D&D 5E 5e Skills whats your opinion

[iserith]

There was a mechanically small but flexibily large difference in the D&D Next play-test system that became 5e. Skills weren't tied to specific abilities.

So you could provide a critique of a performance with Int (Perform) or look at a blueprint of the estate grounds to devise a route to take the party in unseen with Int (Stealth). Bend an iron bar and use Str (Intimidation). It gave a lot more flexibility. Sure, there's a default for the common use-case, but it handles all of the cases intuitively.

We can do this now under current rules. DM asks for an ability check, player asks if a particular skill applies.

Basic Rules, page 58: "Sometimes, the DM might ask for an ability check using a specific skill—for example, “Make a Wisdom (Perception) check.” At other times, a player might ask the DM if proficiency in a particular skill applies to a check. In either case, proficiency in a skill means an individual can add his or her proficiency bonus to ability checks that involve that skill."

And if that's not specific enough, we also have DMG, page 239: "Under certain circumstances, you can decide a character's proficiency in a skill can be applied to a different ability check. For example, you might decide that a character forced to swim from an island to the mainland must succeed on a Constitution check (as opposed to a Strength check) because of the distance involved. The character is proficient in the Athletics skill, which covers swimming, so you allow the character's proficiency bonus to apply to this ability check. In effect, you're asking for a Constitution (Athletics) check, instead of a Strength (Athletics) check."

 

[Imaro]

There was a mechanically small but flexibily large difference in the D&D Next play-test system that became 5e. Skills weren't tied to specific abilities.

So you could provide a critique of a performance with Int (Perform) or look at a blueprint of the estate grounds to devise a route to take the party in unseen with Int (Stealth). Bend an iron bar and use Str (Intimidation). It gave a lot more flexibility. Sure, there's a default for the common use-case, but it handles all of the cases intuitively.

While not default this is one of the options in the DMG... and I even think it's called out as an option in the PHB as well...

 

[Lehrbuch]

Athletics? How do you simulate a desert nomad who lives in rocky hills but has never swam in her life? She just sees the ocean for the first time in her life and she knows how to swim because she is "athletic"? That makes sense how?

What's the problem? When she climbs a perilous cliff-face you make a Strength (Athletics) check?

When she falls off the boat into a swirling ocean, either she just makes a Strength check because she doesn't know how to swim, or she still makes a Strength (Athletics) check, but the DM imposes the disadvantage because she doesn't know how to swim. The DM / players can sort out character-specific details like this which affect how specific characters can use specific skills without resorting to exhaustive lists of narrow skills.

If you are doing something that doesn't make sense; do something else.

Also, should not smart people know more skills? I have trouble with Grug the Dumbass (Int. 7) having the same number of skills as Sheeralla the Sage (Int. 18).

That seems like a fallacy believed by people who fancy themselves as "smart".

Sheeralla certainly should be better at Intelligence based Skills than Grug (and will be better under the game mechanics), but there doesn't seem any reason to restrict the number of Intelligence based Skills that Grug can try to do, and there certainly doesn't seem to be any reason to restrict the number and nature of Dexterity based Skills (for example) that Grug can have.

 

[Shaghayegh]

Part of Intelligence is the ability to learn and assimilate information. A functional moron is not going to have the capacity to study and practice as many skills.

 

[Shaghayegh]

Give her disadvantage to the ability check.

Though, notably, swimming and climbing are both just hits to speed. Only in some cases does the DM call for an ability check.

Yeah, house rule it. Something this basic should not need to be customized to make sense. Athletics is crap.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Part of Intelligence is the ability to learn and assimilate information. A functional moron is not going to have the capacity to study and practice as many skills.

A "functional moron" is not something that can be built in D&D, at least in this edition. A character with an Int score of 7 is still someone who can figure out a DC 17 Intelligence check 10% of the time, compared to the 20% chance that an average character would have.

The weakest, clumsiest idiot that can possibly be expressed under this ruleset is still well within the range of human averages.

 

[Shaghayegh]

A "functional moron" is not something that can be built in D&D, at least in this edition. A character with an Int score of 7 is still someone who can figure out a DC 17 Intelligence check 10% of the time, compared to the 20% chance that an average character would have.

The weakest, clumsiest idiot that can possibly be expressed under this ruleset is still well within the range of human averages.

But that does not imply he can learn and study skills. That is a separate issue.

 

[Lehrbuch]

Part of Intelligence is the ability to learn and assimilate information. A functional moron is not going to have the capacity to study and practice as many skills.

Intelligence doesn't imply capability to learn (either the D&D Ability, or in the real-world sense of the word).

Skills are capabilities, in D&D. There is nothing that implies these must have been acquired by learning, and there is nothing that implies every character acquired a single capability in the same manner.

 

[iserith]

Yeah, house rule it. Something this basic should not need to be customized to make sense. Athletics is crap.

There is no house rule being mentioned here?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

But that does not imply he can learn and study skills. That is a separate issue.

True, but it's a separate character defect which can also not be represented in the D&D ruleset.

Every possible character can succeed at a Hard (DC 15) Intelligence check.
Every possible character can fail at an Easy (DC 10) Intelligence check.
No character is so dumb as to make learning very difficult, or so smart as to make it substantially easier.

These are extremes of the human condition which the game simply does not represent. If you want to call that a failing of the system, then go right ahead.