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Has anyone significantly house-ruled or altered the 5E skill system? Care to share?

canucksaram

First Post
Has anyone significantly house-ruled or altered the 5E skill system? Care to share your ideas?

Also, if you offer a critique of an idea you see here, please be consider being constructive. :)
 
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blueherald

First Post
I dunno if you'd call this 'altered', but I have found in practice it isn't really natural at my table to say "a Wisdom (Pereception) check", as the PHB discusses. The concept of skills as subsets of ability checks hasn't been as formal as it was lauded during the playtest and early podcasts. I pretty much say 'make a Perception check' all the time. Since we pre-calculate skills on our sheets - those people who aren't proficient in Perception or Athletics or whatever are making raw ability checks anyway.

I also have yet to find a situation where I've used the Skills with Different Abilities variant (PHB 175) but that's just me.
 

Rune

Once A Fool
I use a simultaneous initiative system. At the top of the round, everyone broadly declares intended actions. If opponents are more intelligent than the PCs are collectively, I will wait until the players have declared intent before describing opponents' apparent intent. If they are less intelligent, and the players have given me a chance, I describe them first.

Then, everyone's turns are resolved individually but are considered simultaneous, so, for instance, killing an enemy will not prevent it from finishing its turn. Except:

1) Reactions interrupt turns as normal, but readied actions require a successful opposed initiative check to get the timing right.

2) Actions and bonus actions that affect another creature's options (such as shoving, grappling, or restraining) can do so, but require a successful opposed initiative check to get the timing right.

I mention all this, because, in this scenario, initiative is essentially an untrained skill.

Although I frequently use variations of the background-as-skill system, as well.
 
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Lanliss

Explorer
I also have yet to find a situation where I've used the Skills with Different Abilities variant (PHB 175) but that's just me.

I had a player fall a fair distance, down into a forest (he was climbing a tree), so I had him make a Survival (Dexterity) check, to see if his dexterity would actually help him survive. He made the check, so we went into one of those cartoon scenes where the falling person catches and slides down a series of giant leaves and branches. Then a branch landed on him and he took a d6 that almost knocked him out.
 

Henry

Autoexreginated
Similarly, I do the (Str or Cha) Intimidate check quite a lot - makes sense to me, and gives both the hiqwqsqasd High-Cha characters a chance to shine in a non-combat moment. Also, substituting Int for another skill is not a bad call when a PC is trying to impress an NPC with breadth of knowledge on a subject such as medicine or climbing technique.
 

Lackhand

First Post
Do you want half-finished rants on how to use skills as a DM, too? :-D

Firstly, 5e doesn't really prepare us well for "unnecessary rolls". If you have a narrow crack to squeeze through, there's a tendency to ask for an acrobatics check to see if you fit; even setting the DC to 5, what exactly is the DM going to do on failure?
If there's a clear failure ("The ledge is slippery; you fall" or "You get seen by the guy you were evading"), then by all means, do that.
Otherwise I get around that by making success on a check mean that you succeed first try, and every 2 points of failure a doubling in how much time, resources, and noise the failure costs you to convert to a success. When it gets to some number that's ludicrous, it's just a failure, and when the resources get too steep (usually time. "You've spent two minutes banging on the door and made a bit of noise -- it's not budging; want to keep going?"), the PCs declare failure. I still sometimes find myself asking for a roll on something the PCs can't realistically fail, but they can often cut me off -- "I spend 10 minutes casing the joint", for instance, tells me how invested they are.
I'm then VERY cruel about the die roll; someone else can take over or help, but the roll carries; the newbie gets the benefits of their new circumstance, but generally does NOT get to reroll the d20; I have eight players, and if each one gets a crack at a task... ugly business :-D

Secondly, IMO, the 5e skill system is in a weird half-place. The difference between a check and a save is kind of funny sometimes; for instance, anywhere else in the system if I told you I did something to inflict a condition on your character, but don't worry, you get a roll to avoid it, you'd call that a saving throw. Surprise, I was talking about receiving a grapple! If somebody tries to knock you prone, you make a saving throw if it was a wolf with a bite, but an athletics or acrobatics check if it was a person.

And it's not just limited to the grappley/pushy end of the combat system, either. You make saving throws to avoid the effects of spells -- except for illusions, against which you make investigation checks. You make dexterity saving throws to avoid a fall from greased area -- but an athletics check to climb without falling, or an acrobatics check to inch along a narrow edge. You make a wisdom save to avoid being stunned, but a perception check to avoid being surprised.

I don't think you could easily fix this today, as the distinction between save and check exists in the conditions and is necessary for, like, grapples to work right. But it's super annoying, because athletics and acrobatics are just strength and dexterity saves, and perception is your saving throw against surprise. Grump.

Thirdly, I get a lot of mileage asking for people trained in the skill to make checks as a way to share spotlight (using proficiency itself as a permission). "Everyone trained in history knows..." or "Who's trained in survival? Okay, can you roll it? Wendy, you rolled highest at 17? You navigate the group around the ambush and can overhear the enemy, one, maybe two dozen by the shadows, speaking in low voices...". This is what you're doing when the rogue takes point and scouts ahead; being aware of it and making sure to pick other skills sometimes helps those characters get screentime and ensures your game has a good mix of activities.

I kind of feel like the soft skills, like Tool Proficiency: Baker's Tools are there to support that sort of thing; not that every session is going to have a bake off, but they let the players have a write-in slot for voting on baker's tools coming up just once.

I get the sense maybe you wanted more like "Oh, I use this awesome fine-grained skill point system". D&D is too class based for that to pay off (for me); the coarser the better :-D
 

robus

Lowcountry Low Roller
Supporter
I adopted the FFG Star Wars triumph and despair concepts to nat 20 and nat 1 skill rolls. The players already see those rolls as special so I just ran with it.

For those that don't know triumph can mean some unexpected bonus happens whereas despair means the situation got worse because of your failure. Out of the frying into the fire kind of thing - great for surprise story telling moments IMHO
 

the_redbeard

Explorer
I'm actually considering getting rid of the skill system altogether. Perhaps I'd keep tool/kit proficiencies, but maybe not.

Why?

As a DM, the skill system encourages me to ask the players for a roll instead of asking them to describe their action, or just saying Yes/Yes, But/No. Unless failure is really interesting and costly probably most things should succeed.

For knowledge skills, I'd rather ask them how they imagine their character would have come by the information, what book they read and where they found it, who taught them or where they might have seen the situation before.

For social skills, I'd rather they talk it out.

Many maneuvers are probably things that characters should succeed at if they're reasonable.

I'd still have ability checks to fall back on and if they player could justify it, their proficiency bonus. We've race, class and backgrounds and the character's ideals, bonds and flaws to go on.

This actually has been in my mind because I've been thinking about using B/X or Labyrinth Lord as a base system, though perhaps with redesigned, more 5e style, races and classes. But maybe just simplifying 5e would be better.

But the skill system in 5e is so simple that I wonder if I'd be making more work in adjudication/negotiation by removing it. I just don't like the temptation to use it when I shouldn't.

My DMing philosophy is that the rules are only there to aid the DM in adjudicating a PC's actions in response to the environment the DM has described. That's a very old school style, derived from when players often didn't even own the rule books, only the DM did. Even by 1e, there are NO RULES for combat in the Players Handbook. Of course by 3.x, rules have become player empowerment. There's some use to that: players understand how their actions impact the world and that helps them choose their actions. /end digression.
 

Blue

Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
The playtest for 5e, D&D Next, separated out the ability score from the skill. This is a variant rule in 5e, but the skills are fairly tailored to their ability scores mechanically which makes this less useful. I'm not going to ask for a Dex (Athletics), I'll ask for a Dex (Acrobatics). It's still of some use - "could the acrobat of gotten through there?" - "make an Int (Acrobatics) roll to try and figure it out".

But really, that's works better with a whole different set of skills. "High Society" can work with charisma for social interactions, intelligence for remembering protocol or the appropriate bribes, wisdom for noticing something is off on the assassin pretending to be a marquis, dex for impressing on the dance floor at the ball.

Frankly, I like the 13th Age skill system better than 5e. Instead of skills, you have player-created, DM-approved backgrounds that are wider than a skill, but you have less of them. You might be "Quartermaster on the pirate ship Roll-yer-Bones +3 ". Dealing with pirates and scum socially, fencing items, sourcing nautical or illegal items, logistics, as well as general shipboard/sailing, would all be part of it with different ability scores adding in. But it wouldn't help you a lick with taking to fancy folk or impersonating a farmer.

And the idea is that the players ARE supposed to use these creatively. A convention story told by one of the authors was about someone who had something like "army captain on the sea wall +2" (a high lethality post). During the adventure he was trying to comfort a grieving widow and the player was "do you know how many letters I've had to write to the parents and loved ones of those who died under my command?". Poof, background bonus allowed for the check.
 

canucksaram

First Post
Thanks for the replies, folks.

As for my own game, I'm tinkering with the idea of eliminating variable difficulty numbers and using a roll-under-a-fixed-rating mechanic, with easier or harder tasks having advantage or disadvantage. It's not fully developed and needs playtesting...but the seed of it is like this:


(incomplete version...just a taste...)

For a static test, any task that is easy or routine is rolled with advantage, or just declared an auto-success. Something that is challenging or hard or "not easy" requires you to roll under a derived "skill rating." If it's much harder than normal, roll with disadvantage. Basically, ask yourself this: "Could a person with life experience and/or training do this?," and depending on the answer, modify the degree of advantage or disadvantage applied.

Could a person with life experience and/or training do this?​


  • [*=1]Yeah, it's easy. No roll.
    [*=1]Yes, but's it not easy. Make a roll.
    [*=1]I think so, but it's hard. Roll with disadvantage.
    [*=1]Are you kidding? Dollars to donuts you're gonna fail. Roll with double disadvantage (roll 3d20, use worst value).

Throwing some dice around I quickly realized that using a full attribute as the target number is overpowered, so I borrowed a formula already in the game: 8 + Ability Mod + Proficiency Bonus.

For an "average" person, this results in a "skill rating" of 8 if unskilled and 10 if skilled. A bit too slanted toward failure, for my taste, so I changed the formula to 10 + Ability Mod + Proficiency Bonus. Now the "average" skill ratings are 10 for an unskilled person and 12 for a skilled person.

Now...what about a dynamic contest? Here, I borrowed from The White Hack: whoever rolls closest to their skill rating without going over wins.
 
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