Skills... WoTC Blog Post

[Vyvyan Basterd]

my noble czar wizard is going to be better at the court dances than the street urchin rogue kid who is more dexterous, and the templar paladin who is more charismatic.

That's easily covered. Circumstance bonus and/or penalty for those involved in the court dance. Or, the DM deems your character best of the three specifically because of his background with no skill roll required. The bonuses to ability/skill checks need not be a measuring stick of how good you are, nor does every action your character takes need a check.

Also, just how much training in court dancing does your noble czar wizard have since he went off adventuring? An NPC noble czar wizard can afford to spend further resources on court dancing and gain those additional +1s mentioned in the article. Your PC noble czar wizard could as well if that is what truly interests you.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

>As it currently stands, your background grants you four things—either skills or traits.<

One of the things I decidedly didn't care for in 3e was too few skill points. Now everyone only gets four, or less if you want any traits. This is not what I want to hear! (Although the remark about Rogues getting more skills indicates that some might be gotten from Class. But is that only the Rogue? What about the Bard getting Perform, the Cleric getting Lore: religion, etc.?)

 

[Ratskinner]

5e's skill system as proposed doesn't fix this yet. It also runs the potential risk of tethering a skill to a background, so someone who is a Sailor is always going to be less efficient than someone who is, say, an Acrobat. The skill defines you. If that definition is overly narrow or overly broad, you're basically saying, "If you pick Sailor, you suck."

Unless you're playing in a piratical campaign...just sayin'. Some of the value of traits etc. is contextual. I know people like to poo-poo learning extra languages, but I've run campaigns where folks would have jumped on that.

 

[Ratskinner]

>As it currently stands, your background grants you four things—either skills or traits.<

One of the things I decidedly didn't care for in 3e was too few skill points. Now everyone only gets four, or less if you want any traits. This is not what I want to hear! (Although the remark about Rogues getting more skills indicates that some might be gotten from Class. But is that only the Rogue? What about the Bard getting Perform, the Cleric getting Lore: religion, etc.?)

I think they're still futzing around with the rogue's "skillsy" thing. This article made it sound like a rogues get a bigger-than-usual bonus for a skill, while the last one made it sound like they got more...

It could be both, and the classes you mention all get level-based bonuses to certain skills and activities, whether or not they have the skill.

 

[billd91]

Well, it was a problem in 3e (and to a lesser degree in 4e). They were choice-traps. Use Rope was never as effective as Spot. Perception is always better than History.

5e's skill system as proposed doesn't fix this yet. It also runs the potential risk of tethering a skill to a background, so someone who is a Sailor is always going to be less efficient than someone who is, say, an Acrobat. The skill defines you. If that definition is overly narrow or overly broad, you're basically saying, "If you pick Sailor, you suck."

I don't see any easy way out of some choices being better than others, particularly when the style of campaign comes into play. Sailor will be pretty useless in a desert campaign, potentially critical in a pirate campaign. Appraise will rarely be as useful as stealth or perception. In all of these cases, a DM has to do more work to validate the less useful/more specific choices that aren't as generally useful as stealth and perception.

But I'm not sure that's bad. What's bad is a DM leaving the players twisting in the breeze without offering guidance which skills will tend to be less useful giving his style of play. If he just tells the players the correct appraised value of their loot, he should recognize he does this and tell them not to bother with appraise. If he doesn't plan on the game ever being near the coast or making use of sailing skills, he should dissuade players from investing a lot if Profession: Sailor. If he doesn't know because it's a sandboxy campaign, he should tell the players that too and allow the players themselves to enable the importance of their own PC skills.

 

[Quickleaf]

Really? The whole nature/nurture thing is very contentious in the biology and psychology communities, where the influences of genetics are being elucidated. There are many people who profoundly disagree with that statement (and plenty who do agree with it).

It also varies tremendously based on the task. There was a recent article where a former pro football player noted that football accomodates a relatively diverse group of body types and success very much revolves around training towards a particular role, while the ability to play basketball, while certainly involving skill, basically requires certain physical characteristics (height obviously among them).

As a counterpoint, Top 10 Shortest NBA Basketball Players | Top 10 Lists | TopTenz.net, not to mention the Jewish teams playing at average heights around 5'8" before the NBA.

For a game, I think it's best just to say that both skill and ability should matter, and that neither should be dominant.

Can't argue with that

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I like a lot of these ideas, but my fear in this is that the skill bonuses are all going to be too low. On a d20, you're going to see one of the several +0 to +1 characters (10-13 stat, no training) beat the +6 character (18 stat, +2 skill) quite often.

The 13 stat character can only beat the 18 stat character 19% of the time if they keep the auto-success rule. If the +2 training adds to the threshold of auto-success the 13 stat character only beats the 18 stat PC 3.5% of the time.

 

[the Jester]

I continue to be pretty much 100% stoked by everything I've heard. We'll see on next Thursday, but yeah, lookin' good to me.

 

[vagabundo]

This totally reminds me of Warhammer FP. Careers with skills.

A very good thing in my opinion.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I don't see any easy way out of some choices being better than others, particularly when the style of campaign comes into play. Sailor will be pretty useless in a desert campaign, potentially critical in a pirate campaign. Appraise will rarely be as useful as stealth or perception. In all of these cases, a DM has to do more work to validate the less useful/more specific choices that aren't as generally useful as stealth and perception.

I agree with that. I do think packaging will mitigate the worst of it in casual play, in this case. It's the discrete nature of each element that can cause spells, feats, etc. to get so out of control, sometimes even without trying. Character A gets appraise, diplomacy while character B gets perception and religion may not be perfect, but it is harder to accidently screw up than single picks. With four picks in each thing, it can reach a rough parity.

In any event, I don't think preventing all possible, deliberate powergaming stunts should be a goal. Prevent the worst of those, and let the groups manage the rest. It's accidental bumbler or superhero that is annoying. People customize, they'll find a way to max something out that bends or breaks--or accidently screw something up the other way. Having the packages is another way of saying--"stay in these, you'll get something decent that does more or less what it implies." Customize, and the responsibility goes back to the group to watch it.