D&D 5E Heavily used skill proficiencies

[Don Durito]

I actually think the most used skills in my games are Arcana and Investigation - possibly followed by Athletics.

I try to avoid asking for Perception rolls because 90% of the time I feel it is just a waste of time.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

ooooooh yeah. I feel like search was a skill we never used. Talk about good PR, no one likes to "search", search is drudgery. But change the name to "investigation" and suddenly everyone's "investigating" and just using the skill like candy

In 3e Search was the skill you used for traps, and Spot/Listen was mostly for creatures. 5e made their version of "Search" (Investigation) of minimal usefulness and bundled most of the important trap stuff into their version of Spot/Listen (Perception). Some people have said forget that and just put traps and secret doors back into Investigation. Even some of the newer adventures have followed suit.

During the playtest there was more usage of Investigation, but their explanations were a little tricky to get for some, so they just put it all (mostly) under Perception. They could and should have just directly said "Investigation is what you use for things like traps, secret doors, and other intentionally built hidden features. Perception is what you use for creatures and natural environmental features." Or somethingthing like that.

 

[iserith]

In 3e Search was the skill you used for traps, and Spot/Listen was mostly for creatures. 5e made their version of "Search" (Investigation) of minimal usefulness and bundled most of the important trap stuff into their version of Spot/Listen (Perception). Some people have said forget that and just put traps and secret doors back into Investigation. Even some of the newer adventures have followed suit.

During the playtest there was more usage of Investigation, but their explanations were a little tricky to get for some, so they just put it all (mostly) under Perception. They could and should have just directly said "Investigation is what you use for things like traps, secret doors, and other intentionally built hidden features. Perception is what you use for creatures and natural environmental features." Or somethingthing like that.

I do as the DMG suggests and have Intelligence (Investigation) resolve making deductions about how a trap or secret door works which is the step before disabling it or opening it. So a typical trap interaction (if there are rolls) is Wisdom (Perception) > Intelligence (Investigation) > Dexterity (Thieves' Tools) which each task taking about 10 minutes. A secret door is Wisdom (Perception) > Intelligence (Investigation), each task also taking 10 minutes. Wandering monster checks occur every 10 minutes to an hour, depending on the adventure location.

Essentially, if you have clues (the finding of which may have been resolved by a Wisdom (Perception) check), then you can deduce what they mean in a useful way, which may be resolved by an Intelligence (Investigation) check.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Athletics comes up a lot because it allows martials more actions in combat. This results in the skill coming up a lot in a context that generally doesn't involve a lot of skill checks.

Stealth is similar, although the context it works in is different. Frankly I don't think I've been in a game with 'too many' stealth checks, just sometimes you get a really sneaky party.

Perception and investigation are, I think, overused. All too often when the pc look around, they're going to see everything in the room. Only actually hidden things should require a roll.

Side note: I'm currently in an all-bard game, and so Performance comes up a whole lot. But not, as the poll asked, disproportionately.