Posted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 3:32 am
Depends on all sorts of things.
If you have "basic competency" taxes in your skill list, they need to be all taken and have points left over. But really, that shit should be free with a class package, like BAB and Saves are.
If you can super-specialise in one skill, or can spread points out over more skills, it depends if those still work when spread out, what specialising even means. In the real world having lots of specialists works better, but in an adventuring party of maybe 3 people doing a "saving the world" scene without immediate outside input, you need to reward generalists quite heavily so that things can work at all, to the point of functionally banning realistic specialists.
It depends what cooperation does, how overlapping skills function. Like 3e uses the best of everyone's Spot and the worst of everyone's Move Silently, which means one spotter and no fucking point at all in taking Move Silently, ever. But other skills you get a bonus if someone can help a bit, so you shouldn't do that if you want characters to have different skills and less choices each, but you should if you want characters to have the same skills and more choices each.
So design your skill system, get it putting out game-useful results off minimal rolls with a similar set of bonuses (or extra dice or whatever other mechanics), and then work out how to build a functional party of 3 after that. Unlike what 3e seems to have done, where they gave out 2 skill points and then tried to think of things to spend them on.
If you have "basic competency" taxes in your skill list, they need to be all taken and have points left over. But really, that shit should be free with a class package, like BAB and Saves are.
If you can super-specialise in one skill, or can spread points out over more skills, it depends if those still work when spread out, what specialising even means. In the real world having lots of specialists works better, but in an adventuring party of maybe 3 people doing a "saving the world" scene without immediate outside input, you need to reward generalists quite heavily so that things can work at all, to the point of functionally banning realistic specialists.
It depends what cooperation does, how overlapping skills function. Like 3e uses the best of everyone's Spot and the worst of everyone's Move Silently, which means one spotter and no fucking point at all in taking Move Silently, ever. But other skills you get a bonus if someone can help a bit, so you shouldn't do that if you want characters to have different skills and less choices each, but you should if you want characters to have the same skills and more choices each.
So design your skill system, get it putting out game-useful results off minimal rolls with a similar set of bonuses (or extra dice or whatever other mechanics), and then work out how to build a functional party of 3 after that. Unlike what 3e seems to have done, where they gave out 2 skill points and then tried to think of things to spend them on.