Dungeons & Delvers 2nd Edition: Spending Skill Points For Attack Bonuses

Originally Attack Bonuses in Dungeons & Delvers were pretty sparse: warrior-types got +1 to hit with all weapons at 1st-level, and this scaled up pretty slowly, up to +5 at later levels. Rogue-types get it slower, and less overall, while spellcasters don't get it, period, but could generally use a talent or spell to use their spell or magic bonus (which also tends to scale slower than Attack Bonuses).

For 2nd Edition we're going with the 2nd- and 3rd Edition model, where fighters get +1 to hit at every level, and other classes at reduced rates. This makes sense to me, as even a wizard should get some bonus to hit given that he cannot rely on his magic all the time, nor would he even want to, and I assume during downtime or at some point while making camp and eating he's getting pointers from the fighter.

We're trying both this and the infinite-magic bard out in Melissa's monkey-themed adventure, and it definitely helps out low-Strength fighters from being largely useless (seriously, rolled a +0 for Strength on one), even with the Ganging Up bonus.

But something else I thought of that would be a drastic departure from the norm is allowing you to spend Skill Points to gain a bonus to hit with a specific weapon on top of everything else. For fighter-types it would cost 2 Skill Points, while everyone else needs to spend 4 (maybe a War Domain cleric can pick a talent to reduce this).

It's not with every weapon, or even a weapon group, but a specific weapon, and reflects additional training. So a 3rd-level fighter could have +3 to hit generally, but +5 with arming swords if he used up two levels worth of Skill Points. Of course, a level 3 wizard would have +1 to hit generally, but if he burns all of his skill points could squeeze out a +4 to hit with, say, a spear.

Sounds good, only 1 point behind the fighter, but the fighter will likely have a higher Strength, gets a baked-in, auto-scaling Damage Bonus, will very likely have way more WP and VP, and heavier armor and/or a shield. He could also have Talents that make him inflict more damage, be harder to hit, or just otherwise more durable.

So, that doesn't bother me, and a wizard going that route will not only not be upping his skills, he won't be able to buy any Skill Perks or passively enhance his magic. Mostly a see this as a way for wizards to occasionally eke out a slightly improved hit bonus, so they can conserve their Willpower, while still contributing in other ways.