D&D 5E (2024) Rank 5e skills from most useful (1) to least useful (18)

[Gradine]

My interest is on what I can actually achieve at a table when I'm making my characters.

That's fair. However...

When 9 out of 10 GMs is going to view Intimidate as the Screw Yourself Over Even When You Succeed With Flying Colors skill, then yes, I'm going to say "oooookay, never ever ever take that skill; the chance I might get lucky with this GM isn't worth the extreme risk that I won't."

...I feel like this is very much overstating the problem. Anecdotal evidence is all that any of us really have but I'd like to believe that this degree of adversarial DMing is becoming much more rare as the hobby has opened up and kind of exploded in the past decade.

My solution to a GM who is going to punish me for using a skill the game gives me every opportunity to take for my character is not to stop taking or using that skill, it's to stop showing up at that table.

 

[Zardnaar]

That's fair. However...

...I feel like this is very much overstating the problem. Anecdotal evidence is all that any of us really have but I'd like to believe that this degree of adversarial DMing is becoming much more rare as the hobby has opened up and kind of exploded in the past decade.

My solution to a GM who is going to punish me for using a skill the game gives me every opportunity to take for my character is not to stop taking or using that skill, it's to stop showing up at that table.

Intimidation is best used on thugs trying to shake you down imho than part of your day to day affairs.

IRL its usually a very bad way of doing things. I'll use it in extreme situations vs a ranting boomer, telling someone to sit down, or a silent look. Implication being they can do it or face you if they keep doing what theyre doing.

99% of the time its a terrible approach.

 

[Clint_L]

As I said before. What skills are "best" changes wildly on the game your are playing. I don't generally like the concept of saying someone is "a bad DM" or "playing the game wrong", but in the cases listed for DMs ruling Intimidation checks that way? Yes. They are playing the game wrong and (unless they are new and just do not yet know the rules of the game) those are bad DMS. You should not be playing at their tables because odds are strong that (again unless they are new), being unyielding and draconian about the uses for specific skills is not their only issue as a DM.

This is exactly why I would like to see the DDB data on how often each skill is actually rolled. Every campaign is its own context, but I would love to see the broad trends. Based on this thread, it seems pretty obvious that Perception is king of the skills, but I would love to see, for example, how often survival is being rolled in comparison to nature checks, or whatever.

It should be very possible to repackage skills such that they are more balanced in terms of their actual usefullness in an "average" campaign.

 

[Scott Christian]

Acrobatics
Animal Handling
Arcana
Athletics
Deception
History
Insight
Intimidation
Investigation
Medicine
Nature
Perception
Performance
Persuasion
Religion
Sleight of Hand
Stealth
Survival

It is pretty difficult to assess their usefulness, since many of them are class specific, or campaign specific, or table specific. I mean, stealth for a rogue is always used. Sleight of hand, depending on the style of the rogue, might get used a lot too. In a campaign with a lot of political intrigue, deception, persuasion, and intimidation might be the heavy hitters. And table sometimes have a way of blending and not adhering to the actual skill. For example, I have had DMs constantly say: Use athletics or acrobatics, your call. The same can be said of history and religion.

But if you had to twist my arm and say that over a normal campaign that lasts six months or a year, it has to be:
1. perception
2. arcana/history/religion
3. persuasion
4. stealth
5. insight