There is a 2nd level spell called Heroics that gives fighter feats temporary. Is there a spell that gives skills temporary?
Skills are not binary. There are endless spells that provide bonuses to skills, either directly or indirectly. What, exactly, are you trying to do? Please tell us the whole story.
I was doing a character who is a servant of Denier and I wanted to make him Matrix like in regards to having poficentcy in any skill and most feats by "downloading" the skill or feat by casting a spell. Heriocs works for most feats and I was wanting something similar for skills. Its mor for rp than anything else.
Nothing will give actual ranks, although plenty will give bonuses (seriously, there are far too many to list here).
The simplest solution, though, is just to play a factotum (Dungeonscape).
Thanks for the help! if you were to list some ways to gain bonuses to skills what would be your top 3 or 5. I know alterself is a good one what would be another way?
I'm not a fan of shapeshifting, so keep that in mind.
My favorite skill spells are multi-purpose - one spell that affects multiple skills. Two low-level examples are on the Bard list: Improvisation (gives you a pool of points spent to enhance any roll you make within a moderate duration) an Immediate Assistance (any ally - including yourself - can reroll a botched roll.) The high level ones are a lot more diverse, but the benchmark they're usually compared to is Moment of Prescience in the PHB. (There are probably better ones out there - I'm not very familiar with high level magic - but that's a good place to start. However, using it on a skill check tends to be overkill.) You'll note that most of these can also be used to enhance attack rolls, saving throws, and occasionally caster level checks as well.
In terms of feats or class features, it's hard to beat factotum (+Int to any skill check for a refreshable inspiration point), particularly with a lot of Fonts of Inspiration. Prior to that, Bard with Bardic Knack (on any check, can choose to give up the ability to take 10 to replace your skill ranks with one-half your bard level, rounded up) paired with a way to make untrained skill checks (Jack of All Trades, Elf Dilettante, etc.) was the usual suggestion on this front. Anything specifically focused on skills in general beyond this tended to be too expensive to be worth it - skills really don't make as much impact as you'd think, particularly after you get magic that either makes the irrelevant or makes DC 20ish checks easy.
Special mention should go to methods of rotating bonus feats from any list - heroics is limited to fighter feats. Chameleon, the Psychic Reformation power paired with a Thought Bottle, and the so-called "Dark Chaos Shuffle" come to mind here.
Ultimately, though, I'd still suggest factotum overall. Just call inspiration points something appropriate to your concept and BOOM.
--- called Skill Knowledge, that gives you a +5 to a skill, but also
allows you to make Trained checks too.
www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20...
Sans a specific dude to learn it from, you could use PHB Research.
1. Take the Jack of All Trades feat. This lets you make any skill check as though you were trained.
2. Each morning, cast the spell Divine Insight. It lasts an hour per level, so it should last you most of the adventuring day. At any point during this duration, you can end the spell as an immediate action to give you a skill check insight bonus of 5 plus your caster level.
So, any time you need to make a skill check, you pop your Divine Insight, and end up with a tremendous bonus.
You can replace Divine Insight with Guidance of the Avatar if you'd like. GotA is also a second level spell and gives a flat +20 bonus, which is both huge and less dependant on caster level. However, there are three downsides: it only lasts a minute (so no pre-casting it at the beginning of the day), it's a competence bonus (so it won't stack with most skill-granting items), and it's a 3.0 spell from the Wizards online spellbook (so it won't be allowed in every game). Still, if it's allowed, go ahead and nab a wand of it to keep on hand for when you want to really, REALLY do well on a skill check. After all, the two spells stack.