D&D 5E A question for athletic gamers

Hi everyone. I've got a question for those in the Ven Diagram overlap between gamers and athletic people. I'm looking at expanding the skill system.

Do you believe weight lifting is a technique that can be learned beyond just training that increases strength?

Do you believe endurance is something that can be trained for beyond just training that increases constitution? Do you feel like pushing beyond your endurance limit is something you actively do (an ability check), or is resisting fatigue something passive (a saving throw)?

I'm in the process of seeing if I want to expand the skill system, and I'm wondering if Strength should have another skill for applications of strength (like lifting, throwing, bending, and breaking objects) beyond what Athletics covers, and if I should have Endurance as a constitution skill or if those uses would be more in line with Constitution saves.

Thanks for your input!

Xeviat said:

Hi everyone. I've got a question for those in the Ven Diagram overlap between gamers and athletic people. I'm looking at expanding the skill system.

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gamers ∩ athletes = {}

Xeviat said:

Hi everyone. I've got a question for those in the Ven Diagram overlap between gamers and athletic people. I'm looking at expanding the skill system.

Do you believe weight lifting is a technique that can be learned beyond just training that increases strength?

Click to expand...

I don't lift in a way that the kind of people who say "Do you even lift?" would acknowledge, but there's definitely technique. Both for safety and for increasing the amounts you can move.

Do you believe endurance is something that can be trained for beyond just training that increases constitution? Do you feel like pushing beyond your endurance limit is something you actively do (an ability check), or is resisting fatigue something passive (a saving throw)?

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I can speak more about this. There are efficiency techniques to endurance, ranging from how you perform the motions to how effectively you isolate the muscles you don't actually need to use.

But there's a huge mental component to "pushing beyond your endurance limit" (which is sort of oxymoronic; I would instead say "learning where your endurance limit really is and being willing to go there.") It requires both a willingness to suffer, and skills you can practice to prevent your body from rebelling.

I'm in the process of seeing if I want to expand the skill system, and I'm wondering if Strength should have another skill for applications of strength (like lifting, throwing, bending, and breaking objects) beyond what Athletics covers, and if I should have Endurance as a constitution skill or if those uses would be more in line with Constitution saves.

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The same could be said for every skill, though. Working with trained domesticated animals is about as different from knowing how to respond to a rattlesnake as swimming is from climbing (both of which require more endurance than strength, for that matter.) Picking pockets has very little in common with juggling.

My pet peeve with the skills list is that there's no Int skill that is akin to Perception. "Investigation" has to cover everything from looking through a library for clues, to detecting irregularities in illusions. And spotting the inconsistency in a lie is (apparently) a function of Wisdom. B.S.

But I endeavor to persevere.

It's really just a question of how simulationist you want to be.

Xeviat said:

Hi everyone. I've got a question for those in the Ven Diagram overlap between gamers and athletic people. I'm looking at expanding the skill system.

Do you believe weight lifting is a technique that can be learned beyond just training that increases strength?

Do you believe endurance is something that can be trained for beyond just training that increases constitution? Do you feel like pushing beyond your endurance limit is something you actively do (an ability check), or is resisting fatigue something passive (a saving throw)?

I'm in the process of seeing if I want to expand the skill system, and I'm wondering if Strength should have another skill for applications of strength (like lifting, throwing, bending, and breaking objects) beyond what Athletics covers, and if I should have Endurance as a constitution skill or if those uses would be more in line with Constitution saves.

Thanks for your input!

Click to expand...

As a runner, I would say endurance is not only Constitution, but a bit of Wisdom, too, as far as Wisdom represents willpower. The willpower to exercise restraint from the desire to go out too fast at the start of a race and also the willpower to hang on towards the end. As far as racing is concerned, there may be even a bit of Charisma (Deception) in there with the tactic of speeding up to run past another runner later in a race in an attempt to break their willpower even though there really is not much left in your own tank.

As a former baseball player, I'm not too certain Athletics applies to those various skills as I'm reminded of the legendary words of a former major leaguer:

John Kruk said:

Lady, I'm not an athlete. I'm a professional baseball player.

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DnD is a basic and poor simulation system for skills and combat.
and any new system won’t be much better.
beside of that,
training and practice is important for any activity.
and most of the time, doing something require more than one ability.
and a more realistic system won’t necessarily be more fun to play.

I'm not sure I understand the question.

All the skills can be broken up into more specific skills. That doesn't mean they should.

Olympic Weightlifting involves a lot of technique. Powerlifting is more about raw strength but still involves technique. Both require specific conditioning.

A word of caution - PCs are heroes. They do heroic things. A display of heroic strength shouldn't require an ability check most of the time. Ability checks should be reserved for truly epic moments.

ad_hoc said:

I'm not sure I understand the question.

All the skills can be broken up into more specific skills. That doesn't mean they should.

Olympic Weightlifting involves a lot of technique. Powerlifting is more about raw strength but still involves technique. Both require specific conditioning.

A word of caution - PCs are heroes. They do heroic things. A display of heroic strength shouldn't require an ability check most of the time. Ability checks should be reserved for truly epic moments.

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The question is would "can I lift it", "I want to break down the door", and "how far can I throw it" be raw Str checks or do you think a new skill could apply (I'd personally want it to be separate from athletics).

The other question is checks to resist fatigue, should they be passive Con saves, raw con checks, or an Endurance skill.

My questioning is coming from a direction of "how much training and practice are involved beyond raw ability". I trained for track and field in middle school before my knees went South so I don't really have a good basis for measuring myself. I wanted some other opinions on how they felt.

The "you can lift weight" more efficiently skill in my homebrew game is called "Porter". It belongs to a class of skills that generally aren't tested, but instead directly enhance some sort of static quality of your character - in this case carrying capacity. There is also a "Run" skill that directly increases movement rate. Most martial classes have one or both added to them and additional skill points to spend on things of the sort.

I have considered turning Endurance into a skill.

Full disclaimer, I've never been particularly athletic (though I did play some as a kid), but its my observation that people can get better at specific athletic activities, and that if the game is going to include getting better at balance, jumping, tumbling, climbing and the like, that ought to also acknowledge improvement in other tangible athletic activities.

Xeviat said:

The question is would "can I lift it", "I want to break down the door", and "how far can I throw it" be raw Str checks or do you think a new skill could apply (I'd personally want it to be separate from athletics).

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Are you envisioning that heroes spend time training at how to break down doors? If so, maybe that's an edge case that allows for a new background, which grants proficiency or even advantage on those checks.

Or maybe another skill applies:
"I want to pick up the cow. Since I'm a folk hero who grew up on a farm and know how to handle animals I think I should have a better chance of doing that than your average Joe."
"Ok, give me a Strength (Animal Handling) roll...."

Elfcrusher said:

"I want to pick up the cow. Since I'm a folk hero who grew up on a farm and know how to handle animals I think I should have a better chance of doing that than your average Joe."
"Ok, give me a Strength (Animal Handling) roll...."

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What I would tend to do is make picking up a cow have disadvantage on your strength check unless you passed an animal handling skill check. Accomplishes much the same way, but has more verisimilitude and consistency IMO, because it's easy to explain why picking up a moving terrified animal is harder than picking up dead weight.

But, I do have a homebrew 3e feat - 'Imposing' - that lets Animal Handling, Intimidate, and Use Magic Device skill checks depend on strength rather than charisma.

I also have a Saboteur feat that makes you better at breaking things, and there was a published 3e variant 'Dungeon Crasher' that was built around that concept.

I can definitely see 'folk hero', 'saboteur' and the like as viable 5e backgrounds or subclasses, or 5e variant proficiencies that aren't skill or tool proficiencies, but which accomplished things like the 'Porter' or 'Run' skill did for me in 3e.