D&D 5E Adding Additional Skills to the game

Undrave

Legend
I feel like the various areas of knowledge should have been treated more like tools proficiency than skills.

To me, all the Skills should be active, broad, adventuring skills. Stuff you can DO.

Tools proficiency are more narrow, but easier to learn, and easier to expand to fit your game world. They’re almost professions really.

Knowledge should be the third part of this, representing pieces of your game world. Characters should start with knowledge of their homeland, and maybe knowledge based on what languages they have, then a number of Knowledge ‘skills’ based on their Int!
 

log in or register to remove this ad

keynup

Explorer
Background is a skill.
Skills are decoupled.
I'll let players use anything as a keyword for a skill.
The base skills are broad and general. Nothing wrong with that, but if a play feels that Law suits their character better than History, go ahead write that down instead. This might limit some of the things by not having History, but if it involved Law, that character would be better. (Advantage, better results, auto success)

Some keywords could cover multiple base skills in specific situations.
Take Drunk as a skill;
  • streetwise, investigation as it applies to taverns
  • endurance while drunk, etc
Basically the player gets think about how the characters past affects the current situation. Almost a player dictated flash back.
 

I feel like the various areas of knowledge should have been treated more like tools proficiency than skills.

To me, all the Skills should be active, broad, adventuring skills. Stuff you can DO.

Tools proficiency are more narrow, but easier to learn, and easier to expand to fit your game world. They’re almost professions really.

Knowledge should be the third part of this, representing pieces of your game world. Characters should start with knowledge of their homeland, and maybe knowledge based on what languages they have, then a number of Knowledge ‘skills’ based on their Int!
I did the opposite and got rid of tool proficiencies and made craftship skill instead that governs tool use. Music instruments go to performance. I just don't think that tracking really narrow and specific competencies is usually wort it.
 

Li Shenron

Legend
The 5e Skill list is one that I feel is missing a bit. I was thinking about adding

AD&D's Endurance (Constitution)
AD&D's Etiquette (Charisma)
AD&D's Law (Intelligence)
3e's Nobility (Intelligence)
4e's Dungeoneering (Wisdom)
4e's Streetwise (Charisma)

I don't see any problems with your house rules.

There are way too many people thinking that the skill system is closed and rigid, that every task must be covered by one and only one skill, that skill proficiencies must not overlap... they also forget that proficiencies are mainly just a bonus, not a requirement, unless the DM wants to enforce some difference between proficient and non-proficient characters (which I do, by the way).

When you change the skill list, IMHO the only important thing is that you should strive for all proficiencies to be more or less equally useful, so that taking one proficiency for your PC has more or less the same opportunity cost for the same benefit.

And how much a proficiency is useful actually depends on YOUR game. Only YOU can tell if a proficiency in Etiquette will be a good pick for a PC because in your games there'll be plenty of Etiquette checks, or those checks will make a real difference in the story.

While I am generally not a fan of Dungeoneering and Streetwise (IMO a bit too loosely defined and all-encompassing), they can be ok in your own games. It doesn't matter if they overlap with other skills, as long as they don't completely include them. For example, I wouldn't let a Dungeoneering check to replace a Thieves' Tools check in all cases, otherwise it might be better to just drop the latter from the game.

  • Endurance is part of Athletics, you just need to make it a Constitution/Athletics check. It's easier to incorporate using alternate abilities than to add an entirely new skill.
  • For most settings, Etiquette is best handled by Wisdom/Insight, as it's just about avoiding social traps. In a setting dedicated to crucial social etiquette, such as Rokugan or Kura-Tur, then Charisma/Performance seems more appropriate.

That's common in most games, and the reason why these are not 5e default skills.

But they could both interesting additions, for example Endurance is certainly not only physical... you might call for an Endurance check to stay focused on a task despite distractions, or to keep calm in front of others pushing you towards certain actions or emotions. Also, there are physical endurance "tasks" which are not really athletics, such as staying awake, resist hunger/thirst or painful wounds. The point of adding an Endurance skill is to allow a PC to invest in such proficiency in order to obtain a bonus on those checks, instead of using the default Constitution check.

What eventually causes some real mess is the co-existence of ability/skill checks and saving throws in the game. The distinction is mostly proactive VS reactive, but in mechanical terms they are both really the same kind of check i.e. d20 + ab.mod. + prof.bonus. So it's natural for people to come up saying "this should not be a skill check, it should be a saving throw" (or viceversa... that's after all why we still have 3 dominant types of saving throws, while the other 3 are rare because we have ability checks to escape spells that would otherwise have their saving throws!) but ultimately what matters is how a PC can get good at some checks at the expense of others.

For these reasons, I would not recommend to think in terms of what "makes more sense" or "seems more appropriate" from a narrative point of view, when making house rules on the skills list, but instead I think it's best to focus on mechanical balance. Which, of course, is not very solid to start with, when you have a single skill for all Perception tasks :/
 

Minigiant

Legend
Supporter
I don't see any problems with your house rules.

There are way too many people thinking that the skill system is closed and rigid, that every task must be covered by one and only one skill, that skill proficiencies must not overlap... they also forget that proficiencies are mainly just a bonus, not a requirement, unless the DM wants to enforce some difference between proficient and non-proficient characters (which I do, by the way).

When you change the skill list, IMHO the only important thing is that you should strive for all proficiencies to be more or less equally useful, so that taking one proficiency for your PC has more or less the same opportunity cost for the same benefit.

I agree.

I wouldn't make something like Etiquette or Law part of the default skills of D&D because few tables get into the depths of a world's legal, business, and land ownership systems. For most it's just a simple Cha check to start up and a roll on some table.

But when I DM, the machinations of the elite and unsavory become more and more intrusive as PCs gain level aka power. And being an overly passive participator in the game is choice and a dangerous or limiting one. Wizards live in secluded towers to get away from it all.
While I am generally not a fan of Dungeoneering and Streetwise (IMO a bit too loosely defined and all-encompassing), they can be ok in your own games. It doesn't matter if they overlap with other skills, as long as they don't completely include them. For example, I wouldn't let a Dungeoneering check to replace a Thieves' Tools check in all cases, otherwise it might be better to just drop the latter from the game

Thieves tools really should have been a skill and called Thievery or Skullduggery or something. It's way more useful than what a tool proficiency should be.

Especially after the Tasha previews, it's clear that tools proficiency was intended to be minor and ultraspecific compared to the broader use of skills. Woodcarver's tools only work on wooden objects. Thieves tools work on locks and traps, 2 of the most common obstacles in D&D.

Dungeoneering is really half the artisan tools combined (carpenter, leatherworker, mason, smith, woodcarver) along with some monster lore. Without a general Academics or Engineering skill, dungeoneering could fill a gap if DMs called for more exploration checks in dungeons.

But it would ease the power of Perception in dungeons. I would be okay with Arcana, Nature, Dungeoneering, and Streetwise replacing Perception or Stealth in extraplanar, natural, dungeon, and urban environments in 6e.
 

Dungeoneering is really half the artisan tools combined (carpenter, leatherworker, mason, smith, woodcarver) along with some monster lore.
Which frankly is a bizarre combination.

Without a general Academics or Engineering skill, dungeoneering could fill a gap if DMs called for more exploration checks in dungeons.
I'd much rather have general academics and engineering skills.
 

Minigiant

Legend
Supporter
Which frankly is a bizarre combination

Not really.

It hints to a overarching culture of archeologists, adventurers, tomb pillagers, and dungeon delvers that shares knowledge and forms a soceity. Adventurers guilds and such.

But base D&D doesn't have that as socially D&D defaults to medieval eras not late renaissance or early industrial eras. Except thieves tools.
 

Remove ads

Top