Kingmaker - All About Skills & Paypal Available

[Silver]

Pathfinder: Kingmaker has a new update about skills and announces that Paypal is now available.

Luck is merely another word for skill


Dear Pathfinders,

You can now support our game through PayPal

Got any friends who want to help our project, but can't use the payment methods accepted by Kickstarter? Visit https://owlcatgames.com/preorder and support us through PayPal! Please spread the word and let your friends know. Thanks!

And now getting to the topic of this update - Skills in Pathfinder: Kingmaker

Skills are an incredibly important part of most pen and paper RPGs, including Pathfinder. What are skills? Skills represent some of the most basic and yet most fundamental abilities your character possesses, like, for example, Perception - a skill to take note of details around you, to timely notice a deadly trap or to hear the muffled breath of a hidden adversary. Be it finding your way through the unknown lands or high court intrigues, be it searching for forbidden knowledge in the academy library, in a dusty tomb or a shady tavern - all of this is what skills are for. Without them, characters would be mere murderers. It is the existence of skills that allows them to resolve challenges and conflicts without resorting to bloodshed.

While it is a daunting, perhaps impossible, task to make skills just as useful in the CRPG as when playing Pathfinder on the table, it is not our goal to replace the original Pathfinder RPG, but rather to provide you with an experience similar to the fascinating atmosphere of pen and paper gaming. To do that we need to make the application of skills at least as frequent and at least as important as it is in pen and paper, if not as varied.

For our skill list, we decided to use our own approach to what is known to Pathfinder players out there as Consolidated Skills - a system where most skills from core Pathfinder are aggregated into bigger, wider skill groups. Our approach to this also includes our idea that skills should not only be used in dialogues but also in common gameplay and that these skills should be useful and applicable to the characters that archetypically should have those skills.

For this reason we, for example, made Lore - Nature, the archetypical skill of Rangers and Druids, to be based on Wisdom, and to include the knowledge about animals and insects, survival in the wilderness, handling of animals and tending to companions who were wounded or had succumbed to sickness. For that reason, we had made Lore - Religion to include knowledge about both Gods and their servants - outsiders, and plan to make it possible to use Lore - Religion to heal afflictions of the mind.

For those, who rely more on scholarly education, there are the branches of academic knowledge. Knowledge - World studies Golarion and everything specific to it, be it races and cultures that live there, their history and current interactions, trade and politics. Knowledge - Arcana deals with research and knowledge about various unnatural phenomena, eldritch spells, enchanted items and otherworldly entities such as elementals and magical beasts.

For those who crave action, there are Athletics and Mobility, the first of which deals with the skillful application of physical strength, mostly to surpass obstacles or to remove them from your way altogether, and the second deals with avoiding those obstacles and hazards through graceful movement and acrobatic feats. And those more cunning may find for themselves skills like Stealth, which allows you to move unnoticed behind the enemy lines, and Trickery, that allows you to pass through more complex obstacles like locks and traps.

[...]

More information.

 

[rjshae]

Still not a fan of consolidating skills. But I guess if each skill has multiple use cases, with separate modifiers, then it might be okay. It's kind of weird that they kept the Use Magic Device skill though. Why not make Use Magic Device a feat that works with your Knowledge and Lore skill ranks?

 

[Ryzwitcher]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSNNav2eYwk

 

[Darkheart]

Still not a fan of consolidating skills. But I guess if each skill has multiple use cases, with separate modifiers, then it might be okay. It's kind of weird that they kept the Use Magic Device skill though. Why not make Use Magic Device a feat that works with your Knowledge and Lore skill ranks?

I think it is a good compromise to consolidate skills here, but have them cover different skill checks. Better than having multiple skills that are worthless or only checked once a game.

Use Magic Device is very interesting for non-magic users. Even more than for magic-users, which usually are covered in that area anyway.
My rogue solo-run in BGII would not have been possible without Use Magic Device. It's super-fun when you can use different alignment stuff or a paladin's sword.

 

[DarNoor]

Good news on paypal. It gives them a chance to reach new stretch goals.

 

[luj1]

Some consolidated skills will feature multiple "use categories" corresponding to the original skills. For example, the Persuasion skill will allow one to use Bluff, Intimidate or Diplomacy. Furthermore, Owlcat intend for all skills to be useful both inside and outside of dialogue.

This is very good.

 

[Darkheart]

Good thing to make PayPay available for those of us who don't want to or cannot use Kickstarter!

Can't wait to play it next summer! I hope Battletech will tide me over till then.

 

[NewDArt]

Consolidating skills is a good choice, so long as they keep enough diversity - which it looks like they've done.

Nothing is worse than having half your skills be utterly worthless, which is the case in most accurate D&D implementations. Heck, even in D&D itself - that's most often the case.

 

[luj1]

D&D has it's problems however those are tolerable compared to butchering all the fun via an autistic devotion to perfect balance, *cough* PoE *cough*.