D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E

[AbdulAlhazred]

Admittedly I may not have a full grasp on the boundaries of illusionism... but it seems to have alot of similarity to both how I have seen SC's explained and ran by many 4e fans... there is a "success" condition and a "failure" condition... but these are usually pre-set before the actions of the PC's are taken into account. The other instance is in the "fail forward" premise, which again seems like a possibly less hard form of illusionism... where no matter what the PC's actions they will get their goal... but with a cost/consequence/etc... Can anyone tell me why these both aren't a form of illusionism?

They don't involve the DM fudging things or RE-arranging things in a way that results in his predetermined outcome resulting. The success and failure conditions of SCs might be determined ahead of time, but they are what they are, if the GM runs it by the book then the players succeed or fail and its not up to the GM which one happens. Obviously the GM can make pointless SCs that don't really involve any choice and just have resource soaks on fails, but that's at best very elementary and uninspired adventure design.

Fail Forward is just a way of maintaining dramatic momentum. If you use it you use it, it isn't something you turn off and on when you feel like it. When a character fails he gets some consequence, but the story continues to advance in much the same way it would have if he'd succeeded. However, note, there's no requirement that Fail Forward be ABSOLUTE, Dungeon World for instance has a result of 2-5 which is FAILURE, no forward anything (though in some cases a GM soft move could be largely similar to a 7-9 result, it depends on the situation.

4e doesn't really have a Fail Forward mechanism as such anyway. By stock 4e mechanics failure is failure, pick yourself up and do something else if you survived the fall or whatever it was. Obviously a GM could selectively allow forward progress to further his agenda, which would be one form of Illusionist GMing, but no system can 'prevent' that any more than it can prevent just fudging GM dice rolls and such.

 

[Imaro]

The simplest answer is because its a game and why split hairs? The people who get Performance and/or Musical Instrument are mostly Bards anyway! Why isn't there an acting skill and a juggling skill and a...? Its just not really coherent. I've played, a bunch, and its confusing. The skill system can't make up its mind if its a detailed list of everything you could ever do or if its a system of traits and talents ala 4e. This beast is neither fowl nor fish, its confused.

Again where is the confusion... You seem to want to make it confusing when it's pretty clear when you use which... No skill system can be a detailed list of everything you can do... but you do want to cover the bases in your particular genre and I do think in the sources D&D pulls on genre wise... the ability to play an instrument without being a full on Bard is present enough that it should be accounted for and in 5e it is...YMMV of course. Just curious what skill do I use in 4e if I want to play a musical instrument but am not a Bard?

OK, but does that not fall into the nature of RP? Even if you 'test the character' it still falls under basic intelligence. There's not a learned skill or training that will teach you to put these things together, that's what INT IS, definitionally. Investigation makes no sense as a skill. I have experienced this, I gave my character a high score in it. There simply isn't a situation where it makes sense, in every single case the action is covered by something else without fail. I mean we USED it, but it was clearly confusing and I could as well have put the points into Perception or some knowledge skills. In fact said character is lousy at Perception and yet somehow he's a great investigator, its just not making any sense at all!

Using Investigation is an Intelligence check... One can definitely be trained in logical deduction as a skill set (there are mental exercises people perform to do just this), it is basically the "Sherlock Holmes" skill. I think you're inability to use it was probably based more on your DM not structuring situations where it was useful... which can happen to any skill if the DM does not account for them... or your lack of understanding in when to apply the skill...

Claiming that one can't be trained to better use deductive reasoning is like claiming that one cannot be trained to better utilize strength in athletic activities...

Well, what does 'properly' mean? The mechanics are absolutely clear on how THEY work. You get a +2 to checks which logically rely on tools (picking locks, removing traps, that sort of thing). So, now we know what properly means, it means 'get the best possible bonus'. Now, there could also be narrative impact. A rogue without tools might be told by the DM to improvise, or the attempt might take longer, or have some other undesired side-effect. These kinds of things are, in 4e, entirely within the scope of the DM according to the DMG. He might simply impose some awkward tool-related failure when the check doesn't pass.

I would assume that if someone is not using something properly... it would be harder thus a penalty... not that said thing that allows you to use a skill properly in fact gives you a bonus on top of your skills...

Again, if this is clear what is the confusion around 5e... the mechanical application of thieve's tools in 5e is just as clearly stated...

It covers determining the nature of a magical effect, detecting magic, and 'sense the presence of magic'. All Arcane casters generally have Arcana as a skill, often an automatic one not even a choice. Casting relies on INT, which is also the governing skill for Arcana. Presumably someone not trained in Arcana who casts spells does so via some other mechanism than expertise, which is covered in those classes. Exactly what constitutes 'Magic' in 4e IS open to interpretation, but yes, Arcana may tell you something about magic from any source. As for what skills align with those sources of magic Divine magic is covered by Religion, and Primal magic is covered by Nature. Psionics are covered by Dungeoneering, which covers everything related to the Far Realm/Aberrations. This is all spelled out clearly in the rules, which explain which type of lore is associated with each skill, and which monster type/origin keywords are related. 4e is QUITE CLEAR about all of this. It is actually QUITE rare for a 4e GM to be faced with any question as to which skill should govern a situation.

No, I can quote the rulebooks for you and demonstrate that these things are codified directly into the game in a precise fashion. You can of course come up with situations where someone could do THIS or THAT and the effect is largely the same, but using a different skill, but those are very much edge cases. Probably the 'wooliest' skill in 4e is Perception, which is quite useful to rogues but based on a dump stat. The only convention we ever used in 4e was to allow examination of objects specifically for things like traps and locks to be based on Thievery instead, it was just more fun that way. That's a pretty small nit to be the most serious flaw in the whole system, and 5e didn't even fix that one!

I am literally looking at my Rules Compendium right now at the Dungeoneering skill and it makes no mention of psionics or being applicable to that area... to start off can you quote where that information is? I also don't see anything around Primal magic in the write-up of the nature skill...could you also quote where that is stated?

Note: I am also still wondering what shadow magic falls under?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

An example of non-combat-related "fail forward" from my 4e game: the drow sorcerer is riding a flying carpet in an attempt to take a message from a desolate tower to the town. The carpet has been stolen from an enemy wizard in command of local hobgoblin raiders, and when the PC sees signal lights from the nearby hills, he realises they are probably being transmitted by the hobgoblins. He tries to respond but doesn't know the code; is pursued by wyvern riders, whom he can neither shake off nor blast away, and in the end - after turning back to his friends at the tower - he crash lands 50 squares from his allies and in combat with a hobgoblin captain and his wyvern.

This is fail forward - the goal wasn't achieved (the skill challenge to escape the hobgoblins failed) but there was no roadblock. Rather, the situation transitioned into a geographically challenging combat.

Maybe this is a nitpick, but I don't see the 'Forward' in this example. The plot hasn't advanced at all. The character failed and is suffering consequences. Once those consequences have been dealt with the same needs will reassert themselves and presumably the sorcerer will set forth again in another attempt to achieve success at the same task. Perhaps the carpet is defunct now or some other change has come over the situation which obviates the old course of action, but the point is that the failure didn't ADVANCE THE PLOT in any sense.

The stock Fail Forward would be for instance a Dungeon World combat where the character attacks a monster and gets a 7, they will take damage based on the monster's damage expression, and then inflict damage in turn. The plot will advance (perhaps only a very tiny bit, but its still advancing). Now, DW doesn't call this a 'failure', they call it 'success with complications', but its in essence the same sort of thing. In DW if you rolled a 6 or less then you get 'abject failure', but the ball is now in the GM's court, so a move of some sort will result. It MIGHT be unrelated to the failure, but it probably won't be. It will probably be some sort of hard move in a melee, but its quite possible that the PC's agenda will advance, just not in a way they will LIKE. "You miss the ogre with your axe stroke and he knocks your character to the side, where you land near the book. In the process you overset the brazier and some of the hot coals have caught the edges of several pages on fire!" A 7 could give the same result but with damage to the ogre.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

What I'm distilling from the above explanations is, as soon as the player/s choice involves dice and you ignore it, that is illusionism, but if the player/s choice does not require dice then everything is hunky-dory. With all due respect, but it sounds like the definition of illusionism is in fact an illusion by those who claim to define it.

Dice don't factor into it. Anytime the DM presents a choice or action as if it matters and then proceeds to move the narrative on to the same point regardless of which option the characters pick or what the dice say, and doesn't tell the players, that's illusionism. The players have the ILLUSION that they made a choice or that the character's action governed the narrative, but it was actually no choice at all. This can be either retroactive or proactive on the DM's part. That is he can fudge a die roll so that all results are the same, or he can rearrange the plot after the fact so that in every case the situation that the characters ended up in was 'justified' by the plot presented to the players.

Based on what has been described, any/all decisions taken by a player without dice are not as important as the ones which rely on dice. If the choice exists to take the left or right passage but leads to the same result why bother even offering the choice to the PC?

In this case presentation matters. If the DM presents the choice as if it is significant (and not just arbitrary either, but one amenable to some sort of artifice of the characters) then it is Illusionism, the illusion of choice where no meaningful choice exists. If the DM just says "OK, guys, both passages end up at the vault, which do you pick?" then its not, there's no question of significance being falsely presented to the players. Likewise if the characters have no way to distinguish the consequences of one choice over another, so that they're just guessing or flipping a coin there's no illusionism because there's no player agency involved. The players may believe that the choice COULD matter, but its not really in their hands and they know it.

I remember @Neonchameleon, during a player authorship discussion, telling me that if a character wanted to inject a rock in a story he could without the "yes" from the DM to cut time, well in this case I'm saying if you want to railroad the characters to a planned encounter just do it and cut time, instead of giving the PCs the illusion that their decision to go left or right matters.
Instead use the narrative of the journey to the planned encounter to produce the colour desired.

Sure, that's fine DMing advice. I think what we're objecting to is the whole rigamarole show of there being some choices involved instead of just some narration with no player input suggested. I do these kind of 'cut scenes' all the time in my games, they're quite useful. Of course if the players want to interrupt and inject something new at any point they can do that, but often they don't have any dramatic need that requires filling except to 'get where they're going' and cut scenes fit that bill perfectly.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Again where is the confusion... You seem to want to make it confusing when it's pretty clear when you use which... No skill system can be a detailed list of everything you can do... but you do want to cover the bases in your particular genre and I do think in the sources D&D pulls on genre wise... the ability to play an instrument without being a full on Bard is present enough that it should be accounted for and in 5e it is...YMMV of course. Just curious what skill do I use in 4e if I want to play a musical instrument but am not a Bard?

Why would a check ever be required to play a musical instrument? If you want to DO something, then check on the success of the thing you're doing. Are you influencing someone, Diplomacy, are you inspiring them, CHA, are you scaring them, Intimidate, etc. There's no use at all for any numbers to be attached to playing an instrument, and its not a character resource if it isn't something that matters. In 4e you can just say "yeah, I play my fiddle to raise everyone's spirits", but you could as easily talk to them etc and get the same results. A player is free in 4e to simply write on his sheet "background, knows how to play the fiddle" PHB2 even provides a bit more rigorous framework for that if you want to use it.

Using Investigation is an Intelligence check... One can definitely be trained in logical deduction as a skill set (there are mental exercises people perform to do just this), it is basically the "Sherlock Holmes" skill. I think you're inability to use it was probably based more on your DM not structuring situations where it was useful... which can happen to any skill if the DM does not account for them... or your lack of understanding in when to apply the skill...

Sherlock Holmes is super intelligent and has preternatural perceptual abilities. So he has a high INT and a high Perception bonus. He has also studied a wide variety of things, which in 4e terms might be represented by training in some or all of the knowledge skills.

Claiming that one can't be trained to better use deductive reasoning is like claiming that one cannot be trained to better utilize strength in athletic activities...

But I can't find a distinction between INT as an ability score and deductive reasoning capability. This is the same issue that 4e has with Endurance as a skill, to be 'trained in endurance' is simply to have a higher Constitution! Someone who has inured himself to environmental conditions, etc surely would simply have more hit points wouldn't they? There were already feats like 'Toughness' which captured the possibility of additional benefits, but there's just no distinct thing to 'learn' to be tougher. Likewise 'learning deduction' is IMHO just an INT increase. It should apply across the board and automatically to any endeavor based on intellectual ability.

I would assume that if someone is not using something properly... it would be harder thus a penalty... not that said thing that allows you to use a skill properly in fact gives you a bonus on top of your skills...

Meh, they could have written it either way, but 4e was based on a 'give bonuses not penalties' formula, so its a bonus. I don't think it really matters.

Again, if this is clear what is the confusion around 5e... the mechanical application of thieve's tools in 5e is just as clearly stated...

But I cannot have any proficiency with locks, traps, etc independent of this set of tools? It seems like a skill to me, and I just don't understand why there are 2 categories. This is also true with some of the other 'tool' proficiencies, they seem to imply knowledge and other things which are separable from the materials that the tool proficiency is bound to. Its an awkward design.

I am literally looking at my Rules Compendium right now at the Dungeoneering skill and it makes no mention of psionics or being applicable to that area... to start off can you quote where that information is? I also don't see anything around Primal magic in the write-up of the nature skill...could you also quote where that is stated?

Note: I am also still wondering what shadow magic falls under?

Dungeoneering covers everything related to the Far Realm and Aberrations. Psionics falls under that rubrick. This is a bad example though because Dungeoneering is presented in PHB1, and psionics don't appear until PHB3, and aren't in Essentials at all (though admittedly there is an explanation of psionic points IIRC in the RC). PHB1/RC DO tell us what sorts of monsters are covered by Dungeoneering however, and the game clearly associates psionics and Aberrations, so its not actually a HARD question to answer, though one of the most obscure ones on the skill front.

Nature covers all 'Natural things' and natural creatures/animals, which being part of nature of course fall under the Primal power source since primal power is the power OF nature. The question is then only one of 'what is magic'? and 4e doesn't really clearly define things as 'magical' or 'not magical'. In fact the Arcana skill is a bit of an anomaly in terms of actually discussing 'magic' as a specific category of thing, the rules do so nowhere else, except perhaps in defining items as being 'magical'.

Shadow Magic falls under Religion, which covers all things and phenomena associated with the Shadowfell, which is the source of shadow magic. Again, 4e doesn't try to pin down what is or isn't 'magic'.

In general 4e doesn't try to define things that have ordinary definitions and aren't mechanical elements. Magic is a narrative concept, with its ordinary accepted meaning. Anything which is not mundane, able to exist in the real world, is perforce 'magical' in nature (and there is a keyword 'magical' for such creatures). As a result Arcana can detect the presence of MANY things in 4e, including things covered AS KNOWLEDGE by other skills. In other words you wouldn't detect 'Primal Magic' using Nature, you'd detect it using Arcana because 'Primal Magic' implies something supramundane. The Nature skill MIGHT also detect a Primal effect ("that's not right, polar bears never live this far south!") and it could give you knowledge about the effect ("The polar bear is the sign of the Spirit of Winter's son, the Lord of Ice!").

In some ways it would have been simpler if 4e had precisely defined 'magic' as a mechanical concept in 4e, but that would have had some big downsides as well, like by implication making the fighter 'mundane' or 'magical' in an explicit way.

 

[Tony Vargas]

You can take me through an actual example of play where I would ever roll a check using Investigation? I can't. If you look for a physical clue, Perception. If you talk to someone, a social skill. If you research something, the requisite knowledge skill, etc. There is no action you can perform which corresponds to the abstract activity of 'Investigating', its not concrete AT ALL.

Perception will get you the presence of things, Investigation, presumably, will put those things together into some sort of conclusion.

So, you search a suspicious NPC's office, Perception finds all sorts of things: quills, paper, ink, a ledger, an abacus with one bead that's a slightly different color than the others, a secret compartment holding a scroll, etc. Investigation finds that the entries in the ledger all seem legitimate, but that some of the entries involving one particular client are made in a different color ink, while all other entries look the same, and that those specific entries add up to the amount of money missing from the king's treasury....


Or, you could just go with the spot/search dichotomy from 3.x, since WIS vs INT seems to be the main difference.

 

[Imaro]

Why would a check ever be required to play a musical instrument? If you want to DO something, then check on the success of the thing you're doing. Are you influencing someone, Diplomacy, are you inspiring them, CHA, are you scaring them, Intimidate, etc. There's no use at all for any numbers to be attached to playing an instrument, and its not a character resource if it isn't something that matters. In 4e you can just say "yeah, I play my fiddle to raise everyone's spirits", but you could as easily talk to them etc and get the same results. A player is free in 4e to simply write on his sheet "background, knows how to play the fiddle" PHB2 even provides a bit more rigorous framework for that if you want to use it.

Well IMO playing a musical instrument is doing something... it's the how and is just as important if not moreso than the intended result...

Now addressing your examples, If you're trying to influence someone but you're not a trained Diplomat (which encompasses a wide range of talents) but you can play extraordinary music that moves them, why would you roll Diplomacy? Why would a musician or even someone who plays as a hobby have to be a diplomat in order to influence someone through music... that makes no sense.

Next your example goes even wider to Cha if I am trying to inspire them through music... so now instead of a musician I must also be naturally gifted in all ways of interacting with someone as well as naturally charming or commanding... why? There are plenty of examples of musicians with songs that move people who aren't necessarily any of those things. Then were back at Intimidate for trying to scare someone with a song... Again this is about how well I play an instrument not how threatening, hostile, etc. I personally am... or are the scariest songs always written by the scariest people?

Now swinging back to 4e... IMO it's not a feature that my character can't just be a musician by knowing an instrument or two but instead must be a master at Diplomacy, Intimidate as well as adept in Charisma to play anything inspiring, or that invokes emotions in others... YMMV of course and apparently it does. I also don't see how writing down "fiddler as a background in 4e is any different than 5e since in neither system is that an actual background with any type of mechanical backing to it...

Sherlock Holmes is super intelligent and has preternatural perceptual abilities. So he has a high INT and a high Perception bonus. He has also studied a wide variety of things, which in 4e terms might be represented by training in some or all of the knowledge skills.

But I can't find a distinction between INT as an ability score and deductive reasoning capability. This is the same issue that 4e has with Endurance as a skill, to be 'trained in endurance' is simply to have a higher Constitution! Someone who has inured himself to environmental conditions, etc surely would simply have more hit points wouldn't they? There were already feats like 'Toughness' which captured the possibility of additional benefits, but there's just no distinct thing to 'learn' to be tougher. Likewise 'learning deduction' is IMHO just an INT increase. It should apply across the board and automatically to any endeavor based on intellectual ability.

I disagree... Intelligence measures mental acuity, accuracy of recall and the ability to reason... Only one of those is covered by the Investigate skill... ability to reason so I don't see how an overall increase in say memorization maps to Investigate but this would apply to an increase in overall Intelligence...

Meh, they could have written it either way, but 4e was based on a 'give bonuses not penalties' formula, so its a bonus. I don't think it really matters.

My point was that it's not as crystal clear as you seem to be claiming...

But I cannot have any proficiency with locks, traps, etc independent of this set of tools? It seems like a skill to me, and I just don't understand why there are 2 categories. This is also true with some of the other 'tool' proficiencies, they seem to imply knowledge and other things which are separable from the materials that the tool proficiency is bound to. Its an awkward design.

What exactly would a "locks" or "traps" proficiency do that another proficiency or the tools don't cover?... I think the most important reasoning for the the tools proficiencies in 5e is because they make it clear that tools are necessary to perform the actions covered by them... I'm not a fan of the Fonzy school of picking locks.

Dungeoneering covers everything related to the Far Realm and Aberrations. Psionics falls under that rubrick. This is a bad example though because Dungeoneering is presented in PHB1, and psionics don't appear until PHB3, and aren't in Essentials at all (though admittedly there is an explanation of psionic points IIRC in the RC). PHB1/RC DO tell us what sorts of monsters are covered by Dungeoneering however, and the game clearly associates psionics and Aberrations, so its not actually a HARD question to answer, though one of the most obscure ones on the skill front.

I thought you said you could produce actual quotes??

Dungeoneering...RC P.143

The dungeoneering skill represents knowledge and skills related to dungeon exploration, including finding one's way through underground complexes, navigating winding caverns, recognizing subterranean hazards, and foraging for food in the Underdark.
Training in this skill also represents formalized study or extensive experience . Those that have training in the skill can also identify creatures of the Far Realm...

There is nothing in this skill description about psionics... and this is from the RC, which was supposed to be an updated rules reference produced after PHB 3...

Nature covers all 'Natural things' and natural creatures/animals, which being part of nature of course fall under the Primal power source since primal power is the power OF nature. The question is then only one of 'what is magic'? and 4e doesn't really clearly define things as 'magical' or 'not magical'. In fact the Arcana skill is a bit of an anomaly in terms of actually discussing 'magic' as a specific category of thing, the rules do so nowhere else, except perhaps in defining items as being 'magical'.

But the whole point of your argument was that these skills and what they covered were precisely spelled out...

Shadow Magic falls under Religion, which covers all things and phenomena associated with the Shadowfell, which is the source of shadow magic. Again, 4e doesn't try to pin down what is or isn't 'magic'.

Please provide a quote because I am looking at the write p for the religion skill and it doesn't mention the Shadowfell or shadow magic at all...

In general 4e doesn't try to define things that have ordinary definitions and aren't mechanical elements. Magic is a narrative concept, with its ordinary accepted meaning. Anything which is not mundane, able to exist in the real world, is perforce 'magical' in nature (and there is a keyword 'magical' for such creatures). As a result Arcana can detect the presence of MANY things in 4e, including things covered AS KNOWLEDGE by other skills. In other words you wouldn't detect 'Primal Magic' using Nature, you'd detect it using Arcana because 'Primal Magic' implies something supramundane. The Nature skill MIGHT also detect a Primal effect ("that's not right, polar bears never live this far south!") and it could give you knowledge about the effect ("The polar bear is the sign of the Spirit of Winter's son, the Lord of Ice!").

Again I am not seeing this precision you were claiming...

In some ways it would have been simpler if 4e had precisely defined 'magic' as a mechanical concept in 4e, but that would have had some big downsides as well, like by implication making the fighter 'mundane' or 'magical' in an explicit way.

I don't know about simpler but it certainly would have backed up your claims of precision much better...

 

[Tony Vargas]

I get the same feeling when I hear about "rulings, not rules". I always understood that to mean that the rules said: DM, now is the time to make a ruling. Instead what I'm getting from all the 5E posts is that the DM can override whatever's written for whatever meta-game considerations they have at the moment. Which seems like a terribly difficult way to DM! Not only do you have to keep all the NPCs in line, but you have to make sure you know how the players are feeling at any given time.

It's easy once you get used to it, the kind of thing that comes with experience. It can be easier to get to know a few players and what they need out of the game, for instance, than to memorize a rule book full of minutia. Instead of grinding to a halt to look something up, or having players argue that you got it 'wrong,' you just forge ahead with 'rulings.' It's a certain kind of easy that's very different from the kind of easy you get from running a game where the rules are merely clear.

Just a significant hurdle or two away from freestyle RP.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Perception will get you the presence of things, Investigation, presumably, will put those things together into some sort of conclusion.

So, you search a suspicious NPC's office, Perception finds all sorts of things: quills, paper, ink, a ledger, an abacus with one bead that's a slightly different color than the others, a secret compartment holding a scroll, etc. Investigation finds that the entries in the ledger all seem legitimate, but that some of the entries involving one particular client are made in a different color ink, while all other entries look the same, and that those specific entries add up to the amount of money missing from the king's treasury....


Or, you could just go with the spot/search dichotomy from 3.x, since WIS vs INT seems to be the main difference.

I just don't see where a skill fits into it. Reasoning about things is INT. Now, we can argue that INT itself is a 'skill' that can be taught, and I wouldn't disagree that there are certainly ways to increase your reasoning ability. 4e specifically (and 5e for that matter) have ability score increases to reflect that sort of development. We could of course also think about all the various forms of 'skill' that 4e doesn't specifically model, again 5e is similar. No provision exists for a character to learn 'accounting' for instance, although its certainly feasible to consider it to be part of a background element and 4e would allow for you to get a bonus to say an INT check to work out some accounting problems as in this example. 5e has some other different options, but also has backgrounds which could play a part too.

I still just don't know why I would, as a 5e GM, ever call for an Investigation roll, unless the situation was highly abstracted such that the whole investigation was maybe a skill used in a much larger SC or something (but then SCs don't exist in 5e...). In fact this is another reason why 4e has no reason for Investigation, you can simply run an SC with INT and Perception checks, etc as required to reach the conclusion. I just don't see where this sort of 'passive utilization' pattern fits well at all into a skill system.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Because discussion in the general D&D forums, about 4e has become nearly non-existent except for the same 5 or 6 posters... and so those same posters, due to boredom in their own forums, come into the 5e forums... to antagonistically provoke 5e players into conversations about 4e...

You seem to be antagonistically conversing with 4e players about 5e, here. Did the 5e forums suddenly slow down?

I just don't see where a skill fits into it. Reasoning about things is INT. Now, we can argue that INT itself is a 'skill' that can be taught, and I wouldn't disagree that there are certainly ways to increase your reasoning ability. 4e specifically (and 5e for that matter) have ability score increases to reflect that sort of development.

4e also has the +1/2 level bonus. You need a proficiency for your level to matter to something in 5e, so there'd better be a proficiency for anything you might get better at - including reasoning in the context of solving mysteries or otherwise putting together details of the environment.

I get that you prefer a shorter, fixed skill list to a larger - with tool proficiencies, even open-ended - one, and I don't disagree with that preference. I find that exhaustive and/or open-ended skill lists 'create incompetence,' as it were. But aside from SCs or a short, fixed skill list being something to like about 4e, it's a tangent that'd make more sense in the 5e forum.

In fact, there's a thread for it.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?433679-Perception-vs-Investigation