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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MostlyHarmless42" data-source="post: 9776089" data-attributes="member: 6845520">Frankly this question is impossible to answer without explicitly knowing what type of play you are specifically doing for your game.At our table? Perception is by no means an "s-tier" skill despite what others in this thread have said. If anything Diplomacy is probably the highest skill. But we do not do dungeon crawls. We also do not allow perception checks to find hidden clues or traps because that is literally the point of Investigation. Other tables may vary.If your DM is running a Gygaxian meat grinder? Well, first of all, my condolences to you because that sounds like a nightmare and absolutely terrible game to me. But in such a situation Diplomacy or any other sort of roleplaying skill is utterly worthless because the base assumption of such a game is only combat and loot matters. Frankly in such a game Stealth is near useless as well because even if the party's stealthy member tries to stealth ahead ultimately the answer will always be the same: a room filled with monsters and/or dangerous traps. All stealth actually does in such games is either get the rogue killed when he fails the stealth roll or waste the rest of the party's time as they twiddle their thumbs waiting to ultimately just kick in the next door and roll for initiative anyway.If you're doing a wilderness crawl? Survival is king and again roleplaying essentially doesn't matter that vast majority of the time.Are you doing a political intrigue game? Best hope you have Diplomacy, Deception, Insight, and/or Sleight of Hand, or at the very least no fear of potentially failing dice checks; otherwise you're just going to sitting against the walls of every fancy ballroom (like the coward of a wallflower that you are) watching the Charisma characters do all the work and have all the fun. Don't just do what your character is "good at" and avoid the rest, folks. It's obnoxious and makes your DM want to pull out their hair. Failure and luck are a part of the game!Does your DM allow players to blatantly metagame? Congrats, all Intelligence checks are now worthless! Otherwise, Arcana, Nature, History, and Religion are all amazingly useful skills that essentially allow you to gain insights and information about the DM's world that actually open up roleplaying or combat options otherwise your character would likely not be aware of. Again, unless you are cheating and using knowledge your character shouldn't have.Does your DM (stupidly) allow spell casters to hide/conceal spells with sleight of hand/deception? If so either skill is WAY better (and certain abilities like Subtle spell are then made completely worthless).Even the very ruleset you are using matters. Are you playing 2024? Athletics and Acrobatics are less useful because of the changed rules to Grapple/Shove.This question isn't really possible to be answered reliably or consistently without limiting the scope of the question. Even my own 5 different campaigns using the same ruleset and house rules, I would have wildly different orders for skills for each game. It also completely ignores tools and languages. In a game where the DM actually allows downtime for crafting I would much rather have alchemist tools or smiths tools than sleight of hand. In a game where the DM actually uses different languages I'd rather have extra known languages than most of other skills. Sure I could use the comprehend languages or tongues spell, but the same argument could be made for borrowed knowledge with skills, or using downtime to train. And that is before taking into mind any sort of specific character you wish to build. To a character who is pitched as a chef/cook or runs an inn? Cook's Utensils and Brewer's supplies are the two most useful and important skills/tools. What is "s-tier" is not universal to every character.</blockquote>

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