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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9566889" data-attributes="member: 82106">It's rather unclear actually. The PHB first lists skills associated with each ability, THEN it talks about skills in a way that seems to indicate that the association is merely decided by the GM. THEN it introduces "skills with different abilities" as if the last paragraph didn't exist.  Nor is "skills with different abilities" called out as an optional rule, particularly, it is just called a 'variant' and the text seems to assume this is simply a normal tool that the GM has available to them.There are other parts of the rules where it is even less clear. Sometimes these 'variants' are called out. I agree that if you don't say different, Athletics will normally modify STR checks, but given that all checks are ABILITY checks, there's no such thing as a 'skill check' in 5e, it actually wouldn't make sense not to be able to use different ability scores.This is where 4e REALLY IS different, because it calls its 'knacks' skills, but they aren't really. They're more like problem-solving strategies, and in 4e you DO make 'Athletics Checks' and they are always modified by STR because that's what mastery of athletics involves, Strong people with the correct training use that problem solving strategy. OTOH I personally treat 5e skills as 4e skills, but I don't even pretend I would play 5e like it was intended.</blockquote>