Skill Enhancement

As I said, the rules are very vauge and the only reference that I can find to skill enhancement at all is where the book says there is no limits to the competance bonus.  Somehow, I believe this was either an oversight on the writers part or a misprint.  In my campaign, I have characters with magic items that give bonuses to skills ranging from a +2 to a +20.  Some of my players have begun asking about items that would give them +30 to skills like Alchemy and Bluff.  Neccessity has made me lay out some ground rules to keep the ehnacements, and abilities, in check.

There are two ways to give skill bonuses with magic items.  The first way is to possess the knowledge and skill required to impart a competance bonus onto some related magic item.  The other is to possess a spell (like Jump) that ignores skill level and imparts a magical bonus to your skill checks.  Either method may be used or both may be combined to make superior items.

After much deliberation, I have come up with a table to guide the item creation process for skill bonuses.  The maximum bonus is what can be obtained using the skill level, materials, or magic at hand to create the item.  To create an enhanced item, the character must have at least 5 ranks in the appropriate skill.  The following table assumes that the character has at least the minimum ranks for the enhancement.  Without the minimum ranks, only magic may be used to give an enhancement.

Confused yet?  I hope not.  This simple system should cover any questions that come up.  The only problems that I see are what items constitute marginal or major use.  I leave this issue up to the DM and the situation.  The other problem is that some skills can't have competance bonuses attatched to them, and some skills cannot have magical aid to enhance them.  Instead of making a generalization, I have decided to deal with each skill individually.  For new skills, find one that is a close match and adapt those rules.