For quite a few years the only tabletop / play-by-post role playing game I've used is D&D 3.x (or the Pathfinder variant). As far as I can tell it's still fairly popular, despite the fact that D&D is up to a 5th edition, and various OSR (Old School Rules) have emerged. But it has always suffered from the problem that magical power is roughly quadratic with level, whereas everything else is linear or worse. My online gaming colleague Keith Davies has designed a whole new system, Echelon, in reaction to this, but Echelon is in flux and I'd rather not take quite so big a step away from the familiar just yet. So I've looked into some (as yet unplaytested) house rules that would beef up mundane classes, at least for a few levels more than at present.
This post is about some ideas for improving skills. If you think they ought to be totally mundane ("skillmonkeys can't have nice things"), this is not for you.
