d20 Rethought: Skill Training

Today I'll be explaining how skill proficiencies work in d20 Rethought. I've mentioned before that skills work in a similar fashion to the Saga edition of the Star Wars Roleplaying Game (and thus to 4E as well). However, there's a little more to the story than that.

I've mentioned before that every d20 roll in the game will either be a skill check or an ability check (With one exception, but that's not relevant here). That ties into the first thing you need to know: Every type of skill check in d20 Rethought has a Proficiency Rank of one, two or three. This is roughly the equivalent of the "untrained" and "trained-only" labels in 3.X, with a middle ground:

-Proficiency Rank I applications of a skill are the "normal" skill checks, and can benefit from all relevant bonuses.

-Proficiency Rank II applications of a skill are made as ability checks, meaning they can only benefit from the character's ability score, an expenditure of Action Points (kinda-sorta, that's something else I haven't gotten into) and/or any relevant circumstance bonuses.

-Proficiency Rank III means your character is incapable of making this type of skill check.

Training can reduce a check's effective proficiency rank, making it usable. The d20 Rethought equivalent of becoming "trained" in a skill is handled entirely via three feats:

Basic Training (skillname) gives me a +2 bonus on all applications of a skill and lets me treat PR II and III checks as being one proficiency rank lower.

Specialized Training (skillname) gives me a +4 bonus on *one* application of a skill and lets me treat it as PR I.

Advanced Training (skillname), which requires one of the above feats (but not both), replaces these benefits with a +4 bonus on *all* application of a skill while letting me treat them all as PR I.

Make sense? I'll try to have an example up soon.