DND_Reborn
The High Aldwin
Oh, I don't know. I think you have a point, but I don't think it is as strong as you might feel (at least not to me... shrug).This is related to the fact that a lot of skills are basically trash & PCs don't have the budget for trash skills. Perception is almost always going to be useful to some degree. How often have you seen entire campaigns run without ever having someone use medicine/nature/handle animal history or performane? Out of the times those skills even come up in a campaign are they regularly important to any degree? Sure bob might tame a wild animal or use handle animal with a horse but was a possible failure going to have much more impact than "ok.. moving on" or something in even half of those cases?
I see Medicine and Nature used fairly regularly, History sometimes but we use it for things like heraldry, etc., and Performance is only useful for role-play more than anything else, and then it often doesn't really matter IME.
However, out of those, only Medicine is really important at all. The others can be used or not and such is life.
Perception is probably better, but a lot depends on the build and the PC's role in the party IME. Like I wrote above, about half the PCs in the games I've DMed or played in don't have proficiency in Perception.
Now, that isn't to say it isn't important, because the flip side is saying half the PCs DO have it! Out of 18 skills, nothing is as commonly taken. Probably Athletics is a close second IME, just due to grapples and shoves more than actually climbing or anything, although that does come up nearly each session. After that, we see Stealth and Survival often enough as well!
For my PCs this is about half/half. I will take two skills which support my best ability scores, and often two skills to support my WORST ability scores. Nothing sucks more than a Rogue with STR 8 or 10 without Athletics when you need it! (Actually, I'll commonly even use an Expertise on such skills!!!)There is a, uh, perception (no pun intended) among players that proficiency in a skill you don't have a strong ability score in is a waste of time. It's not accurate, but I've played under DM's who set fairly high DC's for things, so I could understand a character not wanting to use one of their few skill picks to grab Athletics if they have low Strength.
And while the answer might be "don't have low Strength", you're going to have something low, so what do you choose?