cooneydad:
Question for everyone: what do you think is the best "skills class" in 4e?
I've actually looked into the somewhat extensively.
Bards win for most class skills at 14. Since they get a bonus on untrained skills, and want to focus on Charisma (which is key for 4 of 16 skills, second only to Wisdom) and don't necessarily need heavy armor, they start out with good numbers on a lot of skills. They start with 5, with Arcana automatically.
Vampires come in second at 11 class skills for some reason. They start with 4, with none automatically.
Then it's monks, rogues and sorcerers at 10. Monks and sorcerers start with 4. Sorcerers get Arcana automatically, but since they don't need Intelligence it won't be a great skill for them. Rogues have the highest starting number at 6, since they pick 4 on top of Stealth and Thievery.
Humans and eladrin both start with an extra skill, and both could be good rogues or good bards, so one should consider that.
Other things to consider:
All controllers have Insight as a class skill, and none have Streetwise or Thievery.
All defenders have Endurance and Intimidate as class skills and none have Acrobatics, Stealth or Thievery.
All leaders have Heal as a class skill, and none of them have Stealth.
There's no skill that all strikers have but 8 out of 9 (all but the sorcerer) have Acrobatics and 8 out of 9 (all but the warlock) have Athletics. Put another way, as many strikers have both Acrobatics and Athletics as there are classes in each of the other roles.
18 of 26 classes have Athletics.
6 of 16 classes have Stealth.
Edit: Some subclasses like the Songblade might have slightly different skills from their base class.
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:28, Wed 21 Nov 2018.