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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 7106957" data-attributes="member: 1465">Interesting thread... There are a few misconceptions about skills IMHO, and perhaps the biggest one is that the skill system is fixed and rigid. The truth is that it's quite flexible, it all depends on how much a DM wants it to be flexible instead of rigid. Among other things: - the PHB skill list doesn't have to be exhaustive, the DM can introduce more- skills don't have to be a "partition", they can overlap with each other- the key ability doesn't have to be fixed, there's a variant rule for using any ability- the border between a skill and a tool proficiency can be blurred- proficiency can also be used to limit what can be done with a skillIf you just keep in mind that the primary rule of 5e is that it's up to the DM to decide if you get to roll a check at all, then even the last of the above points becomes quite natural.So I welcome your decision to make your own additions to the skills list. I am not so keen on changing what is already in the PHB, but I've added myself new skills and tools for my Rokugan 5e campaign conversion rules.YMMV but this was pretty much what gamers wanted. Remember what happened when in 3.0 there were class-exclusive skills? They lasted only until the 3.5 revision because of the widespread uproar. Later on they got rid of the cross-class skills concept too. I didn't have any problems with 3.0 skills, but I'm just saying that if you go back you should be prepared for lots of whining.I agree on this. What 5e was supposed to do, is on one hand to allow everyone to being good at anything, but on the other hand to disallow being better than the class primary meant to be good at it. That's true for a lot of abilities, but unfortunately trapfinding and lockpicking are still mostly just about skill checks. Granted, the Rogue gets Expertise (although we are now seeing how this is creeping into the game for everyone with UA feats...) and Reliable Talent (recently threatened by "Sage" Advice), and Thief gets Fast Hands (not so commonly useful IMHO), but these may not be enough.Well IMHO this could be the symptom that you're using Perception too much.To me it doesn't matter. A more "elegant" system that looks good on paper will not be better, because it will probably just be more rigid therefore annoying.Yes, they should have left it as default, like it was during the playtest. Well I must have been the only person who objected merging Spot & Listen back in the 3.0-3.5 revision days... It was clear to me that the "double cost" was justified by how common were those checks. I think it's a good idea that you brought back Gather Information. My opinion is that they left it out of 5e for a couple of reasons: first the probably wanted to lower the number of Charisma-based skills so that they weren't too many compared to other groups; second, it's possible that they thought that the concept of training to get better at this tasks was too weak. But for me it's totally a valid addition.Normally I am not a fan of Knowledge(Monsters) skills, but it's probably another valid addition.so what is the drawback of adding more skills? IMHO the only possible problem is in the gamers' stubborness in thinking that they I]need[/I] proficiency in order to attempt something. So if you increase the number of skills in the game, some players will complain that now they have to "spend" more proficiencies to be capable of doing the same things. But at the end it's always a matter of how the DM employs the primary rule of when to allow a check and when not.</blockquote>

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