Tome of Prowess (3.5e Sourcebook)/Running a Skilled Game

Running a Skilled Game

Giving new abilities based on something that everyone gets, like skills, doesn't just empower the players, it empowers the world. And this means there could be big changes to the threats that players face and the structure of the campaign setting itself. Incorporating these changes means that some challenges that used to be trite and banal for their level have new life breathed into them, but more than that they make the world a more fantastic place to be. It also means that there's more to keep track of though, in a game that already had a lot to deal with.

This chapter is primarily intended for the DM, to help them more easily work these changes into their games without increasing their workload. Shortcuts and special rules for using these abilities with monsters are presented here. These should help keep encounters manageable.

Ways that these skill abilities affect the day to day lives of people in the world are also listed here. While not important in a most encounters, remembering these changes when describing a scene or building a campaign world helps make the world feel like a cohesive whole. Players may also find these suggestions useful during their down time, as they allow them to interact with the world in fantastic, yet normal, ways.

Running Skillful Creatures

You've seen the new skills and their abilities, and that's a lot of extra stuff for a DM to worry about applying to every creature in the world. You will need to remember it with respect to more classed NPCs, since a substantial portion of their power now comes from these skills. Not making use of the skill abilities for a fighter or barbarian means that they are a substantially reduced threat against the player characters who are using their abilities. Primary spell casters on the other hand, who tend to have more spell options and fewer skills, have other effects to fall back on and probably won't need to use their skill abilities as often.

Monsters are a different problem, however. Most monsters already have abilities relevant for their CR, and adding additional abilities based on skills adds complexity and depth but not necessarily substantial combat ability. Most monsters played at an appropriate level before this was written, and most of them will continue to do so without utilizing it fully. So if you don't want to worry about tracking all of these extra tricks for monsters, you don't need to. In most cases you can just give them the rank 4 and below abilities and not worry about anything else. If you do want to grant a monster use of skill abilities for whatever reason, you will need to determine which abilities they have access to.

Skill Abilities Available to Monsters

For most PCs and NPCs, their level is equal to their hit dice is equal to their CR. This statement is not true for the majority of monsters. They don't always have levels, and their hit dice often exceeds their CR. While this leads to some odd but manageable behavior in saves and attack bonuses, it is absolutely unworkable with these skill abilities. A creature with humanoid hit dice, for example, gains 1 CR for every 4 hit dice that it possesses. This means that a CR 1 humanoid has 4 hit dice and up to 7 ranks in their "class" skills. It would have access to the skill abilities of a 4th level character if there weren't additional rules governing access in these cases. The problem just gets worse as the CR increases. A CR 4 humanoid has 16 hit dice, up to 19 ranks in any "class" skills, and the same skill abilities as a 16th level character. That level of ability is pretty much unworkable for a creature with such a low CR.

So, for the purposes of monster skill abilities, a monster that has non-class based hit dice is limited to skill abilities with a rank requirement of less than their CR + 3 in any "class" skill, regardless of how many ranks they actually have. They are limited to abilities with a requirement of half their CR + 3 for any "cross-class" skills they possess, regardless of how many ranks they actually have.

For their skill bonus, you have two options. Reducing their skill bonuses to their CR + 3 + relevant attribute modifier + special modifiers is certainly the best course of action, but it is also a substantial amount of work. In most cases, you can simply allow them to retain their full bonuses or reduce them by up to half without causing significant issues. Since they are limited to certain abilities already, their having a large modifier just means that they can use skills more reliably than a PC of the same level as their CR. In some cases, their using an ability reliably may be exactly what you want out of the encounter.

Setting the DCs for Abilities Used Against Monsters

Once you have determined which skill abilities to allow, you may need to do a bit of work to set DCs for the skill abilities. While many of the skill ability DCs are simple, some ask that you add a particular number to determine the DC. Which is all well and good for the players who don't have a lot of creatures to track, but the job of a DM is a busy one and in the middle of combat it's not always convenient or even worthwhile to look up the specific numbers of a monster. And in this system, that can happen as often as your players feel like using particular skill abilities. Thankfully, you don't have to be particularly rigorous here.

If you don't feel like looking up a monster's attribute bonuses when determining the DC for a skill ability being used against them, you can use the following shortcut. If you assume that their attribute modifier is +3, with an additional +1 per 3 CR, you'll generally have a reasonable estimate. You can also add or subtract 2 from this number, for creatures who would have an above average or below average attribute score.

DCs that ask for a base attack bonuses are harder to work with in this sense. Because base attack bonus is based on hit dice, which doesn't match with CR, you can have values ranging from half of a creature's CR to almost twice a creature's CR. And that is actually a huge range. For monsters without class levels except of dragons and outsiders, you can use a value of three-quarters of their CR for poor combatants, their full CR for average combatants, and one and a half times their full CR for good combatants to get close to their base attack bonuses. For dragons and outsiders, just use their full CR. For NPCs with class levels you should just look it up or select a value between half of their CR and their full CR. You generally shouldn't add or subtract anything to these values, because you've already dealt with creatures being good or bad at combat and base attack bonuses are much more strongly tied to CR than attribute modifiers are.

Yes, this really boils down to "just make up something appropriate if you can't be bothered to look it up", and that's actually fine. If you stick to this range, apply the bonuses or penalties fairly and evenly, and do it often enough for things to average out your players will still succeed on their abilities as often as expected over the long run.

Running a Skilled Society

There are a number of ways that having fantastic skills affects players, but these skills also impact the way the world functions. This is a list of the ways that the world looks different (while still somehow staying the same) when everyone has access to the fantastic.

Acrobatics

It is rather common for those in certain arts to have substantial ranks in acrobatics. Tumblers and similar physical performers are almost assured to practice the skill. Dancers, however, are also often skilled in acrobatics and use it to perform particular difficult events. Swan Lake set over an actual lake is a perennial favorite, and ballet scenes performed atop fog to illustrate a dream sequence are also quite common where skill permits. As the skill needed for such a dance is relatively rare, tickets are quite expensive.

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, acrobatics is a favorite skill of sailors. The ability to traverse narrow joints and rigging with a constantly changing incline is quite valuable on a ship. Practice with this skill also serves a sailor on land, when they inevitably say something to start a fight. Even surrounded, a sailor has a fair chance of tumbling out of the thick of things, to find a nice corner to finish their ale while they watch the new floor show. In campaigns where flight is relatively common, sky sailors (or aeronauts) also enjoy the ability to fall hundreds of feet without bouncing violently off the ground.

Acrobatics also serves rapid response teams. Those sufficiently skilled can remain in a central location, and then ride a ballista bolt, catapult shot, or similar projectile to wherever they are needed. If they overshoot a bit, they can just tumble into the wind to land safely. It's thus a good idea to not allow guards to send up the alarm when you know such people are nearby. This trick also works for messengers, and thus parcels, but is used less often because of the damage that siege weapons can do if fired repeatedly at your city.

Affability

Affability doesn't affect the world in ways that are particularly apparent. Affable people can shortcut long-term relationship building and can make people like them rather quickly, but that just means they have a lot of friends. They can talk their friends into slightly (or even actually) crazy things, but people do crazy things without significant pushing all the time anyway.

What affability does do is allow fights to be defused. When two sides have turned to violence, the ability to delay things for even a few seconds to talk it over is potentially huge. You can even talk down those blinded by rage, hatred, or other emotion during that time. The time itself could give you time to convince your enemy that there really isn't anything to fight over, or buy a few more precious seconds for reinforcements to arrive. Villains can even explain their master plans without PCs jumping the gun and murdering them. Stalling the heroes for while you really get into a good monologue can even buy just enough time to trigger your master stroke!

Appraisal

Like affability, appraisal doesn't really change much of how the world works. In general it has simply been expanded. Where once you could get a feel for the price of mundane objects, now you can get a feel for the price of most anything in the world. Merchants who see a wide assortment of bizarre and ancient are better able to judge the power in an item, and thus its worth. Some merchants can even tell you what functions an object has and how to trigger them.

Similarly, any reasonably good merchant should know what corners they could cut with their product to make it appear better; that most don't is more a matter of ethics than ability. This is reflected in the inclusion of the forgery ability. Its inclusion also means that shysters are as good at catching bad product as they are at hiding it.

In addition to merchants and fences being more knowledgeable about the objects in the world, they are also harder to trick. Skill in appraisal allows them to spot tiny inconsistencies in a forgery or disguise that might escape others. It is not as fast or reliable as simply being perceptive, but its inclusion means that they can focus more on their work and leave the surveillance and security to others. Their ability to think through these details is what also allows them to talk their guards out of certain dangerous mental patterns. As an interesting side note, groups of appraisers are largely immune to fascinate style mass marketing attempts.

Arcana

The arcana skill, and the other magic skills, actually does change the way the world works a fair bit since the number of people who can recognize and understand arcane phenomena is vastly expanded. While those who actually practice magic can just cast a spell to locate the magic in the world, those with just an understanding of how it works can simply carry around an etheliometer and examine magical phenomena with it. Similarly, knowledge of how arcane magic functions can allow one to make inferences about creatures that are closely tied to it. This is applicable whether it's a creature common in myths and legend or one that was just created in a lab before the previous morning.

Those who learn about the fundamentals of arcane magic also gain the ability to use arcane spell completion items, even if they lack the consistency of those with more formal training. The ability to use these items increases the presence of magic on the battlefield, without increasing the number of spellcasters, since even a first level commoner could potentially pick up and use an arcane wand. It's no surprise then that low charge wands, whose charges may even renew daily, are handed out to defenders and strike teams alike.

This skill is not one that a commoner is likely to invest in, as they likely have more pressing and mundane concerns, but it would hardly be uncommon for a shopkeeper or a nobleman to have taken ranks in it. The benefits of the skill are also useful to those of less than honest professions, as some of the best 'troubleshooting' spells are arcane.

Bluff

Villains, the ones who are good at lying, actually get to escape to fight another day once in a while. Combat distraction can often provide all the time that you need to start your escape unseen, which is often the difference between making it out alive and having you head posted on a spike at the nearby tavern while the heroes celebrate your demise.

Disguise

It is not uncommon for seamstresses to have ranks in disguise so that they can capitalize upon the weight reduction and shaping techniques. Indeed, fetching "disguises" in the form of body sculpting and weight adjusting gowns, dresses, and lingerie are quite common among women at balls and other gala events. And while it does not take long to put one of them on, there is the chance that a party-goer might see through the innocent ruse if one does not make certain that everything is correctly applied. The result is that it really takes nobles forever to get ready for a party because they, or their servants, are taking 20 on their disguise checks.

Apothecaries with skill in disguise (or skilled suppliers) tend to carry Fire Walker Paint. This relatively inexpensive cream comes in every color of the rainbow, though red, orange, black, and gold are the most common. When applied to a person, it provides just enough fire resistance (6, for reference) for a performer to dance among the flames themselves. And at the right kind of parties, that's all that is applied to the performer. These ointments are also available in varieties that protect against lightning, acid, and cold, but those parties are out of fashion or just difficult to arrange in many locales.

Dowsing

A skilled and patient dowser is an extremely common feature in almost every city and mine in the world. It's easy to find the best places to dig a well when you can walk around with a stick until you find a good place. Similarly, you don't have a lot of mine shafts that aren't providing useful ore when you can point at the earth and know what's hiding in it.

Mid level guards and above need not focus solely on perception to detect people trying to sneak into an area. Those who practice dowsing over perception can close their eyes and sense when people are entering an area. Those with a great deal of skill can even sense when people are trying to do it from a coterminous plane, while ethereal for example.

Thaumaturgy

Like the other magic skills, the thaumaturgy skill actually does change the way the world works a fair bit since the number of people who can recognize and understand divine phenomena is vastly expanded. The types of magic that can be understood with knowledge of divine magic and an etheliometer is different from those understood with arcana or geomancy, but the implications are similar. Likewise, the applicability of this knowledge to creatures from myth or only recently seen allows those who live in the world to better deal with plagues of demons without running to the nearest spellcaster. The implications for magic items are the same as with the other magic skills as well. There are potentially a lot more wands in use out in the world.

And like the other magic skills, thaumaturgy is not one that a commoner is likely to invest in. It is common among city guards, however, as a number of divine spells make for great debuffs or non-lethal takedowns, making them ideal for use in locations where collateral damage should be avoided as much as possible. It is not as common among healers, however, as the revised heal skill performs many of the same functions without being item dependent. Some battlefield healers do take both, however, just to increase the number of options they bring into a fight.