New update: Skills

In the first time in over a month, I was able to get some work done. I went through the skills and simplified them, basically restarting with the base set of D&D 3.5 skills, removing a few things I didn't like, and rewriting the skill allocation to fit a more simplistic style.

The main difference is that each class selects a number of skills from their skill list as "class skills". For example:

The fighter’s class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Climb (Str), Craft (Int), Handle Animal (Cha), Intimidate (Cha), Jump (Str), Ride (Dex), and Swim (Str).

Since Fighters get 2 skills per level (not including intelligence), a player chooses two skills from the fighter skill list as class skills. A horseman would probably take Ride and Handle Animal.

At first level, these two skills are rank 2. Each additional fighter level increases these two skills by 1 rank. A 4th level fighter with Ride and Handle Animal as class skills would have Ride 5 and Handle Animal 5.

Characters also get a number of free skills per level equal to 1+ their intelligence bonus. The free skill points can be spent on any skill from your skill list or any untrained skill. So, the same fighter could spend free skill points on Climb (untrained) and Craft (trained, but in the skill list), but not Disable Device (trained, not in the skill list).

Characters can still used skills they are not trained in, but trained skills carry a DC penalty until you have 5 ranks in them. This is to represent how difficult they are, but also to keep from grabbing a single level of another class, buying a rank of some cross-class skill, and then using it without penalty from that time forward.