough, and by RAW, you can technically steal EVERYTHING that isn't held in hand from any character at very "reasonable" DCs.

[Deophaun]

Now that would be interesting. How did it work out?

Tell me more! Tell me more!

Talionis already mentioned how: Undersong + Perform (Weapon Drill) + Action Before Thought = Absorb lightning bolts with your warhammer.

[daremetoidareyo]

combat panache feat + group fake out skill trick + travel devotion + elusive target

pimp out yo bluff skill. Get hit once, then use your move action to combat panache (bluff vs. opponent who hit you's sense motive) then use your standard action to feint (bluff vs. all opponents' sense motive). You your travel devotion movement to move out of danger, trigger an attack of opportunity, use immediate action from combat panache to make him attack a different opponent. Opponent has now missed you. Use elusive target's cause overreach ability and make a free trip attempt against them. Declare dodge on the guy you just got hit. When they attack you, use diverting defense skill from elusive target to make them hit the prone bad guy. Next turn, sneak attack one of them.

[martixy]

combat panache feat + group fake out skill trick + travel devotion + elusive target

pimp out yo bluff skill. Get hit once, then use your move action to combat panache (bluff vs. opponent who hit you's sense motive) then use your standard action to feint (bluff vs. all opponents' sense motive). You your travel devotion movement to move out of danger, trigger an attack of opportunity, use immediate action from combat panache to make him attack a different opponent. Opponent has now missed you. Use elusive target's cause overreach ability and make a free trip attempt against them. Declare dodge on the guy you just got hit. When they attack you, use diverting defense skill from elusive target to make them hit the prone bad guy. Next turn, sneak attack one of them.

This is a beautiful idea!
However - Combat panache specifically states that the opportunity to take the immediate action that redirects your foe's attack only becomes available at the start of his next turn.

But that's easy to miss / easy to sneak in past the dm and players.
Barring the little hiccup above, this should work with other swift modes of movement too - such as the Sudden Leap maneuver.
Not sure what the point of feinting is, past making them flat-footed for sneak damage and easy to-hit.

But I can imagine this on a Jackie Chan type of character.
"When angry men fight, best to just stay out of the way."

This is precisely how I imagine a monk should fight, but as we all know monks suck donkey shtick.

However an unarmed Swordsage focusing on Tiger Claw and Setting Sun is another deal. You can jump around, make foes hit each other, avoid their attacks.
It's incredibly flavourful.

[Flickerdart]

Autohypnosis is a skill that's often missed because it doesn't appear in the general skill lists. It does a weird mishmash of things like resisting poison and memorizing things.

[Talionis]

Talionis already mentioned how: Undersong + Perform (Weapon Drill) + Action Before Thought = Absorb lightning bolts with your warhammer.

On this I'm not sure, I'm away from books, but Weapon Drill may change the relevant stat to Strength. I've personally only done Charisma based performers. But I've heard people fluff the Weapon Drill performance to be like a light saber the whole idea takes feats or levels and spells but it makes for very cool uses fo Performance and can fix gaps, even do conciderable Damage with Inciteful Strike and Greater Inciteful strike

[Deophaun]

On this I'm not sure, I'm away from books, but Weapon Drill may change the relevant stat to Strength.

Nope. It's Charisma. It also adds 1/2 your BAB as a bonus, which is why you cannot use it for Perform checks for bardic music.

[Talionis]

Nope. It's Charisma. It also adds 1/2 your BAB as a bonus, which is why you cannot use it for Perform checks for bardic music.

Thanks, I knew there was something about it that mechanically was better than a normal perform check