D&D 5E Eliminating skill & feat taxes

[abirdcall]

I like what 5e did with skills and feats. It's time for me to go a bit further and eliminate the 'use ropes' of 5e.

Please give me feedback, I am still thinking this through and have probably missed some glaring problems.

Skills:

Animal Handling - Remove it. Survival is enough. Maybe a bit of Nature for remembering how to deal with weird beasts

Medicine - Remove it. All medicine related checks to be covered by a Nature check. Nature encompasses knowledge about biology, botany, meteorology, etc. It is the natural philosophy or science lore.

Performance - Now grants proficiency in all musical instruments. A performance check was either an instrument check or a persuasion check anyway. The Bard extra tool proficiencies now give proficiency in Performance instead.

History/Religion - Meld these together. One informs the other anyway.

Tools:

Herbalism Kit - Now doubles as a poisoner's kit.

Gaming Set - Encompasses all games.


Feats:

Dual Wielder - Allow all characters to draw or stow 2 weapons at once if they want.

GWM - Allow anyone to Cleave - It still uses the bonus action

War Caster - Give Eldritch Knights the ability to perform somatic components with hands occupied by weapons/shield.



Anything else you would change?

Problems with what I have changed?

To be clear lores are now:

Arcana - All things magic and arcane
Nature - Science of the natural world including medicine
History - Includes religion

I thought about consolidating deception/intimidation/persuasion but I don't think it is necessary. Each one can be useful and informs how the character is played. Intimidation is a bit like a narrow persuasion but I feel like it is strong enough to remain. Just pick 1 or the other.

 

[Kobold Stew]

I like what 5e did with skills and feats. It's time for me to go a bit further and eliminate the 'use ropes' of 5e.

I want Use Ropes to be brought back to 5e, as a tool.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Please give me feedback, I am still thinking this through and have probably missed some glaring problems.

Skills:

Animal Handling - Remove it. Survival is enough. Maybe a bit of Nature for remembering how to deal with weird beasts

I could go either way with this...

Medicine - Remove it. All medicine related checks to be covered by a Nature check. Nature encompasses knowledge about biology, botany, meteorology, etc. It is the natural philosophy or science lore.

nope... I would hate that. First aid and botany are not linked or even related skills this makes nature WAY too over used

Performance - Now grants proficiency in all musical instruments. A performance check was either an instrument check or a persuasion check anyway. The Bard extra tool proficiencies now give proficiency in Performance instead.

I would rather not, knowing how to play a lute and knowing how to sing, and knowing how to play a gatar are not related...

History/Religion - Meld these together. One informs the other anyway.

worst idea yet... Knowing both of these isn't a given because you know one...

Tools:

Herbalism Kit - Now doubles as a poisoner's kit.

Gaming Set - Encompasses all games.

I agree 100% on both of these...

 

[Uchawi]

When considering modifications I would ask what can any character do, what can a class do, and how can a class specialize. It appears the modification of the feats you listed will have a big impact on martial type characters, and since they do not have spells, there is one less thing for them to customize. The same principle may apply to skills.

 

[Jediking]

Animal Handling - Remove it. Survival is enough. Maybe a bit of Nature for remembering how to deal with weird beasts

Medicine - Remove it. All medicine related checks to be covered by a Nature check. Nature encompasses knowledge about biology, botany, meteorology, etc. It is the natural philosophy or science lore.

History/Religion - Meld these together. One informs the other anyway.

I think these skills can be really important and separate, especially depending on campaign settings. For them I think your same logic in keeping Intimidation (narrow but strong enough when used) can be applied. Especially Animal Handling and Medicine, which I think should be used for specific situations, while Survival and Nature may be more general skills.

Performance - Now grants proficiency in all musical instruments. A performance check was either an instrument check or a persuasion check anyway. The Bard extra tool proficiencies now give proficiency in Performance instead.

Totally agree here, my group uses Sleight of Hand, Persuasion/Deception, or whatever other skill is involved in the actual performance. We find it helps to describe the situation and make it more engaging anyways.

Herbalism Kit - Now doubles as a poisoner's kit.

Gaming Set - Encompasses all games.

Herbalism kit may be important and used, or forgotten completely depending on the table. I'd hesitate to give mechanical advantages out, but YMMV. Gaming kit is purely ribbon, so I'm with you there.


I haven't used or seen enough about the feats to notice, but seems fine, especially as they represent a big investment. We used the feat title to help too, so someone who takes "Dual Wielder" is functionally ambidextrous. Someone took the Dungeon Delver feat and our DM let him have the Stonecunning dwarf trait with it (his is a halfling rouge btw).

 

[Minigiant]

I want Use Ropes to be brought back to 5e, as a tool.

Rope proficiency is core in my game.
How else can you tie up wanted men.

 

[abirdcall]

nope... I would hate that. First aid and botany are not linked or even related skills this makes nature WAY too over used

They are absolutely related. They are both science. It is really a question of narrow vs broad. Most skills in 5e are broad. Knowing about something that happened 3000 years ago in one region doesn't mean you would have any knowledge about something that happened 200 years ago in a completely different region either.

It would be very easy to split the lore skills into 20 or more different skills. All that would accomplish is to further dissuade people from playing those characters.

I would rather not, knowing how to play a lute and knowing how to sing, and knowing how to play a gatar are not related...
worst idea yet... Knowing both of these isn't a given because you know one...

Knowing how to wield a sword doesn't mean you know how to wield a polearm either. The game simplifies it for the sake of allowing character concepts.

To me these are cases where the narrow range of the abilities don't match the rest of the system which paints in broad strokes.

When considering modifications I would ask what can any character do, what can a class do, and how can a class specialize. It appears the modification of the feats you listed will have a big impact on martial type characters, and since they do not have spells, there is one less thing for them to customize. The same principle may apply to skills.

I agree. There is a balance to be struck. If Athletics were 3 skills in 5e would that help or hinder martial characters?

Knowing how to climb doesn't mean you know how to swim after all.

My major one with the feat is Eldritch Knight. I don't like that they need to spend a feat to use a shield. I also just don't allow -5/+10 abilities so that may change my thinking with GWM.

 

[abirdcall]

Especially Animal Handling and Medicine, which I think should be used for specific situations, while Survival and Nature may be more general skills.

So here's the problem. Do you bother taking proficiency in something that you are rarely going to use? If you have to chose between Athletics and Animal Handling which one do you take?

I want people to be able to play certain concepts without being penalized by their choices.

We have all of these broad useful skills, then we have some that are very narrow and overlap in theme with other skills.

Medicine is even more of a cost in a world with abundant magical healing.

 

[Kryx]

I've thought of this as well. Though maybe even a step further. Here is what I have done:

Skills

• Deception covers Disguise. Disguise Kit (item, not prof) needed to pull off an effective disguise
• Thievery = Sleight of Hand + Thieves’ Tools
• Medicine = Medicine + Herbalism Kit + Poisoner’s Kit. Healer’s kit provides advantage on Wisdom (Medicine) checks to stabilize.
• Nature (Wis) = Nature + Animal Handling + Survival + Navigator’s Tools. Int can still be used for knowledge (skills can use other stats, see PHB)
• Performance = Performance + Musical Instruments

I don't agree on History/Religion. I use history for a lot of things - local knowledge and general "what does my character know". Religion is a combination of Religion + Planes from 3.X. I think it's fine as its own

Feats
I'm highly considering doing the following:
Cleave a weapon property of Greatsword, Greataxe, Maul.
Polearm Provoke is part of Polearms
TWF automatically does full damage on offhand and allows drawing 2 light weapons (change fighting style to be the larger size and drawing 2 normal sized weapons)
Shield Master is inherently part of shields

Polearm's bonus attack would still remain a half feat (add a stat bonus if you use full sized feats). Shield Master's other aspects would remain a half feat. In some cases like a Glaive a person could still spend a half feat to get the cleave part.

 

[Kryx]

For War Caster it should really apply to all classes if you do EK. I feel iffy on that one. It would seem to just negate somatic components entirely. But it does feel like a tax.