D&D 5E Lets Rank the 5e Skills!

[evilbob]

I think the whole Perception vs. Investigation could have been solved with simply: Perception (Int).

Just like Deception (Dex), Intimidation (Str), Stealth (Cha), Religion (Wis), Nature (Wis), etc.

 

[Sadrik]

Saves as skills: top skills for power gamers?

1. Perception: Resist surprise. notice stuff.
2. Insight: Resist lies. notice interpersonal stuff.
3. Investigation: Resist illusions. find clues. search. very useful, most powerful skill in 5e?
4. Athletics: Resist spells like webs.

Useful list of stuff: stuff that makes an rpg work well

1. Stealth: Very useful for a party of adventurers.
2. Persuasion: Very useful, talking in an rpg.
3. Deception: Very useful, talking in an rpg.

Knowledge: If you want to know how to do stuff. Mostly stuff you as a player decides to do.

1. Arcana: Magic in a fantasy world...
2. Nature: Outdoors in a fantasy world...
3. Survival: Outdoors in a fantasy world... Though this seems to overlap Nature tremendously
4. Medicine: Taking damage in a frpg...
5. History: General knowledge, very useful.
6. Religion: Overlaps arcana and history but still useful.

Niche: Stuff that other skills do better or will not be called much and you likely will not do much.

1. Acrobatics: Athletics is called for in spells and various things, acrobatics not as much because you have a DEX save which covers acrobatics.
2. Animal Handling: Yes, nature skill will be encompassing this skill in my game.
3. Intimidation: it is the least useful of the three interaction skills.
4. Sleight of Hand: merge with deception.
5. Performance: completely useless "use rope".

 

[Drudenfusz]

I am missing a social knowledge skill. It seems like Streetwise has not made it to 5th Edition. Okay, I can see that it is kinda useless in some campaigns. Same goes for the good old Knowledge (Nobilty), which did not even made it into 4th Edition. But why is there now no social knowledge skill at all? Wouldn't it not be easy to make a skill called Culture, that deals with all those social knowledge stuff and being broad enough to be useful for most campaigns?

 

[Gradine]

I am missing a social knowledge skill. It seems like Streetwise has not made it to 5th Edition. Okay, I can see that it is kinda useless in some campaigns. Same goes for the good old Knowledge (Nobilty), which did not even made it into 4th Edition. But why is there now no social knowledge skill at all? Wouldn't it not be easy to make a skill called Culture, that deals with all those social knowledge stuff and being broad enough to be useful for most campaigns?

Didn't even notice the lack of Streetwise/Gather Information. Are these just going to be straight Charisma checks? Based on the nature of the check I could see Charisma(Persuasion) or even Charisma(Investigation)

I suppose it doesn't do anything that couldn't be accomplished by other skills (rather than roll a Gather Information check, role play a scene that requires Persuasion or Deception or Intimidation, maybe an Investigation roll first to find the right person to talk to in the first place.)

You're still missing the Knowledge Local half of Streetwise, but I actually think that Backgrounds have that pretty well covered.

 

[Drudenfusz]

Didn't even notice the lack of Streetwise/Gather Information. Are these just going to be straight Charisma checks? Based on the nature of the check I could see Charisma(Persuasion) or even Charisma(Investigation)

I suppose it doesn't do anything that couldn't be accomplished by other skills (rather than roll a Gather Information check, role play a scene that requires Persuasion or Deception or Intimidation, maybe an Investigation roll first to find the right person to talk to in the first place.)

You're still missing the Knowledge Local half of Streetwise, but I actually think that Backgrounds have that pretty well covered.

The thing is Bachgrounds like Criminal and Noble might have some of those aspects, but when I want to have a character that knows how to deal in both kinds of societies, and maybe even want to know how the Hobgoblins, Gnolls, and Orcs in a region are thinking about each other, if there are alliances or open strife. Maybe I just don't want to go around and ask people on how they think what is going on, but simply know how the current situation is between Cormyr and Sembia is (after all I can simply make history checks to know how the past was without having to ask people). Maybe I want just to make a knowledge check to identify people on their clothes to be of a certain ethnicity, instead having to ask such things. So, I want a INT based skill, that delivers knowledge without having to work for it, just like I can make Arcana, History Nature, and Religion checks, just because I already have knowledge on those aspects. So, why is there a skill that is somewhat redundant for nature (overlapping with Animal Handling and Survival) but not one that deals in the same way with civilisation or culture?

 

[Juriel]

The thing is Bachgrounds like Criminal and Noble might have some of those aspects, but when I want to have a character that knows how to deal in both kinds of societies, and maybe even want to know how the Hobgoblins, Gnolls, and Orcs in a region are thinking about each other, if there are alliances or open strife. Maybe I just don't want to go around and ask people on how they think what is going on, but simply know how the current situation is between Cormyr and Sembia is (after all I can simply make history checks to know how the past was without having to ask people). Maybe I want just to make a knowledge check to identify people on their clothes to be of a certain ethnicity, instead having to ask such things. So, I want a INT based skill, that delivers knowledge without having to work for it, just like I can make Arcana, History Nature, and Religion checks, just because I already have knowledge on those aspects. So, why is there a skill that is somewhat redundant for nature (overlapping with Animal Handling and Survival) but not one that deals in the same way with civilisation or culture?

I think History could be argued to cover the present situations, not just stuff that happened 100 years ago that no-one cares about. Perhaps it should be renamed Culture, or something, but history is the focus because of dungeon-delving, I guess.

 

[Gradine]

The thing is Bachgrounds like Criminal and Noble might have some of those aspects, but when I want to have a character that knows how to deal in both kinds of societies, and maybe even want to know how the Hobgoblins, Gnolls, and Orcs in a region are thinking about each other, if there are alliances or open strife. Maybe I just don't want to go around and ask people on how they think what is going on, but simply know how the current situation is between Cormyr and Sembia is (after all I can simply make history checks to know how the past was without having to ask people). Maybe I want just to make a knowledge check to identify people on their clothes to be of a certain ethnicity, instead having to ask such things. So, I want a INT based skill, that delivers knowledge without having to work for it, just like I can make Arcana, History Nature, and Religion checks, just because I already have knowledge on those aspects. So, why is there a skill that is somewhat redundant for nature (overlapping with Animal Handling and Survival) but not one that deals in the same way with civilisation or culture?

I don't know that there's ever been a skill that's accomplished all of that. Remember that in 3.x Knowledge Local was supposed to be a separate skill for each "locality". In 4e Streetwise was Charisma based and represented how well you could find out that information within the locale, not what you inherently knew. And without the granularity that skill points gave in 3.5 that many different types of Knowledge skills just didn't make sense from the point of view of the limited resources of skill proficiencies.

You can still represent such knowledge with an Intelligence check, and add a proficiency bonus if the characters background (and that's lowercase-b background, not just their mechanical Background), would allow the character experience with the particular culture or society in question.

I also disagree with the criticism regarding Nature, Survival, and Animal Handling. One is knowledge, one is application, and one is dealing with specifically domesticated animals. There's practically no overlap unless you start merging them together. It's the difference between a bookwormish botanist, Les Shroud and Cesar Millan.

 

[Juriel]

I also disagree with the criticism regarding Nature, Survival, and Animal Handling. One is knowledge, one is application, and one is dealing with specifically domesticated animals. There's practically no overlap unless you start merging them together. It's the difference between a bookwormish botanist, Les Shroud and Cesar Millan.

Nor is there transferrable skills between, say, swimming, mountain climbing and pole vaulting, but they're all still clumped up into Athletics.

And Persuasion is just every interaction ever, rather than being fast-talk, seduction, teaching as separate skills.

When every other skill is a large collection of stuff, specific like Animal Handling and Sleight Of Hand becomes the weird exception.

 

[Gradine]

Nor is there transferrable skills between, say, swimming, mountain climbing and pole vaulting, but they're all still clumped up into Athletics.

And Persuasion is just every interaction ever, rather than being fast-talk, seduction, teaching as separate skills.

When every other skill is a large collection of stuff, specific like Animal Handling and Sleight Of Hand becomes the weird exception.

Point, but there's a difference between arguing that some skills could stand to be clumped together and stating that skills as written have overlap. As someone who misses skill points, I'm always going to be on Team More Skills. With a proficiency system you have much fewer resources so it makes sense to lump things together. Persuasion, Athletics, Acrobatics, and Thieves Tools all make sense to me. They key off the same stats. I like having Sleight of Hand separate, it implies to me a separate skill set from applying tools to static devices. And calming and handling domesticated animals is the farthest thing from hunting untamed creatures and otherwise surviving in the wild.

 

[Branduil]

I think the whole Perception vs. Investigation could have been solved with simply: Perception (Int).

Just like Deception (Dex), Intimidation (Str), Stealth (Cha), Religion (Wis), Nature (Wis), etc.

I don't think Perception needs to be made any more powerful than it already is.

The way I would rule it, you might use Perception to notice a trap in a room, but you'd need to use Investigation to figure out what triggers it and how to avoid it.

Similarly, if an object is just sitting around a room in a corner, you could notice it with Perception, but if you're actively searching through drawers, cabinets, beneath floorboards, etc., that's Investigation.