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

Playing the Skills Game

This chapter is going to be somewhat redundant with the actual skills, and this is intentional. There are a lot of changes on the player side in this work, and some of them are worth mentioning in a more conversational way so that the possibilities don't get lost in the technical bits. And for those players who have never thought about the skill system in this way, this section should help to make the new options a little more accessible.

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 the success of 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 ballista 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.

Escape artistry, while generally a skill used out of combat, has some applications that make navigating the battlefield easier. Any temporary barrier, and even those barriers made permanent through magic, may simply be ignored for those with sufficient skill. Those truly skilled in the skill can ignore just about everything on the field, slipping directly from one space to another regardless of interposing hazards.

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 as handholds while you fly around on their backs, rather than swapping out for a ranged weapon of some sort.

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.

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 or reduce their combat ability, 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.

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 enigmas 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, though such an activation is not without risk.

Skills as Defenses

There are also new options for avoiding or deflecting abilities used against you. Affability and creature handling have abilities that allow you to hold off attacks from different types of creatures, delaying the start of an encounter or allowing you to talk your way out of it. The bluff has an ability designed specifically to help you make your escape, by getting an unobserved move action with which to start running. These abilities can be used in the same round, by different members of your party even, to stop and avoid an encounter before it starts without taking the time to talk things down.

Dowsing is largely a non-combat skill, but has some very extensive combat applications. Dowsers can defeat invisibility and stealth used against them, since you really can just close your eyes and sense their approach or strike at the right square.

Perception is another skill with many non-combat applications that still has very useful combat abilities. It is the primary skill for detecting people who would rather hide their approach from you. It allows you to actively ignore illusions affecting a single sense, and is a great way to negate the defenses of those who rely on them. Eventually it offers a passive ability to defeat illusions or to spot those who are utilizing an alternate form. These are useful in target spotting, but do little to improve your offense without abilities to take advantage of the information.

Several skills allow you to take actions even after failing a debilitating save, or even fight the effect off entirely. Under the right circumstances concentration serves as a backup will save, endurance as a backup fortitude save, and escape artistry as a backup reflex save. Even partial actions matter when they're all that's standing between you and attacking your friends or dissolving into a pile of goo. The ciphers skill also has an ability that simply allows an additional save against symbols and similar things, even if they don't normally allow one.

Lastly, a number of skills allow you to remove status effects from party members. The appraisal skill allows you to talk companions out of confusion and fascination effects. Affability allows you to remove morale, emotion, and rage effects from people who'd like to use them against you. The healing skill allows you to remove a wide array of physically debilitating effects. With the intimidation skill you can remove fear effects from your party members, possibly by slapping their head straight. You can't use these skills on yourself though, so it's still important to make your save.

Combining Skills

There are several skills in this work that enhance one another, often enabling advanced or longer usage.

Endurance is the most obvious example of this synergy. In conjunction with acrobatics, it enables a user to spend more time walking on water, clouds, or air. When paired with athletics, it allows for faster climbing and swimming in addition to extending the time that can be spent doing these things. Since jump allows you to move faster than your base rate would allow, pairing it with endurance allows you to jump longer and increases your overland movement rate.

Combining acrobatics with jump allows you to land a jump on the water, clouds, or air. The latter looks a lot like flight, as you simply flit quickly from spot to spot in the sky. These two abilities can also be combined with endurance to grant a flight-like ability that functions over long distances, enabling overland flight.

Disguise will allow you to look like other people, but you can't convince others that you actually are them. Bluff, on the other hand, will allow you to imitate people but not look anything like them. The two skills are required together to effectively imitate an individual.

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

When people talk about sneaking into a place, they are almost always referring to the stealth mini-game. Slipping in and out without the enemy even seeing a stray shadow is a powerful image in most gaming circles, and one that is well supported within this sourcebook. The stealth game runs in a much more narrative fashion with Tome of Prowess skills, since players are expected to take 10 with their abilities where appropriate, and this leads to more declarations of "I sneak up behind him" than "I roll for sneaking, how for do I get?"

Because of the way the DCs are set by those doing the sneaking, and detected by those attempting to notice, it is pretty easy for

The "Walk Right In" Mini-Game

There is an alternative to the stealth mini-game of course, and we refer to it as the "walk right in" mini-game. This isn't intended to mean that you kill everyone in your way and then walk around, though you can of course do that, but that you just walk right past the opposition using guile, deception, fear, or friendliness. In short, you use skills to fake your way in. It doesn't have the same weight as slipping in and out without anyone noticing, but those who do notice only notice what you want them to notice and may just as easily assume someone else broke in.

Example in Play

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