But looking up the value is not the only reason to have the skills listed on the sheet.
The things listed on the character sheet - skills, weapon stats, list of spells and powers, and so on - taken collectively give you a first approximation of what your character can attempt to do. If you leave things off the sheet, players will tend to forget those things are options. This is even more important in 5e, in that bounded accuracy means that non-proficient characters may well still have a chance.
Basically, in cutting down the sheet, you risk creating an "out of sight, out of mind" state in the players. Maybe it'll feel lighter, but it may also feel more *restricting*, as they will tend to feel their list of options is constrained.
Exactly!! This is the same thought I had, but actually it only made me think more...
On one hand 5e is supposed to encourage the "you can always try" philosophy. Now if you list down 18 skills, are we sure we're encouraging that philosophy, or is there a risk of having the opposite effects? What prevails between "oh look there's a history/persuasion/insight skill, maybe I can try that" and "but there isn't a geography/creature lore/use rope skill, so this cannot be done"? I think probably the first will be more common, but still... a player who has been told they can try anything, knows they can try anything, whether it's listed on her sheet or not.
Then on the other hand, personally I am not even a fan of the "you can always try" philosophy.
It sounds great when everyone
must make the same check, so this philosophy translates into "everybody can jump over the chasm / swim out of this waters / sneak past the guards", instead of having a system where untrained characters can't proceed at all.
It also sounds good when someone has a creative idea that isn't covered by the rules, but that's when it's not going to be written on the character sheet anyway.
And finally it is useful when
nobody is good at something, so someone has to try it anyway.
Unfortunately, it's not so great when "you can always try" leads into situations where the expert has failed, so everybody else in the party realizes that there is no cost in trying... so they all try the same, which is not the most creative solution, and furthermore almost certainly someone will succeed (if you set the DC higher to avoid the latter, then you risk the expert fail more often). And even the useful case when nobody is good but all of you can try has a similar drawback: that everybody tries the most obvious solution instead of thinking of creative alternatives.
I'm going too far off-topic here, but it was just to say that personally I actually
like that "out of sight, out of mind" effect i.e.
not having suggestions of skills for everyone, but only those who are supposed to be leaders in those.
edit: Notice that something vaguely similar actually already happens... anyone can use any weapon, so why don't we list every possible weapon on a character's sheet? Of course the real reason is because you only list the weapons you
have. Still, when you find weapons as loot you don't spend time calculating all your bonuses just because you might use those weapons. You do that only for occasional weapons you intend to keep. For the others you don't bother, not until something happens that makes you use them. In a sense, this is similar to what I have in mind: to bother when I need to roll, not before. Or to bother only about stuff I use regularly at least.
(This topic is too complex to talk about it here, because skills cover very different things, some of which like Perception are really harmless even if everyone can try, but if everyone can try lockpicking then it might create an issue where being the lockpicking expect doesn't feel rewarding).
However, I think for most people, having to do that math in their head, regardless of how easy the actual math is, would be more difficult than having it done beforehand in front of them.
Well sure, if someone's bothered by math on-the-fly, then they should use a more traditional ready-to-use character sheet.
Tho I am still not sure... you see, if you fill a complete traditional character sheet, you are going to have to do the same calculation 18 times for skills, 6 times for saving throws, a bunch of times for weapons, and a few more times perhaps. Thank God you don't really need to update everything every single time you level up like in 3e, but still sometimes you do. Then it depends how often you need to make rolls... definitely more than 30 rolls before levelling up, sure.
There's a trade-off there however, and what I want to find out, is what changes in feel when using this alternative. For example, could it be better for a beginner to very quickly fill a "light" character sheet and start playing immediately, and delay calculations until she actually needs to make the rolls? Some beginners might be bored already if it takes too long to fill dozens of stats, or intimidated by a character description that has lots of stuff and dozens of numbers.
I could, but I'd probably forget if a weapon did 1d6 or 1d8 base damage, and that would mean I'd have to look it up, which means cracking open the book, which takes up time I'd rather spend on roleplaying.
Weapon damage definitely needs to be written on the sheet, because each weapon has its own. I was instead referring to checks (including weapon attacks), on the ground that so many of them effectively have the same total bonus, since in 5e it's almost always the sum of an ability modifier and your (unique) proficiency bonus.
