D&D 5E A question for athletic gamers

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).

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.

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Training specific lifts is definitely a thing.

I am 5'7" 185lbs and I can deadlift 450lbs.

It's because I practice deadlifting. I have a bad knee so I don't squat very much so I can't do that well. I never go above 200 because I don't want to risk it.

A shot putter will be able to throw heavy things farther than anyone else because that is what they train at.

Xeviat said:

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

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I no longer lift, but from my experience in the past I would say definitely. As you learn to engage additional muscle groups you can lift a lot more. If you train evenly so you don't have one weak muscle group that the weak link in a chain of otherwise strong muscle groups, or one that won't support the others. As you learn to control your breathing.

Xeviat said:

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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Really, all of the ability scores can train. Playing suduko and crosswords can help keep your brain agile for soemthign completely unrelated. If you do this, you may want to do it across the board.

Hmm, that brings up an interesting option instead of a skill system. Allow every character to have a single +2 or three +1 that change your ability mods. This represents your ongoing training and effort.

This could affect everything - ability (& skill) checks, saves, attacks, DCs, etc., or just your ability (& skill) checks depending on how powerful you wanted it. I'd strongly tend towards the second because otherwise I see it almost always being "+2 into attack/DC score". So you could have an erudite fighter with an extra +2 mod for INT without feeling like you were shooting yourself in the foot.

During a downtime or other lengthy period as per the DM you can change those up - either reassigning or swapping +2 / 3x +1. This represents changing your regime.

Note that these are changes to your modifiers - they don't affect your ability scores or their caps at all.

Endurance can be trained. Keeping focus despite exhaustion, starvation, stress can be trained.
military training is a good example for this.

in DnD the difference between a saving throw, an ability check, or a ability check with a skill, is sometime very unclear.
in real life you can certainly train your endurance, does it need to be the same in DnD ? Not sure.

Krachek said:

in real life you can certainly train your endurance, does it need to be the same in DnD ? Not sure.

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One of the things I'm doing as part of a set of house rules is giving proficiency bonus to all saves to balance out saving throw progressions. This is making me put some consideration into what is a save and what is a check.

I'm also looking at adding Int mod to skills known, so I want to add a few skills here and there. Endurance and "Power" were easy adds in my mind because they're things that are currently raw checks, so I'm not really taking away from an existing skill.

As a former athlete (I just try to stay in shape now) and Coach of American Football and Track & Field for many, many years - I think these things can be trained. Training kicks in the more specific the task is. Several of the skills in D&D are mismatched to their primary characteristic.

Xeviat said:

One of the things I'm doing as part of a set of house rules is giving proficiency bonus to all saves to balance out saving throw progressions. This is making me put some consideration into what is a save and what is a check.

I'm also looking at adding Int mod to skills known, so I want to add a few skills here and there. Endurance and "Power" were easy adds in my mind because they're things that are currently raw checks, so I'm not really taking away from an existing skill.

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the actual rules interchange saving throw and check.
the best example is shove vs the trip maneuver.
One ask a check, the other a save...

The idea that give good save to everyone is noble,
but I like the idea of magic or other effect being scary.
if everybody have roughly 50% of saving everything,
the fear of poison, magic, death spell become a play with probabilty, a rational play.

Krachek said:

the actual rules interchange saving throw and check.
the best example is shove vs the trip maneuver.
One ask a check, the other a save...

The idea that give good save to everyone is noble,
but I like the idea of magic or other effect being scary.
if everybody have roughly 50% of saving everything,
the fear of poison, magic, death spell become a play with probabilty, a rational play.

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They won't have a 50% resistance. The gulf between high and low saves is still there from ability scores, and could be as much as 8 different (5+2 vs -1). Now, they start at as much as 6 different (3+2 vs -1) but can balloon to 12 different (5+6 vs -1), so I just want to even it out a little.

Shove vs trip maneuver is because of how they wanted to handle no attack roll.

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!

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how about used to be athletic Here are quick thoughts

Weight lifting will both increase strength and provide some bonus to lift but I think something to remember is it will decrease the chance of straining yourself when you push yourself. In 4e if I use the martial practice that lets me lift better it allows you to take 10 on strength checks. (be strong more reliably)

Engineering? or Investigation might find vulnerabilities in objects to enhance breaking them. I do not consider it Strength based so much

Throwing while in some ways very much generic for athletics is so close to a combat skill that well...

Endurance can be over all or muscle group specific.

Humans who are predominantly fast twitch muscles ie high strength (and yes quick)... will not have the best slow twitch performance ie high endurance, but that is realism heros are different.

Second wind is a real thing and fairly natural (there is cell level healing which removes muscle fatigue in a burst)

Abilities cannot come without practice of some sorts, thus skill.
A fighter is an athlete, just by learning to hit, throw, dodge, feint. Does he need to be trained in athletic on top of that?
a wizard is an accomplish Arcanist. Training in arcana seem obvious.
i take a look at the old thief in aDnd. A thief was trained in all thief skill.
maybe skill should come with class as a package of skills related to this class.

I'm definitely not athletic these days, but once upon a time!

There's technique for sure. Not enough to justify expanding the skills for how I run my games, though. As with most house rules, talk it through with your players to see if it's something they want. By way of example, I have a doctor at my table, and he was indifferent to expanding options for Medicine and other non-magical healing. That is, player familiarity with a subject doesn't mean there's automatic interest in capturing its intricacies with house rules. But it can! So how do your players feel about the idea? Report back!

Consider 5e's nebulous splatterart of class balance while you're at it. It isn't inherently imbalancing to add Strength skills, as (im)balance will only emerge as opportunities to use them arise, but in the broadest terms possible, it will lead to more opportunities for non-skill classes to tread on the toes of skill-based classes (even as it shores up other options; luchador bards please!)