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

[iserith]

In my experience, it’s the norm amongst those people, and amongst people who learned from those people. Which is most players.

Yeah. There's really no way to read the rules and arrive at that approach. It comes from elsewhere.

 

[Don Durito]

Skills really should have been more explicitly optional.

Like feats, or multiclassing.

It definitely feels like that was the original intention.

5e actually throws out a lot of the benefits of it's approach (as seen also in Shadow of a Demon Lord and 13th Age) those of flexibility and minimalism, by hardwiring in a specific skill list.

And then fails to also take advantage of that skill list, by mostly failing to have those skills actually govern anything.

 

[Charlaquin]

Skills really should have been more explicitly optional.

Like feats, or multiclassing.

It definitely feels like that was the original intention.

5e actually throws out a lot of the benefits of it's approach (as seen also in Shadow of a Demon Lord and 13th Age) those of flexibility and minimalism, by hardwiring in a specific skill list.

And then fails to also take advantage of that skill list, by mostly failing to have those skills actually govern anything.

There wasn't a fixed skill list in the earliest drafts of the playtest. Players demanded a skill list, though.

 

[prabe]

There wasn't a fixed skill list in the earliest drafts of the playtest. Players demanded a skill list, though.

If you don't have an NDA keeping you from answering, how'd they handle skill-ish things without a list of skills?

 

[Oofta]

Yeah. There's really no way to read the rules and arrive at that approach. It comes from elsewhere.

Or looking at the character sheet or just getting tired of saying ability score with appropriate skill proficiency modifier or ... just saying athletics check instead of strength check with athletics proficiency modifier if you happen to have one because by default athletics uses strength and the extra words are just redundant.

 

[cmad1977]

"Just describe what you do and tell me what you're trying to accomplish, and I'll tell you if a roll is needed."

This is often the gist of what I say when my players start worrying about checks and proficiency and bonuses and...

 

[Charlaquin]

If you don't have an NDA keeping you from answering, how'd they handle skill-ish things without a list of skills?

Haha I don’t have an NDA - all this stuff is publicly available in the playtest packets, though they are a bit tricky to find these days.

Fundamentally, skills worked the same way they do now throughout the playtest. That is to say, if you had proficiency in a skill, you could add a bonus to ability checks to resolve actions to which that skill might be beneficial. The specific bonus changed from draft to draft. They started out as a flat +3, later changed to proficiency die (which still exists as a variant rule in the 5e DMG), and finally to the proficiency bonus as we see it in 5e. At first though, there was no list. You just got a number of skills and you could pick whatever you wanted. Want a bonus on checks to run, climb, and jump? Use one of your proficiencies on “Athletics.” Want a bonus on checks to weave baskets underwater? Use one of your proficiencies on “underwater basket weaving.” With no fixed list, you could be proficient in anything you could describe in a few words.

Of course, players wanted a list they could pick from, so we got a list pretty quickly. And the exact form of the list changed a few times as WotC tried to find the degree of specificity that satisfied the greatest number of players. But you can see vestiges of the no skill list approach in other optional skill variants in the DMG. Background proficiency is probably the closest of these to how it worked without the list, and though I’ve yet to run a campaign with it, I find it a pretty appealing variant rule.

 

[Charlaquin]

Or looking at the character sheet or just getting tired of saying ability score with appropriate skill proficiency modifier or ... just saying athletics check instead of strength check with athletics proficiency modifier if you happen to have one because by default athletics uses strength and the extra words are just redundant.

You look like you’re actively trying to make it sound like more of a hassle than it is. You don’t have to say “strength check with athletics proficiency modifier if you happen to have one,” you can just say “strength plus Athletics check,” or even just “strength check.”

 

[nomotog]

Haha I don’t have an NDA - all this stuff is publicly available in the playtest packets, though they are a bit tricky to find these days.

Fundamentally, skills worked the same way they do now throughout the playtest. That is to say, if you had proficiency in a skill, you could add a bonus to ability checks to resolve actions to which that skill might be beneficial. The specific bonus changed from draft to draft. They started out as a flat +3, later changed to proficiency die (which still exists as a variant rule in the 5e DMG), and finally to the proficiency bonus as we see it in 5e. At first though, there was no list. You just got a number of skills and you could pick whatever you wanted. Want a bonus on checks to run, climb, and jump? Use one of your proficiencies on “Athletics.” Want a bonus on checks to weave baskets underwater? Use one of your proficiencies on “underwater basket weaving.” With no fixed list, you could be proficient in anything you could describe in a few words.

Of course, players wanted a list they could pick from, so we got a list pretty quickly. And the exact form of the list changed a few times as WotC tried to find the degree of specificity that satisfied the greatest number of players. But you can see vestiges of the no skill list approach in other optional skill variants in the DMG. Background proficiency is probably the closest of these to how it worked without the list, and though I’ve yet to run a campaign with it, I find it a pretty appealing variant rule.

What I wish they did would be to have skills listed under backgrounds, classes and feats but not collected in a list. Or even just not calling them skills.

Also I swear skills were an optional rule up all the way to the end of the play test. My memory might be faulty though.

 

[Charlaquin]

What I wish they did would be to have skills listed under backgrounds, classes and feats but not collected in a list. Or even just not calling them skills.

Oh, yeah, that was a thing for a while. Classes, backgrounds, feats, etc. would sometimes grant skills. There just wasn’t a master list, and you could theoretically gain skills of your own devising.

Also I swear skills were an optional rule up all the way to the end of the play test. My memory might be faulty though.

I don’t remember them ever being an optional rule. What you might be remembering though is that they were presented differently through much of the playtest - as a bonus applied to ability checks, rather than a specific use of an ability. That’s why checks are still written in the form Ability (Skill). That was itself a compromise, as initially they were just written as the Ability without the parenthetical. There was even a bit in the How to Play document instructing the player to suggest if they thought one of their skills was applicable to an ability check. That got phased out in favor of the parenthetical skill at some point, I want to say like the 4th or 5th packet.