D&D General Do you prefer more or less Skills?

[Ruin Explorer]

It is easier for people to understand that Athletics is always tied to STR rather than it being sometimes STR, sometimes DEX, and sometimes CON.
It is also easier to map to a character sheet that way.

Decoupled skills is better in my mind but it is a lot tougher for new or tired players. And it would get annoying fast for DM to constantly have to remind players or field attempts to apply a skill to everything. Trust me.

That's why I am for a list like 5e's plus 5-6 more skills (Weighlighting (STR), Browbeat (STR), Endurance (CON), Etiquette (CHA) Streetwise (CHA)) as a base. Decoupling requires a more veteran playerbase and more attachment to backgrounds.

I disagree strongly about decoupling based long experience of decoupled skill + stat systems and particularly using those with inexperienced players, not veterans.

I'm not saying you're completely wrong but my experience is that it's about presentation and mindset.

Specifically, if you always write them down decoupled, IE there's no idea that "Athletics is normally STR", and the character sheet reflects that (like most WoD games for example), I've never seen players, tired or newbie or otherwise have any problem at all. They have the mindset that it's stat + skill, so they just think of the appropriate combo or ask the DM. I played WoD games with some totally new to RPGs people and never saw a problem. Same with other games taking that approach.

The only time I've seen an issue is where games make it so there's "usually" a specific stat + skill combo but sometimes not, and 5E with the optional rule to use other combos is an example of that. But if, from the start,and on the character sheet, stats and skills were decoupled, I don't believe this would be a problem.

 

[Composer99]

Two general remarks apropos of the developing conversations/subthreads:

Decoupled skills:
Even conceding that it is a PHB variant, decoupled skills are already in the 5e rules. Your player says "I want to do the thing", and the thing looks like, say, Constitution (Athletics), Strength (Intimidate), or Charisma (Arcana), you're already good to go. That said, there's nothing wrong to my mind with skills having a "key" or typical associated ability, representing the majority of typical uses of that skill. It comes down to how it's presented on the character sheet and how you explain it.

FKR/freeform and skills:
I prefer rules-heavier systems myself - around the level of complexity of 5e, to be precise - so I don't buy that FKR or other forms of freeform play are "the cure" for players not engaging with the in-game fiction as much as might be desired. Ideally, player character action writ large in any RPG starts from the fictional positioning, regardless of how rules-heavy or rules-light that game might be. However, players may not feel like engaging much with the in-game fiction at any given time (or at all), depending on their preferences or the circumstances, so I wouldn't force the issue - and here I think systems with more crunch have an advantage because there is a hook to engage with the fiction - at a superficial level but at some level nonetheless - even when players aren't committing to engage with the fiction (because they are playing at a beer-and-pretzels level of engagement, aren't feeling up to more engagement that game session, or what-have-you). "[My character name] uses Athletics to bash down the door" is just game-mechanics-ese for "I attempt to use my great strength to bash down the door", when you get down to it.

More generally/philosophically/from-a-design-perspective-y, skills in an RPG represent, through mechanics, things that any given player character is good at compared to most other creatures in the game world. And in D&D 5e they are sufficiently broad that they are mostly described in the rules in terms of fictional positioning, and not in terms of concrete mechanical levers/buttons/what-have-you. They also have the convenience of being a single word with a checkbox on a character sheet plus a reference in the PHB (or maybe even on my DM screen) for when you need it. As a DM/GM, what I don't care for in ultra-light games is the absence of such mechanics. Meaning if a player and I agree that their character is good at "thing X" in a game I'm running, either I have to adjudicate each instance of "thing X" each time it comes up (and remember said adjudication, or remember to write down said adjudication), or the player character has to write down "what being good at thing X means" on their character sheet. And in that case...

(That last part might be tongue-in-cheek, but not 100% tongue-in-cheek.)