D&D 5E Musical instrument tool proficiency and performance skill proficiency

[The Crimson Binome]

I don't believe tool proficiencies generally benefit from ability score bonuses, whereas a skill does.

All proficiency checks are a sub-type of ability check, where you add your proficiency if it's relevant. There's no such thing just a Lute check; it's either a Dexterity check or a Charisma check, and you add your proficiency bonus if you're proficient.

As far as I can tell, the Performance skill completely supersedes all instrument proficiencies, if you have it. If you are proficient in Performance, then you are effectively proficient in every single instrument, since you will always add your proficiency bonus when using an instrument to perform. It's just that, since individual instruments also count as tools, it's possible for someone to learn how to play one without otherwise being proficient in Performance.

 

[discosoc]

All proficiency checks are a sub-type of ability check, where you add your proficiency if it's relevant. There's no such thing just a Lute check; it's either a Dexterity check or a Charisma check, and you add your proficiency bonus if you're proficient.

As far as I can tell, the Performance skill completely supersedes all instrument proficiencies, if you have it. If you are proficient in Performance, then you are effectively proficient in every single instrument, since you will always add your proficiency bonus when using an instrument to perform. It's just that, since individual instruments also count as tools, it's possible for someone to learn how to play one without otherwise being proficient in Performance.

I guess I should clarify that tool proficiencies don't have a *default* ability that they are tied to, which means potentially less control on the player's part. For some reason, I've never had it come up with performance, but I do have it come up with lockpicking once in a while.

 

[hastur_nz]

As far as I can tell, the Performance skill completely supersedes all instrument proficiencies, if you have it. If you are proficient in Performance, then you are effectively proficient in every single instrument

No, you are wrong. PHB page 154, first sentence: "A tool helps you to do something you couldn't otherwise do" etc - read the whole paragraph.

Bard gets to choose 3 instruments to be proficient in - why, if Performance means they can play all instruments equally?

In real life, my sister learned piano for many years - could she suddenly pick up a french horn and play it? No, she had some transferable skills (like reading music), but still had to spend a long time learning to play that new instrument. She learnt tuba , but again, only so much transferable skill, still had a lot to learn.

Proficiency in a Tool is best thought of as a Technical Proficiency - it covers that fact that you know enough about how to use the thing. Without that proficiency, you don't really have a hope of performing anything except maybe the most trivial task (like, say, getting a random note or two).

Again, read Chapter 5, first paragraph - you need proficiency in a tool e.g. lute, in order to add your proficiency modifier to an ability check e.g. Cha (perform). Another example would be singing - technically you need proficiency in 'singing' as a tool, in order to add your proficiency modifier to a Cha (perform) check, if you are just singing a song. For example, a character I have up my sleeve is a rapper bard - one of his 'instruments' would be 'rapping'.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I guess I should clarify that tool proficiencies don't have a *default* ability that they are tied to, which means potentially less control on the player's part. For some reason, I've never had it come up with performance, but I do have it come up with lockpicking once in a while.

True. Unlike with skills, where each skill is very definitively tied to a specific ability score unless the DM invokes a variant rule to allow otherwise, tools don't have a specific ability score which applies in all circumstances. That means the real benefit of having Performance instead of just instrument proficiency is that you know it will rely on Charisma, so there's no risk that the DM will make it a Dexterity check or something.

Or I suppose, depending on the DM, you might be able to wheedle them into letting you use Dexterity for the instrument check instead of Charisma, if you're a rogue or ranger and that would actually be better for you.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

No, you are wrong. PHB page 154, first sentence: "A tool helps you to do something you couldn't otherwise do" etc - read the whole paragraph..

If you're going to quote something, it should be the Basic Rules Document:

"A tool helps you to do something you couldn’t otherwise do, such as craft or repair an item, forge a document, or pick a lock. Your race, class, background, or feats give you proficiency with certain tools. Proficiency with a tool allows you to add your proficiency bonus to any ability check you make using that tool. Tool use is not tied to a single ability, since proficiency with a tool represents broader knowledge of its use. For example, the DM might ask you to make a Dexterity check to carve a fine detail with your woodcarver’s tools, or a Strength check to make something out of particularly hard wood."

"Musical Instrument. Several of the most common types of musical instruments are shown on the table as examples. If you have proficiency with a given musical instrument, you can add your proficiency bonus to any ability checks you make to play music with the instrument. Each type of musical instrument requires a separate proficiency."

"Performance. Your Charisma (Performance) check determines how well you can delight an audience with music, dance, acting, storytelling, or some other form of entertainment.

As you can see, proficiency with a musical instrument allows you to add your proficiency bonus whenever you make an ability check to play music with that instrument, but the Performance skill lets you add your proficiency bonus whenever you make an ability check to entertain someone by playing music. Given the general rule that you can't add your proficiency bonus to the same roll more than once, having both skill and tool proficiencies would be entirely redundant under any situation where you attempt to entertain someone by playing a musical instrument. The skill proficiency also allows you to entertain someone without playing an instrument, though, and I guess you could argue that tool proficiency with the instrument would allow you to play music without entertaining anyone.

 

[Kobold Stew]

The musical tool proficiencies fail consistently, and require contortions to justify (as has been demonstrated above).

1. The instruments available for specialization in the PHB don't map onto the ones listed in the DMG (in Magic Items).
2. The bard's instrument proficiencies don't make sense as a magical focus.
3. There is the overlap with the Performance skill (which you note) -- except in the goonies/death trap example, I think no reasonable DM would allow the player to choose which of the two they use to accomplish the same outcome (e.g. performa a concert for a king to earn favour). The narration may be different, but success is based on what the player rolls -- and here, almost uniquely, there is overlap (the only other examples of overlap I can think of are defending in grappling).

 

[hastur_nz]

Yes, the rules are not 100% clear. But you missed my appeal to Common Sense. As always, play your game the way you like...

 

[Satyrn]

I still think the divide between musical instrument proficiency and Perform looks like so:

If you're playing prog rock, it's a musical instrument check.
If you're playing punk rock, it's a performance check.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I've always maintained that the development of "tool" proficiencies was due to the original development of 5E to be able to be reflective of all the past editions of the game. With the belief that there would be some players of old editions who would not want to use "Skills" in their game... they needed a way to still reflect the ability to open locks and disable traps. Wherein 1E and the like, the Thief just had a chart that said "Here's what you roll to open locks and disable traps" without them being actual "Skills" (a la a "skill list"). Their development answer to that seemed to me to be "Thieves Tools". If you could use Thieves Tools (because you were proficient with them), you could be allowed to make checks to open locks and disable traps without having to bring into your game the concept of "Skills".

So that development occurred, and I think they then tried to add to that idea of Tools by coming up with other things that could be Tool proficiencies (like musical instruments, herbalism, vehicles, blacksmithing tools etc. etc.) All these things that would grant PCs the ability to do/make all these things even if the DM chose not to use "Skills" in their game.

But unfortunately, I think over the course of the game development someone's work on Tool proficiencies did not get fully in line with someone else's work on the development of the Skill system (in the same way Mearls said one developer worked on the Elemental Monk and another worked on the Shadow Monk, which is why they are off-balance from each other due to differing expectations they had of design). A final pass in design really needed to happen between Skills and Tools to make them align better with each other for those groups that DID choose to use both. Because I don't think that final pass really ever occurred. Otherwise something like this potential Performance / Musical Instrument overlap never really would have gotten through.

In truth... I think knowing then what we know now (and how I expect there's probably little to no groups playing 5E that DON'T use Skills after all)... there's really no reason to HAVE Tools in the game anymore just for the really old-school players they thought were there. You could easily just put Thievery back into the skill list, and reincorporate all of the current uses of the various tools back into the skills themselves. Using Herbalism falls under Survival. Using Alchemy falls under Arcana. Using Land Vehicles falls under Animal Handling. Navigating a boat falls under Nature (or whatever).

I think in this fictional 5.5 or 6E update that might happen in another five to ten years... a realigning of Skills and Tools probably would be one of the things to occur. Although in point of fact... this is actually one of those rather easy homebrewing areas that probably a lot of us have already "corrected" in our own personal games. I know I have.

 

[iserith]

Your player's bard wants to perform a concert for the king and his court to earn their favor. Do you ask her to roll a skill check for Performance or for her lute as a tool? I'm thinking Performance... but then when she use her lute proficiency?

What ability check is called for - if one is called for at all - depends entirely on what the player described she wanted to do relative to the context of the situation. As DM, if you find yourself in the position of not knowing whether an ability check is appropriate or which ability check and/or proficiency applies to resolve the outcome of the stated fictional action, then the player likely did not adequately establish the goal and approach of the character (what the character is doing and hopes to accomplish). So start asking the player to be more specific as to goal and approach until it becomes obvious whether you need an ability check and which ability check is best.