I disagree. Most DMs in my experience tend to err on the permissive side when it comes to opportunities to utilize your proficiencies... as long as you ask. A lot of players don’t tend to ask for some reason, but seriously, try it and see. When the DM asks for a check with a skill you don’t have proficiency with, ask if you can apply your proficiency with a tool. As long as the connection makes some kind of sense, there’s a good chance they’ll let you.
Well, first of all I don’t think extra tool proficiencies are too strong at all. I think people freaking out over hill dwarves being the best race now are overreacting. That said, 5e does have a crafting system. It’s pretty barebones and most DMs in my experience don’t use it. But it does exist.
When you say “make an Investigation check,” you kind of cut off the player’s opportunity to suggest adding a tool proficiency. Like, sure, they can say “can I add my Alchemist’s Tools proficiency instead?” but most players won’t do that, as they figure you had a reason to ask for the skill you asked for. But when you just say “make an Intelligence check, with Investigation proficiency if you have it,” it gets a little easier to ask to sub in another proficiency (be it tool or skill), and when you just say “make an Intelligence check” you make suggesting a proficiency part of their role.
I’m a big fan of this approach. Most DM do it with thieves tools already, I see no reason not to do it with other proficiencies.
Not a single 5E campaign I have ever run has ever had a PC use a Disguise Kit. Not once. Because Disguise Self is a 1st level spell and thus relatively easy to get into the party.
I don’t think improving the balance of races was ever the goal. The goal was to free races up to be paired with classes they aren’t typically, without having to sacrifice your primary ability score.I mean this is clearly imbalanced, some races now are just flat out better than others. Now in practice this imbalance is so small that it probably doesn't matter terribly much, but that was the situation before these extra rules too. So as an attempt to improve the balance of the races it fell flat.
But some races is still better for certain classes than other races, now it just happens that mountain dwarves and perhaps half elves are better for almost any class than any other races. So I'd say the situation is actually worse than before and certainly not any better.
Don't get me wrong, I fully agree with the system you are describing and how it enhances character-depth and engagement, it's just that those are still mostly homebrew systems and it's kind of impossible to say anything meaningful about how powerful tool profs are then. My main point, which originally was aimed at answering the OP's question, is that tool proffeciencies can never be too strong in 5E because if you open an officialy published 5e campaign and do ctrl-f for "tool prof" you will most likely get 5 hits at most.
Ohh yeah, those tool proffeciencies definatly got things like Magic Resistance on Yuan-ti and Satyrs beat out.
Tool proficiencies no. Armour proficiencies for casters combined with two +2s however is definitely better than what most other races can bring.
I disagree. People are real hyped about elves and dwarves right now, but I think time will tell that they’re not even the most powerful races under this system. And again, the differences are minor enough I think this change will only increase diversity in race/class combinations.
