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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rodrigo Istalindir" data-source="post: 6400304" data-attributes="member: 2810">Having played a lot of games wherer 'Pick a skill, pick a stat, roll the dice' is the normal way of doing things, there are reasons why it's not always a good thing.The general assumption in most games, and in 5e, is that you're going to skilled in some but not all things, and your stats will run the gamut from average to great.  With static skill/stat pairs, this results in fairly predictable archetypes -- the halfling rogue will have a high Dex and be skilled in stealth, the half-orc barbarian will have a low CHA and be unskilled in Persuasion.  In 5e, Backgrounds do a good job of letting you change up those archetypes in an organic manner without forcing you to gimp your character.  A player wanting a leader-y dwarf can still be decent in Persuasion by taking an appropriate background and putting a decent but not great score in CHA.  He'll still be a great warror, and also pretty good a certain social tasks but still not so good at others.So Duane the Half-Orc barbarian straight out of central casting walks into town and the guards demand he surrender his weapons.   The player decides to try and talk them out of it; unlikely, no skill at Persuasion, low CHA, but the consequences of failure are low.  Or he can try and intimidate them; better chance of success, low CHA but skilled at Intimidate, but the consequences of failure are higher.  He could try and lie and tell them he has a dispensation from the sheriff, but that's unlikely too, with a low CHA and no skill at Deception.  He could also surrender the great axe but try and keep the short sword hidden under his cloak; his high Dex could offset his lack of training in Sleight of Hand.Duane the Half-Orc takes crap from no man, so he grabs the guard's shirt and growls 'Make me.'  The GM says 'Ok, roll CHA+Intimidate', and things happen.That was a decision, and decisions are interesting.OTOH, Duane the Half-Orc Barbarian using the variant rule walks into town and the guards demand he surrrender his weapons.  The same options are presented.  Duane gets in the guard's face and says 'Make me.' The GM says ' Ok, roll CHA+Intimidate'.  The player counters with 'I'm really strong, so I grab his shirt while I do it.  That should be  STR+Intimidate.'So now the player has chosen both the skill to be used as well as the stat.  This reduces or eliminates decisions.  Players are going to try and game the system so they're always doing the optimal thing.  Every skill check becomes a negotiation between the player and the GM, and that gets tedious and potentially confrontational when there's disagreements.   It lets players boost their strengths while ignoring or minimizing their weaknesses, and that gets old fast.  A roller-coaster of little successes and Little failures followed by big successes is more interesting than a constant string of little successes followed by a big success.Ideally, what happens is the GM describes the situation, the player describes how they act, and the GM takes that into account.  In the above example, Duane walks into town, the guard demands his weapons, Duane reacts by grabbing his shirt and saying 'Make me.'  The GM tells the player to roll Str+Intimidate, but adjusts the consequences for failure from 'pissing off the guard' to 'the rest of the watch beats him senseless and throws him in jail'.TL;DR -- Players making decisions is interesting, and allowing them to always cherry-pick to maximize their success is boring.</blockquote>

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