D&D 5E Do you ever let players stack skills?

[MNblockhead]

Say the party comes across a terribly mauled corpse. It would seem logical that a character skilled in both investigation AND medicine would be in a better position to determine what creature mauled the corpse and other details than a character skill in only one of the skills.

Party finds a magic relic. if you are skilled in both arcana and history, would you not have a better chance of knowing something about it than someone with a skill in just one?

But the rules state that "Your proficiency bonus can't be added to a single die roll or other number more than once."

I try to keep to the RAW, but I'm wondering if there is room to let characters with complementary skills benefit from that.

What I do, is when you have to two skills that can apply, I let you roll using both. Basically, it acts like advantage. Maybe your history skill wasn't helpful, but your arcana skill was.

I think that better reflects the value of overlapping expertise.

Generally I only allow this for knowledge-based skills. Your extra knowledge and study gives you extra rolls.

For activities that require both acrobatics and athletics, I treat it a bit differently. You are basically making multiple skill rolls for different things. For example, if you have to run along a railing an make a big jump to a balcony, you would roll independently for a dexterity (acrobatics) check to run along the railing and a strength (athletics) check to jump. Once isn't really helping the other. I find "athletics" to be rather silly as a "skill", but that's perhaps a topic for another thread.

Does anyone else do anything similar? How do you handle overlapping skill sets?

 

[afdarcy]

How do you handle overlapping skill sets?

Give the player the option of which to use - they will generally pick the one with the better bonus. Stacking bonuses doesn't play well with the Bounded Accuracy principle that 5e is built upon.

 

[pukunui]

I wouldn't let them stack the bonuses, but I might consider granting them advantage.

 

[afdarcy]

I wouldn't let them stack the bonuses, but I might consider granting them advantage.

Yes, good call, this could be seen as the equivalent of receiving the benefit of help from another character.

 

[Ath-kethin]

Either give advantage or allow them to make multiple checks (one for each skill you feel is relevant).

 

[Rya.Reisender]

I'd never allow stacking like that.

If something is related to various skills, what the players says he wants to do determines what roll is used.

Magic relic example:

A)
DM: "Your find a weird object, seems like a relic."
Player: "I wanna check if I have read about that object before."
DM: "Roll History."

B)
DM: "Your find a weird object, seems like a relic."
Player: "I want to take a closer look at it, trying to figure out its function."
DM: "Roll Investigation."

C)
DM: "Your find a weird object, seems like a relic."
Player: "I want to check if it's magical."
DM: "Roll Arcana."

The result will also strongly depend on what roll was used. A successful history check will let me tell the player a bit on the history of the item and where he heard for. A successful investigation does reveal nothing about the items history, but will still disclose its function. A successful arcana check will probably just make me tell the player whether he thinks it's magical or not (whatever the truth is).

 

[77IM]

When a player is proficient in more than one relevant knowledge skill, I have them make a single Int check (with proficiency modifier) and on success they get the information from all the relevant proficient skills.

In your example, a character skilled in Investigation might find bits of hair and claw on the corpse, and maybe know from the position of the wounds that the monster jumped out at the victim. A character skilled in Medicine might know instead that the wounds targeted vital organs (a sign of intelligence?) and that the victim bled to death (meaning, the creature left the scene before finishing the victim off). A character skilled in both would get both pieces of information.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I wouldn't allow the stacking of skills, nor would I allow multiple checks.

I might grant advantage on the roll, but what is most likely is that the character with more than one relevant proficiency is going to make me feel that there is nothing uncertain to resolve - they are effectively an expert in the relevant field, so if there is something that someone might know, they are the one that would know it.

 

[iserith]

Say the party comes across a terribly mauled corpse. It would seem logical that a character skilled in both investigation AND medicine would be in a better position to determine what creature mauled the corpse and other details than a character skill in only one of the skills.

Party finds a magic relic. if you are skilled in both arcana and history, would you not have a better chance of knowing something about it than someone with a skill in just one?

But the rules state that "Your proficiency bonus can't be added to a single die roll or other number more than once."

I try to keep to the RAW, but I'm wondering if there is room to let characters with complementary skills benefit from that.

What I do, is when you have to two skills that can apply, I let you roll using both. Basically, it acts like advantage. Maybe your history skill wasn't helpful, but your arcana skill was.

I think that better reflects the value of overlapping expertise.

Generally I only allow this for knowledge-based skills. Your extra knowledge and study gives you extra rolls.

For activities that require both acrobatics and athletics, I treat it a bit differently. You are basically making multiple skill rolls for different things. For example, if you have to run along a railing an make a big jump to a balcony, you would roll independently for a dexterity (acrobatics) check to run along the railing and a strength (athletics) check to jump. Once isn't really helping the other. I find "athletics" to be rather silly as a "skill", but that's perhaps a topic for another thread.

Does anyone else do anything similar? How do you handle overlapping skill sets?

No. I generally just call for one of the six ability checks. The players can then claim which of their proficiencies might apply based on what they described they wanted to do. I agree by default under the assumption the player is acting in good faith.

When you run into a situation where a couple of different skills could apply to resolving a task, then that could be a sign the player's action declaration lacked reasonable specificity. In a case like this, I would likely ask the player to be more specific about the character's goal and approach. You can the imagine the smart play is to then add description appropriate to the skill with the highest bonus, if there is one that outstrips another.

 

[Rune]

What I do, is when you have to two skills that can apply, I let you roll using both. Basically, it acts like advantage. Maybe your history skill wasn't helpful, but your arcana skill was.

This was my initial thought. Except...

Generally I only allow this for knowledge-based skills. Your extra knowledge and study gives you extra rolls.

I don't do knowledge checks at all (except, maybe, sometimes, when the character is under pressure). In my experience, the game is not well served by withholding that kind of information from the players based on the whim of a dice. At best, it messes with the pacing. At worst, it grinds the adventure to a halt.

Therefore, if a character could know something relevant, they do. However, I do try to filter the information through the perspective of the individual, so no two characters with the same skills would know exactly the same things. That could be as nebulous as factoring in class, race, and background, but a cleaner way would be to just look at the character's skill set in aggregate.

For activities that require both acrobatics and athletics, I treat it a bit differently. You are basically making multiple skill rolls for different things. For example, if you have to run along a railing an make a big jump to a balcony, you would roll independently for a dexterity (acrobatics) check to run along the railing and a strength (athletics) check to jump. Once isn't really helping the other. I find "athletics" to be rather silly as a "skill", but that's perhaps a topic for another thread.

Does anyone else do anything similar? How do you handle overlapping skill sets?

I'm really not a fan of requiring multiple rolls to resolve a single action sequence. In practice, that just seems to end up punishing (and, hence, discouraging) the people who like to link stunts together. I want to see the swashbuckler swinging over the heads of the enemies on a chandelier and then tumbling into a combat stance behind them. Or the monk actively dodging attacks by diving under a table, tumbling over to the wall, climbing up the corner, and leaping back over to the tabletop. But with multiple rolls, that's just two (or more) chances to fail for not much tangible gain. Although, I might be okay with it if such an action sequence granted inspiration to an observer. Say, one per ability check after the first.