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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 5815869" data-attributes="member: 996">I suppose.  An assassin could flourish a dagger menacingly, using DEX to intimidate.  A cleric could recite the grim fate awaiting you in the afterlife if you dared to oppose him using WIS, maybe.  A wizard could hand you a geometry pop quiz...The 3.x way was complex but mostly codified.  You had a /lot/ of skills, most of which did specific things, you also had some skills that were actually /many/ skill waiting to be defined into being by a player taking them.  You distributed ranks over those skills.  Your ranks determined how good you were. The higher level you got, the more ranks tended to overwhelm the influence of high stats.  At low level, you might be passible at many skills, thanks to some innate talent (stats) or spreading some ranks around.  At high levels, you were only good at skills you spent max ranks on, you're incompetent (for that level) at everything else.  And, you know it.  When you go to perform a task, you have a decent idea of the DC (either because it's static, or because there's some formula for what you're trying to do) and whether or not you can succeed, because there are rules for the use of every skill, and they're mostly right there in the PH for you to read.The 5e way, skills are optional, and you make checks based on stats to succeed when you try to do something.  There are no rules for how good, say, a 14 STR makes you at breaking down a door. It's up to the DM.  You say "I try to break down the door," he says "roll STR" you roll, the DM decides if you succeed.  Or maybe he decides before you roll and just says "the door breaks" or "you hurt your shoulder."  I've actually used this aproach, myself, with other games, when the resolution mechanics are too byzantine or non-functional to bother with.  You just run by the seat of your pants, and use dice rolls as the roughest of rough guides as you drag the party along your inteneded story line.  So if you want them to get through a door, they get through, if you don't, they don't.  The player, the character, and the die roll don't really matter.  It's a perfectly valid way to run, so long as you have the chops to make it /fun/ for all (generally by lying through your teeth about it "Ooh, let me check my notes... nope, missed it by that much...too bad, that would have been cool...").</blockquote>

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