D&D 5E (2024) Rank 5e skills from most useful (1) to least useful (18)

[TheSword]

10 years on with a new edition update how would you rank the 5e skills 1-18 from most useful to least useful in a typical campaign. Let’s assume it’s running levels 1-10. Don’t worry about individual classes it’s less about what your character has and more what the party has access to. I’ve left them in alphabetical order. In case anyone forget any!

Acrobatics
Animal Handling
Arcana
Athletics
Deception
History
Insight
Intimidation
Investigation
Medicine
Nature
Perception
Performance
Persuasion
Religion
Sleight of Hand
Stealth
Survival

Feel free to have a heated debate while we are at it! Have any changed since 2014?

 

[TiQuinn]

Perception has to be near the top if not at the top.

History or Religion is probably at the bottom but that’s also more my fault for forgetting it or allowing substitutions than anything.

 

[Charlaquin]

1. Perception
2. Investigation
3. Arcana
4. Insight
5. Stealth
6. Persuasion
7. Intimidation
8. Deception
9. Sleight of Hand
10. Athletics
11. Acrobatics
12. Survival
13. Medicine
14. Nature
15. Religion
16. History
17. Animal Handling
18. Performance

I ranked Arcana near the top because I know a lot of DMs treat it like a mini Detect Magic. Likewise with Insight because so many DMs treat it as “tell me if this NPC is lying”. At my table specifically they’d both be lower. On a similar note, I ranked the social skills above Sleight of Hand, Athletics, and Acrobatics, figuring that social interactions will be more common in most 5e games than locked doors and grapples, but I would swap those if I knew it was going to be a dungeon delving campaign. The various “know stuff about things” skills (other than Arcana) could likewise go higher depending on the campaign. The order of those skills is pretty arbitrary, but I put Medicine first because it has niche combat use as a way to stabilize a dying creature, and because it often becomes the “forensics” skill in murder mystery type adventures. Animal Handling could be higher if you’ve got a DM who has it work like mind control on animals, but I don’t see that too often, and even in that case it’s still pretty niche.

 

[cbwjm]

Might as well put investigation at the bottom since every DM seems to forget about it and call for a perception check instead.

 

[I'm A Banana]

S-Tier: Take these if you can.
1. Perception: Solve mysteries & avoid traps & thwart ambushes.
2. Insight: "Tell me what this NPC is REALLY thinking."

A-Tier: Pretty good.
3. Persuasion: "I tell them to be my friend."
4. Deception: "I tell them to be my friend, but I'm lying." Riskier than Persuasion, but roughly equivalent. Bad rolls on this often lead to more fun than good rolls, but good rolls build tension.
5. Athletics: Necessary for climbing/jumping/moving big things out the way, and useful for grappling.
6. Investigation: Insight for the environment.

B-Tier: More rarely used, but pretty good.
7. Stealth: A must-have for the party, but really only something one character needs, and even then scouting is a risk.
8. Arcana: Most useful of the knowledge skills; a lot of DM's treat this like "detect magic lite."
9. Acrobatics: A useful alternative to Athletics when grappling, but otherwise a pretty pointless skill. "Do a backflip" doesn't solve many problems.
10. Sleight of Hand: Sometimes used for picking pockets or locks, but needs some pro-active use. Never really necessary.

C-Tier: Toss-up. You don't need these, but you might get some use out of them.
11. Animal Handling: Persuasion, but for things that don't speak. A campaign can ignore this for the most part, but when it's useful, it's useful.
12. Survival: Some campaigns can completely ignore this skill, but others might use it quite a bit. So C-tier: useful when it's useful.
13. Nature: Reasonably useful knowledge skill for "what that monster do?" But like other knowledge skills, can be useless depending on the DM.

D-Tier: Mostly a trap.
14. Religion: Marginally useful knowledge skill for like angels and devils and stuff.
15. Intimidation: Depending on DM, either a "start this fight" button or a "make NPC do exactly one thing and then nothing else" button.
16. History: Marginally useful knowledge skill for when the DM has put extra work into the lore and for some reason that's important.

Super Hell: Why are these even skills?
17. Medicine: Everything comes back on a long rest. Sometimes marginally useful knowledge skill for "how did this thing die?" but Investigation does that work, too. Could be useful in a game where injuries linger.
18. Performance: Main use is for "how did I do with my song?", which in practice is an OK bit of RP, but, like, why are we rolling for this? There's not usually consequences for doing well OR poorly, so idk, just tell me what you do.

 

[TheSword]

I’m surprised people haven’t ranked Survival higher. The tracking element alone would make it more useful I would have thought.

 

[TiQuinn]

I’m surprised people haven’t ranked Survival higher. The tracking element would make it more useful I would have thought.

I think the thing with Survival is there tends to always be one person in the party for who it’s applicable and everyone else just lets those kind of situations that call for it defer to that person.

 

[Zardnaar]

I think the thing with Survival is there tends to always be one person in the party for who it’s applicable and everyone else just lets those kind of situations that call for it defer to that person.

Thise OCs often have high wisdom and guidance spell as well. They're better at it untrained tgan you are saying why bother?

Perception is the super skill S tier.

Sleight of hand now has advantage with tool proficiency. Probably A tier.

Arcana let's anyone craft magic items now. Dont even need to cast spells els unless the item has it.

Alot of the D tier skills are DM dependent and often support exploration.

 

[cbwjm]

I’m surprised people haven’t ranked Survival higher. The tracking element alone would make it more useful I would have thought.

Ithibk the tracking element also falls prey to the overuse of perception. DMs will often call for that instead of survival to see if you spot the tracks.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I’m surprised people haven’t ranked Survival higher. The tracking element alone would make it more useful I would have thought.

Tracking is one of the better use cases of Survival, but in practice, it's not super critical to have the skill to do the thing. If the DM WANTS you to find the tracks, you won't need the skill to do it. Or the DM might use Nature or Perception or Investigation or some other skill to make it more likely the party will find the trail. And at the same time, you can reasonably assume if the DM doesn't give you the path to follow, that there's nothing important really down that path. so in a player's hands, this functions more as a momentary diversion, or a time for the DM to narrate some of the "what happened here?!" for a curious group. This, for me, is C-tier material: It's not going to be useful for every character, or in every campaign, but you can sometimes find a use for it, and when it IS useful (which may be never!), it's quite nice to have.