D&D 5E Skills - Does anyone actually like the way they're headed?

[1of3]

I think, the question is how you imagine the characters. Are they rather usual individuals with a few special tricks, or are they overall kick-ass heroes? A system with smaller differences in competence points to the latter.

Another question is how you transform the results into a narrative. The wizard does not know about that spell, but the ranger does. Is the ranger more educated in such matters? "Nay, I never had the patience for this stuff. Went with me father and aunt once, to take down a shaman. He pulled that same trick, before auntie took his head off."

Of course, if that isn't how you imagine the game, you can just reintroduce the extra +10 for knowledge checks.

 

[AntiStateQuixote]

What if the skill system included an "automatic" take 10 for all skills in non-stressful or optimal situations. Would this help?

Knowledge (lore) check
I'm researching bits about dragons because we're thinking of going after one. I roll my d20 and it's less than 10, so my skill check is 10 plus skill modifier. I still have a decent chance (50%) of getting 15 or higher, and the least I can get (with +3 INT and +1 skill) is 14.

We're fighting a beast that I've never seen before and I want to figure out what it is and what it can do to me. I roll 5 on my d20. That's my check (plus modifiers).


Figure out magic check
After we get out of the dungeon with our filthy lucre, I take the bottle of green liquid and examine it while we're in camp using my portable chemistry set. I get a minimum roll of 10 on my d20 to figure out what the potion is.

While trudging through the dungeon we come upon a magical rune on a door. I check it out and make my check. The d20 roll plus my modifier is my check. I roll low and we decide to bypass the door. But before we leave I get out my tracing paper and charcoal and to take a rubbing of the rune.

When we return to town I go to the library and research the rune at my leisure. Minimum roll on d20 is 10.



Now training matters more when your chance of success is more about skill and training, and less about the heat of the moment or other "luck" factors.

Does that help?

 

[Klaus]

I've been running the D&D Next playtest rules, and I am still trying to come to terms with the skill system.

My criticism of skills is that the proficiency bonus just isn't substantial enough. At Level 1, someone trained in a particular skill is a mere +1 better than someone who has no experience whatsoever. I realize that the math and DCs of DDN are lower overall, and a +1 in DDN is not the equivalent of +1 in 4e or 3.5. Nonetheless, it still doesn't work for my group and I. We just don't feel like these characters really are trained in the skills, both from a mechanical and a storytelling standpoint. And even moreover, the random die roll really is the main factor in whether or not you succeed at a task.

Look at a skill like Arcana, for example:

Level 3 Mage, Arcana +5 (+3 INT, +2 prof)

This conveys that a mage's wizardry training has only made him 10% better in the realm of arcane lore and magical knowledge. Sure, pure raw ability plays an important role in any skill, but one's training and dedicated learning should play a much greater role. This is especially obvious in very specialized areas, such as esoteric lore, device disabling, or even baking; think about it- your training is practically everything.

Let's say the 3rd-level party comes across a magic rune in a dungeon (DC 15 Arcana). The mage has a 50% chance of identifying its properties, while the fighter has probably a 25% chance. That's a noticeable difference, but really, it should be a bigger difference. Like, mage 60-70% vs. fighter 5-15%.

I could think of many, many more examples where the implications are that one's raw ability and (even more so) pure chance play the biggest factor in determining success. I shake my head.

Furthermore, why does the proficiency bonus have to be equal for attacks, spells, and skills. Would it really be that difficult to create a different bonus (like +5 to +11) for skills? I seriously doubt that a shift of 4 points is going to break the bounded accuracy philosophy.

Lastly, Rogues. The Expertise feature suddenly makes it feel like you are actually trained in skills again but, only this one class receives this feature. Mages aren't experts in Arcana, Clerics in Religion, Druids in Nature, and so on. It don't know if WotC is going to implement such an update in the future, as I've heard nothing of it, but I seriously hope the skill system gets revised.

May your adventures be many and your diligent training make a difference,

Esper

You can also take into account the advice on setting skill DCs from the DM Guidelines document.

In your example, the party comes across an ancient rune. It is not a particularly hard rune to recognize, for someone trained in Arcana, so the DC for the wizard is 15. On the other hand, it is extremely obscure for someone who had no training in the mystical arts, so you set the DC for the Fighter at 25.

 

[DEFCON 1]

You can also take into account the advice on setting skill DCs from the DM Guidelines document.

In your example, the party comes across an ancient rune. It is not a particularly hard rune to recognize, for someone trained in Arcana, so the DC for the wizard is 15. On the other hand, it is extremely obscure for someone who had no training in the mystical arts, so you set the DC for the Fighter at 25.

Yup. There's no reason why the DM can't set some checks as "trained only", or set the DC for some checks differently for the trained PCs instead of the untrained ones.

And on top of that... the other thing to remember is that it's not the flat proficiency bonus we should be looking at, it's the disparity between the PC's totals to determine whether than are really good or not. You have a complaint that a wizard is only +1 for Arcana at 1st level due to his proficiency? In a vacuum, yes that's true. But when you take into account the other PCs and the ability modifiers... your wizard is probably +5 for Arcana (INT + prof) while other characters could be -1 or +0. So that's upwards of a 30% swing.

And just because you have been trained in something while simultaneously not really having the ability to do it, does not mean you still should be better at it than someone who is naturally that way. A dry, wooden, personality-less person (CHA 10) might learn tricks on how to negotiate and make better deals (+1 prof bonus for Persuasion)... but that doesn't automatically mean they should be better at it than the charismatic superman who hasn't learned those tricks but can still just charm the pants off of people naturally (CHA 18). Especially as a 1st level character.

Now eventually... the more the negotiator works at his skills at persuading people enough, he will surpass the naturally charismatic one who didn't... but at 1st level, you've only just started getting better at it.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

Do I like the system? Yes. A lot. But the OP has a point. It would be more satisfying if the proficiency bonus either started higher, or if they make expertise more common.

And I still would prefer if expertise doubled your proficiency bonus instead of providing a flat +5.

 

[Li Shenron]

What if the skill system included an "automatic" take 10 for all skills in non-stressful or optimal situations. Would this help?

Maybe.

One problem with skills is that the d20 is too swingy i.e. there is too much range between 1 and 20. This might cause the problem, that you still have a too high chance of failure for tasks that should be trivial. If you have even a 5% of swimming up a waterfall, it's not believable that you still have a chance of drowning in a still pond (note: this is just a made-up example, maybe with the current DCs you can't).

But on the other hand, there are other skills for which the d20 is fine, especially when you have different degrees of success. That's actually one very good way IMHO to handle Knowledge checks. When the check is not for answering one specific questions but rather to get clues (e.g. "What is this arcane symbol on this door?") then the way I've done it hundreds of times is to grant cumulative clues based on the result: something like 10+ "It's a protection symbol", 15+ "It blasts with fire anyone trying to touch the door", 20+ "It cannot be dispelled but only bypassed with a password", 25+ "Here's the password...". In such case, large range actually makes it easy to allocate a few cumulative effects.

Take10 made sense in 3e, but what I didn't like about it, is that you can choose. I didn't like that you sometimes Take10 because there's no rush, then it's not enough so you retry with a roll. Furthermore, Take10 works horribly for lore checks, because it changes those skills from "What you know" to "What you can remember at the moment" (it's a possible interpretation, but it's one that forces you to allow retries at least after some time, so you need to be sure to know what retries imply).

Honestly I prefer not to see Take10 and Take20 come back, at least not in the Basic core game.

But OTOH you are suggesting something different IIUC, i.e. that there can be a feature to some character to automatically have a minimum result of 10 on certain skills. This is GOOD, and has already been in 5e playtest at some point, for example the Rogue had it in some packet, and spellcasters had it in Lores (instead of proficiency). I think this can be used well for skills that have a penalty for failure (hazard). So you could have Expertise in skill A, meaning you have a +5, but you could also have Reliability in skill B, meaning you get minimum 10.

 

[Ratskinner]

Problem lies in the linear probability distribution of the d20. If you want skills to matter more, try changing DC 15 to DC 1d20+5.

or use 2d10 instead of d20...I think that was even in the 3e Unearthed Arcana. I mean, that'd be a big change, but you'd still have a natural 20 show up (very rarely). Maybe the game should use 2d10 for skills and d20 for attacks/saves?

 

[Sadrik]

I think the skill system as presented in the last packet is not that good.

I would have much preferred them to use the advantage/disadvantage mechanism just for skill checks. Replace all other instances with advantage/disadvantage in the other rules with bonuses.

You have proficiency in arcana? Ok, roll 2d20, which depending on your DC is maximally a +5 bonus.

Disadvantage could be used in situations where you have no training and it is a skill where training or a tool would be required. So simple. But alas...

 

[Kobold Stew]

It would be more satisfying if the proficiency bonus either started higher, or if they make expertise more common.

I'm fine with the former, but not with the latter. I am feeling Expertise is too common already. If the niche of the rogue is the skill-monkey, then any spreading of Expertise diminishes that.

We see that clearly with the Bard: with Expertise and Bardic knowledge and no limit in class skills, by level 3 the Bard is better than the rogue in every way as a skill monkey.*



*The one exception, in terms of certain tool proficiencies, can (currently) be remedied by background choice if desired. (discussed here and here)

 

[EvilDwarf]

Having spent most of my years playing AD&D, I have a bias against skills. We did just fine with the DM judging the relative difficulty of a task based on class, character specific experience (Oh, yeah, Homer the fighter has fought liches before, so he would know something about this puzzle/maze/trap etc) and then we'd roll d100 lol.

I'm ok with skills, but there's so much challenge to implementing them correctly: what skills do you include, the cleric with high wisdom out-spotting the ranger problem, the flat math problem, the DC problem, the should DCs increase with character level like monster AC problem, and so on, ahem.

Not trolling here, but I think 13th Age (and even early Next packets) got it closer by having broad backgrounds that would forgo the need for specific skills and make sense in why a character has skills, etc. Now, you might say this introduces the DM may I problem, but hey, the DM is in charge of the game and the world already, or should be.

And...well, Mearls said it himself when Monte was still around. Monte had a really interesting idea with the Trained and Expertise idea--and now we see it implemented very well in Numenera. In this system, the character reduces the DC of the task depending on Trained or Expert in the skill. This takes care of some of the wonkiness of the d20 and accounts for flat math and eliminates the problem of how much a bonus should be the bonus. I guess you could say that reducing the DC by one step is the same as a +5 bonus, and reducing the DC two steps is a +10 bonus, but it's not, really, if you think about the flat math and the upper bounds of what should be possible for a PC.

So, I don't like how skills are implemented thus far. They still feel very much like they are in beta, which I guess they are, lol. Having said that, the skills in 3 and 3.5 seem like beta versions, too. Can't say about 4 because I didn't get to play it much.