Tome of Prowess (3.5e Sourcebook)/Playing the Skills Game

This is just a skeleton of this chapter for now. Eventually it will have in depth explanations of the various skill interactions in the infiltration game, suggestions on how to get the most out of your skills, such as how to combine them to achieve stronger effects, how to use them to protect your weak defenses, and so on.

The Combat Game

The combat game consists of a lot more than just hitting your foe over and over again until they fall down. There's tactical positioning, status effects to apply or remove, enemy action restriction or denial, healing, and plenty of other concerns that are often more important than just hitting the guy in front of you. The revised skills in this sourcebook allow many classes to affect aspects of a battle that previously didn't worry about, and thus contribute more to their party as a result.

Skills as Mobility

Getting to your enemy is almost a prerequisite for being able to fight them, and there are several new or updated ways to do that with the Tome of Prowess. The acrobatics skill allows you to reach your enemies over water or air, and at higher levels you can even fight them reliably on these things without falling. More entertainingly, the acrobatics skill allows you to use other objects, like arrows or spears or balista bolts, as temporary "mounts" to reach whatever destination they were aimed at. They require a bit of assistance to use, since you can't throw them yourself in most cases, but they are an exceedingly fast way to travel when available.

The athletics skill allows you to climb and swim, and allows you to maintain your position while you fight creatures fairly reliably from even mid levels, provided you're not trying to use a large weapon. Even two-handed weapons and shields are eventually available through this skill, allowing you to fight more or less comfortably within liquids, while walking up walls, or even across the ceiling at high levels.

The rather straightforward jump skill, however, can easily be overlooked in tactical positioning situations. The ability to exceed your base move coupled with the ability to ignore interposing terrain and obstacles because you're traveling over them makes jump a very versatile skill for on the ground fights. It is also possible to jump up to reach flying creatures, allowing you to use that sword or axe you invested in rather than swapping out for a and then use your swords as handholds while you fly around on their backs.

Skills as Offense

Several skills allow you to do new things to your enemies, to break down defenses that used to thwart the skilled classes, or to do things to them in different ways. The legerdemain skill does far more than just allow you to steal things unnoticed. It allows you to stab someone, with a knife or dagger that might happen to be covered in poison, without anyone around seeing it. At higher levels, you can steal their weapons and hide them from them, even in the middle of combat if there's a compelling reason to disarm them.

Intimidate for shake morale

Dowsing / perception for enemy detection and illusion piercing

Psychology for

Skills as Defenses

Bluff for head starts on escapes

Concentration = backup will save

Endurance = backup fortitude save

Escape Artistry = backup reflex save

Perception = illusion piercer

Analysis, Affability, Intimidation, etc = status effect dispellers

The Infiltration Game

Sometimes it's not feasible or desirable to just kill or run off everything that's between you and your goal. Enter the infiltration game. An infiltration generally means that you need to avoid or defelct encounters along the way to your objective. There are a few ways to go about that in D&D, though for some reaon simple stealth seems to be exclusively used. In this section we'll go through two methods of obtaining access without alerting the enemy, and discuss how they work with the revised skills.

The Stealth Mini-Game

Ah, the stealth mini-game. The game that people almost always mean when they talk about sneaking into a place. The stealth game runs in a much more narrative fashion with Tome of Prowess skills

Combining Skills

Lots of skills actually get better when you use them with other ones. Here are a few of the more obvious ones.

Acrobatics + Endurance = less time limited water / air walk.

Athletics + Endurance = less time limited, as well as faster, climbing / swimming

Jump + Endurance = significantly faster overland travel

Acrobatics + Jump + Endurance = basically really fast flight.

Disguise + Bluff = immitation