Talk:Tome of Prowess (3.5e Sourcebook)

Comment on Skill Point Assignment

Haven't read through the whole thing yet (mainly because it's not all here, heh), but I've looked over the acrobatics section and I really like what you've done so far! Keep up the good work. Would this use more the PF skill system where there are no cross-class skills, but traditional class skills gain a +3 bonus if you've invested ranks in them? That way you could let fighters tumble if they wanted to in order to keep up with flying wizards at higher levels without having to buy skills at 1/2 the rate (yuck) --Ghostwheel 22:21, January 7, 2010 (UTC)

You could use that, but I'm not planning on writing that in. Mostly because I intensely dislike the difference between being trained and not trained to be only +3. As written it uses standard class and cross class max ranks, but each rank is purchased for 1 skill point each. I want people who have the skill as a class skill to be substantially better than those without it at higher level, but since I know you don't share that goal you're welcome to do otherwise. - TarkisFlux 22:40, January 7, 2010 (UTC)

I babbled about something related over at TGD, and wanted to expand on my decision to not do what you suggested above / what pathfinder does. I'm going for a system where you care about skill access in the same way that spellcasters care about spell access. Giving everyone the same rank limit, where you get +3 if it's a class skill and you invest in it, causes problems in that setup. It sets people who don't have the skill as a class skill behind by all of 3 levels. It would be similar to saying that a wizard got every spell on the cleric list, they just used up a slot between 1 and 2 levels higher. That's not a situation I want at all. I want high level ability differences, and you can only get that if you allow differing ability growth rates so that one outpaces the other (or set the class / not-class disparity to very large, which I'm not interested in).

I'm not opposed to your suggestion in the default skill system, but that's because I don't think skill access is on the same level as access to other ability sets in that setup. And since it stops beings as important as other ability sets around level 5 anyway, where the gap is only +4 anyway, the +3 bonus for class skills is pretty fair. It totally opens up new character concepts, which is a good thing in this case since there's no strong balance reasons to protect these things. So I think it'll work well enough in a regular game or your Grimoire setup, it just leads to behavior I don't want here because of the different value assigned to skills. - TarkisFlux 01:17, April 28, 2010 (UTC)

Concentration

What would concentration be under this system? Especially for things like the Diamond Mind discipline? --Ghostwheel 22:46, April 9, 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand your question. Concentration is still in, but was changed to a Wis skill. Does that break something in Diamond Mind or does the extra utility lead to odd things I'm not thinking about? - TarkisFlux 23:53, April 9, 2010 (UTC)

The reason I mentioned Diamond Mind explicitly is because Concentration is often used there due to the fact that you can bump it to higher levels through items and similar things. Without that, things like Insightful Strike (and the Greater version) become much worse, as do Sapphire, Ruby, and Diamond Nightmare Blade. --Ghostwheel 21:54, April 14, 2010 (UTC)

Ok I think I got ya, though that looks more like an item boost concern than a concentration specific one. I'm not going to change my stand on item limits or make some exception that makes them even more complicated than they already are to address this. If you think the reduced item bonuses make the maneuver suck (and it probably does in these cases), I'd recommend you just write it in as a bonus to your roll when using that type of ability. I'd go with half initiator level or (if I wanted the bonus to not scale with level) plain old maneuver level. - TarkisFlux 04:06, April 15, 2010 (UTC)

I think even full IL could work, and be a bonus that only works on maneuvers. No chance of writing it in? --Ghostwheel 04:16, April 15, 2010 (UTC)

It won't get written into items at all, but will probably get a system wide note in one of the later chapters eventually. Just not anytime soon. Non-core subsystem compatibility (ToB, ToM, MoI, etc.) is well down the To Do list and I want to take a closer look at those before I write in anything official. This was just off the top of my head, and I haven't really considered what it does to the game, I just thought those numbers would plug the new item hole. - TarkisFlux 04:40, April 15, 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good. Since skills increase at 1 per level (barring ability bonuses, which people don't always apply to secondary scores), they scale more slowly than attack rolls and the like what with magic items and other such things around. Thinking about it some more and doing some more of the math, I think adding one's IL to the check when using maneuvers would work well. --Ghostwheel 11:08, April 30, 2010 (UTC)

Wait, what? That skill rank increase rate hasn't changed, the only thing that has is what sort of item bonuses and other bs bonuses you can add on to it. And while I can see that approaching IL for lower levels where item boosts are cheap, I'm not seeing those bonuses coming out to IL at higher levels. Mind writing that out? - TarkisFlux 17:40, April 30, 2010 (UTC)

At higher levels, a non-ToP character is going to take the magic items needed to boost their specific skill check sky-high to make sure it always succeeds so that they're not completely wasting attacks. At low levels however, they're not going to be able to afford those items, so the bonus is going to be lower. Furthermore, many characters are going to focus on their ability score that gives them bonuses to attack in general, rather than one like Constitution for Concentration.

Thus, at level 20 (where the difference is largest, and can be seen most clearly), a "normal" character might have a Concentration modifier of 57 (23 (Rank) + 4 (Constitution) + 30 (Item)) while without the above, a ToP character would just have 27. However, at level 20 a character might have an attack bonus of 37 (12 (Str) + 5 (Magic) + 20 (BAB)).

By giving the boost equal to IL to a character on key skills when initiating strikes, you allow them to emulate similar characters in that they start out relatively weak and are unable to always back strikes with skills (in the case of things like Ruby Nightmare Blade), while at high levels they land the skill portion of such strikes with ease. --Ghostwheel 19:56, April 30, 2010 (UTC)

Forgot that skill items went up to +30 before epic, so fair enough on that. It'll probably wind up being character level instead of IL though to keep the same dip utility it had before. - TarkisFlux 20:14, April 30, 2010 (UTC)

Propertizing

Can someone who knows the wiki more than me set up a Tome of Prowess Skills property for classes to have, and maybe a block to copypasta that sets them all as class skills? Thanks, I'd appreciate having this since I want to reference this in stuff I'm writing. --IGTN 05:36, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

This I can do, but I'm going to delay until I'm more conscious. Also, I want to ponder whether it makes sense to stick ToP skills in the regular property or make a new ToPSkill property. - Tarkisflux 07:48, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

I've seen properties hold multiple roles depending on where they are used. But since they are to be used alongside normal skills, it might make more sense to have TomeSkill. This is a part of the Tome system, no? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Havvy (talk • contribs) at

Yes and no. It's written assuming that you're not using any other Tome material, but designed to be compatible with them if you wanted to use them. If you are using Tome classes, they don't generally need the same boost or the same number of skill points.

Anyway, yeah it gets it's own property. Drop this into the table after the regular skill set if you want them both IGTN, or just replace the regular skill set with this one if you don't.

|- class="noalt"
| colspan="42" class="skill" |
'''Class Skills, Tome of Prowess Variant (### per level, ×4 at 1st level)'''<br/>
{{ToP Skill|Acrobatics}}
{{ToP Skill|Affability}}
{{ToP Skill|Appraisal}}
{{ToP Skill|Arcana}}
{{ToP Skill|Athletics}}
{{ToP Skill|Bluff}}
{{ToP Skill|Ciphers}}
{{ToP Skill|Concentration}}
{{ToP Skill|Creature Handling}}
{{ToP Skill|Cultures}}
{{ToP Skill|Devices}}
{{ToP Skill|Disguise}}
{{ToP Skill|Dowsing}}
{{ToP Skill|Endurance}}
{{ToP Skill|Enigmas}}
{{ToP Skill|Escape Artistry}}
{{ToP Skill|Geomancy}}
{{ToP Skill|Healing}}
{{ToP Skill|Intimidation}}
{{ToP Skill|Jump}}
{{ToP Skill|Legerdemain}}
{{ToP Skill|Perception}}
{{ToP Skill|Psychology}}
{{ToP Skill|Stealth}}
{{ToP Skill|Survival}}
{{ToP Skill|Thaumaturgy}}

Wheee. You may also want to add some commas in there. - Tarkisflux 17:04, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Human bonus skills?

Do humans still gain bonus skill points? Isn't that overpowered?----Parakee 14:30, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

They do. And no, not really. They're effectively trading being good at an extra thing (or a couple of side things) for being exceptionally good at a thing or two through racial bonuses. Broad training over specialization basically. Specialization matters less after a few levels because of masterwork skill items, but broad training matters less when skill items show up and people can just buy skill additional skills if they really need or want them. It basically all works out. - Tarkisflux 16:58, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Psion?

What happened to psions? What is the equivalent of psicraft?

I consider psionics an expansion set, like martial maneuvers and truenaming. As such it's not presently included, but it is scheduled for an appendix. Arcana is probably the closest if you just wanted to steal one, and already Int based, but there's some weirdness in that the Wilder is supposed to use the same skill and I wanted them to have a bonus to their casting skill. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 19:01, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Rating

	Parakee likes this article and rated it 3 of 4.
	This makes skills matter. No one really cares about there skills without this once they've 5th level. Now they do. Now mundane characters can actually compete with arcane spell casters. I do think skill feats should be made for this, but besides that I'll give it a thumbs up.

Alchemy?

Can you add it? Maybe let you brew potions with it?--Parakee^Talk 22:50, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Or really just craft. Can craft fit anywhere? I want my PCs to be able to craft things.--Parakee^Talk 22:50, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Then let them do that (see here). Seriously, just let them. Go ahead and use the old craft guidelines if you need to set some sort of time limits on things, but I'd honestly just handwave it and let people turn time and money into other stuff during downtime based on background skills.

The longer (and less dismissive) form of an answer to that request is that Craft is incredibly problematic in the scope of ToP. Crafting just doesn't work on the same value scale as the other skills here. Short of letting people craft magical items with the craft skill (which has associated skill rank vs. feat cost issues that I'm not interested in resolving), there is no way to make investing more than a rank or two into the skill worth your time. And without any other growth of the skill out of the mundane, those two ranks become increasingly more valuable for other skills as you level since you could have put them into other skills and gotten level appropriate power out of them. There's also no reason at all for craft to be tied to level, and doing so reduces the number of stories that can be told in the game without adding anything beneficial.

I'm working on a large crafting revision that will eventually get dropped in here, but it's not ready yet. You're welcome to check it out and fill in the blanks if you want to though. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 00:36, 22 July 2011 (UTC)