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

This chapter is going to be somewhat redundant with the actual skills. This is intentional. There are a lot of changes here, and some of them are worth mentioning in a more conversational way so that the possibilities don't get lost.

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 once thwarted the skilled classes, or to do things to them in different ways. Because it needs to be allow you to mimic oddly sized and shaped creatures to retain its relevance at higher levels, the disguise skill is a rather large source of offensive abilities. Additional attacks, threatened melee range, and more are available to those who know how to operate such a costume. You don't even have to try to make it look like anything real if you don't want to.

Dowsing is largely a non-combat skill, but the sense presence ability has very extensive combat applications. Invisibility and stealth are substantially harder to use against someone who can close their eyes and sense your approach or strike at the right square.

Intimidation is one of the more obviously aggressive skills in the game, with some rather obvious combat applications. The shake resolve ability allows you to just frighten foes away, and the bonuses and rushing penalties are designed such that you can just scare a group off immediately after you kill one of them. The new orders ability is less useful in combat, having some reasonably annoying penalties for its use there, but can be effective at just ordering people out of your way in the right circumstances.

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.

Perception is another skill with many non-combat applications that still has very useful combat abilities. The simple notice check is important for detecting people who would rather hide their approach from you. See the invisible, hear the silenced is a great ability to actively negate the defenses of others, while the improved Sight beyond sight is a passive version that functions to weaken illusions in the same way. The discern transformation ability is useful in target spotting, but does little to improve your offense without abilities to take advantage of the information.

The psychology skill is primarily a defensive and non-combat skill, but has a useful combat ability in Before they know it themselves. It provides a substantial bonus against a single target, and so functions very well in a duel.

Stealth is also an extremely effective offensive skill in the right circumstances. Since you don't need cover to sneak up on a foe with Avoid detection, you can get the drop on enemies just by stacking the odds in your favor. Picking conditions that limit your foes' senses and staying out of sight until the fight has begun so that your foes are extremely distracted are wonderful ways to leave them unaware of your attack and flatfooted against it. Sniping from cover is also an excellent option for those with ranks in stealth.

Lastly, there are several skills that fill the space previously filled by use magic device, and all of these can increase your offensive potential substantially under the right circumstances. The arcana skill can be substitute for a high attribute score if the item requires it to function. Ciphers allows you to decode and then use any spell completion item that you run across. The dungeoneering skill allows you to mimic class features, including class lists, and gain access to spell trigger items like wands. Geomancy allows you to use items designed for other races. The thaumaturgy skill allows you to use items designed for those with a different alignment. And if you have no idea what an item is or does, or no more relevant skill to fall back on, the cultures skill will allow you to throw random activation actions at an item until it works blindly.

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 render defective encounters along the way to your objective. There are a few ways to go about that in D&D, though for some reason 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