Straight Skills

Fantasy heroes are an exceptional sort. Even when they aren't the chosen one, they're often set apart from a young age: their abilities exceeding their peers even before they take up adventuring. Part of this ability is their mastery of a great many adventuring talents: languages, magic, and weapons. When you’re that talented, the question is: at eighth level, should they assign that skill point to Climb, or to Acrobatics - and is it worth it to gain yet another rank in Linguistics?

Fortunately, this is a game, and we don’t need to worry about tracking points where we don’t enjoy doing so. Most characters in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game make decisions on skills once, picking the most essential skills at character creation, and then improving the same ones every level from second to twentieth. With Straight Skills, a character doesn’t have to restrict themselves to just the best skills and one or two others. Instead, every adventurer is capable in vital adventuring skills, trained at a few others, and has a few hobbies that they can get by with as well.

Straight Skills is an optional subsystem compatible with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, which replaces the existing system of skills and skill points. Although targeted towards new players, Straight Skills allows players to be creative and flexible with their skill choices, without penalizing characters who chose to take ranks in non-adventuring options, being any more complicated, or restricting options for more advanced players.