It's a little too easy to abuse a single rogue level with UMD. I would like to see a single change made to it, to make it less overpowering to take a single rogue level on Mr.Fullplate

Restrict UMD by armor, the same as tumble.

I approve, for a completely unbiased reason.

It's easy to abuse anything. I don't think that'd make a whole lot of sense, anyway. The armor you're wearing makes it harder to use the arcane wand? Doesn't make sense, nope.

Perhaps only PCs with two rogue levels or more can use the skill?

If this is indeed a problem that needs any sort of fixing at all. Which at the moment I don't think it is, but never the less tossed my suggestion in. :3

Why does armour incur spellcasting failure? I think it makes enough sense to work in, and IMO, it's more balancing than what it is currently.

Wands don't suffer from spellcasting failure, thus it would be silly to have UMD affect them based on what you're wearing.

Cleft Why does armour incur spellcasting failure? I think it makes enough sense to work in, and IMO, it's more balancing than what it is currently.

Spells that require somatic components suffer spell faliure from armour due to the weight and difficulty to make the intracate movements while encumbered by full plate. Activating a wand is just you speaking the command word.

If it's just speaking a command word, why can't everyone use them? Arguing the "sense" of magic, makes no sense in itself. I really think this would be more balancing, and make leather armour more appealing over the fullplate and towershield pwn machine.

If someone really wants to use a wand they'll take a bard or ranger level. Really, would it create anymore fun situations, opportunities to roleplay, having them not working in armor? Would it add to anything? I don't think it would.

Really, UMD has nothing to do with armor in any way, IMO.

Yeah, it doesnt have anything to do with armor. A mage can use a wand in fullplate if he wants.

It's fine as it is, frankly-

It's not an untrained skill though that is the problem so you need to know a little about magic to do it or be able to fake it (which is why a rogue gets the skill)

Don't forget bards!

And UMD doesn't just affect arcane items. It also covers your divine equipment, wands and scrolls too.

You're probably not going to earn any coolness points with the DMs for laming one level of rogue for UMD. The DCs for scroll/wand activation are high enough that you'd probably have trouble saving up skill points without risking character file corruption, which we would not repair.

I don't see any reason to make the changes suggested in this thread.

I had a rogue, pure rogue mind you, that made it to level 8 and had a few items that boosted his UMD skill - up to 15 and I still didn't have a really great % chance of using scrolls or crafted wands.

There is a post that Thrawn made a while back that lists the new EfU scaled UMD and Lore score points.

You'll notice that even with a single level of rogue and 9 points in UMD, that you still don't get very high up on the value scale for items. And you certainly don't come very close to the amount needed to use UMD for alignment restrictions or race restrictions.

Djspectre is right. I am playing a pure rogue with UMD and let me tell you that even though my character has max UMD and 16 Cha I fail a lot when trying to use a simple invisibility wand. Three out of Five times the wand will simply fail to work.

I think UMD is balanced as it currently is for the simple fact that non-pure rogues taking the skill are taking it for divine healing wands. A level of Ranger and a level of Sorcerer (or Bard) would give you access to every wand in the game with no check penalty. If you take a ranger level, you don't get any AB or HP Penalties. If you take Sorcerer you can take True Strike / Shield (which can't be made into wands OR potions). If you take Bard you get good saves, the same amount of AB you would have had if you went Rogue, a few less skill points, and access to all the sweet bard only items found on EfU. Fighter 6/ Ranger 1 / Bard 1 is a better power build than Fighter / Rogue IMO. The only thing you lack is the sneak attacks, but if you're only going for one level of rogue then it doesn't matter anyway.

Using UMD to it's full effect has a lot to do with using the wands with low UMD checks, that help you most.

Hold person Darkness Color spray

Those are about the only things you need to abuse UMD like your red headed step child.

You can always just drink a potion of invisibility, so having a wand of invisibility can be avoided most the time.

To use UMD like this, you only need a few things.

Level 7, 1 level of rogue at level 7=10 ranks UMD(with a decent int and a human, you aren't even 'saving' skill points from previous levels) SF:UMD 14 charisma =Only failing to use those wands on a 1, or a 2.

I'm not saying this to say I'm right, just to point out that a lot of the misconceptions about how hard it is to abuse UMD with one level of rogue are misguided.

What I am trying to say, though, is not that UMD is not abuse-able, but that trying to "fix" it would change nothing. It would only cripple pure rogues.

All of the spells you listed are arcane spells. If you change UMD so that it becomes even more difficult and limiting then people will simply take a level of bard or sorcerer instead. As I said, taking a level of bard is even better than taking a single level of rogue because of all the nice bard items here on the server. Taking a level of sorcerer gives you access to True Strike (which you can cast in heavy armor) and shield. Both are insanely powerful spells - so powerful that they can't even be made into potions or wands.

Additionally, on top of those advantages, they'd also get to use those same arcane wands without a single check required.

If you look at things in that context, UMD is balanced by comparison.