D&D 5E When is it OK to let a player substitute one skill for another?

[Oofta]

Also more newbie friendly as it eliminates the problem of inexperienced players wondering what the skills they don’t have are “for”

I find asking for a skill check more newbie friendly because if I ask the player of a wizard for an athletics check they can just look a the list on their character sheet and use the -1 that's to the right of the word "athletics". I don't see how it can get much simpler than that. They don't even really need to know how it's calculated, just the number they need to add to the D20 roll.

 

[Oofta]

Anyway, back to the OP in general, I do regularly ask for (or allow) multiple types of checks such as history, religion or arcana each of which may reveal slightly different information.

It can even be as extreme as avoiding boulders being rolled down a hill at them (assuming they see them coming so it's not a reaction/saving throw) they can give me an athletics check to jump over them, an acrobatics to dodge out of the way, a perception check to duck behind cover, an investigation check to calculate the path they're going to take. I also let them know that I'm open to other options. It lets people know they don't always have to use a specific ability or skill for a specific scenario. They just have to explain why it makes sense.

Some of it will depend on players and style, of course.

 

[Don Durito]

But if someone wants to climb a wall, I know they need to make an athletics check whether they're proficient or not. Since I don't know off the top of my head what each PC is proficient in, if they're climbing a wall I'd have to say "give me strength check an apply your skill proficiency in athletics if you have one". Do people really do that? Isn't it just easier to say "give me an athletics check?" In other cases such as lifting a heavy object where I don't think athletics applies I might just ask for a straight strength check.

We can debate other hypothetical systems (or implementations from other systems/editions) but I'm talking about 5E.

Athletics is easy though because it's 'Strength the Skill'.

But generally yes in 5E I will usually nominate a skill (or two) because it saves time and I don't find resolution that interesting that I want to dwell on it - it's up to the players to remind me if they have an alternative claim to proficiency. I would even do that sometimes in 13th Age, "Roll Int + something Arcane knowledge based if you have it", and that system doesn't even have skills.
In 5E I would just say roll Strength(Athletics). So if you don't have athletics you just roll Strength. The fact that it's not written on the character sheet is enough to indicate that you can just roll Strength.

But this comes about in part because 5e skills are a muddled inconsistent compromise that doesn't make a lot of sense. If you're using ability score variants you quickly run into the fact that some of the skills are redundant because they're basically just ways of adding proficiency to an ability score in general (Athletics and Acrobatics being the two biggest offenders).

 

[Oofta]

Athletics is easy though because it's 'Strength the Skill'.

But generally yes in 5E I will usually nominate a skill (or two) because it saves time and I don't find resolution that interesting that I want to dwell on it - it's up to the players to remind me if they have an alternative claim to proficiency. I would even do that sometimes in 13th Age, "Roll Int + something Arcane knowledge based if you have it", and that system doesn't even have skills.

But this comes about in part because 5e skills are a muddled inconsistent compromise that doesn't make a lot of sense. If you're using ability score variants you quickly run into the fact that some of the skills are redundant because they're basically just ways of adding proficiency to an ability score in general (Athletics and Acrobatics being the two biggest offenders).

I guess I've never felt that, but everybody has different idiosyncrasies/likes/dislikes. I know I have my share. No game will ever be perfect, much less perfect for everyone. I think proficiency works well enough for it's role in the game.

 

[Charlaquin]

Very true. I call out checks by the skill because that is what is written on people's character sheets, and even many experienced players aren't really used to thinking about what is theoretically going on with game mechanics to give them that particular bonus.

Now this might be overly constraining, except that the one to three times per session when they are actually doing something that best suits a check not run as they appear on the character sheet "skill menu" I just explicitly talk through what we are doing and why. "Okay, you're proficient in performance, so to impress people on the beach with your muscles roll a strength check and then add +3 from your proficiency bonus."

I would assert that the inconvenience of having to walk the player through this process is a major contributing factor to it only happening 1-3 times per session. If the character sheet was set up in such a way as to make the ability check plus proficiency bonus process more intuitive, more DMs would call for ability checks with unorthodox proficiencies more often, and players would ask to apply different proficiencies more often. I’d likewise wager a lot of players and a smaller but non-zero number of DMs don’t even realize they have that option.

 

[Charlaquin]

I find asking for a skill check more newbie friendly because if I ask the player of a wizard for an athletics check they can just look a the list on their character sheet and use the -1 that's to the right of the word "athletics". I don't see how it can get much simpler than that. They don't even really need to know how it's calculated, just the number they need to add to the D20 roll.

I find that to be unfriendly because it obfuscates what’s happening and why. If the proficiency field was blank and the players could write in the proficiencies they had, the DM could ask for a “Strength plus Athletics check,” and the player could check their Strength mod to find that -1, and seeing that they don’t have Athletics written in their “Proficiencies” field, not add anything else. If they did have it written there, they could add their Proficiency Bonus. No more confusion over why their sheet has a field for “proficiency bonus” when it’s already calculated on their skills, no more menu of options subtly encouraging players to ask to make a check with the skill that has the biggest number next to it.

 

[Oofta]

I would assert that the inconvenience of having to walk the player through this process is a major contributing factor to it only happening 1-3 times per session. If the character sheet was set up in such a way as to make the ability check plus proficiency bonus process more intuitive, more DMs would call for ability checks with unorthodox proficiencies more often, and players would ask to apply different proficiencies more often. I’d like wager a lot of players and a smaller but non-zero number of DMs don’t even realize they have that option.

In practice, how often do you swap? It might come up maybe once every 2-3 sessions for me, but that's just a guess. But a lot of things are just fairly straightforward, but it's also not a clean thing.

For example, a PC was trying to convince an NPC of something. Sounds like persuasion or intimidate with charisma, right? But it made sense in context to make it religion using wisdom if they wanted. So ... not charisma, not one of the standard social skills, just kind of appropriate combination that made sense at the time. Which is something I try to encourage, even if the answer is "no" or preferably "no, but" sometimes.

 

[Charlaquin]

In practice, how often do you swap? It might come up maybe once every 2-3 sessions for me, but that's just a guess. But a lot of things are just fairly straightforward, but it's also not a clean thing.

Well, in practice I never swap because I just call for ability checks and let the player determine if one of their proficiencies is applicable. But again, I would bet that it happening only once every 2-3 sessions for you is at least in part because the way the character sheet is designed makes swapping inconvenient. If it was designed to make the skill check with proficiency bonus process more intuitive, I imagine you might call for ability checks with nonstandard proficiencies more often, and even if not, your players might propose different combinations more often.

For example, a PC was trying to convince an NPC of something. Sounds like persuasion or intimidate with charisma, right? But it made sense in context to make it religion using wisdom if they wanted. So ... not charisma, not one of the standard social skills, just kind of appropriate combination that made sense at the time. Which is something I try to encourage, even if the answer is "no" or preferably "no, but" sometimes.

I’m not entirely sure how this example illustrates your point. But, yeah, seems like a perfectly reasonable call to make.

 

[Oofta]

Well, in practice I never swap because I just call for ability checks and let the player determine if one of their proficiencies is applicable. But again, I would bet that it happening only once every 2-3 sessions for you is at least in part because the way the character sheet is designed makes swapping inconvenient. If it was designed to make the skill check with proficiency bonus process more intuitive, I imagine you might call for ability checks with nonstandard proficiencies more often, and even if not, your players might propose different combinations more often.

I’m not entirely sure how this example illustrates your point. But, yeah, seems like a perfectly reasonable call to make.

But then in my example wouldn't you have still limited or directed the choice because you might have called for a charisma check? A fair number of times I'll just call for a check (and the player can ask for alternative if they think it makes sense) other times we'll have a bit of back-and-forth almost brainstorming what makes the most sense.

In any case I'm not challenging what you do, more just kind of thinking out loud. Typing out loud? Doing a brain dump because it's been a long week? Trying to wrap my brain around different approaches because thinking about things from different angles sometimes helps?

 

[Rune]

In practice, how often do you swap? It might come up maybe once every 2-3 sessions for me, but that's just a guess. But a lot of things are just fairly straightforward, but it's also not a clean thing.

For example, a PC was trying to convince an NPC of something. Sounds like persuasion or intimidate with charisma, right? But it made sense in context to make it religion using wisdom if they wanted. So ... not charisma, not one of the standard social skills, just kind of appropriate combination that made sense at the time. Which is something I try to encourage, even if the answer is "no" or preferably "no, but" sometimes.

Some get swapped pretty frequently if I’m running a game with set skills at all.

As an example, any check of pure knowledge is going to automatically be Intelligence, so Medicine and Survival are only Wisdom when the check represents practical application of that knowledge.

Charisma (Investigation) could potentially come up pretty commonly with the right type of character (although, admittedly, I haven’t had a player play that character).

And, of course, Dex is not always the right stat for initiative.