D&D (2024) 5e 2024 Skills

[jgsugden]

I am normally opposed to 'wasting' a skill choice on Endurance.

But now that 5.24 has new rules for Exhaustion ... that DM doesnt need to feel guilty about enforcing ...

Maybe Exhaustion can be a routine − sometimes even fun − part of the game. So the Endurance skill that can (among other things) play around with the Exhaustion, might now be worthwhile having...

I'm with you on the feels here ... it gave me the icks. However, skill represents things you can learn ... and you can train endurance. It also severs some concepts from Athletics which covers too much ground in some ways. I had to be sold on it, but I think it works.

Something else to consider as an option while we're talking skills: I have 5 to 10 'specialization' abilities for each skill. When you gain proficiency or expertise you get to select one. For athletics we have:

• Swimmer - your swim speed increases by 5'
• Climber - your climb speed increases by 5'
• Leaper - treat your strength score as 4 higher when jumping.
• Hurdler - Ignore the first 5' of difficult terrain you enter each turn.
• Scamper - Your movement speed is not decreased when crawling.
• Grip of Iron - Add 2 to d20 contests involving grappling or maintaining a grip.
• Kicker - You may make unarmed attacks with your legs (requiring no hands). These attacks deal 1d4.
• Biophysics - You have expertise in knowledge checks that relate to humanoid physiology.
• Hurler - Add 10 to the ranges of thrown weapons.

This gives each PC a little more uniqueness and a fun specialization. I printed these out as a deck of cards and suggest to players that they select one at random for each skill proficiency.

Alas, most of the intelligence skills just give a small bonus for particular topics.

 

[Yaarel]

• Swimmer - your swim speed increases by 5'
• Climber - your climb speed increases by 5'
• Leaper - treat your strength score as 4 higher when jumping.
• Hurdler - Ignore the first 5' of difficult terrain you enter each turn.
• Scamper - Your movement speed is not decreased when crawling.
• Grip of Iron - Add 2 to d20 contests involving grappling or maintaining a grip.
• Kicker - You may make unarmed attacks with your legs (requiring no hands). These attacks deal 1d4.
• Biophysics - You have expertise in knowledge checks that relate to humanoid physiology.
• Hurler - Add 10 to the ranges of thrown weapons.

This gives each PC a little more uniqueness and a fun specialization. I printed these out as a deck of cards and suggest to players that they select one at random for each skill proficiency.

Mechanically, I want to treat this kind of specialization as a toolset proficiency, despite that specializations such as Swim and Jump dont have 'tools' per se. Abstractly, it represents a specific kind of body training.

For me, Biophysics = Medicine. Medicine is already a specialization of Nature.

Each of the application of 'Unarmed Strike' (Grapple, Shove, Damage) can benefit from specialization.

 

[Yaarel]

I am wondering if 'Unarmed' should be a separate skill from Athletics. But in the 5.24 rules, there is not much benefit from it being a skill, except to escape from a Grapple. Trying to Grapple someone else imposes a Dex save, and there is no skill check per se.

Note, when Dexterity agility is muscular, the DC for Grappling is always Dexterity Reflex (not Strength).

As far as I can tell, Unarmed Combat can remain an aspect of the Athletics skill.


Note, I use Grapple to hold on to a larger creature, such as hanging on to Horse or a Dragon, or even a Giant that is trying to shake one off. In this case, the target has the Grappled condition except the target is the one that determines the Move.

 

[Yaarel]

Running

The fastest runner, Bolt, ran at 10.44 meters per second, equivalent to 34.5 feet per second.

Thus, a highly trained athlete (Proficiency +3, maybe +4) with an ability score of 18 (+4, representing the peak of natural human ability), would run about 210 feet per turn.

Normal movement during an encounter is 30 feet per turn.

In other words, the top Running speed = Speed x7.

Running speed seems to work out to be something like:

Run = Speed x (Proficiency + Dexterity)


If proficiency was +4, then doubled from Expertise, the Run at Speed x (+8 + +4) would be Speed x12, superhumanly fast.

 

[tetrasodium]

Skill options ane even skill system mechanics are absolutely something I think that could be system specific, but I don't think that wotc has any interest in considering supporting GM's with such a thing before 6e.

I got fed up with every check of any importance getting swarmed with a chorus of "oh I'm proficient too, can I try? Set to the drumbeat of rattling d20s and a rapid fire series of numbers being rattled off years ago but was never able to get over x"wotc knows what's fun" & "I can't do that in ddb [so I won't & will just crumble that I can't if ever pressed]". At one point I even made a customized character sheet with less all inclusive skills but it's almost impossible for the skills I'm 5e to be any more broad & accessable to PCs so any meaningful change comes off as a defacto nerf and it doesn't take much for small number of players to channel their resulting frustrated grumpiness to poison the table's mood.