Pretty early on in my DMing career, I decided to give some leeway to players chafing against their class skill lists. I'll usually allow them to check off the little dread-box after a convincing enough appeal. For more outlandish requests ("Wizards should have tumble, because... acrobatics and magic go hand in hand! Somatic components, right?"), I make them take a feat; for really reasonable requests ("Why doesn't my fighter know first aid?"), I add the skill to my homebrew class alterations. Recently I did a little research and decided to invent a couple feats.
For starters, here's the most reasonable parallel I can find in the published rules:
- Races of Destiny, p150 wrote:
- City Slicker
[General]
Prerequisite: 1st level only
Effect: Disguise, Forgery, Gather Information, and Knowledge (local) are always class skills for you.
This seems like a very reasonable feat that blends roleplay and mechanics smoothly. There are several other scattered feats set up very similarly, notably the Draconic Heritage feat on page 77 of Complete Arcane. However, they all offer thematically pre-set skill lists. That's too confining for my tastes. Of course, it's easy enough for the DM to adapt City Slicker to something like Wild Man or Natural Athlete (Survival, Knowledge (Nature), Knowledge (Geography), and Handle Animal for the prior; Climb, Jump, Swim, and Tumble for the latter), but I think the process can be done more efficiently and with more player control.
Here are my two homebrew proposals:
Skill Adaptation[General]
Prerequisite: -
Effect: Choose a skill. This skill is always "in-class" for you.
Special: You can gain this feat multiple times. Each time you take the feat, it applies to a new skill.
Professional Background[General]
Prerequisite: 3 ranks in Profession (Any), 1st level only
Effect: Choose up to 1+Int (minimum 1) skills appropriate to your chosen profession. These skills are always "in-class" for you.
Special: With 5 ranks in your chosen profession, the skills selected with this feat receive a +2 synergistic bonus.
Professional Background melds feats such as City Slicker with the seldom useful Profession skill, borrowing some mechanics from the Rogue special ability
Skill Mastery. My hope is that this feat will facilitate the roleplay implications of the profession skill, while rewarding the players mechanically. The synergistic bonus is just icing on the cake for those willing to continue their professional advancement into their adventuring career.
Skill Adaptation is a lighter, less demanding alternative for the sweet-talking Wizard or tumbling Fighter. Having a bit of flexibility with a character's skill list encourages variety within members of the same class, and can paradoxically make multiclass characters more effective and less necessary. ("Sweet! I don't have to cross-class rogue for my fighter to tumble past the baddies!" "Excellent, I can continue gaining ranks in Diplomacy even if my Cleric of Obad-hai decides to follow the call of the Ranger."
(A possible alteration for DM's who really want to open up skill lists is to make the skill selection for Skill Adaptation 1+Int instead of 1, and Professional Background 3+Int.)
What do my comrades think?
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