As a GM, I’ve always gravitated towards using some skills, and away from using others. In my limited experience, I’ve found that most GMs do something similar. There are skill checks which they call for, and checks which they don’t. Beneficial as those decisions may be, players are often harmed by this practice. Because, in my experience, GMs don’t communicate which skills they will be using for and which they will not.  They may not have even noticed that they ignore certain skills. In my own experience, when a player says “I swim into the river,” I’ve never even considered asking for a swim check. I’ve always simply allowed players to do so. But what I’ve come to realize is that I have been, in effect, lying to my players because of that.

When a new player is joining my games, I’ve never told them not to put any ranks in swim, or climb, or disguise, or escape artist. I let them make their own decisions, not realizing that in doing so I am implying that any skill they put points into is a skill which will potentially be useful to them. How many of my players have wasted skill points on skills which would never be rolled even a single time? I have been at fault in this, which is why I set out to correct that oversight with this series. Over two weeks of posts here on Papers & Pencils have been devoted to overviewing Pathfinder’s skills. I’ve approached each one in turn with as clear a mind as I could manage, analyzing its strengths and its flaws in the hopes of cutting the fat from the system.

What has been the result? Well, the original game of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 had an amusingly appropriate 35 skills. Pathfinder combined a number of these skills together, bringing the total number of skills down to 26. With the additional cuts I’ve made, the total number of skills is down to 14 total.You can see the breakdown of the skills on this chart:

My reduction in the number of skills is pretty drastic. It is legitimate to be concerned that it may be too drastic. If a human rogue rolls 18 for their intelligence, then they can add two to that, and start the game with an Intelligence modifier of +5. If that character also selects rogue as their favored class, then at each level they can receive a total of 15 skill points (Rogue is 8 + Intelligence Modifier, +1 for the human racial trait, +1 for leveling in a character’s favored class.) Considering that both Craft and Knowledge represent multiple skills, this doesn’t mean that the character would end up with excess skill points at each level. However, such a rogue would almost certainly be forced to put skill points into a number of abilities they had little to no interest in actually using. Such a character does not even imply any attempt to manipulate the system on the player’s part. All it would require is a lucky roll for ability scores, followed by common-sense choices.We could reduce the number of skill points each class receives. However, for now, I will be allowing characters to maintain their current speed of skill point acquisition, to see if this is actually a problem or not. After all, no class gains skill at the same pace that the rogue does, and rogues are supposed to have a wide variety of talents.

I hope I have been somewhat successful in streamlining, and improving Pathfinder’s skill system with these posts. But there’s only so much that can be done. The D20 system’s skill mechanic is fundamentally flawed, and from what I’ve seen, so is the way design decisions have been made. If not by Paizo, then at least by Wizards of the Coast.

First, there’s the issue of linear probability. Rolling a single twenty sided die for a skill check means that none of the potential results are even slightly more likely than any other possible result. A character can roll a 1, or a 20, or anything in between with equal probability. With some rolls, like attack rolls in combat, it makes good sense. Combat is chaotic, and unpredictable. Your skill at thrusting a sword is mitigated by the quality of your opponent’s armor, and their skill at parrying, or blocking, or dodging your attack. This is not true with something like a ride check or a acrobatics check. Take the instance of a jump: in Pathfinder, a level 1 commoner who attempts to jump as far as she can is just as likely to make it 1ft as she is to make it 20ft. Can you imagine anyone in the world with that kind of variance in their ability? A much better system would be one which used multiple dice for skill checks. Something like 2d10, or 3d6, which would have a bell curve of probability, where the numbers in the middle of the possible range (right around 10-11) will appear much more frequently than the numbers at either extreme of the number range.

I’ve also found that there has apparently been no real attempt to balance the skill’s usefulness against one another. It would seem to me as though any sufficient amount of play testing would reveal that skills such as escape artist are used much less frequently (and to much less effect) than skills such as perception or acrobatics. Given this wide disparity in the frequency and effectiveness of usage, a skill point put into escape artist is significantly less valuable to a player than a point spent in acrobatics. Now, I would not suggest that each skill needs to be precisely equal in value to every other skill. A game which offers as many choices for character building as Pathfinder does will always have more and less ideal ‘builds.’ But there is a limit to the disparity of balance which is acceptable. Some of Pathfinder’s core skills are more valuable than others by an order of magnitude, and that’s unacceptable.

For many of these skills, I can only imagine that they were kept in the game because the game needed to be compatible with D&D 3.5 products.

I would like to thank all of my readers who stuck with this series throughout. I know it has been a rather dry read. Truth be told, I’ve been itching to be done writing it myself. There have been a number of topics I’ve been greatly interested in writing about, but I did not want to interrupt the flow of these skill posts. Now that they’re done, I look forward to covering a variety of topics which have been on my mind these past few weeks. As mentioned earlier in this series, I am intending to re-write the Knowledge and Craft skills, as well as the process of identifying magic items. You can expect those posts in the coming weeks, but not before I’ve had some time to touch on some other subjects first.

Stealth (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post):  The stealth skill is not quite so broken as I thought it was before I sat down to do my analysis. It can be easy for those of us who played Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition for years to not notice, or forget, some of the changes which Pathfinder has made. Pathfinder’s stealth skill doesn’t include any information on hiding whatsoever: hiding is left up to the GM and players to work out on their own. Which is good and proper. If my players tell me they would like to hide behind a statue, then I see no reason to make them roll for it. Simply using commonsense rules about line of sight is enough. Though I would appreciate it if the stealth skill included information about hiding in shadows, or using camouflage in the woods.

In my games, I assume that all characters standing in darkness and not moving are effectively hidden and cannot be perceived unless a creature has darkvision. Moving half your speed in darkness requires a stealth check (for moving silently) made with a +4 bonus. Characters standing in dim light make stealth checks directly opposed to perception checks so long as they are not moving. If they do move, they make their check at a -4 penalty. In areas of normal or bright light,  hiding in shadows is done at a -2 penalty when standing still, and a -6 penalty when moving.

I also use facing in my games, as presented under the OGL for D&D 3.5. Note that the rules include a -5 penalty for perception checks made to the “flanking” (left and right) areas, and -10 penalty for perception checks made towards the “rear” area. So characters standing to the side or the rear of a creature can attempt to use stealth checks to move silently into an area where they can hide, which allows them to hide during combat.

Judgement: As written, the skill is not clear on several key points. And, without facing, the skill’s use in combat becomes a little ridiculous. By polishing these aspects of the skill, it can be made acceptable.

Survival (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post): I like survival. When attempting to subsist in the wilderness, there are some tasks which shouldn’t be ignored, but which are none the less not interesting or easy enough to actually model at the table. Finding food and water, for example. While this may be a simple task in a forest, scrounging up the necessities of life might be significantly more difficult on a rocky mountain, or in a desert, or a poison-filled swamp. The skill also helps players avoid becoming lost, which is good when world travel is handled by a hex crawl rather than the much less entertaining “fade to black” style travel. The skill is also essential when attempting to find, and follow tracks, which is a time honored ability in D&D, and functions effectively under the Pathfinder rules.

Judgement: I would like it if this skill had more utility, but some of the utility it already has (determining weather a day in advance, for example) is pretty useless. A better mechanic for these tasks could probably be worked out for future editions of the game, but as it stands survival is adequate.

Swim (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post): If you read my entry on climb, then you already know why I hate the swim skill. It is utterly without merit for a game which takes place largely on land to treat the ability to swim as anything more than a binary function. Either yes, a character can swim, or no, they cannot swim. I suppose that if a specific adventure called for the characters to spend significant amounts of time in the water, then a “water maneuverability classes” similar to the ones traditionally used to gauge flight ability might be useful. But that’s about it.

The rules offer a number of examples of when a swim check should be asked for, such as when the water is rough, or stormy. But how often is this really an issue? In all my years, I’ve only ever played through a single underwater dungeon, and a handful of water-environment combats. Even in those instances, I never felt the need to roll dice to determine how well players could move. I understand, of course, that my personal experience can’t be extrapolated to everyone who plays the game. But the game is clearly not designed around adventuring through watery environments, and if it was, I doubt you would need to roll dice to determine whether or not you could move at all.

In my games I allow players to simply swim if they feel as though it’s an ability their character would have. If you need a mechanic, then have players who wish to swim spend a single skill point to gain the ability to do so. It makes more sense than learning languages by spending a single skill point.

Judgement: Purge this skill from your game, and let its name never be spoken again.

Use Magic Device (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post): This is another example of a well constructed skill, like Sleight of Hand. It allows any character to use items, such as wands and scrolls, which would typically only be usable by casters. This allows characters greater flexibility in their planning. My players, and myself when I am a player, often come up with elaborate plans which require the use of a specific spell cast in a specific place at a specific time, where there might be no caster present. But since a fighter is not fully capable of understanding the complexities of a scroll of fireball, it’s only logical for there to be a chance for failure.

Judgement: Keep this skill in the game as-is.

And there you have it. All of the skills. The conclusion will go up over the Weekend, after which we will return to our regularly scheduled writings.

Sense Motive (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post): By now, I’ve gone over every skill pretty thoroughly, and I have a good idea of what I want to say about each one. I’ve even run a game using the reduced skills list, and it went quite well. I’m sure that some of my changes are breaking other minor rules. No doubt there are a number of spells and feats which have been rendered useless by the way I’ve changed and removed skills. But I believe the reduced list has been an overall improvement. My players spent a little less time looking at their sheets and asking if they could make skill checks, and a little more time engaged with the game world, asking whether they could perform certain tasks.

The one skill I left in the game at the time, which I am now pretty certain I will remove, is sense motive. I’ve spent a lot of time wrestling with whether this skill has value to the game. On the one hand, I agree with -C’s basic assessment. If you break it down, it seems clear:

1. In an good game, players are able to succeed by making meaningful, intelligent choices.
2. In order to make intelligent choices, players must be able to access relevant information to base their decisions upon.
3. If players must roll a die to access information, then there is a chance they will fail that roll.
4. If they fail that roll, they will not be able to access to the information they require in order to make intelligent decisions.
5. If players cannot access the information they require to make intelligent decisions, then they will not be able to succeed by making meaningful, intelligent choices.
6. Ergo, if players must roll a die to access relevant information, then a game is not good.

There are other skills, however, such as knowledge and perception, which also require a roll in order for a player to receive information. -C’s posts decry these skills on much the same grounds as he decries sense motive, but I have chosen to keep them in my game. Albeit in modified forms. So am I a hypocrite, or is there a difference between the types of information players gain from knowledge and perception, and the type of kind of information players gain from sense motive?

Somewhat.

Knowledge is a different beast altogether, but sense motive and perception have a number of commonalities between them. Both are most commonly rolled against an NPCs, both can be used to give players advance warning of danger, and both can potentially produce interesting results regardless of success or failure. With perception, it is interesting both when players are ambushed, and when they detect an ambush before it occurs. With sense motive, it can be interesting both when a players are fooled, and when the players manage to see through a deception. On those grounds alone, sense motive would seem to be a legitimate and useful skill.

However, sense motive isn’t perfectly analogous to perception. Perception is used to determine whether characters can notice things they are not looking for, such as an orc sneaking through the trees. Sense motive, on the other hand, is most commonly rolled to gauge an NPC which players are intently engaged with, such as a back-alley informant who may be lying to them. That alone is reason to cast serious doubt on the value of sense motive.

I don’t think it’s always wrong for a GM to use NPCs to lie to the players. I think untrustworthy NPCs who lie to, or even betray, the players adds an element of social danger to the game which is valuable. But there must be a better way to do it than with the sense motive check. An untrustworthy NPC surely gives some signs that they aren’t being entirely straight with the player characters. Shifty eyes, oddly emphasized words, inconsistent stories about who they are and what they want, there are dozens of ways to give the players a chance to figure out that they’re being had. And once the players have an inkling, the desire to confirm that inkling gives the GM a good opportunity to challenge them. A street thug’s reputation for lying might be easy enough to find out if you know who to ask, but finding out that the duke is planning to frame the PCs for his crime might be a little trickier.

Judgement: After much deliberation, this skill should be house-ruled out of the game. In a pinch, perception checks can be used to fill-in for it. Bluff checks should only be used by the PCs against NPCs, so a DC is adequate. If you prefer, it can be rolled v. another bluff roll.

Sleight of Hand (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post): There is very little to say about sleight of hand. It is just about the perfect skill. It comes up decently often in play, success and failure are almost always both interesting results. And since I can’t think of a way to handle it which would be more fun than a dice roll, it doesn’t circumvent any potential fun. If anything, having this skill in the game encourages players to use it in creative ways. I once had spell caster put points into it so he could attempt to hide his magical hand gestures.

Judgement: I cannot think of anything wrong about this skill.

Spellcraft (Full Description on PFSRD): The spellcraft skill has five officially listed functions in the Pathfinder Core Rulebook. It is used to identify a spell which is being cast, copy a spell from a borrowed spellbook, prepare a spell from a borrowed spellbook, and as part of crafting and identifying magic items. The book also indicates that spellcraft “is used whenever your knowledge and skill of the technical art of casting a spell […] comes into question.”

Spellcraft functions well for the most part. I don’t really like the way in which it interacts with the craft skill, but as I’ve already mentioned in this series, I have plans to entirely re-write the Pathfinder crafting rules in the near future. I’m also dubious of the value of needing to roll a check in order to copy a spell from a borrowed spellbook. It strikes me as an unnecessary and ultimately ineffective attempt to control a wizard’s power through drawing out the amount of time it can potentially take to gain new spells. However, requiring a roll to actually prepare as spell from a borrowed spell book functions as a minor but effective throttle on a wizard’s power, since it has a more immediate effect on gameplay. Plus, on the fluff side of things, the failure chance meshes with the way Vancian magic is described in the rulebook.

My only real problem with the skill is the way it is used to identify magic items. I’ve tried a number of things over the years, and never really been happy with any of them. As of late I’ve simply been allowing any spellcaster to identify the purpose of an item she believes is magical, so long as she has 10 minutes to examine it. I would also like for some items to be un-identifyable to a spellcaster, because this can create interesting scenarios where characters must seek aid in identifying their items.

I don’t think the spellcraft skill can reasonably be involved in this process, though. A level 1 elven wizard with 18 Intelligence has a +10 to their spellcraft check. That goes up to +12 if the the magical properties for the item they’re attempting to identify are from their specialist school. So you can’t simply allow casters to automatically identify items with a caster level equal to or lesser than the caster’s spellcraft check bonus, because a level 1 elf could identify items on the high-end of mid-level. The typical solution would be to add 10 to the item’s caster level, and call for a roll, but then you’re back to asking the caster for a dozen rolls every time the party encounters a decent sized treasure horde. Checking an item’s caster level against a character’s caster level is also a possibility, but I would like non-casters to be able to identify magic items by investing in the spellcraft skill.

The process of identifying magic items is one I plan to cover more thoroughly in a future post.

In the past, I’ve also allowed casters to use spellcraft to spontaneously craft new spells. If a caster is in combat, and they would like to modify one of their spells in an unusual way, or would like to combine it with another spell, then I’ll allow them to do so. They must first provide a good explanation of how the spell will work (“I want to cast acid orb on my crossbow bolt, and fire it into the ogre!” or “I’d like to cast Cone of Cold and Fireball simultaneously to create a blast of steam.”) They must succeed on a DC 15 + [level of any spells involved, added together] spellcraft check, and expend one of their highest level spells slots available, which is lost whether the spell succeeds or not.

Perform (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post): A skill is a mechanic. It is not a character trait, nor is it a role playing device. Role playing and character development are handled by the player. The player can choose to build their character’s personality off of the character’s mechanics if they wish. It is fun, and even recommended. However, the fact that character mechanics can serve as the basis for role playing traits, does not imply that role playing traits must be represented mechanically. Why, then, does the perform skill exist? Can’t players simply write down that they know how to play the fiddle without requiring a number to keep track of how good they are at it?

As a mechanic, it simply seems silly. If a character is not a bard, then the skill breaks down to “roll the dice, get some money!” Even if treasure is not the central focus of your game, rolling a twenty sided die to determine the effectiveness of your busking has got to be the least entertaining way to earn money that I can imagine. It’s not even a worthwhile amount of money! The most you can possibly earn in a day is 18 gold. The book goes on to hint at some potential plot hooks for characters who frequently succeed at DC 30 performance checks (“In time, you may draw attention from distant patrons, or even from extraplanar beings.”) but that hardly seems to make it worthy of being a skill in my view.

Bards, of course, are the exception. For them, the performance skill is integral. Many of their bardic performance abilities depend on making a perform roll, and then allowing the bard’s companions to use that roll’s result in place of some other type of die roll. This can be an extremely potent ability, and an effective use of the skills system. For example, consider a level 1 bard with 16 Charisma, 1 rank in performance, and the skill focus(performance) feat. That’s a total of +10 to a performance roll, which the bard can roll in place of his companions will saves (which will probably be +4 or less for most characters). On the other hand, a number of the bardic performance abilities (Inspire Courage, Inspire Competence, etc) don’t use a perform roll at all. Instead, their effects increase in strength based solely on the bard’s level.

Judgement: For non-bard players, this skill should be house-ruled out of the game. For bards, I see two possible options. First, you could make Performance a bard-only skill, and edit the bardic performance abilities to make the skill check more relevant. Alternatively, you could house-rule the performance check out of the game for bards as well, and edit all of their performance abilities to be level based, rather than roll based.

Profession (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post): The problems with the profession skill are so similar to the problems with the perform skill that it hardly seems worth it to write a separate entry for each one. Mechanically, both skills essentially boil down to exactly the same thing: roll dice to see how much money you make. There are some subtle differences, (such as the fact that a profession check takes a week, and a perform check only takes a day), but they are largely inconsequential. The profession skill doesn’t even have the dubious benefit of having a class built upon it. As it exists in the game, profession may be the single most useless skill of all. Purge it.

Useless as the profession skill may be, however, there might be some benefit to a character having a listed profession. In my Twittertop RPG, a character’s profession was used as a substitute for an entire skills system. The idea is that if a player can justify their character possessing a certain skill on the basis of their profession, then the character will be able to use that skill effectively. For example, a character whose profession was sailor would obviously be able to swim, tie ropes, and avoid sea sickness. Whereas a player whose profession was miner would be particularly effective at noticing details and dangers underground.

There’s no reason that the same thing couldn’t exist in Pathfinder as a supplement to the skills system, rather than a replacement. Nothing which a player would need to roll for, mind you. Just an extremely simple, rules-light way of determining whether a player has minor knowledge or abilities which won’t come up frequently.

Judgement: House rule this out of the game as a skill. If you are so inclined, make it a stand, alone trait for each character.

Ride (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post): I like the idea behind this skill, but I feel it lacks solid implementation. It takes some steps in the right direction, though. Unlike many skills, you can actually do most of what you might imagine is “easy,” without ever spending a point. Characters with 0 ranks in ride are able to saddle, mount, ride, and dismount from a mount without a problem. Even a character with a dexterity modifier of 0 has a 75% chance to avoid falling off their mount when hit. For most players, this should be plenty. It allows them to make use of the standard benefits of riding: moving quickly, and increasing encumbrance limits. A character only needs to put points into the skill if they want to perform more difficult tasks with their mount.

That’s what I like about the skill. What I don’t like is how limiting it is. For example, it would be fair to say that horses can jump further than humans, right? Yet if a human character has 1 rank in jump, and 1 rank in ride, then if he rolls the same on both a long jump check, and a leap check with his horse, then the distance covered will be exactly the same. That’s flat-out ridiculous. I think the game would benefit from advanced riding techniques, and mounted combat, being given a little more spotlight. I’m not certain how it should be done at this point. Perhaps it is something I will direct my attention towards in the future.

Judgement: This skill is fine to leave as-is for now, but it would benefit from some polish, and expansion.

Perception (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post)(-C’s OTHER Post): I doubt there is any skill quite so divisive as perception. I hardly feel qualified to assess it. So many dozens or hundreds of men and women much more experienced than I have spent so many forum threads and blog posts debating back and forth over the issue of perception that I feel presumptuous even attempting to resolve it. But that’s what I signed up for when I said I was going to begin this series of posts, and I’m not going to back out now, so here we go.

If you recall from earlier in this series, I believe disguise and escape artist are two skills which should be house ruled out of the game because they are needed so incredibly infrequently as to be useless. Well, if those skills commit the sin of a deficient frequency, then perception commits the sin of excessive frequency. The skill is so frequently called for, and so necessary, that -C uses the term “Skill Tax” to describe it. Putting points into perception is more of a requirement, than an option. And if something is a requirement for effective play, why clutter up the skills list by giving players the illusion of a choice?

But I’m getting ahead of myself. If you’d like to have perception torn to pieces in front of your very eyes, read -C’s two posts linked above. He’s done a superb job highlighting the problems with this skill, and I feel no need to repeat that task. As daunting as it is to attempt to resolve the problems with perception, I have no qualms about stating quite firmly: perception does have problems.

Pathfinder uses perception in two different ways: one which I’ll call active, another which I’ll call passive. Active perception checks are generally requested by the player. “I’d like to make a perception check to search this room,” or “I’d like to listen intently for someone sneaking up on me.” Active perception checks occur when the character is primarily engaged in the act of looking, listening, smelling, feeling, or tasting. Passive perception checks (sometimes called “reactive”) most often occur without the player’s knowledge. They are rolled by the GM, in secret, to determine whether or not a character is able to perceive something. This might happen when there is a faint scent of cooking coming from behind a door, or if someone is attempting to move without the player’s noticing them. Passive perception checks are useful for information which the players might not be looking for specifically, but which the characters might nevertheless notice and find useful if they’re alert.

Pathfinder is actually pretty vague about when a perception check should be rolled, and what information a player should be able to gain from it. As such, we can’t exactly blame the game for the fact that many GMs and players use it as a substitute for creating & interacting with an actual environment. However, the game would function better if it presented a more focused version of this skill. In the hopes of correcting this oversight, I’ve broken perception down into its component parts. Below are the various uses I’ve seen for perception, and my attempts to work out what the skill should apply to, and what it shouldn’t.

Active Perception: Primarily used to find hidden treasure, discover secret doors, and avoid traps.

If a room contains treasure, that treasure is either obvious, or not. Obvious treasure, such as that found in a chest, on the body of a foe, or simply laying on the floor, should never require a perception roll to find. So long as the players say they’re searching the body, or opening the chest, they should be allowed to find the treasure. I would hope that was self evident. If a treasure is not obvious, then the players ought to be forced to look for it if they want to find it. The GM should describe the environment the players are in, and if they feel there may be treasure present, they can describe to the GM where they look for it.

What could possibly be gained by having the players roll to discover non-0bvious treasure? If their roll succeeds and they find the treasure, then it’s not functionally different from obvious treasure. It simply required the extra step of rolling a die. If, on the other hand, their roll fails and they don’t find the treasure, then the treasure effectively does not exist, because they can’t find it. It’s not as though it’s fun for a player to simply be aware that treasure was hidden before they found it. What is fun is the process of finding that hidden treasure. Coming up with the idea to search for loose bricks on the wall, and being rewarded by finding a bag of 30 gold is a lot more fun than entering a room, rolling a die, and being told you found 30 gold behind a loose stone.

Locating secret doors is somewhat different from finding non-obvious treasure in two important ways. First, the hiding place of even the most well hidden treasure ought to be mentioned in the room’s description. If it’s not, then the players have no way to know where to search That doesn’t mean you need to drop obvious hints, simply that it’s not fair to hide treasure under a bed without telling the players that the room contains a bed. On the other hand, secret doors are most commonly built directly into the walls or floors. Since those are present everywhere, there’s no good way for players to search for secret passages intelligently. The second difference is that treasure is an end unto itself. It, along with experience points, is how players are rewarded for successful play. Secret doors, on the other hand, exist only as a means to an end. That end being whatever lies beyond the door. Though the joy of discovery shouldn’t be discounted.

Given those differences, I think it is reasonable to allow players to roll perception checks to discover hidden doors. The area for such a perception roll should be relatively small–perhaps 15ft square, centered on the character. Some characters could even be allowed to find hidden doors with a passive perception check, if they passed within 10 feet of it. Traditionally this is an ability which was given to elves, but perhaps it would be better if anyone with 5 ranks or more in perception was given the chance to automatically discover hidden doors. Reducing the act of finding a hidden door to a roll does come with a danger, however. If the entirety of the interaction is rolling to look for a door, finding a door, opening the door, and going through the door; how is that any different from rolling to find non-obvious treasure?

I would propose that a perception roll allows players to, as -C puts it “learn the location of the secret door but not how to open it.” Once they know the door is there, the players are free to attempt to bash it down if they wish. Though in some cases that may be pretty difficult. Alternatively, the players can search for the mechanism within the room which opens the door. Perhaps a loose stone needs to be pushed in, or three worn-down keys on a piano need to be pressed simultaneously. And if the players notice the loose stone or the worn-down keys before they find the door in the first place, then the discovery of a secret passage will be made all the more exciting.

Using perception checks as a means of finding traps is something I’ve struggled with as of late. My party’s rogue has frequently complained of the tediousness involved in searching every door, every chest, and every trigger that they find in order to avoid the handful of traps in each dungeon. And I have to agree: it is tedious, and not at all fun. I suppose I could make it less tedious by simply adding more traps to my dungeons, but that seems like a lazy solution. The problem is not that there’s an insufficient amount of things to find, it’s that excessive rolling is boring.

Pathfinder has a rogue talent called Trap Spotter, which allows rogues to make an automatic, passive perception check whenever they are within 10ft of a trap. I propose that this be removed as a possible rogue talent, and instead, this effect be made part of the Trapfinding class ability which rogues receive at level 1. Additionally, any character with 5 ranks or more in perception could also be granted the ability to notice traps using passive checks.

Judgement: In general, active perception checks seem to sap potential fun from the game. I propose eliminating active perception checks from the game, except when it comes to searching for secret doors or traps within a 15ft square area centered of the player.

Passive Perception: Primarily used in opposition to a sleight of hand and stealth checks or to notice fine details in an environment.

Sleight of hand may be the single most well-designed skill in Pathfinder, and rolling perception against it is a reasonable method of conflict resolution. There is no need to alter the way in which perception interacts with that skill. The stealth skill, on the other hand, has a number of problems, which I will detail once I write my overview for that skill. Speaking strictly on how perception interacts with stealth, however, I can find no fault. If the stealth roll is being utilized properly, then rolling perception against it makes perfect sense.

That only leaves a roll for noticing fine details in the environment. This is anything which the character’s might not notice right away. A faint smell from two rooms over, an orc’s knee sticking out from behind the barrel he’s hiding behind, or a crack in a stained glass window across the room. I think this application of the skill works well enough. Whenever I go to use it, though, I ask myself one important question: is there any reason to withhold this information?

Using the examples above, it makes sense to roll a passive perception check to see if the players notice the orc’s leg sticking out from behind a barrel. The creature is obviously attempting an ambush, and their success or failure in that attempt will hinge on whether or not the players notice him first. That’s a good use of a roll. It also makes sense to make the roll to determine if the players notice the faint smell of cooking from two rooms over. If they notice it, they have an opportunity to prepare to enter the evil cult’s mess hall, if they don’t then they’ll be surprised when they walk into a room filled with enemies. The crack in the window, however, is essential information if the players are going to figure out the room’s puzzle. If they fail their spot check, then the puzzle becomes unsolvable unless one of them decides (out of the blue) to examine the window for cracks.

Note that you’re not rolling perception based on the type of information, you’re rolling it based on how that information will be used within the game. That may seem silly and unrealistic, and it is. But realism does not equal good gameplay.

Judgement: Passive perception is mostly fine. Just don’t use it to hide information the players ought to have.

Overall Judgement: I think perception has a valuable place in the Pathfinder game. However, the game benefits significantly from reducing this skill’s importance drastically.

Knowledge (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post): I’ve always liked knowledge skills, though I’m not certain why. Perhaps it’s because most games, particularly video games, consistently put the player in the position of the most ignorant person in the room. The rationale for doing so is obvious. Representing the player with an avatar who is ignorant of what is going on around them is a useful tool for justifying exposition without breaking the fourth wall. It’s lazy storytelling, but it works well enough in a pinch. Problem is: I don’t like being ignorant. I think that, perhaps, when I first encountered knowledge skills I was excited by the prospect of having a measure of control over what my character knows about the world.

I’ve always maintained that a knowledge mechanic is beneficial to the game. However I must confess, -C’s arguments forced me to seriously reflect on whether or not I was right. He presents a legitimate concern: does the inclusion of a knowledge check lead GMs to restrict information in a way which is not conducive to creating a fun game? Is rolling dice to determine a character’s knowledge of a subject beneficial even slightly, or is it nothing more than a side-effect of the knowledge mechanic being shoe-horned into the skills system? At the time I even said as much myself: “the randomization element isn’t very useful for knowledge skills […] it’s not particularly exciting and the roll doesn’t really drive the game forward.”

My thinking on this matter began to change after a recent experience at the table. My players were investigating a dungeon which had been specifically built to keep gnomes out. In one room, there were a number of statues of gnomes, which were part of a larger statuesque depiction of a battle. Nearly all of the gnomish statues, however, were actually real flesh-and-blood gnomes, who had been turned to stone hundreds of years in the past. My intent was that the players would not realize this until the end of the dungeon, where they would encounter a large number of gnomish ghosts. Once the ogre who had murdered those gnomes was killed, the ghosts would be able to tell the players about their petrified kin on the floor above. My GM notes for that gaming session were actually posted on this blog, if you’re interested.

When my players entered the room with the petrified gnomes in it, one of them actually guessed immediately that the statues might simply be petrified, and asked if there was any way they could know for certain. At first, I was a little flustered. I did not want to deny my player the right to investigate his hunch–particularly because he was right! But I also did not want to hand him information which he had no reasonable way of obtaining. The builders of this room had gone to some lengths to disguise the statues as genuine, even going so far as to include a number of real statues. And if I set a precedent of answering player’s guesses with accurate information, I rob the players of the ability to take actions based on an incorrect guess.

I then recalled that the player had put a number of points into Knowledge(Dungeoneering). I asked him to roll that to determine whether his character knew of any method to differentiate between petrified beings, and finely crafted statues. I set the DC at 15, and the player succeeded. I then confirmed for him that, yes, these statues were in fact petrified gnomes. A fact which the party managed to learn long before I had intended them to, and which proved to be quite relevant when they continued through that dungeon in the next session.

In this case, the Knowledge skill did exactly what I want a skill to do. It took a situation where the outcome was uncertain, and it resolved it with a minimal amount of wasted time. It allowed the players to succeed in a way which I had not intended them to be able to succeed. Even if the roll had failed, demonstrating that none of the players were able to determine petrified creatures from statues, it would have simply created a different interesting situation. One in which the players needed to seek out the answer to their question

Judgement: Like crafting, knowledge works well in its current state, but isn’t good enough. Also like crafting, I plan to devote some of my upcoming time to a complete redesign of the knowledge skill, in the hopes of making its ideal function more apparent, and shaving some of the fat from it.

Linguistics (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post): To my knowledge, linguistics is unique amongst skills, in that its primary use (learning languages) is accomplished by putting points into the skill, rather than rolling skill checks. Which isn’t to say skill checks are never made with linguistics, simply that none of those checks would (on their own) justify this skill’s existence in my eyes. Aside from learning languages, you  can create or detect forgeries, and you can also decipher writing in an unfamiliar language or dialect. Officially, that’s all you can do with a skill check, and neither of those two is very likely to come up frequently enough to justify the skill’s existence.

Regarding the creation and detection of forgeries, how often will this actually show up in a game, honestly? In all my years of playing and running both Dungeons and Dragons, and Pathfinder, I don’t believe I’ve ever had cause to forge a single document. I’ve never been to a city which required me to carry identification papers, nor have I tried to deliver false orders to a group of soldiers. I’m not saying these occasions will never arise–they might! But will they arise often enough for this use of the skill to provide a significant frequency of use? No, probably not. That’s why Paizo combined the old D&D 3.5 forgery skill into Pathfinder’s linguistics skill, and that’s good. But if there is no other justification for having the skill, then creating/detecting forgeries wouldn’t provide that justification.

The other use of the skill which calls for rolling dice is deciphering writing. Like forgery, this was also a stand-alone skill in D&D 3.5, called decipher script. The idea is to provide players with the chance to interpret written languages they don’t know, or writing which is otherwise incomprehensible to them. It’s like reading Chaucer for you or I; it may be English, but understanding it is a difficult skill to master. Indecipherable writing is a challenge players may face somewhat more often than forgeries, but still not something they’re likely to encounter often. And even in those cases where it does come up, there is more often than not going to be a simpler and more entertaining way to solve the problem: finding someone who is fluent in the language for example.

I propose a new feat; Master of Writing. Players with this feat can decipher any written language with perfect accuracy after 1 hour of study. They are also able to create and detect forgeries with perfect accuracy, so long as they have seen a copy of the “real” document at least once before.

Which only leaves one purpose for this skill: learning new languages. Since that doesn’t require any rolling, it seems obvious to me that this skill has no justification for remaining in the game. But how, then, should a character learn new languages? In D&D 3.5 this was handled by spending a skill point, but that hardly makes sense. Normally, spending a single skill point allows you to become roughly 5% more likely to succeed at a given task. So why should skill points suddenly become so potent when it comes to learning new languages? And as I learned with The Owlbear, there aren’t even enough official languages in the game to support this system to its logical conclusion.

Additionally, why should characters be allowed to learn languages so quickly? I’m not suggesting that we force players to waste in-game years learning languages in pursuit of realism, but why not attempt a middle ground? A character who wishes to learn a new language must either be traveling with someone who speaks the language fluently, or must purchase a book for 10gp which teaches the language. The character must spend 8 hours of light activity studying the language each day (during which time they cannot craft magical items or perform other tasks). After 1 month, they gain enough of an understanding of the language to read, and hold conversations.

Judgement: House rule this out of the game. Languages can be learned by spending time resources, rather than skill resources.

Knowledge and Linguistics both ran a little long, and the next skill on the block is a doozy, so only two skills for this post!

Handle Animal (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post): Before I start talking about this skill, I’d like to point out that it does not grant a character the ability to improve an animal’s attitude towards the party–that’s a class skill which is possessed by Rangers and Druids. I mention this not to be patronizing, but because I myself made that mistake. I went so far as to write an entire critique of it before realizing my error.

With that out of the way: I don’t like this skill. As best as I can determine, it’s simply intended as a time-sink. Handle Animal presents a remarkably complicated system for spending a week at a time attempting to train a domesticated animal to perform a trick. If you fail, you can simply spend another week, make another roll, and try again to teach your dog to sit. Once trained, either through luck or attrition, another check will be required each time you wish the animal to perform that trick.

Now, I will freely admit that I am not an ‘animal person.’ If I’m being completely honest, I kind of hate animals. And if their barking, hissing, and chattering is any indication, animals don’t really like me either. I’m fine with that. They stay away from me, I stay away from them. But I do know people who like animals, and based on what I’ve heard from them, this model isn’t really an accurate representation of what it’s like to train an creature. It strikes me that a much better method of training animals would be to allow any character who wants to train an animal to do it in a set amount of time. Perhaps that amount of time can even be modified by their charisma bonus. More difficult tricks could be taught if the character had a the “Handle Animal” feat. Perhaps there could also be a limit on the number of animals you could domesticate, which would be raised when a character took the feat.

Judgement: House Rule this skill out of the game, and allow players to train animals as they please. Rangers and Druids can use the Diplomacy skill, rather than Handle Animal, for their Wild Empathy checks. (Both would gain it as a class skill)(Though, I have my problems with Wild Empathy as well.)

Heal (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post): I’ve always been somewhat dubious on the usefulness of the heal skill. It is not potent enough for a party to feel safe adventuring without a cleric, and if the party does have a cleric, magical healing makes the skill almost completely useless. However, there will always be times in the heat of battle when the cleric is out of range, or perhaps even unconscious themselves. And if the party does decide to go adventuring without a cleric to aid them, then I’m sure they’d rather have the heal skill than nothing at all. In the absence of a clear solution, let’s break the skill down into its various functions to see if they will better illuminate the usefulness, or lack thereof, of heal.

The primary use of heal is to stabilize dying characters. Whether or not this will be needed frequently depends largely on what kind of game the GM runs, and how methodical the players are. It may never come up at all, or it may come up all the time. I can’t think of a more entertaining way to pretend to bandage someone, so the skill doesn’t circumvent fun. But is it necessary that the action’s success is uncertain? I’m tempted to simply allow all characters, or at least those with heal as a class skill, the ability to stabilize adjacent characters automatically with a standard action. In my experience, however, a player dropping below 0 HP is a moment of excitement for the party. Everybody is worried that the bleeding character will die, and those adjacent to him must make a choice: do they attempt to help their fallen comrade stabilize, or do they try to end the battle quickly so they can devote their full attention to the dying character? It’s a tense decision. An exciting decision! A decision whose impact might be lost if there was no chance that the player might fail to stabilize their companion. Though the check might be a little too easy. Perhaps 10 + [current # of HP below 0] would be a more appropriate DC for the heal check?

Long-term care and treating wounds from Caltrops etc. are both a little silly, since neither would be performed in battle. So a character with 1 rank in the skill (and at least 12 Wisdom) can automatically succeed at either of these tasks by taking 10 on their roll. So neither of those can justify the skill on their own. Allowing characters to “Tread Deadly Wounds” doesn’t seem to add much value to the game, to my thinking, but I have no real problem with it so long as it isn’t harming the game. Lastly, treat poison and treat disease are both solid abilities.

Judgement: I had honestly expected that I would recommend this skill be house ruled out of the game, but after consideration, it seems as though it is useful enough to be left in the game in pretty much its current form. I would say, however, that it could use a bit of a redesign.

Intimidate (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post): Intimidate is the third NPC interaction skill, with the first two being bluff and diplomacy. As I mentioned when I covered those skills: I think there really ought to be a social resolution mechanic which is completely independent from the skills system. But since I’ve said this all before, I won’t bother going over it again. Such a system would be, after all, a large deviation from the rules, and not something I could cover briefly here. In the absence of such a system, my solution for both bluff and diplomacy was to require multiple checks for each interaction, and to place more emphasis on circumstance bonuses from role playing.

My solution for Intimidate is to remove it from the game completely.

Intimidate is probably one of the most ridiculous skills in the game. It honestly makes no sense whatsoever. Consider this scenario: you are a humble bartender. One day, a 9ft tall human barbarian starts a fight with some other patrons. Things turn ugly, and the barbarian starts punching people hard enough to smash their brain pans. Dead bodies are starting to pile up, but the barbarian’s rage is just getting started. He draws his axe and cuts your husband in half. He then grabs your 2 year old child by the head, and holds the child up in front of you. “GIVE ME A FREE DRINK OR I’LL CRUSH THE CHILD UNTIL ITS BRAINS OOZE BETWEEN MY FINGERS!” the barbarian shouts.

“No free drinks!” you reply. “And you’ll have to pay for those tables you smashed!”

Where did you find such courage? Well, the barbarian used charisma as a dump stat, never put any points into intimidate, and only rolled a 1 on his check. Even with the generous +16 circumstance modifier the GM gave him, he failed to overcome your five levels of expert, and wisdom score of 14. Obviously this is an extreme example, but my point is that there are lots of was to be scary: large muscles, brandished weapons, flashy spells, etc. Having the skill tied to charisma makes no sense. Allowing characters to take a feat to substitute their strength makes even less sense, since the feat’s existence seems to acknowledge the problem, yet attempts to solve it by forcing players to jump through a ridiculous hoop.

I don’t see why intimidation requires a resolution mechanic at all, actually. It seems to me as though this kind of thing is best handled by the GM’s own judgement. A mechanic is useful for diplomacy and bluff because those actions represent a kind of subtle combat. The player is attempting to influence an NPC with a series of lies, or arguments which are built one atop another, all while the NPC is trying to look out for their own best interests. Intimidation is not quite so refined. When you put a sword to an orc’s throat and tell it to stop kicking a puppy, there are two possibilities: either the orc cowers in fear, or it attempts to attack. That’s a pretty simple decision for the GM to make on their own.

And for those cases where intimidation is part of a more amicable, subtle kind of discussion, just make it a circumstance bonus for a diplomacy roll. Rename diplomacy to “influence” if that makes you more comfortable.

Judgement: House rule this skill out of the game. Handle it either with GM arbitration, or as a circumstance bonus to a diplomacy/influence roll.

Disable Device (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post): Disable Devices has always seemed, to me, to be one of the most solid skills in the game. But, in recent months I’ve started to notice its flaws more and more. For picking locks, it works fine. Though I dislike the fact that “you should always take 20 when picking locks” is a kind of unwritten rule. It’s crap like that which serves as a barrier to new players trying to understand the game. As a lover of rogues myself, it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that the skill was balanced around taking 20. It’s almost as though the game is trying to force you to learn to manipulate the system. But the simple solution to that is just to inform your rogue players that they’ll want to take 20.

The real conundrum with Disable Device is traps. Sometimes the skill makes perfect sense as a means of disabling the trap. Other times, the players can simply tell you how they want to disable a trap. If you really wanted, the GM could even go so far as to come up with a mechanism for how each trap works, and let rogue players actually try to figure out how to bypass traps. But if you do that, then the skill is unnecessary. And if you only use the skill roll for some traps (like pressure plates, or doorknob needle-traps) but not for other traps (like trip wires), then where do you draw the line?

I’m honestly not positive about how I want to handle Disable Device in the future. For now, I’m trying to give my players more opportunities to figure out traps on their own, to see if that’s something that will even work at the table. But, if players prefer to make a disable device check, I’m not going to force them to do anything.

Judgement: Could use some refinement and there should never be “suppressed rules,” but is otherwise a solid skill.  Could possibly be made more interesting, but I am not yet sure.

Disguise (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post): One of the major flaws with the skills system is that not all skills are created equal. Some skills will be needed three or more times per play session, while other skills may only be needed once every two or three play session. Some skills might have a major impact on play, while other skills impact the game in more subtle ways. Some skills even provide small tactical advantages in combat, while most simply don’t. It’s not a perfect system, but so long as everything remains within a standard deviation of usefulness, the game works itself out. I’ve never met a player who felt they needed to put ranks in acrobatics, simply because it makes it easier to move through an enemy’s square.

But disguise doesn’t fall within that standard deviation. It is an outlier–an extreme outlier. Disguising yourself is less of a general skill, and more of a specific plan. It comes up so infrequently that I honestly can’t remember the last time I had a player use it, aside from that one sorceress who thought it was hilarious to disguise herself as the prince just to see whether or not she could fool the palace guards. Disguise painfully fails the ‘frequency of use’ test. If you absolutely must have it as a skill in your game, consider merging it with bluff. But I don’t understand why this needs to be a skill at all.

Lets say the players attempt to disguise themselves as guards. That is probably the most common way of disguising one’s self in a fantasy adventure game. Either the players have access to guard uniforms, or they don’t. If the players don’t have guard uniforms, then it’s going to be damned difficult for them to disguise themselves as guards. They might be able to convince someone that they are guards, but that would be handled by bluff, not disguise. Yet if they rolled a 20, they could (ostensibly) throw some cheap paint on a burlap sack, and nobody would question whether or not it was a guard’s uniform.

I think a far better idea would be to allow all players to disguise themselves with a basic level of competency. For more difficult disguises, there can be a “Chameleon” feat available, which allows players to disguise themselves even if they lack the materials which would normally be necessary, or to disguise themselves as a specific, recognizable person. (For example: they could disguise themselves as the king just convincingly enough to fool a guard who has only met the king a few times.)

Judgement: House rule this skill out of the game. Allow all players to disguise themselves, and make a feat available to anyone who wants to improve their ability.

Escape Artist (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post): It’s kinda awkward for me when two skills with essentially the same problem appear right next to each other. It seems as though I’m repeating myself, because all that stuff I said about Disguise? It applies to Escape Artist as well. This is a skill which rarely comes up in the game because it is only useful in stupidly specific situations. Just how often are the players going to be bound, manacled, or in a tight space? Hint: if it’s happening often enough to justify this skill, then it’s happening too often. The only other use for Escape Artist is to escape from a grapple, but it’s only the secondary method of performing that task. It’s as though they were writing the grapple rules, and realized “Oh, hey, if people have points in Escape Artist, they’ll wonder why they can’t use that to escape.”

The worst part about this skill is that if you take a moment to break down the mechanic, you realize that the entire thing is absolutely meaningless, even in those few situations when it would ostensibly be useful. Unless a character is pressed for time or actively being threatened, they can simply take 20 on their roll. And while you can probably imagine a few situations where a character would be pressed for time, or threatened, those few situations would be even more uncommon than being bound, manacled, or in a tight space in the first place. When a character takes 20, they’ve done the absolute best that they can possibly do. So either the character succeeds and frees themselves from the bonds, or fails and the bonds are proven to be impossible to wiggle free from.

Which brings me to another problem with Escape Artist: it’s not even comprehensive! You would think that when a skill is only useful in an extremely specific situation, it would at least cover that situation thoroughly, but Escape Artist doesn’t. It only counts if you’re attempting to wiggle your way free of bonds, not if you’re attempting to break them with sheer strength, or cut them on a nearby blade. So why not simply combine Escape Artist into Acrobatics, if it must be a skill at all?

Personally, I like -C’s thoughts on this skill. Make “Escape Artist” a class skill of some kind for rogues and monks. Everyone else can either take an “Escape Artist” feat, or try to escape using their wits.

Judgement: House rule this skill out of the game. Make it available as a feat for players if they wish–it could even have a 100% success rate. Otherwise, let players attempt to figure out a method of escape themselves, rather than forcing them to rely on a fun-neutral die roll.

Fly (Full Description on PFSRD)(-C’s Post): Who the fuck thought this was a good idea? I’m not even going to dignify this one with a thorough write up.

All I’m going to say is that Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, and all the editions prior to it that I’m aware of, had a very simple system for handling flight maneuverability. It was called, “maneuverability,” and creatures could be either perfect, good, average, poor, or clumsy. It was an elegant solution, and I never wanted anything better. Yet, for some reason, Paizo decided that we needed another completely useless movement skill, like “Swim,” and to a lesser degree, “Climb.”

Judgement: This is the single worst change Paizo made to the game. House rule this skill out, and house rule the D&D 3.5 maneuverability system in.