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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ashkelon" data-source="post: 6665043" data-attributes="member: 6774887"><p>Sure, there are 16 skills, but some skills aren't all that useful. Animal Handling, Performance, and Investigation are rarely used or help very little in exploration or social encounters. These skills seem most useful for RP purposes. These skills really should only be chosen if it fits your characters theme as you won't be rolling them that often. Next up we have History, Religion, and Nature. These skills are sometimes useful, but a party will do just fine without them. They aren't necessary to overcome particular challenges. A party will be just fine without anyone trained in these skills. Then we have Athletics and Acrobatics. I've found that anything athletics can do (climb, jump, swim) a Druid can do better by turning into a creature with a climb speed, a fly speed, or a swim speed. A party will be just fine if nobody in the group has training in Athletics by mid levels when low level spells are readily usable for utility. Acrobatics doesn't really help contribute to overcoming exploration encounters. These skills are useful in combat however.So of the 18 skills in the PHB, only 10 are "necessary" for exploration or interaction encounters and 5 more are nice to have, but ultimately not extremely useful. A group of 4 would be able to cover all 15 of those skills easily, or cover the 10 most useful skills and double up on some important ones like stealth and perception.Next, variant humans get a bonus skill. Elves get proficiency with Perception. Half elves get 2 bonus skills. Bards, get one more trained skills. Rogues get two more trained skills. Warlocks have an invocation to get 2 more trained skills. A few cleric subclasses gain trained skills as well. Druids gain the proficiencies of creatures they turn into.With 2 half elves in the party and 1 elf, we already had 22 skills covered. I think the only skill my human fighter had that someone else in the party didn't have was History, which over the course of the campaign I only rolled a handful of times, succeeded at less, and primarily gained backstory from its use (ie it wasn't necessary to overcome challenges).</p></blockquote><p></p>

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