D&D 5E Lets Rank the 5e Skills!

[Greg K]

Yeah... the three skills I'm most disappointed in are Animal Handling, Performance, and Sleight of Hand.

Like as has been said... when you have Nature and Survival, do you really need Animal Handling? Is it truly necessary? Will it ever get used enough to warrant being its own skill? Unless you have lots of horse and carriage chases, I just don't see it.

Then merge them for your game. In my circles, spitting them up was a good thing

And Sleight of Hand (or Fine Motor Skills or whatever you want to imply with it) has always been the red-headed stepchild of thievery skills except in 4E when they wisely merged pickpocketing with opening locks & disarming traps as the Thievery skill.

No thanks. Again, I like it as a its own skill and despised the merging in 4e. I can think of numerous roguish concepts that deserve to have the split as well as for non rogues with one or the other.

Pickpocketing at least in my games has never warranted its own skill because it is so rarely used. So to split it off from Open Locks and Disarm Traps again (IE the "Thieves Tools" proficiency) is a waste

All that says is something about how you run your game rather than the need for them to be split. The groups that I know get enough usage for them to be split and splitting them is seen as a plus.

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

Acrobatics - A

I like to try to make use of this skill in combat situations. It really should provide an AC bonus for lightly-armored characters.

Animal Handling - F

Why is this a skill?

Arcana - A

This skill should be amazingly useful. Especially given how much I like to toss weird effects at people.

Athletics - A

You only need to tick off a red great wyrm once to learn how valuable this can be.

Deception - B

Lying PCs can be fun.

History - D

Rarely make use of history checks.

Insight - A

Needed! Lying NPCs are also fun.

Intimidation - C

Can be good, but a high roll result can negate the usefulness of it. After all, if the NPC is so afraid of you that they wet themselves and are incoherent, you're probably not going to get anywhere.

Investigation - D

Why is this a separate skill?

Medicine - B

Medical supplies are often surprisingly useful!

Nature - C

Expect to use this and Survival a lot.

Perception - A

You need this!

Performance - F

Why is this even a skill?

Persuasion - A

This tends to be the best way to gather info!

Religion - C

Necessary for paladins so they don't tick their gods off by going off-code.

Sleight of Hand - B

Useful in a number of situations.

Stealth - B

Sometimes it's better to sneak past the demonic army.

Survival - B

Going to be heavily used.

 

[Greg K]

Animal Handling - F
Why is this a skill?

Performance - F
Why is this even a skill?

Because not every group just does dungeon crawls and/or hack and slash. If your group can't find a use for them, don't use them. That you don't see a use should not deny other groups that can and do make use of them.

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

Because not every group just does dungeon crawls and/or hack and slash. If your group can't find a use for them, don't use them. That you don't see a use should not deny other groups that can and do make use of them.

I'm asking why they're skills because I could see merging Handle Animal with Diplomacy and Perform has its own problems. The Perform skill creates an inherent self-contradiction; the skill itself reflects training and experience, yet the die roll it modifies reflects more what you would see from a rank amateur with no training at all.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Mallrighty!

A-Rank: Everybody Should Have It

1. Perception: Want to avoid surprise or notice treasure? NO SUBSTITUTE.

B-Rank: Really useful. At least SOMEONE should have it.

1. Stealth: Want to gain surprise or avoid monsters? Do you have a rogue? USE IT. Only useless if you wear heavy armor constantly.
2. Persuasion: Unless you dump CHA, you want it. Make NPC's your slave unless the DM says no.
3. Arcana: What's this thing do? Why's that deelie glowing?
4. Deception: A tricksy characters' Persuasion. Basically the same effect, just higher stakes if you fail.
5. Nature: What's that noise? What's that furry thing? Can I eat it?

C-Rank: Yeah, they have their uses. Kind of situational.

1. Survival: Unless you're determined to rough it, you can afford rations, and natural disasters only happen when the DM's getting creative.
2. Insight: If your NPC is lying to you, it's usually pretty evident or at least not very destructive if you believe them.
3. Animal Handling: Do you have a horse? Do you want to make it go somewhere? You'll need this.
4. Medicine: The basic game doesn't use diseases or long-term injury, why are you?

D-Rank: Take 'em for in-character reasons, otherwise don't worry about it.

1. Athletics: You are never going to encounter a challenge that you must roll Athletics to solve.
2. Acrobatics: Like Athletics, but for dexmonkeys. Backflips are always superfluous.
3. History: Like a less reliable Arcana for People Who Hate Magic.
4. Intimidation: Do you LIKE hostile NPC's? Or do you just like making goblins squeal?
5. Investigation: If you have a mystery, your DM WANTS you to solve it. Use this if you want to show off how detective-y you are.
6. Religion: History for Priests. Doesn't do much.
7. Sleight of Hand: Just play a Kender. Seriously. It's what you want.
8. Performance: "I sing a song at it" has never fixed anything except for bards with nothing better to do in their downtime.

 

[gyor]

Animal handling used to be the mount tool prof, but they bulked it up slightly and made it a skill.

I can see some use for animal handling. I'd also point out that skills might have uses in the down time system we don't know about yet.

And I'll point out that Paladin's, especially Cavaliers and anyothers with magical mounts its useful, especially if you need your mount to do a risky manvuer. Jumping over a chasm with be easier for a Paladin if he/she is mounted, and while the Paladin might not need Animal Handling to control a magical mount I don't think its unreasonably to use it to buff any checks your mount makes.

Still for none druids/paladins/rangers I'd rate it as low. Mabye nature clerics might have some use for it, or more knightly fighters.

I'd personally also think you should be able to add you profiency bonus to your mounts attacks if your prof in Animal Handling. honestly exploring uses for skills deserved more space, hopefully they'll get it in the PHB.

 

[TerraDave]

I'm surprised people rate Handling animals so low. Every campaign I've been it has PCs getting and using horses when they can and having mules to carry the treasure. Not knowing how to deal with the animals is not a pretty sight. PCs hate it when the mule carrying thousands in gold goes running off scared into the wilderness.

DM style is important. Some DMs are going to hand wave, except in very specific cases. But some of use run it differently. Good players in turn will pick up on this. Most of the above come into play almost every session, all can be key at some point, and (there earlier predecessors) have been key many, many years of play and a range of editions.

 

[Greg K]

I'm asking why they're skills because I could see merging Handle Animal with Diplomacy

Diplomacy? Do you mean Persuasion? Why the separation? To separate those characters good with animals from those good with "people". Plus as others have mentioned, if you need to control an animal, it is the skill you want. I, personally, would allow it for other things involving animals as well (e.g., evaluating the value of an animal, training an animal, etc.)

and Perform has its own problems. The Perform skill creates an inherent self-contradiction;.[/ the skill itself reflects training and experience, yet the die roll it modifies reflects more what you would see from a rank amateur with no training at all.

I am taking off in a few minutes. Can you elaborate?

 

[Crothian]

DM style is important. Some DMs are going to hand wave, except in very specific cases. But some of use run it differently. Good players in turn will pick up on this. Most of the above come into play almost every session, all can be key at some point, and (there earlier predecessors) have been key many, many years of play and a range of editions.

A skill is not a bad skill just because DMs choose to ignore the rules and hand wave it. A DM could do the same thing with Perception, seemingly the king of all skills, but that would not make the skill any less worthy.

 

[Mistwell]

D-Rank: Take 'em for in-character reasons, otherwise don't worry about it.

1. Athletics: You are never going to encounter a challenge that you must roll Athletics to solve.
2. Acrobatics: Like Athletics, but for dexmonkeys. Backflips are always superfluous.

Wow, really? No encounters that ever use climbing, swimming, jumping, crossing slippery surfaces, tightropes, rocking ships, forcing open a stuck door, breaking bonds free, pushing through a small tunnel, hanging onto something while being dragged, tipping over a heavy object, holding something heavy back from rolling, etc..

Those two are some of the most used skills in my games.