D&D 5E I want skills decoupled from stats. Suggestions?

[dave2008]

While not a decoupling so to speak, couldn't you more extensively use the skills with different abilities variant (PHB 175) to solve a lot of the problems from the examples given?

Yes, that is how we do it. As the OP mentioned, I allow characters to use strength with there intimidate skill, and really any combination if they provide a good explanation. I feel that 5e really does allow the skills to be decoupled from specific ability scores.

 

[Satyrn]

I still don't see why everyone is saying allocating skill points as I proposed would be that much harder and more complex than the stat point buy already used by many to generate stats. I can't imagine it would add any more complexity than stat point buy does. I mean if you don't like point buy because it's to complex maybe. But I've never heard anyone complain that the reason they don't like point buy is it's complexity lol.

For me, it's not so much complexity as it is fiddlyness.

In 3e I found that there was a lot of time spent tweaking skill points, shifting them around, deciding where to place. But that time spent just wound up not being worth the effort for the results. By the end of 3e, I was just chosing a number of skills to max out rather than wasting time on. 4e's change was perfect for me.

And I find the same thing with stat point buy. I just don't find the results worth the time spent - plopping down 6 scores from an array is quicker and I get essentially the same results. (Most of the time, anyway; I'm might really want to get stats an array won't provide but I haven't actually found that yet.)


I just find allocating points to be too fiddly to enjoy.

 

[Mercule]

Well, the only issue I see is that this system would tie what skills you could actually be an expert in to your class. That's just another way of removing the flexibility I'm looking for. Without that flexibility I don't really see the point. Why go through the effort of decoupling skills from stats only to then couple them to class?

Not to be flip, but that's pretty much the point of a class-based system: group capabilities into large buckets and move on with life. It's not exactly a secret, but it is something most folks don't acknowledge explicitly. It's the trade-off made for the simplicity of the classes and you should go into that with eyes fully open.

If it really, really bothers you, I'm going to suggest checking out Savage Worlds. No sarcasm there. Just offering a workable option if you don't feel like the trade-off is worth it. Different systems exist for a reason. I'll admit to being of two minds about it, myself.

Could the core fear of my proposal be that yall are afraid that players will still flock to the max or dump skill allocation if we don't enforce something else?

Not for me. As I indicated, I just don't think there's much value in having more breakdown than "good, fair, poor" in D&D skills. It's one more fidgety thing to worry about and skill checks tend to be something of a side-show, in practice. IMO, it's actually value-reducing to increase the complexity any more than it already is.

If you want to decouple and tweak the way things work, that's cool. I love to tinker and am more than happy to try to get some sort of rules module up and running. There's a point at which you have to realize that you're fighting system inertia, though -- peeing into the wind, as it were. If you cause a cascade of changes, that's a bad plan because you've just changed the game enough that it's a genuine barrier to new members of your group. There's also a point where you start fighting core design characteristics of the underlying system, which means your module doesn't really work aesthetically, even if it works mechanically.

In this case, it would be perfectly feasible to grant all PCs a standard amount of skill points and then open up all skills to everyone. That might put some classes (Rogue) at a disadvantage, unless you tweak base points bay class. Regardless, you would be able to have a sneaky, fast-talking Fighter or a Wizard who was an amazing survivalist and animal trainer. There's nothing really wrong with those concepts, but they start to break down class boundaries. Why not allow the Wizard to get Expertise in Survival or let a Rogue learn the Duelist fighting style? How about a shape-shifting Druid who taps into rage when in bear form? Very cool, but normally requires multi-classing.

So, just expand the feat system by converting all the class features into feats, with some chains and level requirements, for balance. Heck, you could even turn spell-casting into a feat chain, with feats that grant more slots, prepared spells, and access to new levels. A feat for each hit die bump would work, too. We've already got a pretty straight-forward conversion between skill points and feats (3 skills = 1 feat) and ability scores (2 stat points = 1 feat). Now you've got a point-buy system, instead of a class-based system. Give me 40 hours and I could write up a play test draft for you (maybe I should do that as a PWYW on DMsGuild and see how it goes).

One side effect is that we don't need character levels, anymore, since we have the finer grained advancement with feats. Proficiency bonus could be done away with, but then we need to add an attack skill or two -- otherwise, do some sort of tier system where every, say, 5 feats your proficiency bonus goes up by +1.

Regardless, this no longer resembles D&D, other than in some superficial ways and the ability to share some resources. You could go through all that work, but it's probably better to just go ahead and play something else to begin with. Even if you'd prefer the alt-D&D, I wouldn't sell it to folks as "D&D". It's probably different enough that you'd be better starting with a fresh rule book and just letting people know they could borrow from D&D fairly freely.

Sorry for the long post. I hope it doesn't come off too rant-y. It's just some design thought and why going too far off course starts to get weird.

 

[SmokeyCriminal]

I think starting all Skills at -2 and getting a 30+ skill point is way too fiddly. I think I get what your going for so this is my suggestion;

---Have all Skills start at 0

This cuts down on the amount of Skill Points you need to give out. Instead of making 30+ mini-micro Skill choices. You'll make a few big Skill choices; Which Skills to be "Good" at (proficient), and which Skills to be "Bad" at (Unproficient?) and then just have a pool of manageable Skill Point to distribute.

---Choose your 4 skills that you get from Background/Class, those skills start at +2

Giving a skill your proficient in a +2 bump insures you'll start the game at a +4 so even if you dump INT your Arcana will always be decent. So even tho the Fighter has an 8 in INT, choosing Proficiency in Arcana gives you a sort of "ghost stat" of 14, which seems reasonable. Plus you avoid that weird thing where you're Proficient with the skill but only get a +1 to your roll and the other Character isn't proficient but gets a +3.

---Choose 4 skills to be "Bad" at, those Skills start at -2

I think choosing which skills you will be bad at is much simpler and more meaningful then just having them be the skills that you ignore, or end up leave behind, because you wanted this other skill to be high.

---Get 10 Skill Points to put anywhere you want.

to round out your Character a little better, either put one more point in the Skills they're proficient in to reach the +3 cap, or put up to 3 points in a skill the're not proficient in. You can even make it so they can't put any point in the Skills they chose as their "Bad" (Unproficient?) Skills.

---And personally I'd give everyone two free Tools and/or Instruments just because they can be interesting. Maybe remove the obvious ones like Alchemy, Herbalism, Thieves, Forgery, and Disguise as options for the free-bees because D&D needs more Barbarian Glass-Blowing drummers and such.

Obviously Im just pulling the amount of Skill Points you get out of my butt and they need to be adjusted, But I think this way you can get the high Intimdation, dump stat 8CHA, average Persuasion, terrible Deception Fighter that you want. And it's done in a meaningful and simpler way. "I'm a big ugly fighter so I want to be able to Intimidate people (pick proficiency in Intimidate), But I'm honorable so I'm a bad liar (pick Unproficient? in Deception), and I don't really care about being persuasive (leave as-is)."

Finally, getting points every ASI is ok, but then that means the Fighter will get 7 skill upgrades and the Wizard 5 (or however many). I think you should only informally follow ASI, so ALL character get Skill Point on the levels the Fighter gets his ASI or on the levels the Wizard gets his ASI, depending on how often you want Characters to get them. So they just happen to fall at the same level as the Fighters or Wizards ASI but arn't actually attached to ASI per se.

 

[Horwath]

For all skills trained use 2×proficiency. 3×prof for expertise. Use abilities where ability bonus is bigger than your proficiency bonus total(multiplied).

That way abilities represent raw talent but proficiency training

Sent from my SM-J320F using EN World mobile app

 

[FrogReaver]

For me, it's not so much complexity as it is fiddlyness.

In 3e I found that there was a lot of time spent tweaking skill points, shifting them around, deciding where to place. But that time spent just wound up not being worth the effort for the results. By the end of 3e, I was just chosing a number of skills to max out rather than wasting time on. 4e's change was perfect for me.

And I find the same thing with stat point buy. I just don't find the results worth the time spent - plopping down 6 scores from an array is quicker and I get essentially the same results. (Most of the time, anyway; I'm might really want to get stats an array won't provide but I haven't actually found that yet.)


I just find allocating points to be too fiddly to enjoy.

Well if you dislike point buy then of course you would dislike my proposal. Can we at least agree it's on basically the same level of fiddlyness as point buy?

Just curious, when you use an array method do you prefer to get to choose between a few slightly different arrays or for everyone to use the same exact array?

 

[FrogReaver]

For all skills trained use 2×proficiency. 3×prof for expertise. Use abilities where ability bonus is bigger than your proficiency bonus total(multiplied).

That way abilities represent raw talent but proficiency training

Sent from my SM-J320F using EN World mobile app

Interesting idea. It's kind of counter to my purpose of decoupling stats and skills though. Why decouple stats and skills 95% of the way only to leave about 5% attached? Why is it important to you that abilities and not something else represent raw talent?

 

[FrogReaver]

Not to be flip, but that's pretty much the point of a class-based system: group capabilities into large buckets and move on with life. It's not exactly a secret, but it is something most folks don't acknowledge explicitly. It's the trade-off made for the simplicity of the classes and you should go into that with eyes fully open.

5e isn't a purely class based system. 5e is a heavily class based with many aspects that you wouldn't find in purely class based system. So please don't act like I'm against a heavily class based system because I'm asking that a fairly flexible skill system tacked on to a heavily class based game be made into a more flexible skill system.

You see I'm totally against free form systems that many games and people try to make. I think they are a waste of time and much better results could be obtained making some cool classes for a class based game. So the notion that asking for flexibility in skills is someone wanting classes to be gone is ludicrous. I'm even fine with a game including all in combat and out of combat ability within a class. It's just that if you do tack on a skill system to a class based game at least make sure it doesn't just offer the illusion of choice and that the skill system actually reasonably allows you the flexibility in character creation that a skill system should be allowing you.

Not for me. As I indicated, I just don't think there's much value in having more breakdown than "good, fair, poor" in D&D skills. It's one more fidgety thing to worry about and skill checks tend to be something of a side-show, in practice. IMO, it's actually value-reducing to increase the complexity any more than it already is.

But as has been noted time and time again, my suggestion isn't increasing complexity any more than a stat point buy would and that's still a very common method of producing stats.

If you want to decouple and tweak the way things work, that's cool. I love to tinker and am more than happy to try to get some sort of rules module up and running. There's a point at which you have to realize that you're fighting system inertia, though -- peeing into the wind, as it were. If you cause a cascade of changes, that's a bad plan because you've just changed the game enough that it's a genuine barrier to new members of your group. There's also a point where you start fighting core design characteristics of the underlying system, which means your module doesn't really work aesthetically, even if it works mechanically.

Well as you can see my plan didn't include changing much except removing the skill point component stats provide and giving you a more free form method to place skill points. It's not some big sweeping change like you are making it out to be.

In this case, it would be perfectly feasible to grant all PCs a standard amount of skill points and then open up all skills to everyone. That might put some classes (Rogue) at a disadvantage, unless you tweak base points bay class. Regardless, you would be able to have a sneaky, fast-talking Fighter or a Wizard who was an amazing survivalist and animal trainer. There's nothing really wrong with those concepts, but they start to break down class boundaries. Why not allow the Wizard to get Expertise in Survival or let a Rogue learn the Duelist fighting style? How about a shape-shifting Druid who taps into rage when in bear form? Very cool, but normally requires multi-classing.

And yet you are making large sweeping changes that interact with far more rules than my proposed changes do. Now you have got to figure out expertise, proficiency bonuses to skills, how to factor in some classes higher number of starting skills, how to factor in racial skills... Those are the reasons I didn't propose a pure skill point system for skills. Too much is tied to skill proficiency and so you would have a huge cascade of changes in order to implement that idea.

I don't see how skills impact class boundaries in 5e at all. Unless you are claiming it's a design feature to give each class a staple subset of skills only they can typically be the best at and that they accomplished this by tying those kinds of skills to your primary stat. That's definitely an interesting sentiment.

So, just expand the feat system by converting all the class features into feats, with some chains and level requirements, for balance. Heck, you could even turn spell-casting into a feat chain, with feats that grant more slots, prepared spells, and access to new levels. A feat for each hit die bump would work, too. We've already got a pretty straight-forward conversion between skill points and feats (3 skills = 1 feat) and ability scores (2 stat points = 1 feat). Now you've got a point-buy system, instead of a class-based system. Give me 40 hours and I could write up a play test draft for you (maybe I should do that as a PWYW on DMsGuild and see how it goes).

That's exactly the kind of system I dislike. You see I like classes. I think they are very useful design vehicles. I think taking classes away and trying to put everything behind a prerequisite wall doesn't even come class at emulating a class based system. Even if you give different abilities different costs it still doesn't help. Basically you end up with a system where a player will always have to choose options that highly synergize with each other or be left behind by his allies that do. Classes force on you a package of good, bad, ugly and great. A classless system doesn't really do that.

One side effect is that we don't need character levels, anymore, since we have the finer grained advancement with feats. Proficiency bonus could be done away with, but then we need to add an attack skill or two -- otherwise, do some sort of tier system where every, say, 5 feats your proficiency bonus goes up by +1.

Regardless, this no longer resembles D&D, other than in some superficial ways and the ability to share some resources. You could go through all that work, but it's probably better to just go ahead and play something else to begin with. Even if you'd prefer the alt-D&D, I wouldn't sell it to folks as "D&D". It's probably different enough that you'd be better starting with a fresh rule book and just letting people know they could borrow from D&D fairly freely.

Hurray!! you made something that doesn't resemble D&D and that I dislike... So why is it that my suggestion doesn't resemble D&D anymore?

Sorry for the long post. I hope it doesn't come off too rant-y. It's just some design thought and why going too far off course starts to get weird.

General design ideas are fine and welcome. I just can't help but feel like you are arguing that any change no matter how small makes d&d into not d&d. I think there's a difference in degree. I don't think my proposed change is a large change.

I'm basically able to replace 1 part of a numerically derived value with a similar value that's derived a bit differently. Since I am keeping the numbers in the game that the previous value was derived from then I still have those numbers for anything else I need. Your suggested changes don't keep that simplicity. Instead you propose changing things in a way that will snowball into many other changes.

Are you really arguing that any change no matter how minor causes something to "no longer be D&D"?

 

[Krachek]

How does one best decouple skills from stats in 5e? My current thought is keeping stats for combat and special ability purposes but eliminating the stat bonus to skills. Proficiency to skills would be handled the same. However, instead of stat bonus to skills you would get maybe 20-30 skill points to set your skills however you wanted. All skills would start at -2 and you could spend skill points on them until they reach +3 base (+5 with proficiency added to it). At each level you take an ASI you would get 2 more skill points that must be placed in different skills. All skills can be raised to +5 by the skill points from ASI's (or +11 total with max proficiency bonus).

Thoughts? Opinions? Suggestions?

You are making two changes at the same time.
Skill point is a thing.
Removing ability is another.

Removing ability can be simply made by using the proficiency bonus instead of the stat bonus.
So a trained character at level 1, has a constant +4 bonus, +6 If expertise.
You can also state that the stat bonus for a skill is a least equals to the proficiency bonus, but not exceeding +4.
Or simply state that training in a skill give a minimum +2 stat bonus.


So a dum orc could be trained in arcane with a decent bonus without outshine a smart wizard.

I'm not a fan of partial training. But Adding another free skill around level 6 and 12 could be fun.

 

[Mercule]

5e isn't a purely class based system. 5e is a heavily class based with many aspects that you wouldn't find in purely class based system. So please don't act like I'm against a heavily class based system because I'm asking that a fairly flexible skill system tacked on to a heavily class based game be made into a more flexible skill system.

I didn't say it was purely class-based. I'm not sure that pinning down exactly where it fits on the spectrum adds a ton of value. It's somewhere north of "most significant character mechanic". I in no way meant to imply you had an issue with class-based systems.

I don't actually know what you're looking for. I don't know you and a couple of exchanges about decoupling skills from stats doesn't give me any real insight into you larger perspective. You've only been here for a bit over two years. I don't know if that's when you started gaming (making you just over 30 years my junior, in terms of experience) or if you started with OD&D when you had to write directly to Gary's home address to get a copy (making you a bit more than a decade my senior) and only recently joined this community. I recognize your screen name, but I'm afraid I don't have a strong vibe for who you are (there are really only 8-10 posters that I "know" their style, and those are mostly the ones with whom I have significant overlap in tastes and humor).

Anyway, I did acknowledge that I got into a philosophic mode. It wasn't intend as chastisement, in any way. I thought I'd called that out, but that appears to be the one piece I could have expanded on better. It was really just settling into what seemed like it was going to be a fun, casual thought experiment and me loosening up and letting things flow where they may. I can certainly "get back to business", though.

The core idea is this: In my opinion, decoupling the skills from everything else -- which is your goal, unless I'm missing something -- starts to get into a dangerous design area. It adds a new axis to the system that's no longer tethered to one of the other mechanical posts. I think this will end up increasing complexity, even if it appears to be a simple change. By all means, make that change, if you want. I just don't think it will actually turn out well.