D&D 5E Skills Redux

[CapnZapp]

Okay, so with one full campaign under my belt, here's what doesn't work well with 5e skills:
- it's too easy to take the best skills. No matter what class, race and concept all my characters easily took the skills they wanted
- dilution of skill monkey niche. Sure its fun a fighter can pick locks, but the reason classes must be rigid is to make the party want a rogue and feel the pain when one isn't there
- investigation is utterly unused
- the mess that is skill and tool proficiency is a mess
- the idea that you could use the same skill with different abilities is a good one, but completely undercooked

My playing style means there are some commonly taken actions in the game. The skills must match those actions. I don't want perception to be that all-powerful that isn't apparent from just reading the PHB but what practical play makes it into. Modules use Perception for EVERYTHING.

Also, finding out more by talking to people and visiting bars is a common action. There needs to be a skill for that.

Also, we often want to find out whether the characters know a particular strength or weakness about a monster (the PLAYERS are D&D veterans and often know much more than the characters). 4E monster knowledge checks was perfect for this.

Therefore, I give you... Skills Redux:

 

[CapnZapp]

First - which skills are there and what abilities do they key to?

Strength
Athletics
Intimidate
Might
Survival

Dexterity
Acrobatics
Dungeoneering
Thievery
Stealth

Intelligence
Arcana
Diplomacy
Gather Information
History
Religion
Feylore

Wisdom
Diplomacy
Dungeoneering
Insight
Medicine
Perception
Survival

Charisma
Deception
Gather Information
Intimidate
Performance
Persuasion

Any
Craft

Please note some skills appear more than once in the list.

 

[CapnZapp]

Let's list the skills alphabetically, and provide each with a few keywords to help DMs to understand when to use them:

Acrobatics (Dexterity): balancing, swashbuckling, dives, stunts
Arcana (Intelligence): spells, magic items, symbols, rituals, planes of existence
Athletics (Strength): climbing, jumping, swimming
Craft (Any): work as a craftsman or artisan, create items
Deception (Charisma): lie, cheat, disguise, misdirect
Diplomacy (Intelligence or Wisdom): etiquette, oratory, inspire, deal-making
Dungeoneering (Dexterity or Wisdom): trapfinding, disarm traps, terrain, edible fungi, follow tracks, avoid getting lost, avoid hazards – all under ground
Feylore (Intelligence): entities from the ethereal, far realms, fey, shadowfolk
Gather Information (Intelligence or Charisma): make people talk, puzzle together clues
History (Intelligence): historical events, legendary people, past disputes, lost civilizations
Insight (Wisdom): detect lies, discern motives, predict behavior
Intimidate (Strength or Charisma): make someone do your bidding using fear, pain and threats
Medicine (Wisdom): stabilize the dying, diagnose and treat illnesses, perform post mortems
Might (Strength): bend bars, lift gates, kick in doors, pushing statues
Perception (Wisdom): spot, listen or otherwise detect things
Performance (Charisma): sing, dance, play instruments, recite poems, tell tales
Persuasion (Charisma): make somebody want to do your bidding
Religion (Intelligence): gods and churches, holy symbols, rites and prayers
Stealth (Dexterity): hide, move silently
Survival (Strength or Wisdom): terrain and weather, plants and animals, follow tracks, avoid getting lost, hunt wild game, avoid hazards – all above ground
Thievery (Dexterity): escape artist, disarm traps, forgery, lockpicking, pickpocketing, rope use

 

[CapnZapp]

Monster Knowledge Checks
Arcana: Constructs, Dragons, Elementals, Monstrosities
Dungeoneering: Aberrations, Beasts, Monstrosities, Oozes
History: Humanoids, Giants
Intimidate: Dragons, Giants
Survival: Beasts, Monstrosities, Oozes, Plants
Religion: Celestials, Fiends, Undead
Feylore: Aberrations, Dragons, Fey, incorporeal Undead

If you aren't familiar with the concept, the idea is when you see a strange beast or monster, each character makes a monster knowledge check. The genius is to not use little-used Intelligence skills for all of these; instead the idea is that people proficient in Dungeoneering will know stuff about monsters common in Dungeons and so on. This makes adventurers automatically good at knowing stuff about the monsters they are likely to face.

As with most skill checks DC 10 is a basic success, giving you the monster's name and "common" knowledge (which may be false rumors). Making DC 15 will give you crucial tactics ("don't use fire", "use fire", "stay away from the stinger" etc). DC 20 means you know specific details on resistance and immunities, and what damage forms you should protect yourself against.

Then the monster's nature might obviously shift these - rare obscure and high-CR monsters might have their DCs bumped to 15/20/25.



PS. Do note I originally tried to set the DC to CR + 10. This doesn't work. For one thing, I mostly WANT to tell the player what the monster is called, so the DC of the basics should always stay low. It's no fun if you have a strange and wondrous beast (perhaps a picture from an obscure AD&D supplement) and can't even tell the players its name.

And for high-level threats, the DCs run away beyond what the 5e model expects. Skill DCs above 20 should be reserved for the truly preternaturally difficult checks. I've just run an entire campaign without a single skill check ever being more difficult than DC 20 and it works well. (Of course, there was no Rogue in the party, so I can envision throwing in a few DC 25's just to make him shine)

So I tried DC 10 + CR/2... but it just gets fiddly. In the end, I settled on fixed DCs 10/15/20 with just a simple +5 modifier for "extra obscure". This works well, since after all, you WANT characters to succeed - just not all the time. As long as one party member gets a result of 15 for every encounter (and then can tell the others), things work swimmingly.

 

[CapnZapp]

The final must-have key to this puzzle, is to list Class Skills - the skills each class gets (to choose from).

Barbarian: Choose two from Athletics, Craft, Feylore, Intimidation, Might, Perception, and Survival
Bard: Choose any three
Cleric: Choose two from Craft, Diplomacy, History, Insight, Medicine, Persuasion, and Religion
Druid: Choose two from Feylore, Insight, Medicine, Perception, Religion, and Survival
Fighter: Choose two skills from Acrobatics, Athletics, Craft, History, Intimidation, and Might
Monk: Choose two from Acrobatics, Athletics, History, Insight, Religion, and Stealth
Paladin: Choose two from Athletics, Insight, Intimidation, Might, Medicine, Persuasion, and Religion
Ranger: Choose three from Athletics, Craft, Feylore, Gather Information, Insight, Might, Perception, Stealth, and Survival
Rogue: Choose four from Acrobatics, Athletics, Deception, Dungeoneering, Gather Information, Insight, Intimidation, Perception, Performance, Persuasion, Stealth and Thievery
Sorcerer: Choose two from Arcana, Deception, Insight, Intimidation, Persuasion, Religion, and Survival
Warlock: Choose two skills from Arcana, Craft, Deception, Feylore, Gather Information, History, Intimidation, and Religion
Wizard: Choose two from Arcana, Craft, Diplomacy, History, Insight, Medicine, and Religion

 

[CapnZapp]

All that remains is to collect various changes in mechanics.

First up, the crucial restriction on what to do when your Class and Background skills overlap.

If your background gives you a skill proficiency you have already, pick a replacement from your list of class skills. Only if you run out of class skills do you get to pick a skill freely.

 

[CapnZapp]

As an optional rule, I'm going to try out reintroducing Intelligence-based skills.

You might have noticed how characters gain relatively few skills (above, in the Class Skill list). This is because of the following rule.

Starting Intelligence grants extra skill proficiencies at game start.

• Intelligence 8-11: no changes
• Intelligence 12-13: One racial skill
• Intelligence 14-15: One racial skill and one extra class skill
• Intelligence 16 or more: One racial skill, one extra class skill, and one free skill

*) Increasing your intelligence during play gives no extra skills. This is deliberately forcing players to consider an initial high Int score, which matters in point-buy chargen. Otherwise it's too easy to dismissively just hope for a Headband of Intellect... Also, my intention is not to give every Wizard five extra skills, which the original idea "one extra skill per point of Int modifier" would have led to.

So as you can see, my rule - giving up to three skills - is at a mid-point between "int gives no skills" and "int gives lots of skills".

Racial skill: A skill you and the DM agree is typical for your character's race. For instance: many dwarves are proficient in Dungeoneering or History, while many Elves are proficient in Performance or Feylore.

As before, if you already somehow have all the skills you think are appropriate for your race, pick a class skill first, and a free skill only if you've exhausted the entire list for your class.

This is a token effort to make race matter. Or to be precise - to make culture matter. A human raised by Dwarves would choose a Dwarf-y skill, for instance. So this is really a "culture-light" rule, as small as it is.

The way the first skill you gain (as your Intelligence goes up) is more restricted than the final skill, is deliberate. Most non-stupid Dwarves will choose among the same skills. Only the brightest and best will pick something "exotic" (from a Dwarf's perspective).

Do note I deliberately do not even attempt making an exhaustive list. Part of the reason is that there are so very many races available already (with Volo's Guide), and also because skills vary with cultural differences in how a race is used in different campaigns and worlds. But the most important reason is that asking the player to come up with suggestions himself is just the better option!

 

[CapnZapp]

Let me add for clarity that

...backgrounds are still in the game. You can still gain "thieving" skills by choosing Criminal for your Fighter.

What my rule removes is the minmaxing possibility to pick a background that gives you the same skills you already picked for your class in order to gain "two free skills". Ugh.

So lossening up the previous super-rigid class-skill limitations is a good thing. 5E just went too far, ignoring how minmaxing players will pick a background for precisely the wrong reasons!

...tool proficiencies are removed.

You still need tools to avoid disadvantage but tools have been relegated to things you merely need, that doesn't provide special advantages. And in particular - you can't be just proficient in a tool and avoid having to take the skill. This way, skills aren't made redundant by tools.

...I won't be using passive skills nearly as much.

I am sick and tired of players pointing to their 20 score in Passive Perception (or Insight, or whatever) and asking that all the game secrets are just rolled out for them automatically.

I know you can play the game differently, but I would much rather not first have the PHB hand out something and then have to take it away as the DM. I would much rather see the reverse, where the PHB makes no promises, and then I as DM can then freely choose when and where a high passive score is enough to automatically grant stuff.

It's a matter of how you look at the rules. The stuff about passive perception should have been relegated to the DMG as explicitly DM-optional rules. That is why I'm removing blanket passive scores from my Redux.

 

[Li Shenron]

Interesting thread... There are a few misconceptions about skills IMHO, and perhaps the biggest one is that the skill system is fixed and rigid. The truth is that it's quite flexible, it all depends on how much a DM wants it to be flexible instead of rigid. Among other things:

- the PHB skill list doesn't have to be exhaustive, the DM can introduce more
- skills don't have to be a "partition", they can overlap with each other
- the key ability doesn't have to be fixed, there's a variant rule for using any ability
- the border between a skill and a tool proficiency can be blurred
- proficiency can also be used to limit what can be done with a skill

If you just keep in mind that the primary rule of 5e is that it's up to the DM to decide if you get to roll a check at all, then even the last of the above points becomes quite natural.

So I welcome your decision to make your own additions to the skills list. I am not so keen on changing what is already in the PHB, but I've added myself new skills and tools for my Rokugan 5e campaign conversion rules.

- it's too easy to take the best skills. No matter what class, race and concept all my characters easily took the skills they wanted

YMMV but this was pretty much what gamers wanted. Remember what happened when in 3.0 there were class-exclusive skills? They lasted only until the 3.5 revision because of the widespread uproar. Later on they got rid of the cross-class skills concept too. I didn't have any problems with 3.0 skills, but I'm just saying that if you go back you should be prepared for lots of whining.

- dilution of skill monkey niche. Sure its fun a fighter can pick locks, but the reason classes must be rigid is to make the party want a rogue and feel the pain when one isn't there

I agree on this. What 5e was supposed to do, is on one hand to allow everyone to being good at anything, but on the other hand to disallow being better than the class primary meant to be good at it. That's true for a lot of abilities, but unfortunately trapfinding and lockpicking are still mostly just about skill checks. Granted, the Rogue gets Expertise (although we are now seeing how this is creeping into the game for everyone with UA feats...) and Reliable Talent (recently threatened by "Sage" Advice), and Thief gets Fast Hands (not so commonly useful IMHO), but these may not be enough.

- investigation is utterly unused

Well IMHO this could be the symptom that you're using Perception too much.

- the mess that is skill and tool proficiency is a mess

To me it doesn't matter. A more "elegant" system that looks good on paper will not be better, because it will probably just be more rigid therefore annoying.

- the idea that you could use the same skill with different abilities is a good one, but completely undercooked

Yes, they should have left it as default, like it was during the playtest.

I don't want perception to be that all-powerful that isn't apparent from just reading the PHB but what practical play makes it into. Modules use Perception for EVERYTHING.

Well I must have been the only person who objected merging Spot & Listen back in the 3.0-3.5 revision days... It was clear to me that the "double cost" was justified by how common were those checks.

Also, finding out more by talking to people and visiting bars is a common action. There needs to be a skill for that.

I think it's a good idea that you brought back Gather Information. My opinion is that they left it out of 5e for a couple of reasons: first the probably wanted to lower the number of Charisma-based skills so that they weren't too many compared to other groups; second, it's possible that they thought that the concept of training to get better at this tasks was too weak. But for me it's totally a valid addition.

Also, we often want to find out whether the characters know a particular strength or weakness about a monster (the PLAYERS are D&D veterans and often know much more than the characters). 4E monster knowledge checks was perfect for this.

Normally I am not a fan of Knowledge(Monsters) skills, but it's probably another valid addition.

so what is the drawback of adding more skills? IMHO the only possible problem is in the gamers' stubborness in thinking that they I]need[/I] proficiency in order to attempt something. So if you increase the number of skills in the game, some players will complain that now they have to "spend" more proficiencies to be capable of doing the same things. But at the end it's always a matter of how the DM employs the primary rule of when to allow a check and when not.

 

[CapnZapp]

One final piece of the skills puzzle is the way I like games where you don't make all your choices at game start and then remain static throughout the campaign.

I know you can learn a skill through downtime and I know you can pick the Skilled feat. Both those options are too expensive in my mind - the first because most prewritten campaigns don't have any downtime, and the second because it doesn't help when you only want a single new skill.

So I'm toying with the idea to give out a free (class) skill at levels 6, 12 and 18.

Not only does this mean characters will grow automatically (simulating downtime and getting rid of the super-expensive feat option), it also provides an answer for multiclass characters.

When you multiclass it's only natural to ask if you can't pick any of your new class' skills. So I'm considering to allow you to pick your "level 6 bonus" (or 12, or 18) at the time when you multiclass, even if that happens before level 6 (or 12, or 18).

The only restriction is that you can't pick a bonus skill more than five levels ahead of when you would otherwise gain it. So even if you multiclass a lot, you can only gain the level 6 bonus before you reach level 7. Then you can pick the level 12 bonus. You need to reach level 13 to pick the level 18 bonus.

Even if you never multiclass, you still gain your bonus skills at (character) levels 6, 12 and 18.

Now, this might seem mighily generous. But will it really be in practice?

In practice, skills are not important enough to influence a minmaxer's decisions. So my rule is intended to work both for two-level dips and more regular multiclassing, which happens in chucks of four levels at the very least. I truly believe that most practical multiclass builds will only use this rule in moderation - perhaps picking the level 12 bonus at level 10 (taking five levels of one class for the extra attack, then four levels of fighter for Action Surge and ASI, before going back to the first class). Conversely, the two-level dips involve spellcasters taking Warlock or Fighter, and they will never again multiclass, so they will pick the level 6 bonus at third level, but that's it for them.

A couple of extra skills simply isn't worth gimping your long-term build strategy over. If you like many skills, how about simply building a high-Int Rogue and/or taking the Skilled feat?

If you want more, maybe pick two Fighter levels at mid level for the juicy Action Surge and then do that at character levels 11 and 12 (to pick up the level 18 bonus at level 13 when you return to Rogue), but I can live with that level of "abuse".