Talk:Skill Concentration (3.5e Feat)

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Your Average roll will still be 10.5 but the Chance of getting higher or lower then that drops along a Bell Curve to the point that their is almost no Chance of getting a 1 or a 20. You go from having a 1 in 20 Chance of getting a 1 or a 20 to only having about a 1 in 200 Chance of taking a 1 or 20 on your roll. I'm not sure how to show you the math, all I can do is ask you to roll 3d20 and see for yourself. --K William S

Oh god use of statistical knowledge, I'm so happy.
You're right, the average roll will stay the same but the standard deviation (the spread of the 'bell curve') will decrease. Nice job calculating the 1/200 chance, as far as I can make out that's entirely accurate.
The deletion proposal is invalid, in fact, instead of having no benefit, I'd say this feat could almost be considered overpowered. By activating its effects, you undertake an act very similar to taking a 10 on a roll. By taking 10, the average negigibly decreases, and the standard deviation becomes 0. When using this feat, the average doesn't change, and the standard deviation decreases massively.

Anyway, I rant. The point is, using this feat is equivalent to using a "take just about a 10" action on a skill check, even when taking a 10 would be impossible. I've removed the deletion proposal, due to its invalid reasoning. Nice catch there, I wouldn't have noticed. --SgtLion (talk) 15:56, 24 December 2013 (MST)
I see. Although there are feats that let you always take 10 on skills, like Steady Concentration. Marasmusine (talk) 16:30, 24 December 2013 (MST)
True, but this feat not only applies to two chosen skills, but has a higher average roll than taking 10 and could benefit greatly from things like reroll abilities. Making it crazy more powerful than Steady Concentration. --SgtLion (talk) 03:45, 25 December 2013 (MST)

This is the only way I feel that Feats like Alertness could ever be useful, but I could change the needed ranks from 6 to 9 or change the Feat to a Skill Trick and only allow the player to pick one skill (or something like that). --K William S