D&D 5E Changing the Skill Check Paradigm

[mcbobbo]

IMO "Skills" no longer exist, and the new 5e thing that replaced them needs a new name. Can you decide to get better at them, for example? "Put points" into them? Only through feats and class features, as far as I am aware.

That would make them about as far from "skills" as you can conceptually get.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Wow. I didn't realise I or the people I play with were playing D&D wrong

You said:

In my experience players will simply not do something if they know there's a low chance of success.

You're playing a game where you take on the roles of heroic people facing terrible odds and snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. If they'll only do things when they're likely to succeed, there's no point in playing the game.

So either the GM is being overly punitive when they fail -- too many silly traps, overwhelming encounters that require absolute min-maxing, etc

Or he's being insufficiently flexible -- letting a game grind to a halt on a missed spot check, requiring constant skill checks for trivial things instead of just hand-waving the small stuff, and so forth,

Or you've got players that value 'winning' over 'playing', and there's nothing you can do about that.

The quickest way to differentiate between good players and bad players is how they react to minor setbacks. Good players will revel in them, and riff off the events to do clever and daring things. Bad players will recoil from failure and get frustrated when they can't always spin things to their advantage. All players will try and do things their characters are good at; the difference is in how they react when they can't.

Adapting the skill/stat pairings when appropriate and in response to character actions is good -- that's why there's a GM. But letting players cherry pick the difficulty lest they refuse to do anything is Not Good.

 

[ExploderWizard]

a puzzle shows up for one of my players and he just shuts down. He has some mental issue with puzzles, but loves playing the "smart" character. He just doesnt like logic puzzles. "He says he wants to have fun, and not have to think. He does that for a living."

Sometimes, when very tired or brain fried, I just want to have fun without much thinking too. When that is the case, I play a fighter. I hit things. I pick things up and put them down.

What I don't do is choose to play the character who is supposed to figure stuff out and hope the system plays my character for me because I cannot be bothered to do so.

If all of the thinking is handled on autopilot, what is there for the player to actually DO except roll dice?

 

[nomotog]

The player needs to be specific about the related task. She shouldn't just say "I am checking the runes", she has to say how she checks them.

"I'm checking the runes using my arcana to understand if it is a glyph or a magical keyword for a ward of some sort."

DM: "Ok. You can roll your wisdom arcana. "

Or

"I look at the runes and wonder if it is an ancient dwarven prayer for the dead."

DM: "Ok, you know dwarven language already, roll a wisdom check with history."

That first one sounds a little gamey. It's a little like saying I use arcane on the runes, just worded differently. I don't think I would have thought to allow history on that second one. I may have given a proficiency bonus if they were a dwarf though. This system seems to allow in a lot more ambiguity.

 

[Joe Liker]

I agree. I really dislike Investigation and would like to see it removed. Easy enough to house rule however. If a PC is investigating a scene, I want to hear what is it he's trying to do. "I investigate" is just as meaningless as "I handle an animal" or "I survive"

I feel like you're trying to infer how the game works by looking at the character sheet rather than reading the rules. In the "Using Ability Scores" chapter, it lays out fairly specifically how the various Intelligence-based skills differ.

History, Nature, and Religion represent the ability to recall specific information from these respective spheres of knowledge.

Investigate, on the other hand, is for researching new information, making a deduction based on clues already found, or drawing inferences about the physical world based on general knowledge (as in the example of the weak point in the tunnel).

I personally think it's a reasonable fallback for when the players are presented with a puzzle none of them can crack. At the very least, a success on an Investigate check should earn them a hint or two. There's nothing wrong with playing a character who's smarter than the player, and this is a good way to emulate that.

It's all well and good to require your players to describe how they are using a skill; in fact, that's how you're supposed to do it. House ruling a skill out of the game because you're afraid players will use it as a crutch -- that's just cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Investigate is a good skill, and there's a very clear need for it in the list. It's up to the DM to make sure it's used wisely.

 

[LostSoul]

Adapting the skill/stat pairings when appropriate and in response to character actions is good -- that's why there's a GM.

That's why I like getting rid of strict stat pairings: the DM needs to hear the in-character action before he or she has enough information to proceed with resolution. This isn't always the case ("I climb the wall") but it helps.

You might have to deal with some players trying to use their high stat for everything, but eh.

e.g. Player: I pick the lock.
DM: Dex + whatever.
Player: My wizard has a high Int, can I use that?
DM: How?
Player: Maybe I know about this lock from my Criminal background and how to pick it.
DM: That's a different task. You can roll to see if you have that knowledge since it fits your background, but actually picking the lock requires manual dexterity. If you make that knowledge check you can "aid" yourself, and if you fail you'll gain disadvantage on the lock picking check - your remember incorrectly.

I like doing that sort of thing (I feel it fleshes out the characters during the game) but others may not.