Sword of Spirit
Legend
Since people are currently talking about skills over on the Intimidate thread, I thought this would be a good time to share my home-brew skill revision.
Use it for inspiration, adopt as-is, ignore, or use as fuel for arguments.
This is based on 2014, but should more or less work with 2024 also. Just ignore the part about the background features and free +1 to an ability score on page one, and treat the Specialist feat as an origin feat, available to whatever backgrounds you want it to be.
Features
-Opt-in on a player level. Everyone gets extra languages equal to their Intelligence bonus, and +1 to an ability score. A player can ignore the rest of the customization options and still be using the exact same rules as everyone else.
-Skill customization. Each skill is split into 2 to 4 specialties (3 for most). You can split your skills to divide proficiency and expertise around, so with the right character options you might have expertise in Survival [Improvise], proficiency in Survival [Endurance], and no proficiency in Survival [Range].
-No orphan ability checks. Every ability check you make has a skill that applies.
-Artistic styles and additional tools. Artistic styles (song, dance, etc) are added to complement musical instruments. The Performance skill (now completely optional for succesfully entertaining) was powered-up substantially. A few tool proficiencies I felt were missing were added, and the healer's kit got some new rules to accompany the Medicine skill expansions.
-Skill specialities + tool proficiencies grant expertise. This is an alternative to the 2024 and Tasha's rule that having both grants Advantage. I also tried to make sure that all skill specialties other than directly opposed ones (ie, Perception, Stealth, Intimidation) have tools (or languages, or artistic styles) that can combine with them for expertise.
-Languages grant cultural knowledge. Not only do tools grant knowledge about related matters, but languages also grant knowledge about the cultures of their speakers.
-Simple downtime training rules. This is on page 1, which you can basically skip if you just want to see how I split up the skills.
Parts I Really Like
-I'm happy with how I divided up knowledge of creature types and other things amongst the specialties. I used some ideas from the D&D Next playtest that I really like (yay, Forbidden Lore, and Monstrosities and Giants under History!)
-Deception, Intimidation, and Persuasion have some specialties that are similar (they all three grant one that allows you to alter an NPC's disposition (Friendly, Indifferent, Hostile), and one that allows you to directly get someone to act) but one that is unique to each skill (Con, Interrogate, Gather Information), and even the similar ones have some different uses.
-History becomes an extremely useful skill (combined with languages) for knowing about humanoid cultures.
-Medicine is actually useful. The Heal specialty is better if you ditch or nerf the Healer feat, but the Treat specialty is the one I'm excited about. (Also, I'm using the healer's kit dependency optional rule for healing during short rests, so you'll see references to that. If you aren't using that rule, you might want to buff the Heal specialty for better balance.)
-Nature [Feylore]
-Performance! Completely redone so that instead of the "entertaining" skill (which you can now do with a variety of skills, musical instruments, or artistic styles) it is now more reminiscent of the non-magical crowd-influencing abilities of past edition bards.
-Sleight of hand--this was a tricky one, but I'm happy with how it finally worked out. Now includes a specialty for actually doing artifice-y and invent-y stuff!
-The two non-Dexterity based Stealth specialties.
-Survival! And now for something completely different...
-New ideas of things for characters to do occurred to me as I was making this. Take Performance [Entrance], Stealth [Avoid Contact], or Survival [Improvive]. Not necessarily things I would normally think of when I think of 5e skills, but now that there are skill specialties telling you that they do them, it will hopefully inspire players to try these new sorts of things.
I think most of this should make sense as-is, but it's possible there may be some interaction with other house rules of mine, so feel free to ask questions if something seems like it should make sense but doesn't.
Use it for inspiration, adopt as-is, ignore, or use as fuel for arguments.
This is based on 2014, but should more or less work with 2024 also. Just ignore the part about the background features and free +1 to an ability score on page one, and treat the Specialist feat as an origin feat, available to whatever backgrounds you want it to be.
Features
-Opt-in on a player level. Everyone gets extra languages equal to their Intelligence bonus, and +1 to an ability score. A player can ignore the rest of the customization options and still be using the exact same rules as everyone else.
-Skill customization. Each skill is split into 2 to 4 specialties (3 for most). You can split your skills to divide proficiency and expertise around, so with the right character options you might have expertise in Survival [Improvise], proficiency in Survival [Endurance], and no proficiency in Survival [Range].
-No orphan ability checks. Every ability check you make has a skill that applies.
-Artistic styles and additional tools. Artistic styles (song, dance, etc) are added to complement musical instruments. The Performance skill (now completely optional for succesfully entertaining) was powered-up substantially. A few tool proficiencies I felt were missing were added, and the healer's kit got some new rules to accompany the Medicine skill expansions.
-Skill specialities + tool proficiencies grant expertise. This is an alternative to the 2024 and Tasha's rule that having both grants Advantage. I also tried to make sure that all skill specialties other than directly opposed ones (ie, Perception, Stealth, Intimidation) have tools (or languages, or artistic styles) that can combine with them for expertise.
-Languages grant cultural knowledge. Not only do tools grant knowledge about related matters, but languages also grant knowledge about the cultures of their speakers.
-Simple downtime training rules. This is on page 1, which you can basically skip if you just want to see how I split up the skills.
Parts I Really Like
-I'm happy with how I divided up knowledge of creature types and other things amongst the specialties. I used some ideas from the D&D Next playtest that I really like (yay, Forbidden Lore, and Monstrosities and Giants under History!)
-Deception, Intimidation, and Persuasion have some specialties that are similar (they all three grant one that allows you to alter an NPC's disposition (Friendly, Indifferent, Hostile), and one that allows you to directly get someone to act) but one that is unique to each skill (Con, Interrogate, Gather Information), and even the similar ones have some different uses.
-History becomes an extremely useful skill (combined with languages) for knowing about humanoid cultures.
-Medicine is actually useful. The Heal specialty is better if you ditch or nerf the Healer feat, but the Treat specialty is the one I'm excited about. (Also, I'm using the healer's kit dependency optional rule for healing during short rests, so you'll see references to that. If you aren't using that rule, you might want to buff the Heal specialty for better balance.)
-Nature [Feylore]
-Performance! Completely redone so that instead of the "entertaining" skill (which you can now do with a variety of skills, musical instruments, or artistic styles) it is now more reminiscent of the non-magical crowd-influencing abilities of past edition bards.
-Sleight of hand--this was a tricky one, but I'm happy with how it finally worked out. Now includes a specialty for actually doing artifice-y and invent-y stuff!
-The two non-Dexterity based Stealth specialties.
-Survival! And now for something completely different...
-New ideas of things for characters to do occurred to me as I was making this. Take Performance [Entrance], Stealth [Avoid Contact], or Survival [Improvive]. Not necessarily things I would normally think of when I think of 5e skills, but now that there are skill specialties telling you that they do them, it will hopefully inspire players to try these new sorts of things.
I think most of this should make sense as-is, but it's possible there may be some interaction with other house rules of mine, so feel free to ask questions if something seems like it should make sense but doesn't.
