D&D 5E Getting rid of bad skill proficiencies

[tetrasodium]

Intimidation is about making a (strong) impression, which is under the purview of charisma. You can make an impression by giving a creepy speech, or by looming ominously with your cudgel implying you'll knock their brains out; your pick, but it's still charisma.

It still shouldn't prevent your half-orc from basing an impression on a demonstration of force and use Strength instead (and DMs should go along with that), but by RAW Charisma isn't only about speaking properly or looking pretty. Otherwise, demons wouldn't have sky-high charisma scores...

It's not that simple. We see it in movies all the time where the boyfrient meets the dad while his date's dad is cleaning a gun, sharpening knives, or even just has a bunch of big dudes who don't need a club being intimidating is all about the situation.

 

[iserith]

If the DM just calls for an ability check and lets the player add whatever skill proficiency they think is relevant to the approach the player already described the character as attempting, there's really no issue in my view. The DM need only remember 6 things and the total number of skill or tool proficiencies is irrelevant.

 

[Tomice]

My reasoning is as follows:
Skills like Medicine are so much worse in practical gaming than skills like perception, that they are hard to justify even for the most flavor-oriented player. As a result, they might as well not exist.
They are also weird because they aren't logical (they aren't necessary for any kind of relevant healing), making them not very appealing for role-players either.

Making healers kit usage a tool proficiency just lowers its cost within the boundaries of the current system, it doesn't remove it as a roleplaying hook for those few who would like to have it.

It's similar for performance: it's somewhat superfluous when we have individual instrument proficiencies.

 

[Oofta]

My reasoning is as follows:
Skills like Medicine are so much worse in practical gaming than skills like perception, that they are hard to justify even for the most flavor-oriented player. As a result, they might as well not exist.
They are also weird because they aren't logical (they aren't necessary for any kind of relevant healing), making them not very appealing for role-players either.

Making healers kit usage a tool proficiency just lowers its cost within the boundaries of the current system, it doesn't remove it as a roleplaying hook for those few who would like to have it.

It's similar for performance: it's somewhat superfluous when we have individual instrument proficiencies.

I use medicine now and then. Not only for bandaging someone that's dying (without a healer's kit), but also to determine how someone died or diagnose disease. For performance, I follow XGTE guidance: if you have performance and proficiency in an instrument you get advantage on checks.

So it depends on DM and campaign. How often do you call for checks? Does the DM set up scenarios where the checks matter and so on. I keep a reminder/cheat sheet of skills (with an indicator if anyone in the group is trained) just so I remember to include them now and then. But I'm sure other people ignore 90% of the skills on the list, but which skills are ignored will vary from table to table.

 

[Gradine]

Medicine is neither useless nor a waste, except for maybe the most optimized of characters. This is what happens when optimizers try to evaluate skill systems. Skill usage is so reliant on specific adventures/campaigns that the white room "typical play" is, by nature, still going to be far removed from a large and significant number of games.

As for performance, I can say as an actual performer that is very, very different than just playing an instrument proficiently (Cha vs Dex). Again, in the hands of the right DM not a single one of these skills is either useless or superfluous.

 

[Charlaquin]

I like the idea of rolling some aspects of medicine into healer’s kit proficiency quite a lot. I also agree that Performance is a really superfluous skill, and am onboard with the suggestion of redistributing physical performances mostly into Acrobatics or perhaps occasionally Athletics, oration to Persuasion, and music to instrument proficiencies. I don’t agree with the idea of merging singing in with musical instrument proficiencies, but if there’s a better alternative, it isn’t obvious to me. Expanding the scope of History makes sense.

I understand where you’re coming from with wanting to merge Nature with Survival, but I think they really do represent very distinct things - Nature is a knowledge skill, whereas Survival is much more of a practical “do stuff” skill. I do agree that the distinction is not made clear enough in the text, but I don’t think merging the two is the right solution. Rather, I would bring back the idea of knowledge as a particular category of proficiency, which Arcana, History, Medicine, Nature, and Religion would all belong. I would redistribute Animal Handling, with knowledge about animals going to Knowledge (Nature), riding animals going to Acrobatics, and interacting with animals getting subsumed into the other social skills (seriously, if Persuasion/Intimidation/Perception works the same on everything from humans to beholders, why on earth do you need a completely different social skill for interacting with animals?)

I strongly dislike the idea of merging Thieves’ Tools into Sleight of Hand. Sleight of Hand is already pretty much a catch-all skill for any task involving manual dexterity (a consequence of the Dexterity ability gradually expanding to encompass all forms of agility). We don’t need to compound that even further by rolling lock picking and trap disarming into Sleight of Hand too. I think having Thieves’ Tools be a separate tool proficiency is also very useful, as it enables DMs to gate attempting to pick locks behind that proficiency. Sure, you may have very steady, nimble hands, but you can’t pick a lock without the proper tools and the training to use them. As it should be, locksmithy is a very specialized and tool-dependent skill.

 

[NotAYakk]

What if we rotated skills to archetypes.

Brute: Athletics, Intimidation
Trickster: Deception, Acrobatics, Performance
Scout: Survival, Animal Handling, Perception
Sage: History, Arcana
Priest: Religion, Medicine
Thief: Stealth, Slight of Hand, Thieves Tools, Investigation
Diplomat: Insight, Persuasion

We could even add overlap:

Brute: Athletics, Intimidation, Endurance
Trickster: Deception, Acrobatics, Performance
Scout: Survival, Animal Handling, Perception
Sage: History, Arcana, Persuasion
Priest: Religion, Medicine, Insight
Thief: Stealth, Slight of Hand+Thieves Tools, Investigation
Diplomat: Insight, Persuasion, Deception

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I like the idea of rolling some aspects of medicine into healer’s kit proficiency quite a lot.

There's no such thing as healer's kit proficiency, and I don't think there should be.

I also agree that Performance is a really superfluous skill, and am onboard with the suggestion of redistributing physical performances mostly into Acrobatics or perhaps occasionally Athletics, oration to Persuasion, and music to instrument proficiencies. I don’t agree with the idea of merging singing in with musical instrument proficiencies, but if there’s a better alternative, it isn’t obvious to me.

Eh. Just get of rid of instrument proficiencies and let performance skill handle all of that. Why not?

I understand where you’re coming from with wanting to merge Nature with Survival, but I think they really do represent very distinct things - Nature is a knowledge skill, whereas Survival is much more of a practical “do stuff” skill. I do agree that the distinction is not made clear enough in the text, but I don’t think merging the two is the right solution.

The thing is that in actual game they're often used to do the same thing.

 

[Charlaquin]

There's no such thing as healer's kit proficiency, and I don't think there should be.

Eh. Just get of rid of instrument proficiencies and let performance skill handle all of that. Why not?

Sure, that works too. Point is, in both cases the things the proficiency is used for and the things the tool is used for have a lot of overlap, and might be best served by consolidating.

The thing is that in actual game they're often used to do the same thing.

Yes, I agree that is a problem. I just think that making the distinction between the two proficiencies clearer is a better solution to the problem than merging them in this case.

 

[Dausuul]

What I would like to see is a clear delineation between "background skills" and "adventuring skills," and use separate pools of skill picks during character creation.

Adventuring skills would have defined uses in the rules, and the designers would try for a rough balance between those uses. Obviously, every table is different, but come on, how often do you see Sleight of Hand get anywhere near as much play as Perception?

Background skills would have no defined uses in the rules; finding creative ways to use them in play is up to the player. Balancing them would be about ensuring that any reasonable character concept can be represented with your background skill picks. Say you're a ship captain; you should know how to sail a ship and how to navigate, have a fair grasp of geography (at least as regards coastal areas), and know how to track rations and water for your crew. Your background skill picks should be able to cover that, with a bit left over for a personal touch--maybe you can dance a hornpipe like no one else, or you while away the long nights at sea reading sea elf poetry in your cabin.