Lord Pendragon
First Post
Exactly.Staffan said:The idea behind Int giving more skill points is that high Int = better learning capacity. Later changes in Int doesn't change how much you learned three years ago, but it does make it easier (or harder) to learn new things, which means old skill points aren't changed, but future ones gained are.
In 3.0 it was simple. Each time a PC leveled, if he'd spent most of the previous level with an int of 24 (18 +6 Headband of Intellect), he got the skill points for having an int of 24. This makes perfect sense to me. No passing the Headband or the like. No "quick int boosts for more skill points" or any such nonsense. Whatever your int was at most of the time, that's where your learning capacity was, and that's how many skill points you earn.
If the day after you level the Headband is destroyed, then when you level next time, you'll only gain skill points for an int of 18, since that's how smart you were for that time period.
This system only caused problems in two instances. 1. Creating a high-level character from scratch. You'd have to determine when he bought his Headband of Intellect to properly calculate his skill points. And 2. When auditing a mid- to high-level character's skill points. As the number of points gained could vary from level to level, it makes checking for mistakes more difficult later on. (Did I upgrade my +2 Headband to +4 at 8th-level, or was that 9th...?)
3.5's rules eliminate those two issues. You no longer have to worry when a high-level character boosted his int (it doesn't matter to skill points) or figure out when you got your headband to audit a PC's skill points.
IMO, even though skill point tracking has become simpler, the tradeoff--less worth for the Headband of Intellect for non-wizards and less skill points for the wizard, isn't a good one.
I prefer the 3.0 method, although I understand why they did what they did.
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