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

[tetrasodium]

It depends on the game & how skills are handled. Fate has gobs & gobs of skills, but the system is so different it's not really even possible to make a comparison to d&d/pf. 3.5 had some that were overly niche but a good number if you ignore that. 5e by comparison however went too far in its zeal to streamline & simplify at all costs creating a different problem. I'm looking forward to seeing levelup's full skill system

 

[Umbran]

For D&D? Some skills, but not a huge number.

For other games, more or less, depending on what they game is going for.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Do you prefer the game to have a huge amount of Skills or a small amount of Skills?

Hmmm...

An example of a few Skills would be combining Jump; Swim; Climb into Athletics.

An example of a lot of Skills would be dividing Athletics into Jumping; Swimming; Climbing; Running, etc.

If a game has more Skills for your character to learn, such as Fishing; Hunting; Farming; Animal Husbandry, etc, does that effect your interest in the game?

Ahhh....ok, based on your examples, for D&D 5e, I'd go with "Lots".

Of course, I wouldn't do it that way. I'd have Skills and Specialities or Focuses. So there would be one skill, "Athletics", but a PC could specifically develop some area of Athletics to get an additional bonus. I would also make a distinction between "Trained" and "Untrained".

Athletics, for example, would have an "Untrained" and a "Trained" description. In the Trained one, it would say something like "Someone Trained in Athletics knows how to swim, tie specific rope knots for climbing, and the value of stretching before and after strenuous physical activity". So if you didn't choose Athletics, you wouldn't know how to swim or tie specific knots.

What I wouldn't do, is have a BUNCH of 'related' skills be separate (re: "Athletics, Jumping, Running, Swimming, Climbing, Tumbling, Dodging, Juggling, Balancing-Spoons-on-your-Nose, etc").

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[J.Quondam]

I voted "fewer."
In fact, I'd be cool with just one, as long as that one is Use Rope.

 

[Minigiant]

An example of a few Skills would be combining Jump; Swim; Climb into Athletics.

An example of a lot of Skills would be dividing Athletics into Jumping; Swimming; Climbing; Running, etc

The key is total amount of skill a typical party has vs the total skills in the game.

D&D, I could go for about 3-5 more than what 5e has.

I believe the game is more fun when a standard party is missing a few skills. Risk of utter failure and pure gambling.

So a party of 4 with 4 unique skills a piece except for a skill user with 5 unique skills that gives you 17 skills in the party. So the game should have 5 skills.

Basically a standard 4 person group should have 25% of skills uncovered. You should need a 5 man party to cover almost everything.

 

[Fenris-77]

Hmm. Something that just occurred to me. If you decouple straight skill-stat relationships then I think you can a lot more done with less. There are lots of games that, for example, have an action called something like Act Under Pressure (although I'm not specifically calling out AW here) and when you take that action plus a stat appropriate to what the PC is trying to do, it actually covers the ground of a whole lot of skills that are usually written up separately.

 

[Helpful NPC Thom]

D&D needs fewer skills. I'd be happy with a simple proficiency check based on ability score, not unlike Castles & Crusades. Give classes special abilities that make them better at doing class-related things.

 

[humble minion]

I think I prefer too few skills rather than too many. The number of skills in 5e seems about right to me, though i do have some minor quibbles (there should be a skill that covers law/administration/management/rulership etc, there's too many tool proficiencies compared to the number PCs will ever be able to learn, and some magic items and race/class features make it obnoxiously easy to get proficiency in whatever you need, which trivialises the whole thing)

For me the problem with large numbers of skills (in a D&D context, at least - different genres work differently) is that it all ends up being too granular and you end up with skills on the list that have a limited application, and then you have the whole additional complexity with 3es concept of synergy bonuses between related skills and so on. Shouldn't i get a bonus to Search because I'm good at Spot? Or to Disable Device because I have Craft (trapmaking)? Or to Knowledge (politics) because I have Knowledge (history)? It all gets a bit fiddly.

Of course accumulating related skills also has its downsides, there's no mechanical way in 5e to represent the big athletic bruiser who can run, jump, climb etc etc but is deathly scared of water cos he can't swim. Cos it's all Athletics. But I'd like to see 5e make much more use of the Inspiration mechanic, and this sort of exception-based case seems like a prime way of doing that. Give your PC the flaw 'can't swim' (I cordially hate the way 5e assumes 1 flaw per PC - PCs with more flaws are more interesting!) and then whenever you need to make an athletics check to swim, you roll with disadvantage and don't get your proficiency bonus, but get a point of inspiration. Or maybe you get that point if you refuse to go into the water in the first place.

 

[Arilyn]

My favourite way is what 13th Age does. Your chosen backgrounds determine what sorts of tasks you can tackle skillfully. For example "Lone Guardian of the Deep Wood." This could give you survival, nature and monster lore and the fortitude to stay awake during watches.

 

[Greg K]

I want more skills, but only 6-10 (almost all of which had appeared in the open playtest).