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Concept: Prestige Skills
Secret Craft (INT; trained only)
A Prestige Skill is a special Secret Craft skill discipline that has both greater cost and greater abilities. The costs, beyond just using up skill points, include dedicated experience, time and gold. A Prestige Skill has multiple uses (called abilities), which have prerequisites for each, must be researched individually, and practiced to be mastered. Successful usage of a Prestige Skill’s ability requires a successful skill check.
A Prestige Skill’s abilities are arranged into Circles which are similar to levels. The chart below indicates that a PrS ability belonging to the 2nd Circle requires an arcane spellcaster level of seven before a character can attempt to learn. All abilities of a Circle must be learned before you can be promoted to the next Circle within that order’s Secret Craft.
The Prestige Skill Secret Crafts are Alchemy, Dracology, Elementalism, Illusionism, Necromancy, Cryptomancy, and Witchcraft. You can only belong to a single Secret Craft.
[HTML]Circle Cycle Cost XP Level DC # of uses
1st 14 500 500 5th 15 3 a day
2nd 28 1000 700 7th 18 2 a day
3rd 42 1500 900 9th 22 1 a day
4th 56 2000 1200 12th 26 1 a week
5th 70 2500 1500 15th 30 1 a month[/HTML]
Circle: A disciple’s rank among his order, or the power rank of a Secret Craft’s ability.
Cycle: The time needed (in days) to study one ability of a circle. At the end of a cycle, the PC gains the studied ability. A student may freely interrupt his studies, come back later and pick up where he left. [Possibility – To learn an ability, he must succeed at a certain roll (undetermined as yet)].
Cost: The fee in gold ducats for each day of studies. The gold is paid to the teacher, each day, or in advance for the full cycle.
Experience: The experience points a student must earn before being capable of using a new ability with the best chance of success. He must earn the indicated XPs, using his newly acquired ability, before starting a new study cycle. These XPs are ‘used up’ in the focus of learning and further understanding of the ability and are therefore not counted towards any character level advancement. These XPs represent an intense focus on mastering an ability at the expense of furthering his class
Level: This is the minimum arcane spellcaster level at which a disciple may start studying abilities of each Circle.
DC: This indicates the DC of each Circle’s ability. Each time an ability is attempted, the PC must roll a Secret Craft skill check at the indicated DC or above or the attempt failed. If he has not accumulated the needed Experience yet, his skill check is penalized by -5.
# Uses: This defines the number of times within a specific period that a disciple can attempt to use an ability. A failed skill check counts as one usage. Each ability is tracked individually.
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Like I said, some numbers may likely have to be altered, such as XP, costs, etc. Interestingly though, the DC to use each ability works out very close to the percentage chance at minimum levels. I know some people are likely to absolutely hate this concept, but to me it feels the closest to the original.
Like I said, some numbers may likely have to be altered, such as XP, costs, etc. Interestingly though, the DC to use each ability works out very close to the percentage chance at minimum levels. I know some people are likely to absolutely hate this concept, but to me it feels the closest to the original.
I wouldn't say I hate it, but it just doesn't feel quite right, as is, to me. My primary objection would be simply that it is a high cost to pay for Skills that can only see a limited amount of use, especially skills that aren't guaranteed to be successful. This is especially true because- for wizards and sorcerers in particular- skill points are rare commodities. They only get 2 + Int bonus per level. To spend one on an ability that isn't a guaranteed success, and can only be used a limited number of times- even though it is more powerful (in some cases, much more powerful) than a regular skill- seems too high.
In the case of the 5th Circle ability, a close to 50% chance failure rate for an ability that can only be used 1/month seems extreme. This is especially true when you consider that some 5th Circle abilities (I'm looking at you Necromancer!) are one-time only abilities. The High Master of Necromancy isn't assuming lich-form once/month; he *is* a lich. That's it.
(Of course, the Lich problem is my major problem with the Necromancer class RAW- rules as written- especially with the phylactery creation rules in 3E; but we'll get into that when I start discussing the Necromancer more).
On the converse, someone who advances all the way to the 5th Circle will have pretty much automatic success with the skills; depending on whether you still make them roll (and have a natural 1 as a failure chance) or not. They can only use them 3/day at most, though. Guaranteed (or virtually so) success, but only a couple of times of use. A wizard might very well be better off just casting a spell instead.
Paperwork is a bit of an issue, though admittedly a minor point, as you have to track each of the various Circle abilities each time they are used.
I wouldn't say I hate it, but it just doesn't feel quite right, as is, to me. My primary objection would be simply that it is a high cost to pay for Skills that can only see a limited amount of use, especially skills that aren't guaranteed to be successful. This is especially true because- for wizards and sorcerers in particular- skill points are rare commodities. They only get 2 + Int bonus per level. To spend one on an ability that isn't a guaranteed success, and can only be used a limited number of times- even though it is more powerful (in some cases, much more powerful) than a regular skill- seems too high.
Thanks for the feed-back, Andrew. First, all the variables can be adjusted for balance, etc., as we see fit and I didn't intend for it to be used as is; I mostly was just getting the concept known first and then we can fix it. Second, and regarding the skill point expenditure, I realize that wizards recieve a small amount of skill points, however, since most have high intelligences they likely get at least 4 per level (5 if human ;) ) and as much as 6/7 (maybe more). Also, once at maximum rank, it will only cost 1 point per level to stay there which isn't that bad.
In the case of the 5th Circle ability, a close to 50% chance failure rate for an ability that can only be used 1/month seems extreme. This is especially true when you consider that some 5th Circle abilities (I'm looking at you Necromancer!) are one-time only abilities. The High Master of Necromancy isn't assuming lich-form once/month; he *is* a lich. That's it.
Close. At minimum possible level and max rank, it is nearer 65%; 18 ranks + 4 Int (had 3 oppurtunities to raise int score) = 22 = 65%. Failure would just mean waiting a month (or whatever we changed it to
).On the converse, someone who advances all the way to the 5th Circle will have pretty much automatic success with the skills; depending on whether you still make them roll (and have a natural 1 as a failure chance) or not. They can only use them 3/day at most, though. Guaranteed (or virtually so) success, but only a couple of times of use. A wizard might very well be better off just casting a spell instead.
Well, since normal skills don't fail on a 1, I think we should keep it that way. We could increase the number of uses quite easily, but seeing as how these are abilities in addition to their spells and only cost skill points, xp, time, and money ( 'only' :D ), I wouldn't want to make it too many more.
Paperwork is a bit of an issue, though admittedly a minor point, as you have to track each of the various Circle abilities each time they are used.
Very true.
Which variables do you think we should alter? Do you think the 4th and 5th circle's level requirement should be reduced so that it increases by two levels for all circles? Any additional comments/observations welcome.
[HTML]Circle Cycle Cost XP Level # of uses DC
1st 14 100 500 5th 3 uses a day 15
2nd 28 200 700 7th 3 uses a day 18
3rd 42 300 900 9th 2 uses a day 22
4th 56 400 1200 12th 1 uses a day 26
5th 70 500 1500 15th 1 uses a week 30
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I reduced the gp cost on 'gut feeling' (my DMG is lent out at the moment). I also increased the number of uses, a universal opinion I think. Still not sure if it's good enough though.
If failure is a concern, there is always a feat like Skill Focus. You could also use a feat like Improved Secret Craft that would allow an extra use of each ability per day/week or maybe even just double the usage (maybe too powerful though).
I don't want to harp on this if everyone else prefers a PrC/substition level approach, and the progress others are making doing so is very good, but I also think it's nice to have an alternative mechanism. It's all just IMHO, by this just feels like the OD&D secret craft to me.
This still has more work to be done on it.