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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9776813" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I really don't think there's any "self-fulfilling" about it.Performance checks have never been common in any game I've played. Ever. Doesn't matter what system. I've literally never even heard of a GM calling for lots of performance checks prior to [USER=6845520]@MostlyHarmless42[/USER] saying so just now in this thread.Likewise, as noted, Intimidate is avoided like the plague for a very, very good reason: huge swathes of GMs view it as the social skill which makes people hate you forever and instantly try to fight against you the moment they aren't under your direct supervision. Like I've personally seen that several times, enough times that I learned, "Oh. Don't take Intimidate. Doesn't matter if I have good Cha and a racial bonus. Never take Intimidate. It'll essentially always screw you over." That has nothing whatsoever to do with its charop potential. In 4e, Intimidate was an extremely highly-rated skill because it had combat applications--and I still saw people avoid it like the plague, very specifically (as in, they told me explicitly) because of their knowledge that GMs actively punish the use of Intimidate as a skill.This is, in part, why I very much preferred both the skill list, and the explicit rules about how skills were used, from 4e. 4e skills are CHONKY. Getting only four skills in 4e doesn't feel like a huge loss, because every single one actually has lots of uses, even the academic ones like History--and they encourage the GM to be as open-minded as possible. (Ironically, the text for 5e actually isn't super far from 4e on this; it's less strident, but the same idea is there. The vast majority of 5e GMs just.....don't do that, and instead run the skills as though they were carbon-copied from 3e, even when this directly contradicts the text.)I definitely agree with some of the folks here that there are certain contextual elements that can boost or weaken skills. But we can take an overview across a broad swathe of games, considering how the rules themselves present these things--and some skills, like Perception and Investigation, simply come up far more often than things like Performance or Animal Handling.</blockquote>

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