Divine Social Skill Advancement

This issue has come up in discussion periodically. Once upon a time, as has been explained on other threads (lost now), Etiquette was going to have separate sub skills per region (like separate knowledge skills). That got dumped … for which I am glad.

But it is true that it’s pretty easy to have more potential skill ranks than social skills if you take this advancement to raise your social skills. Personally I think +1 to Persuasion, Deceit, Empathy, Intimidate and Etiquette is a good deal if you are a Divine Caster who also wants to be the party’s face.

But if the potential “wasted skill point” bothers you, you certainly aren’t alone … Keen Eyes (or whatever its called) can add Perception to this list.

My issue is more so, what if I want to be divine and not be a party face? I am losing out on a specialized advancement just because I don’t want to be the one doing all the talking. I have a small group that I’ve been working on getting the game going with and it keeps looking like I’ll be both running the game and playing a divine character to afford healing. I for one don’t think the game is very interesting for anyone if I sit there and talk to myself, playing the face and NPCs, for all but the combats. That is just an odd case but an issue none the less.

you make a solid point, I have some ideas on how to address this…. (as all the Archetypes suffer a little of the same)

I can offer you a “way out” start a Martial character and chose Initiate of the Gods as your background, and use your two talents at the end of character creation to get Preg and Divine Spell Casting.

Your spell casting will not be your core, fighting will….. you can advance your casting up by +2 every tier without an issue, pick the right Paths and you can make it a +3 every other tier. Chose talents like Smite and the like…

You can make a good healer, you don’t need max ranks to pull that off…. and he can be helpful in melee or ranged (depending on god) Heck you can make him a Martial based Sorcerer-Priest and make things very interesting.

Really? You only need 3 ranks in a Lore skill to qualify for Prestidigitation, and a lot of things grant Wilderness Lore.

Solani Dwarves, Ardekene Elorii, Black Talons, Humans, Vals, Undir from race.

Altheria, Coryan, Elorii Nations, Hinterlands, League of Princes, and Milandir for nations.

Former Altheran Marksman, Former Messenger, Laerestri, Soldier of Retribution, Woodsman, Huntsman, and Undisciplined Psion for backgrounds.

You can also take Adaptable (Ta) or boost the skill when you buy skill points.

Getting back to the original poster, I see no rules balance issue with making it “social and artisan skills” for divine. But I seen no compelling reason why priests of a Church are natural artisans either.

Also if it is changed for the Divine Archetype it should also be done for the Arcane and Martial Archetypes.

This idea is not insignificant.

Martials get to advance two categories (combat and physical I think… Book not in front of me)

Arcane Archtype gets Lore which has oodles of different skills due to knowledge being seperated.

I also like the idea of Perform. Another option (and again I don’t have book with me so I don’t know how it will work out) is have the deity skill added to the list that can be increased with that option

Regards

Taffy

I’ve finally twigged to what the underlying game design flaw is regarding Training Talents (specifically Continued Training, but it rears itself in a few other places).

Arcane and Divine have two separate skill advancement options.

* Gain 1 Rank in a single Arcanum skill, Deceit and Stealth.
* Gain 1 Rank to a number of Trained Lore Skills equal to 3+ your Logic Passive Value.
* Gain 1 Rank in a single Arcanum skill, your Deity’s favored skill, and Knowledge (Religion).
* Gain 1 Rank to a number of Trained Social Skills equal to 3+ your Logic Passive Value.

Combining the two options into one in the next edition would fix so many ongoing problems.

Example:
* Gain 1 Rank in a single Arcanum skill, Deceit and Stealth and to a number of Trained Lore skills equal to your Logic Passive Value.
* Gain 1 Rank in a single Arcanum skill, your Deity’s favored skill, and Knowledge (Religion) and to a number of Trained Social skills equal to your Logic Passive Value.

I happen to like that solution very much also