Todays fact is brought to you by the smell of wood smoke, Pumpkinator, Flight of the Conchords and potato soup. At this point in time your character is just about built. Youve got your Abilities, your modifiers. You have your various Armor Classes (mostly) filled in. You know how where you stand in terms of HP. And, hey, youve learned some terms. Con, Dex, AC, etc. But now is where it gets complicated. Not because of any trick of mechanics- the mechanics here are very, very simple. No, the reason its about to get complicated is because the choices youre about to make can either make or break any variety of situations for your character and, quite possibly, your entire party of fellow adventurers. What am I talking about? Feats and skills. Now, on paper, feats and skills are “different,” sure. But they are only different because of one subtle reason. Heres how it works. Every character has skills and feats. Every single one. Skills, which youll see in a somewhat confusing list on the right-hand side of the first page of any D&D 3.5 or Pathfinder character sheet (unless youre using a ridiculous expanded sheet like I do for Pathfinder- 12 pages FTW), are both universal and class-specific. Any character can have any skill, but it comes at a cost, while any character can easily bone up on their class-specific skills. In each class description for both D&D and Pathfinder, youll find a list of class skills. Things like Climb, Swim, Craft, Knowledge, Survival, Heal. Youll also find a formula for how many skill points you get both to start and then again at each level as you go forward. For example, a Ranger recieves 6 points plus their Int modifier times 4 to start- so if their Intelligence is 18, then they will start with 40 skill points. Then, with each level they gain they will receive 10 skill points to spend. Spending a skill point is fairly simple- choose a skill that you want to get better at. You will then use your skill points to purchase ranks in that particular skill. If it a skill native to your class, or a skill which is universal (it will be marked accordingly on your character sheet), then 1 point equals 1 rank in that skill. If it is not a class or universal skill for your character, then you can spend a minimum of 2 points to get 1 rank, because a skill thats not class-specific or universal is viewed as being particularly difficult for your character to understand and thus more effort is required to learn it. For example, a D&D 3.5 Barbarian isnt likely to have a deep knowledge of arcana, history, etc., so they would have to burn 2 points to get one rank in that skill. Whatever points you accrue are helped by the fact that each skill is assigned to a specific Ability score and thus using those skills will benefit from the addition of its matching Ability score modifier. For example, if I have an 18 Int and have 4 ranks in some Craft skill, then any time I roll to use that skill (1d20), I will add my skill score to it, which makes my roll 1d20 + 8. Not too shabby. Feats, on the other hand, are slightly different. While skills are something you use somewhat passively, feats are things that affect your performance in combat and arent used quite the same way. If youre a video game lover, think of feats as a sort of buff. Each class has a set feat progression, meaning that they get X number of feats to choose at 1st level, then they get X number of feats at certain levels. Typically a class gets 1 feat at 1st level, then a second at 2nd level, then one feat at levels 4, 6, 8, etc. But some races will grant you extra feats as well. Being human grants you an extra feat in both D&D and Pathfinder simply because humans are the jack-of-all-trades race for these games. But the kicker is that feats are very specific in application, and you often cant just pick a feat. Many feats have prerequisites- some will require you to meet minimum Ability score requirements, such as a 13 Str or higher. Others will require you to have other feats in order to qualify- like Power Attack, Cleave and Greater Cleave. And to make it even pickier, feats tend to be permanent things. To my knowledge, a feats permanence is part of the core rulebooks for both games and, honestly, any DM/GM who allows a player to go back on their feats is probably not worth playing under. Choose your skills and feats with care. Youll find detailed descriptions of all the feats for both D&D and Pathfinder, as well as descriptions of classes. But either way, resign yourself to one thing: for your first few characters, youll probably wind up disliking your feats and skills within the first four sessions. And thats okay. Stick around for tomorrow. Were learning about alignments, and why they can make a game unbelievably challenging (and thus more fun).
Posted on: Sat, 26 Oct 2013 07:18:37 +0000
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