Hacking 2e: Skills and the Nonweapon Proficiency System – Part 6 (Final Skill List)

I’ve spent the past 5 weeks looking at all of 2e’s varied skill systems, mostly focusing on the Nonweapon Proficiencies. I have tried to rein in overpowered skills, boost weak ones, and cut the fat wherever possible. This has resulted in a list of five Rogue-only skills, three universal skills, an optional background skill system, and ten optional NWP-derived ability skills. These are in addition to skills provided by demihumans and by specific classes.

I’ve already reviewed the demihuman skills, though the following rules will require that I adjust those skills. The Rogue skills and class skills are a matter for another post. Today, I shall hammer out universal, background, and ability skills.

Hacking 2e: Skills and the Nonweapon Proficiency System – Part 5 (Roguish Skills and Survival)

Last time, I threw most of the reviewed Nonweapon Proficiencies over the side of the ship. For this final review of the NWPs, we’ll look at Thief-adjacent NWPs and the Survival skills.

Hacking 2e: Skills and the Nonweapon Proficiency System – Part 4 (Feats and Riding)

Last entry, I pared down a few more Nonweapon Proficiencies into Animal Handling, Performance, Direction Sense, and Healing. I only got halfway through the list of feat-like NWPs, so let’s finish those off first.

My numbering has gone sideways due to this split. Part of this is Part 2 of Part 3, and starts at 3.6. Forgive me.

Hacking 2e: Skills and the Nonweapon Proficiency System – Part 3 (Animals, Art, and Feats)

The last post established the background feature – allowing the Secondary Skills system to directly interface with Nonweapon Proficiencies – and tossing all the other ‘career’ NWPs. I also took skills related to knowledge, scrapped language/literacy NWPs, condensed the list, and bundled it under a general Knowledge skill. I pulled Religion out of the pile to remain a separate skill.

Let’s move on to the animal stuff.