Cosmic Horror SRD: Design Part I

So here I am, not even a week into working on the Cosmic Horror SRD, and I'm having to make design decisions.  Heh.

First up are classes.  In Call of Cthulhu d20 there are no classes.  There are levels and an offense option and a defense option.  I don't know if I can re-word that in such a way as to not cause copyright issues, so - taking a hint from d20 Modern - I'm going with a different approach: an offensive class ("The Offensive Investigator") and a defensive class ("The Defensive Investigator").  While the classes will have different class- and level-dependent tables, the values will be the same for all but base save and attack bonuses.

So... where you'd have a 1st level character with the defensive option in Call of Cthulhu d20, you'll have a 1st level Defensive Investigator character in the Cosmic Horror SRD.

Next up are skills.  First off, since I'm not willing to test the public domain-ness of the word "Cthulhu", there will be no Cthulhu Mythos skill.  Instead, there will be a Cosmic Mythos skill.  Above and beyond that, I'm working on testing the end result of the Dungeons & Dragons / D20 Modern skill approach versus the Pathfinder skill approach.

In Call of Cthulhu d20, a character receives (8 + INT bonus) * 4 skill ranks at first level, and 8 + INT bonus skill ranks at each level thereafter.  Skills cost 1 rank per +1 for "in profession" skills and 2 ranks per +1 for "out of profession" skills.  The maximum ranks you can put into "in profession" skills is equal to your level plus 3, and half that for "out of profession" skills.

Using the Pathfinder skill approach, a character would receive 8 + INT bonus skill ranks at each level. Skills cost 1 rank per +1, regardless of if they're "in profession" or not, however, "in profession" skills receive a +3 bonus.  The maximum ranks you can put into any skill is equal to your level.

I vastly prefer the Pathfinder approach as it's much more elegant and easy to work with. I'm concerned, however, that characters will wind up less skilled than they would if I used the Dungeons & Dragons / D20 Modern approach.  So over the next couple of days I'm going to create the same character using both approaches and see how they compare.  I'll post the results here, just in case anyone is interested.