Infinity Matrix: Skills

As part of my houserules for Infinity Matrix I decided to go a different direction with skills. My general intention was to make things a bit simpler and give a bit of an edge to some of the classes that don't have many skill ranks to work with. The last part was extremely crucial due to the nature of the campaign. In a medieval-stasis setting its perfectly fine to live and die by the sword and rely on your friends to carry certain skills around. But in a futuristic setting skills are a lot more crucial because this is the kind of setting where swords and sorcery can't really solve every problem, especially in a space ship.

For this I enlisted the help of Pathfinder Unchained and built up around the consolidated skill list. In the end this is what I have. This does several things.

Rules for skills follow the Consolidated Skills rules from Pathfinder Unchained with the following changes.

Skill	Untrained	Ability	Skills Included
Acrobatics	Y	Dex	Acrobatics(except Jumping), Escape Artist, Fly, Ride
Athletics	Y	Str	Acrobatics(Jumping), Climb Swim
Expertise (Multi)	N	Int	Appraise, Craft, Knowledge(engineering), Profession
Finesse	N	Dex	Disable Device, Sleight of Hand
Influence	Y	Cha	Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate
Nature	N	Int	Handle Animal, Knowledge(dungeoneering, geography, nature)
Perception	Y	Wis	Perception, Sense Motive
Performance	Y	Cha	Disguise, Perform
Psionics	N	Int	Autohypnosis, Knowledge(psionics), Use Psionic Device
Religion	N	Int	Knowledge(planes, religion)
Society	N	Int	Knowledge(history, local, nobility), Linguistics
Spellcraft	N	Int	Knowledge(arcana), Spellcraft, Use Magic Device
Stealth	Y	Dex	Stealth
Survival	Y	Wis	Heal, Survival

• Classes get their full class skill ranks per level but not their bonus from INT. For example; a Fighter would get 2 ranks per level, a Monk would get 4 ranks per level and a Bard would get 6.
• To accommodate classes from third party sources you may choose your class skills. You may have up to your ranks per level plus your INT bonus in class skills chosen among any of the skills that your normal class skills folds into. For example if you would normally gain Bluff, Diplomacy or Intimidate as a class skill you may choose Influence as class skill. When you multiclass you gain two extra class skills.
• A new skill Expertise has been added. Like the old functions of Perform, Expertise is actually a number of separate skills. You could have several Expertise skills, each with its own ranks. The most common Expertise subjects are; Food, War,  Mechanical, Seafaring, Alchemy, Metalworking, Apparel,  Farming, and Construction. Potential subjects include; Chemestry, Biology, Electronics and Machinery. Expertise covers the old functions of Appraise, Craft, Knowledge(engineering), and Profession. You can only gain one Expertise skill as a class skill at a time like what was previously the knowledge skills.
• A new skill Psionics has been added. This skill is only applicable in the context of using psionic rules from Dreamscarred Press when psionics is ruled as different from magic.
• Racial bonuses and bonuses gained from class features apply to specific skill function not to all functions of the consolidated skill and are not halved.
• The following feats are removed from the game and any feat that would use them for prerequisites no longer require them; Acrobatic, Alertness, Animal Affinity, Athletic, Deceitful, Deft Hands, Magical Aptitude, Persuasive, Self-Sufficient, Stealthy.
• Any bonus applied to a Craft skill now applies to an Expertise instead. 

This does several things. First of all this takes Int out of the equation when it comes to skill ranks. This seems like a big step but it ended up making more sense to me in the environment of consolidated skills. For one you aren't penalized for having lower Int, or at least not as penalized as the game normally does. It also simplifies matters. The best part is that skill prowess starts to fall into where I think classes should be. A class with 2 ranks per level and no reason to invest in Int doesn't end up getting crippled in the skill department, something I don't want happening in the setting. They can max what is effectively 3-8 skills. Classes like the Rogue  gain an incredible amount of skills making them more ideal as 'the skill guy' instead of other classes that have reasons to invest in Int and therefore actually capable of gaining more skills. 

There are a few percieved problems that seem to appear but get alieviated naturally. 

Casters of any sort that rely on Int get penalized. This isn't as bad as a problem as it sounds. A wizard can max upwards to 8 effective skills which is the same amount of skill ranks that they would get if they had 22 Int, which definitely isn't bad. The most likely skills to max in their case is Spellcraft and an Expertise which is effectively 7 skills. They certainly aren't helped if they go past 20 Int but they aren't crippled by the system. 

Int becomes irrelevant because having low Int doesn't penalize. Int is less relevant here as you can still be relatively skillful without the Int investment. But while low Int doesn't penalize having it is more useful than not having it.  Your amount of class skills is still effected by Int so it gives the ability to spread skill ranks around and if you have low Int you actually start having fewer class skills than you have ranks to max them out so you'll be missing that class skill boost. Also Int still controls almost half the skill list, with one of the skills being a multi-skill and some skills, like Use Magic Device and Handle Animal got folded into an Int-based skill. Int is still very potent and desirable to have, you just aren't heavily crippled from not having quite enough. 

As to why I went with the consolidated skill list rather than Background Skills is simple. Simplicity. I'm already adding quite a bit to the game. I didn't desire a more complicated skill system on top of that. That and the background skill system solves very few of my problems. I didn't want to use the consolidated skill list as is because even that was more complicated. In it's original version you would get 1/2 your ranks per level plus 1/2 your Int bonus. This means that you need at least 14 Int before it matters and 18 Int before it matters more. It just puts the skill power more into the hands of classes that use Int as a casting stat rather than classes that are meant to be skillful. I was also not keen on having Craft and Knowledge Engineering left out in a Scifi adventure campaign, thus the Expertise skill. Expertise was also created to account for skill ranks pulled for other sources. With 8 ranks per level, classes like the Rogue can consume a huge amount of the list and if they can pull ranks from other sources Expertise gives a bit of room to grow into. This also lowers the impact of skill ranks from unexpected sources since Expertise can eat up a lot of skills if you try to be a super science whiz.

The rest of the changes were based on the fact that I use a lot of third party material. I didn't want to create new skill lists for each class I'd allow so I just let players pick what class skills they would get. I didn't want to change each race one by one, work that would have to happen if I used this system for another campaign so I just allow skill bonuses to apply to functions over specific skills. The same goes for skills in regards to class features. I just didn't want to sift through classes and archetypes to change everything so adjusted the consolidated skill system to account for whatever new classes pop up.  

So that is my revised Consolidated Skill list which is what my players are using for the Infinity matrix campaign. Leave a comment if you have questions, praises or criticisms. If possible please try this out in your own campaigns and tell me how it worked out for you. I'd love to see more reports on how this works in action.