D&D (2024) How would you change skills in 5.5e

[Gorck]

Definitely. Right now it's...

Player: 'I'm going to search for secret doors'
GM: 'Alright, roll Investigation'
Player: 'Oh, uh, I'm not a Wizard so I have no reason to have Int. What if I just step into the room and randomly glance around?'
GM: 'Finally! Then you can roll Perception as intended!'

Not always. If a secret door is behind a tapestry, the player probably won't be able to spot it just by using Perception to scan around the room (Unless a big gust of wind blows through and moves the tapestry). The player will need to use Investigation to move the tapestry and look behind it.

Perception is standing there and looking around you, sniffing the air, listening for sounds, etc.
Investigation is going around and moving objects, picking things up, opening drawers, etc.

 

[tetrasodium]

Not always. If a secret door is behind a tapestry, the player probably won't be able to spot it just by using Perception to scan around the room (Unless a big gust of wind blows through and moves the tapestry). The player will need to use Investigation to move the tapestry and look behind it.

Perception is standing there and looking around you, sniffing the air, listening for sounds, etc.
Investigation is going around and moving objects, picking things up, opening drawers, etc.

There is big trouble with that fork in logic though. Once you start going down that road it quickly leads to the player piloting the PC to avoid skill checks by interacting with things. That works slowly until the players start triggering traps with their PC & the players respond by spending forever checking for traps to bring down a well trod style of paranoid play

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

Perception is standing there and looking around you, sniffing the air, listening for sounds, etc.
Investigation is going around and moving objects, picking things up, opening drawers, etc.

Investigation skill's text is almost all about using it to 'make sense of clues'. But there's no rules for how that might work, so no wonder it's been delegated to just being the worse version of Perception that you try to avoid invoking.

A GM should not need to know if there's a tapestry covering a secret door at the exact moment you step into the room. That's what the roll is for, to take some weight off of the GM's back.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Perform: We do not need instrument proficiency and this skill. Moreover, performing on an instrument is too niche to be worth it. If you dig a little, it becomes clear that this skill at minimum is also meant to cover acting giving it some overlap with deception.
My solution would be to replace this with an "Impress" skill that is used whenever you wish to affect an NPC's attitude or emotions. Performing an instrument then just becomes one particular way to impress someone.

Performance already is much broader than you give it credit for.

Intimidate: Perhaps it ought not be so, but Intimidate is just a worse form of persuasion -- most DM's instinctively treat this skill as riskier to use than persuasion, and seldom create situations where Intimidate can work when persuasion can not. This skill could be rolled into the above "Impress" skill.

The charisma skills help index what approaches to social situations a character is good at, and which they’re bad at.

 

[fuindordm]

The current skill list is great for light hearted beer and pretzels dungeon play.

Once you go deeper it shows cracks.

I've played RPGs with a lot of different skill systems and they all show cracks.
When you have lots of skills, then some of them are too niche to be worth investing in but they end up punishing everyone when they become important to the story.
When you have too few then the party can cover all use cases, or they can be subsumed into profession/class/background.
I'm not bothered anymore, as long as I can map my character concept onto the available skills reasonably well.

 

[delericho]

The charisma skills help index what approaches to social situations a character is good at, and which they’re bad at.

The problem is that either the Face has all the skills, and so is rolling Cha + Prof for everything, generally against the same DC (in which case the chosen approach becomes irrelevant), or they only have one and so use that one approach for everything.

IMO it would be better to have one skill (or, as I suggested, proficiency in social groups), and move the Intimidate/Persuade distinction to the other side of the screen - published adventures should do a better job of calling out that NPCs react differently to different approaches. The DMG should also provide similar guidance too, for people to fail to read.

 

[delericho]

I've thought of another thing I'd change, although not directly related to skills (I'd apply it to everything, except maybe saves): if you're rolling for something that you're not proficient in, the maximum bonus you can apply is your proficiency bonus. So there's a fairly tight limit to what an untrained amateur can achieve.

 

[RealAlHazred]

I think there are still far, far too many skills. I'd reduce it to just 6 -- one for each characteristic. Then, you don't need skill names!

 

[tetrasodium]

I've played RPGs with a lot of different skill systems and they all show cracks.
When you have lots of skills, then some of them are too niche to be worth investing in but they end up punishing everyone when they become important to the story.
When you have too few then the party can cover all use cases, or they can be subsumed into profession/class/background.
I'm not bothered anymore, as long as I can map my character concept onto the available skills reasonably well.

At what point do we stop to admit that d&d is not a single player game so its skill system needs to serve the needs of someone other than the player of "my character"? People like other players at the table or even the GM's needs. The 5e skill system crashes hard for those other groups & there is a pretty good post up on the alexandrian about it.

 

[Minigiant]

I've played RPGs with a lot of different skill systems and they all show cracks.
When you have lots of skills, then some of them are too niche to be worth investing in but they end up punishing everyone when they become important to the story.
When you have too few then the party can cover all use cases, or they can be subsumed into profession/class/background.
I'm not bothered anymore, as long as I can map my character concept onto the available skills reasonably well.

But the 5e system solhows cracks in its base play.

Remember 5e was designed using a survey base that no longer matches the current player base.

It doesn't do what current DMs and Players want it to do.

5e needs more skills because the players and DMs call for actions that have no skill or combinations of skill+ability the system doesn't have.

I mean one of the BIGGEST complaints is that warrior classes lack skills for their main attributes unless they go Dex. There is only 1 Strength skill and 0 Con skills.

I can easily bring both to 3 skills each that fans call for as checks and would appreciate as skills.

Zero Constitution skills is almost objectively bad design.