Rogues get so many skill points to distribute among roguish skills, certainly not knowledge. From a different perspective, rogues get skills while wizards get spells. The rest of the class abilities are probably comparable (assuming you can compare sneak attack or uncanny dodge with a metamagic or item creation feat). And, of course, the fact that most wizards have higher Int than the average rogue, takes a bit away from the edge of this apparent difference.
Your argument about wizards being more like the "knowledge" than the "hide spot etc" person is reflected by class skills that you so generously dismissed by giving everyone Versatility
As for Local, I've always felt like it just hangs out of the crowd. Simply makes no sense in terms of utility. If a campaign is more about a single region with all the characters from that region then it makes sense to know more about the habits, observations, holidays, festivals etc of the locals. The way "we" (and I mean "you" ) use it is an intuitive way of using it for "everything commonplace" simply the name doesn't fit. Maybe it could be "Knowledge (generic)". If you treat it this way the synergy bonus is actually a good idea _in_addition_ and not as a sole purpose of the skill.
Talking about 2 sp per level... I have a particular gnome priest (2+Int skill points per level) with Int 7. He could actually have Int 3. Since you get a minimum of 1 anyway it doesn't matter if you have an Int Mod of -1 or -4. That is, as long as you don't want to roll for Religion or Spellcraft The sole reason he has 7 is because that's the lowest the point buy system goes in that GM's ruling.
EDIT: In AD&D we had NWP groups plus separate allotment for rogue skills. While it may be a bit better in modeling, d20 is much simpler and as such it's *my* way to go, regardless how much I love AD&D.
Your argument about wizards being more like the "knowledge" than the "hide spot etc" person is reflected by class skills that you so generously dismissed by giving everyone Versatility
As for Local, I've always felt like it just hangs out of the crowd. Simply makes no sense in terms of utility. If a campaign is more about a single region with all the characters from that region then it makes sense to know more about the habits, observations, holidays, festivals etc of the locals. The way "we" (and I mean "you"
) use it is an intuitive way of using it for "everything commonplace" simply the name doesn't fit. Maybe it could be "Knowledge (generic)". If you treat it this way the synergy bonus is actually a good idea _in_addition_ and not as a sole purpose of the skill.Talking about 2 sp per level... I have a particular gnome priest (2+Int skill points per level) with Int 7. He could actually have Int 3. Since you get a minimum of 1 anyway it doesn't matter if you have an Int Mod of -1 or -4. That is, as long as you don't want to roll for Religion or Spellcraft
The sole reason he has 7 is because that's the lowest the point buy system goes in that GM's ruling.EDIT: In AD&D we had NWP groups plus separate allotment for rogue skills. While it may be a bit better in modeling, d20 is much simpler and as such it's *my* way to go, regardless how much I love AD&D.
