D&D 5E How to Do Skills in a Basic Game

[Falling Icicle]

A skill check in the Basic game without skills, is just an ability check. Simple as that.

You don't need a skill list and you don't need the skill dice (or a skill bonus) to let your PC do something he wants to do in the Basic game: you just say what you want to do, and roll an ability check if needed.

If all you do is have ability checks with no skill dice, then no class is better at anything than any other. Rogues are not better at picking locks than fighters, rangers are no better at tracking than wizards, etc.

Of course that might mean that there are no Skill Tricks for the Rogue. But probably other classes also have something less.

No other class has such a huge portion of its abilities devoted to an optional mechanic like skills. That indicates to me that skill dice are probably not going to be optional at all, at least not for rogues. Otherwise, you have some serious balance issues. Assuming the rogue is balanced with other classes when it has skill tricks, it becomes underpowered if it doesn't have them.

My idea allows people to still use skill dice and leave the rogue unchanged while still keeping things very simple and giving DMs plenty of freedom.

 

[Li Shenron]

If all you do is have ability checks with no skill dice, then no class is better at anything than any other. Rogues are not better at picking locks than fighters, rangers are no better at tracking than wizards, etc.

My guess is that very simply, only the Rogues will be able to pick locks and disable traps, for example through the proficiency in Thieve's Tools.

I don't know if there would be something like that for tracking, but my guess is also that Rangers aren't in Basic, only the 4 core classes are.

No other class has such a huge portion of its abilities devoted to an optional mechanic like skills.

Yes I know, which is why I was very surprised to hear that skills won't be part of Basic. Now I'm just trying to figure out how they might handle their absence, and while I don't dislike your suggestions at all, they still seem about as complex as the normal skill system, which defies the point of removing it from Basic...

 

[Li Shenron]

To make another example, probably Knowledge checks won't be allowed to anyone except those who have them as a class feature: Cleric and Wizard. Possibly even simplified by removing their choice and instead default to Kn:Religion and Kn:Arcana respectively.

Assuming the rogue is balanced with other classes when it has skill tricks, it becomes underpowered if it doesn't have them.

The Rogue might still have a default (non-selectable a character creation) skill trick or two, for instance something related to perception or stealth, that would work everytime they choose to do such action, without need to mention skills or skill dice explicitly.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I think they will just be abilities unique to the thief in the basic version (like they were in 1E and 2E).

 

[Li Shenron]

It would also mean that characters in a basic game would be at a mathematical disadvantage compared to those in a more advanced game, since they would never get to benefit from skill dice.

...

Instead of having skills, your class and background would determine generally what your skill dice can be used for.

Re-thinking about it, this is probably quite simple enough to be featured in the Basic game, or alternatively (as suggested before in this thread) even going with the even simpler "Fighter gets this bonus to all Str-based checks", then Rogue/Dex, Cleric/Wis and Wizard/Int.

The problem with my own proposal is that it keeps everything very simple, all classes balanced in their Basic version, but not balanced with the Standard versions.

I was thinking about how to handle the similar problem with feats, races and class features... In our playtest game we didn't use feats and races at all, and that meant no problem at all between the PCs, but clearly they could not be balanced with characters having all the benefits from races and feats.

For feats, it shouldn't be too difficult... all they need to do is pick a list of default feats for each class, making sure they are as passive as possible, and "embeddable" in the class description or by-level progression.

For instance, you could give every class in Basic the Toughness feat at 1st level, and you don't need to mention that, you only need to change the starting HP of each class. Then maybe the addional 3 feats for the Wizard could be those granting extra cantrips, for the Fighter something granting extra proficiencies in exotic weapons... or even simpler feats.

For races I'm totally in the dark, because each race grants benefits that are individually designed and quite unique. It won't be easy at all to "embed" these in a little-visible way.

For class features, there are some easy cases, but others are very hard. The best example of something "embeddable" is the Wizard Tradition. A Basic Wizard will be a Scholarly Wizard by default, and you don't even need to mention much about it: instead of 1 new spell per level she'll get 2, instead of casting rituals from prepared spells she'll cast them from known spells... but the point being, the class description never needs to mention what she would have if she was a Standard character, thus it would be effectively simpler.