House Rule - Skills by Character, Skill Feats, and Skill Synergies

Skills by Character
Which skills are class skills, and which skills are cross class skills are not determined by character class. Instead, they are determined by the player during character creation. Each character has a pool of twenty class skill slots that they may use to define the class skills for their character. For most skills, choosing them as a class skill costs one slot. Specific Craft, Knowledge, Perform, and Profession skills can be purchased for one skill slot each. To purchase Craft: Any, Knowledge: Any, Perform: Any, or Profession: Any costs four skill slots. Players must define the skill list for their character during character creation, and once set, this is the list of "class skills" for the character for the remainder of his adventuring career.

Note: Using four skill slots does not grant the skill Craft: Any, Knowledge: Any, Perform: Any, or Profession: Any. Those skills do not exist. Using four skill slots places all of the individual skills on the character's class skill list, but each skill must be taken individually. For example, a character who spent four skill slots during character creation to add "Craft: Any" to their class skill list could then spend skill points on Craft: Blacksmithing, Craft: Weaponsmithing, and Craft: Goldsmithing as skills, purchasing each of these skills separately.

Skill Feats
The various “+2 to two skills” feats such as Athletic, Diligent, Negotiator, and Self Sufficient are not used. Instead, the following feat replaces them all:

Skill Augmentation [General]
   You display an aptitude for certain skills.
   Benefit: Choose two related skills (subject to approval). You gain a +2 bonus on all checks involving those two skills.
   Special: You can gain this feat multiple times. Its effects do not stack. Each time you take the feat, it applies to a new pair of skills.

Synergy Bonuses
The following synergy bonuses are used. To gain a synergy bonus from a feat, one must simply have the feat. To gain a synergy bonus from a skill, one must have a certain number of ranks in that skill. Feats provide a flat +2 synergy bonus to the specified skill. Skills provide a bonus depending upon how many ranks in the skill a character has. If a character has 5 ranks in a skill that grants a synergy bonus, the character gets a +1 synergy bonus on checks involving the affected skill. When the character reaches 10 ranks in a skill, the applicable synergy bonus increases to +2, when the character reaches 15 ranks, the synergy bonus increases to +3, and finally when the character reaches 20 ranks, the bonus increases to +4.

Note that a character has to have at least one rank in a trained only skill in order to benefit from the synergy bonuses provided to that skill by other feats and skills.

The feats and skills in the left hand column provide synergy bonuses to the skills in the column on the right.

Feats

Brew Potion	Craft: Alchemy
Run	Evasion and Pursuit
Scribe Scroll	Profession: Scribe

Skills

Bluff	Diplomacy
Bluff	Disguise (to stay in character)
Bluff	Intimidate
Bluff	Sleight of Hand
Concentration	Ritual Casting
Craft	Appraise (related to the subject of the Craft skill)
Craft: Alchemy	Profession: Cook
Craft: Alchemy	Spellcraft (when identifying magical oils and potions)
Craft: Locksmith	Open Lock
Craft: Trapmaking	Disable Device
Decipher Script	Use Magic Device (involving scrolls)
Disable Device	Craft: Trapmaking
Escape Artist	Use Rope (when binding someone)
Gather Information	Profession: Guide (in urban areas)
Handle Animal	Profession: Farmer
Handle Animal	Profession: Teamster
Handle Animal	Ride
Handle Animal	Wild Empathy (class feature)
Jump	Tumble
Knowledge: Arcana	Spellcraft
Knowledge: Architecture and Engineering	Search (involving secret doors and compartments)
Knowledge: Astronomy	Profession: Astrologer
Knowledge: Dungeoneering	Survival (when underground)
Knowledge: Geography	Profession: Cartography
Knowledge: Geography	Survival (to keep from getting lost)
Knowledge: History	Bardic Knowledge (class feature)
Knowledge: Law	Profession: Barrister
Knowledge: Local	Gather Information (in local area)
Knowledge: Nature	Profession: Sailor
Knowledge: Nature	Survival (in aboveground natural environments)
Knowledge: Nobility and Royalty	Diplomacy
Knowledge: Religion	Turn or Rebuke Undead (class feature)
Knowledge: the Planes	Knowledge: Astronomy
Knowledge: the Planes	Profession: Astrologer
Knowledge: the Planes	Survival (when on other planes)
Knowledge: War	Profession: Siege Engineer
Open Lock	Craft: Locksmith
Perform	Profession: Actor
Profession: Actor	Bluff
Profession: Actor	Disguise
Profession: Apothecary	Craft: Alchemy
Profession: Apothecary	Knowledge: Nature (natural properties of animals or plants only)
Profession: Barrister	Knowledge: Law
Profession: Barrister	Diplomacy (when used to persuade or convince)
Profession: Cartographer	Forgery
Profession: Cook	Knowledge: Nature (for plants and animals commonly eaten)
Profession: Farmer	Knowledge: Nature
Profession: Fisherman	Knowledge: Nature (for fish, fish life, and coastal areas)
Profession: Groom	Handle Animal
Profession: Guide	Survival (to keep from getting lost)
Profession: Herbalist	Heal
Profession: Innkeeper	Gather Information
Profession: Prostitute	Bluff (when used to seduce or deceive)
Profession: Prostitute	Diplomacy (when used to seduce or deceive)
Profession: Sailor	Balance
Profession: Sailor	Use Rope
Profession: Scribe	Forgery
Profession: Scribe	Decipher Script
Profession: Soldier	Knowledge: War
Profession: Teacher	Knowledge (applies to one specific Knowledge skill)
Profession: Teamster	Handle Animal
Profession: Woodcutter	Knowledge: Nature (in relation to plants)
Search	Survival (when following tracks)
Sense Motive	Diplomacy
Sense Motive	Profession: Innkeeper
Spellcraft	Use Magic Device (when using scrolls)
Survival	Knowledge: Nature
Survival	Profession: Farmer
Survival	Profession: Fisherman
Survival	Profession: Guide (in wilderness areas)
Survival	Profession: Woodcutter
Tumble	Balance
Tumble	Jump
Use Magic Device	Spellcraft (to decipher spells on scrolls)
Use Rope	Climb (involving climbing ropes)
Use Rope	Escape Artist (to escape rope bindings)

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Game Mechanics - Changing How Class Skills Are Allocated

I usually use the d20 system for my role-playing gaming. I sometimes dip into GURPS, and I have a couple editions of Traveller, and earlier editions of Dungeons & Dragons, but once the 3rd edition rule set for  Dungeons & Dragons was released, that became my go to game of choice. Although I like the system, I am a rules tinkerer by nature, and I can't just leave it alone if I think something else will work even just a slight bit better. So I began tinkering with the d20 skill system.

House Rule: Skills by Character
Instead of the standard d20 trope of having a character's range of available skills be determined by a list taken from their character class, the "class skills" for a character are determined by the player, at character creation and remain fixed for that character through their adventuring career. Instead of looking at the class skill list for, say, the fighter class when taking a level of fighter, the character will look to their own individually defined array of "class skills" no matter what class they choose to level up in. The number of skill points a character has to spend at any particular level is still determined by their class: the fact that a rogue gets 8 skill points per level while a fighter or a cleric only gets 2 skill points per level is a balancing factor that preserves the parity of the various classes.

If we treat the Craft, Knowledge, Perform, and Profession skills as a single skill, there are thirty-six discrete skills in the d20 system (at least there are thirty-six discrete skills in the 3.5e Player's Handbook). The most diverse class skill list in the standard D&D rule set is the rogue, with twenty-five listed skills, which includes the skills Craft, Perform, and Profession, which are really a number of skills masquerading as one skill. The shortest skill list is the fighter's, with seven skills, although once again one of them is the multifaceted skill Craft. So these would be the parameters for determining how many skills a character should be allowed to select as "class skills".

Craft, Knowledge, Perform, and Profession raise an interesting question when considering how to construct class skill lists. Each of these skills is actually a collection of related skills - Craft: Armorsmith and Craft: Weaponsmith are different skills, but a class that has the skill "Craft" with no further specification would be able to select either of them as class skills. Some classes, such as the rogue and fighter, list these skills in their generic form. A rogue could expend skill points on any Perform subskill and treat them all as class skills. Some classes, such as the monk, which has Knowledge: Arcana and Knowledge: Religion on its class skill list, list specific subskills as class skills. While a monk could spend skill points on those skills at the reduced class skill cost, if he wanted ranks in another Knowledge skill, such as Knowledge: Nobility and Royalty, he would need to purchase those ranks at the double cost for out of class skills. In general, most classes that have specific skills drawn from these general skills, they have one or two, and once in a great while three specified skills. Based upon this observation, it seems reasonable to set the cost of individual subskills in these four generic skills at one skill slot, while choosing to purchase the general skill (i.e. Craft: Any or Profession: Any) costs four skill slots.

Using this revised cost, the rogue would have thirty-one total skill slots, and the fighter would have nine. Setting the total range of class skills available for characters at the midpoint between these two points would give a figure of twenty skills. Using this system, that would mean that during character creation, every starting character would designate twenty skills as "class skills", and that list would remain the same throughout their character's adventuring career no matter what classes they chose to take levels in.

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