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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 8546324" data-attributes="member: 58172">The casters, including the Wizard, tend to use spells to overcome noncombat challenges. They dont really depend on skills and tools, the way noncasters do. Heh, the Bard that enjoys both spells and proficiencies is an embarrassment of riches, but thematically this feels appropriate for the Bard concept (both the Celtic mythological accuracy that is a blend of shaman and scholar, and the D&D tradition that emphasizes versatility).In 5e, the DM has almost complete control over when and how to use a skill or tool. (Even the few hard rules that exist, such as how many feet a character can jump, the DM can decide that this is the minimum that is automatic, and then to roll Athletics to see how much further one can jump.) So the DM decides how good a skill or tool is.When I DM, my style is to adjudicate everything narratively, depending on how much sense something makes within the context of the story. Many player efforts either work or dont (autosuccesses or autofailures). Only when the effort seems like it could go either way, do I roll dice. Normally, skills and tools determine the success or failure. A combat encounter is often a last resort. So for my DM style, skills and tools are central to the D&D experience.For me, the difference between a "skill" and a "tool" is almost like the difference between a theoretical science and an applied science.A "skill" represents a broad category of knowledge, like an area of education.By contrast, a "tool" is a narrow specialization.For example, say the player chooses the tool to be a "vehicle", and that vehicle to be a horse with or without a chariot or wagon. The resulting character knows everything there is to know relating to a horse, how to ride it, where to buy and sell it, how to haggle for it, how to armor them in barding, how to make the barding, how to look after them, how to race them, how to make a wagon or chariot or saddle, how worthy a military chariot is, and so on. The tool expert wont necessarily know much about other kinds of animals, like the Animal Handling skill will. But the tool pro knows horse − and knows many things associating with a horse that Animal Handling wont know.So the Fighter would have two skills for breadth of knowledge, plus two tools for depth of knowledge.Moreover, flavorwise, tools tend to associate hands-on knowledge, and the same kinds of intelligence that master tools including weapons, extends to other kinds of tools as well.</blockquote>

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