D&D 5E The skill system is one dimensional.

[Shardstone]

That is not my experience.

At all.

As in, almost exactly the antithesis of my experience.

How many reddit posts do I have to link to disprove you? 10? 30? Cuz there is a lot lmfao

 

[Micah Sweet]

While I like both systems for adding more granularity to skills, they do ultimately file down to just adding more numbers.

Unfortunately, explicated skill systems have gone quite thoroughly out of fashion, and I have all but given up hope of seeing a new design take on the task of listing out everything one can actually do with skills, much less plan sensibly for scaling and increased breadth of ability as characters level up.

Instead we get generic or scaling difficulty tables.

I can definitely see value in adding abilities tied to particular degrees of skill; ie, at +5 acrobatics you can do this cool thing, and at +10 acrobatics you can optionally do this other even cooler thing. We can call them skill features.

 

[Scott Christian]

How many reddit posts do I have to link to disprove you? 10? 30? Cuz there is a lot lmfao

I mean to be fair to @EzekielRaiden , there are certainly a rather vocal group that carries on about how terrible 4e was. And, on top of that, they have the sales figures to prove it. So, while there may be positive affirmations out there, there are also negative affirmations as well. And it is easy to fall into being surrounded by one category.

 

[Micah Sweet]

They aren't in 5e, that's for sure.

The edition that must not be named, on the other hand...

Please explain how this is yet another thing 4e does better.

 

[Shardstone]

I mean to be fair to @EzekielRaiden , there are certainly a rather vocal group that carries on about how terrible 4e was. And, on top of that, they have the sales figures to prove it. So, while there may be positive affirmations out there, there are also negative affirmations as well. And it is easy to fall into being surrounded by one category.

My argument is that online opinion on social media has changed to be favorable toward 4e in the last few years. I dont care about the minority or sales figures.

 

[Shardstone]

I can definitely see value in adding abilities tied to particular degrees of skill; ie, at +5 acrobatics you can do this cool thing, and at +10 acrobatics you can optionally do this other even cooler thing. We can call them skill features.

This is a good idea

 

[Micah Sweet]

I will disagree with the premise. Reason being... skills should not be a "mechanics mini-game" within an RPG.

D&D Combat is a "mini-game". You can strip the entire system out of the RPG and play it on its own-- and we know this because WotC has actually created board games that specifically do this. They remove the roleplaying from games like Wrath of Ashardalon and Legend of Drizzt to just have the combat mini-game.

But ability checks and skills are not that. And they shouldn't be that. What they are, is giving us 'Yes' / 'No' answers to the questions regarding our narrative experiences within the roleplaying. We don't play "skills" to play skills-- we use skills as randomizers to describing our actions within the story. We tell the DM what it is we want our characters to do in the story... and the ability check (with or without skills added) is there purely for the DM to help them decide how successful the action was. That's it. Because whatever the result, the DM will then narratively describe what happens.

The fact of the matter is... we don't NEED skills at all. AD&D didn't have them after all. D&D can completely function just by the player describing what it is their PC wants to accomplish and the DM could just decide for themselves "Is this something I think should work?" and describe the results from that. But that's an arbitrary DM decision that results in players and DMs oftentimes arguing if the player doesn't accept the DM's reasoning for why some action wouldn't work. So instead, we add in a die roll specifically just to take the heat off the DM.

The DM still gets to make a decision on how possible they think the action should be... they choose the DC of the action... but then the player gets a chance for their PC to be successful by making a check. And this process-- replacing a DM fiat decision with a die roll-- should be just as easy and quick as it was when the DM just said 'Yes' or 'No'. Because we aren't trying to gamify skill checks, we're just using randomness in our narrative description and roleplaying. So trying to enlarge the entire thing by expanding the die rolling systems or creating multiple layers of things you can and can't do with skills... that's all unnecessary. Describe narratively what you want to do, make a die roll, gets the results. Then move on in the adventure.

Sounds like a preference to me, not in any way objectively what we should do.

 

[Pedantic]

To talk a little bit on this point that you bring up, there's a chance that you and I might be using a term like 'adjudication' differently, so let me go over how I'm looking at its use. You might not agree with my way of defining the word, but you might agree with the results that come from the way I'm using it. I don't know.

From my way of thinking (using the climbing a 30' castle wall as the example scenario)... the "adjudication" would come in from things like this: the player knows that they could just say a default "I want to climb the wall" and that the DM would then ask for a STR (Athletics) check. But because they know the default is the barest minimum to complete this challenge and has the highest DC since nothing has been been said to make the climb easier... the player might look for other things that would be to their benefit to the climb. So for instance asking if there are any parts of the wall where there are vines growing up that they could use for hand/footholds. Or if there might be a cart nearby they could wheel into place to give them a bit of a boost. Stuff like that. Then the "adjudication" (as I'm using the term) would be the DM deciding in the moment if any of those things do exist, and if so, deciding if their use would make it easier for the player's PC to scale the wall. Then that adjudication would adjust the mechanical DC downwards.

I would categorize what you're saying here as the PC requesting more information about the world. The existence of a cart being prompted by the PC's query about it is outside the purview of a skill system from my perspective. It's certainly possible the inquiry brought something into focus that wasn't previously firmly decided but it's not particularly relevant. The skill DC should be a factor of the wall, with appropriate modifiers noted in the climbing skill, and possibly some appropriate small bonuses or penalties (I'm fond of 3e's +/-2 circumstance bonuses), which are generally not that important unless the PC is reaching and in many cases will be largely subsumed by the PC doing something, even as simply as taking 10/20 to break the RNG and guarantee they hit a desired threshold.

Now I'm sure there are some DMs who would not go along with that style of playing, because it essentially is a player "inventing" things in the world that could benefit them... things that did not exist before because the DM did not describe them originally. The DM has probably not thought up every single thing in the environment around these castle walls, so the adjudication comes from them after the fact deciding as to the possibility or likelihood that the thing COULD be there if/when the player asked about it. And if they decide "Yes, sure, let's say that thing is there" then how does that impact the mechanical odds of success?

So rather than a player knowing all the things they can do mechanically and making informed decisions that way (which I think is what you are talking about if I've understood you correctly?)... they instead know that they can come up with ideas narratively and that it will have impact if/when the mechanics eventually come into play. And the adjudication comes from the DM having to translate narrative ideas into mechanical results.

I don't think it's possible to purge the skill system or the game of every such situation, but I don't think it should be the primary vector of play. Frankly, I don't generally think PCs should have all that much hinging on any one given skill check regularly. The goal is getting into the castle, and the rogue has sufficient climbing skill they can scale castle walls, making that one viable route in. "Climbing a wall" isn't a problem or an encounter in its own right, it's something that occurs in a broader context. I'd much rather have a player asking routinely about the relative roughness of most walls they run across, knowing that anything less than a perfectly smooth wall makes climbing something they can definitely do to resolve whatever the actual situation at hand is.

 

[Scott Christian]

My argument is that online opinion on social media has changed to be favorable toward 4e in the last few years. I dont care about the minority or sales figures.

Then your online community must be different than the one I see. Or, worse yet, people who had real and concrete concerns with how 4e was built and played are now just silent because they are tired of trying to demonstrate their arguments against people who refuse to listen. I mean, we see it in play right now in another thread about what to bring from Baldur's Gate to OneD&D. It's like people forgot that 4e did not appeal to the masses. In fact, it even failed to appeal to many long time D&D players; whereas 5e, has appealed to both.

My point is, an online vocalization, positive or negative, is not an indicator that the community switched. And that includes the online community. Because in the end, it might just be opponents know their evidence will be dismissed, and therefore, remain quiet.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I can definitely see value in adding abilities tied to particular degrees of skill; ie, at +5 acrobatics you can do this cool thing, and at +10 acrobatics you can optionally do this other even cooler thing. We can call them skill features.

I'm pretty sure other game systems do have those thing in them. I want to say Green Ronin's 'AGE' system has something like 'critical boons' that give you bonus stuff when you roll doubles or triples on the dice? And those I think are like set bonuses that are written down as being gained (rather than the GM just inventing something to be a boon for a successful roll.)

I don't think D&D will ever see something like that myself... but who knows? Maybe someone at WotC will think of some interesting way to do it using the 5E engine and offer it up? Not expecting it, but wouldn't dismiss it out of hand either.