Benjamin Olson
Hero
I mean, it really depends what your DM tends to call for. I don’t really know how anyone who plays with more than a group or two can meaningfully rank them. Some things are campaign dependent as well. I can only group them based on experience.
Basically universally important:
Perception: Many tables it decides if you get ambushed, often it seems to determine if you unlock a whole area of content by noticing something subtle or secret. Often used for group checks. The standard character sheet has a passive perception box and nothing comparable for any other skill, so it’s obvious which skill is usually king. Every D&D party should have a couple characters good at this.
Good at most tables I’ve played at:
Arcana: The settings are usually so magical in 5e I’d say the majority of knowledge checks end up being arcana or having arcana as an option at most tables. People talk about it being used instead of Detect Magic, but I more often see it used instead of Identify. It is what identifies enemies who aren’t humanoids, animals, or from certain religiously aligned planes.
Athletics: Maybe not the most common but when it does come up failure is often likely to involve falling off a cliff or something else dire. It’s very easy for a player to provoke Athletics rolls, you just need to try to do something strength based at most tables. If you’re a strength based character you take this, if you’re not you probably don’t, but it is pretty consistently useful for strength-based characters so I categorize it as good at most tables.
Persuasion: Clearly the king of the Charisma skills. There’s a lot of grey area between Perception, Deception, and Intimidation, so any of them is pretty good if you don’t have the others, but if you are making an ambiguous social check it’s probably going to end up being a Persuasion check.
Really important in many campaigns or tables, virtually irrelevant in others:
Insight: This almost makes the above category, I just find some tables and campaigns rarely use it, and some DMs don’t give you useful information when you do use it. But in the right campaign it can be one of the very most important skills.
Investigation: If you have a DM actively trying to call for Perception less than this one becomes pretty ubiquitous. If it’s a mystery you are trying to solve you’re going to get this. If you take it and your DM calls for Perception for everything you can probably convince them to let you use this sometimes instead.
Stealth: Most groups I’ve been in try to be stealth sometimes, and usually this means group stealth checks. When a PC ranges out on their own they are likely to want to use stealth. I can totally see how you might play a no stealth campaign, but most I’ve been in this is a top 5 skill.
Survival: If your campaign is spending any time in the wilderness this becomes a top skill in most campaigns I’ve been in. But maybe your DM is an outlier, or maybe it’s an urban campaign or an endless dungeon crawl.
Really clutch at a few tables I’ve played at or campaigns I’ve been in:
Acrobatics: Can sometimes be used in lieu of an athletics check, including in the RAW rules for some things like escaping grapples, and since there’s a lot more dextrous characters than strong ones these days it sees a fair amount of use there. Some tables also seem to use it in a lot of places where others would use a Dex save. A character who goes out of their way to be acrobatic will have a lot of fun swinging from chandeliers and the like at the right table, but I haven't seen this often.
Deception: Depending on play-style this may be constant or never. But even with a deceptive play-style you might still be making Persuasion rolls more often depending on the DM.
History: The generic non-magical knowledge check, and 5e’s closest stand in for a local knowledge check. I’ve never been at a table where it was really important, but I’m sure that table exists.
Intimidation: Ditto what I just said about Deception
Nature: Wilderness knowledge check. Ranges from overwhelmingly important to irrelevant based on the campaign.
Religion: Often used for identifying iconography and general exposition of ancient temples and shrines. Often used for identifying angels, devils, and demons. For a few campaigns this is the most important knowledge skill, for some it’s irrelevant. For most it is of middling value.
Sleight of Hand: Does this get used for lock picking at your table? If so it’s probably very important someone be good at it. If not it’s probably not. The right character can get amazing use out of pickpocketing and the like.
Only important if a player makes them important:
Animal Handling: If you’re the player who wants to get a menagerie of pets, ride exotic mounts, or diplomance your way through wildlife encounters, this is going to matter a lot, otherwise it doesn’t.
Performance: I’ve seen tables find some creative times to apply it, and if you do lots of disguise shenanigans maybe this matters. Generally you only need this as a Bard or entertainer character, and it still is primarily just important there to character moments (when your bard performs at the tavern you probably want it to be awesome, not an embarrassment). Maybe if you are a Warlock with at will Disguise Self and you want to make it work more like at will Alter Self it becomes vital.
The worst (to take proficiency in):
Medicine: If your group has no or limited magical healing capacity there is a strong chance that at some point a medicine check will be literally life or death, so it’s not a completely irrelevant skill. But that is virtually the only time you’ll think about it, and the character who takes proficiency is not more likely than any other to be the one in position to make that vital check, so it is a terrible skill to waste a skill proficiency on. And if healing potions are common in the campaign it becomes almost completely irrelevant. And a Healer’s kit, rather than amplifying this skill instead makes it irrelevant.
I’ve seen some creative use as an anatomy check, and if you really want to make a healer character you might have some cool character moments healing NPCs with amazing medicine checks, but it is the loser of the bunch.
Basically universally important:
Perception: Many tables it decides if you get ambushed, often it seems to determine if you unlock a whole area of content by noticing something subtle or secret. Often used for group checks. The standard character sheet has a passive perception box and nothing comparable for any other skill, so it’s obvious which skill is usually king. Every D&D party should have a couple characters good at this.
Good at most tables I’ve played at:
Arcana: The settings are usually so magical in 5e I’d say the majority of knowledge checks end up being arcana or having arcana as an option at most tables. People talk about it being used instead of Detect Magic, but I more often see it used instead of Identify. It is what identifies enemies who aren’t humanoids, animals, or from certain religiously aligned planes.
Athletics: Maybe not the most common but when it does come up failure is often likely to involve falling off a cliff or something else dire. It’s very easy for a player to provoke Athletics rolls, you just need to try to do something strength based at most tables. If you’re a strength based character you take this, if you’re not you probably don’t, but it is pretty consistently useful for strength-based characters so I categorize it as good at most tables.
Persuasion: Clearly the king of the Charisma skills. There’s a lot of grey area between Perception, Deception, and Intimidation, so any of them is pretty good if you don’t have the others, but if you are making an ambiguous social check it’s probably going to end up being a Persuasion check.
Really important in many campaigns or tables, virtually irrelevant in others:
Insight: This almost makes the above category, I just find some tables and campaigns rarely use it, and some DMs don’t give you useful information when you do use it. But in the right campaign it can be one of the very most important skills.
Investigation: If you have a DM actively trying to call for Perception less than this one becomes pretty ubiquitous. If it’s a mystery you are trying to solve you’re going to get this. If you take it and your DM calls for Perception for everything you can probably convince them to let you use this sometimes instead.
Stealth: Most groups I’ve been in try to be stealth sometimes, and usually this means group stealth checks. When a PC ranges out on their own they are likely to want to use stealth. I can totally see how you might play a no stealth campaign, but most I’ve been in this is a top 5 skill.
Survival: If your campaign is spending any time in the wilderness this becomes a top skill in most campaigns I’ve been in. But maybe your DM is an outlier, or maybe it’s an urban campaign or an endless dungeon crawl.
Really clutch at a few tables I’ve played at or campaigns I’ve been in:
Acrobatics: Can sometimes be used in lieu of an athletics check, including in the RAW rules for some things like escaping grapples, and since there’s a lot more dextrous characters than strong ones these days it sees a fair amount of use there. Some tables also seem to use it in a lot of places where others would use a Dex save. A character who goes out of their way to be acrobatic will have a lot of fun swinging from chandeliers and the like at the right table, but I haven't seen this often.
Deception: Depending on play-style this may be constant or never. But even with a deceptive play-style you might still be making Persuasion rolls more often depending on the DM.
History: The generic non-magical knowledge check, and 5e’s closest stand in for a local knowledge check. I’ve never been at a table where it was really important, but I’m sure that table exists.
Intimidation: Ditto what I just said about Deception
Nature: Wilderness knowledge check. Ranges from overwhelmingly important to irrelevant based on the campaign.
Religion: Often used for identifying iconography and general exposition of ancient temples and shrines. Often used for identifying angels, devils, and demons. For a few campaigns this is the most important knowledge skill, for some it’s irrelevant. For most it is of middling value.
Sleight of Hand: Does this get used for lock picking at your table? If so it’s probably very important someone be good at it. If not it’s probably not. The right character can get amazing use out of pickpocketing and the like.
Only important if a player makes them important:
Animal Handling: If you’re the player who wants to get a menagerie of pets, ride exotic mounts, or diplomance your way through wildlife encounters, this is going to matter a lot, otherwise it doesn’t.
Performance: I’ve seen tables find some creative times to apply it, and if you do lots of disguise shenanigans maybe this matters. Generally you only need this as a Bard or entertainer character, and it still is primarily just important there to character moments (when your bard performs at the tavern you probably want it to be awesome, not an embarrassment). Maybe if you are a Warlock with at will Disguise Self and you want to make it work more like at will Alter Self it becomes vital.
The worst (to take proficiency in):
Medicine: If your group has no or limited magical healing capacity there is a strong chance that at some point a medicine check will be literally life or death, so it’s not a completely irrelevant skill. But that is virtually the only time you’ll think about it, and the character who takes proficiency is not more likely than any other to be the one in position to make that vital check, so it is a terrible skill to waste a skill proficiency on. And if healing potions are common in the campaign it becomes almost completely irrelevant. And a Healer’s kit, rather than amplifying this skill instead makes it irrelevant.
I’ve seen some creative use as an anatomy check, and if you really want to make a healer character you might have some cool character moments healing NPCs with amazing medicine checks, but it is the loser of the bunch.
