D&D 5E Skills Should Be Core

[Hussar]

Not a terrible idea at all, but the question then becomes: if the skill packages are so broad why not just roll them into class abilities?

IMHO the only reason to have individual skills is the granularity of picking individual areas of focus. Your simplified list is ideal for class ability packages and wouldn't require a skill subsystem to implement.

The same goes for feats actually. Any subsystem of menu options will become bloated and unmanageable over time.

Or, even further, why not just roll that into character stats? Classes and/or backgrounds might give some sort of bonus to a given stat (fighters gain +1/level to Str based skill checks for example) and be done with it.

Does mean that if you do wrap these up into either class or stats, classes become much more restrictive though. You can't have a "Crafting" fighter, for example if Crafting is tied to another class. And if Crafting is tied to, say, Wisdom, then it's very unlikely that you will get players to take Crafting unless their class also needs a high Wis.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

Or, even further, why not just roll that into character stats? Classes and/or backgrounds might give some sort of bonus to a given stat (fighters gain +1/level to Str based skill checks for example) and be done with it.

Does mean that if you do wrap these up into either class or stats, classes become much more restrictive though. You can't have a "Crafting" fighter, for example if Crafting is tied to another class. And if Crafting is tied to, say, Wisdom, then it's very unlikely that you will get players to take Crafting unless their class also needs a high Wis.

I spent a long while thinking about just this, since even broad skills can often map closely to one ability score. But, in the end there was just enough crossover to make me choose flexibility over simplicity.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Or, even further, why not just roll that into character stats? Classes and/or backgrounds might give some sort of bonus to a given stat (fighters gain +1/level to Str based skill checks for example) and be done with it.

Does mean that if you do wrap these up into either class or stats, classes become much more restrictive though. You can't have a "Crafting" fighter, for example if Crafting is tied to another class. And if Crafting is tied to, say, Wisdom, then it's very unlikely that you will get players to take Crafting unless their class also needs a high Wis.

I don't think skill based abilities all need to be so closely tied to a particular stat. Blacksmithing, for example can require STR ( using heavy tools), DEX (using tools with precision), INT ( a working knowledge of metallurgy and the properties of other elements important to the craft such as carbon), and WIS (the ability to adapt knowledge and apply it to available tools & materials).

The skill would represent the training that would allow the development of these stats toward a particular purpose even if some of them were not really great.

 

[Hussar]

I don't think skill based abilities all need to be so closely tied to a particular stat. Blacksmithing, for example can require STR ( using heavy tools), DEX (using tools with precision), INT ( a working knowledge of metallurgy and the properties of other elements important to the craft such as carbon), and WIS (the ability to adapt knowledge and apply it to available tools & materials).

The skill would represent the training that would allow the development of these stats toward a particular purpose even if some of them were not really great.

That's essentially the 4e approach to skills though. Everyone can do everything, to some degree, with skill training basically making you better, instead of skill training allowing you to do it in the first place.

 

[ExploderWizard]

That's essentially the 4e approach to skills though. Everyone can do everything, to some degree, with skill training basically making you better, instead of skill training allowing you to do it in the first place.

This can get messy in a class based system. For example, in 4E the various thief skills were generally available to other classes which kind of bumps the thief out of his specialty because the core abilities that the class used to operate on became more generic. The original concept for the thief was that the class exclusive abilities represented that beyond what a normal talented everyman could do.

For example any adventurer without noisy gear could move pretty quietly if they tried. This is an everyman type of "skill" that doesn't require character building resources or specialized class training. In addition to being able to do this like everyone else, the thief had the ability to move silently. Because these abilities were more mechanically defined, the everyman ability to be pretty quiet was forgotten or dropped (or never existed for some newer groups). This was the beginning of the end of everyman competency and the beginning of the age of something needing to be rigidly defined on the character sheet or else that character was assumed to be a complete boob and incompetent at the activity in question.

Classes are broad archetypes for ease and simplicity. They are the primary focus of adventurer type and don't need to be loaded down with every mundane thing an active adventurer could possibly do.

If used at all in a class based system, skills should be largely non-adventuring related ( performance, crafts, & mundane professions), and available to all classes equally in both selection and quantity.

If you want characters to be more unique on the competency scale with regard to everyman adventuring skills, let players define an equal number talents and incompetencies. These would provide either a modest boost or penalty with certain everyman skills. Bob the ranger might be more talented at outdoor survival than riding for example.

This way, skills can exist, and serve to help craft more unique characters without having to be a thorn in class balancing.

 

[Li Shenron]

(didn't have the time to read the whole thread, but still...)

My ultimate wish would be that only class is mandatory, and everything else is optional: skills, feats, backgrounds, equipment, races, alignment, subclasses... all of these could be "modular" and the game still function with them (at least on a group basis, not necessarily as an individual choice), if the designers wanted to make them so.

Skills effectively expand the complexity of ability checks. I love skills and I hardly imagine playing without them, because I love to have different characters with their own narrow fields of expertise, but there is no reason a gaming group couldn't play a D&D adventure effectively without skills, in fact that's what happened for almost 20 years before non-weapon proficiencies!

Feats have always been add-on abilities, thus they are modular by nature. I do not understand why Mearls have decided to make feats mandatory now, I think it's a mistake. A gaming group may not want to use feats in order to keep the number of character's feature low, thus making the game less complex.

Backgrounds have been introduced to represent the concept of "what your PCs do when not adventuring" (or "what your PCs used to do before adventuring"). Clearly, if your gaming style is focused on adventures and ignores the time between, you may not want to use backgrounds.

When I say Equipment should be optional, I simply mean that there might be a gaming group which is uninterested in differentiating weapons. A default weapon damage (like in OD&D, IIRC) and perhaps a default armor or two would be enough for such group.

Races can be optional too, in fact we didn't use them in our playtest! Not using races doesn't mean you can't play an elf, it just means you're not going to add racial benefits (not even human's) to your character sheet. Nobody ever mentions this because it feels weird to say your characters don't have a race, but those benefits are all perfectly additional and the game works totally fine without them, if you want to lower character complexity.

Alignment is optional only as long as other stuff in the game (most notably spells) doesn't have mechanics directly referring to alignment, which hopefully is going to remain this way.

Subclasses can also be optional if done properly (granting additions/variations that are not strictly required), but right now I think they aren't like that, for example because a Rogue without subclasses is just someone with sneak attack, which hardly makes it enough of a Rogue. Most notably, subclasses would be really be optional only if they were balanced across different classes: right now, taking away a Paladin's Oath or a Monk's Tradition doesn't hurt them much, but taking away a Cleric's Domain or a Rogue's Scheme is a bigger deal, so you can't easily play without subclasses with these characters at the same game table.

It may not be a big deal for me, since anyway I'm probably going to use all of these options anyway at my table, but the game would be better for other groups if these were optional, so I wish they would ALL be such.

OTOH, I definitely want ALL of these to be available in the first 3 core books!!