D&D 5E Stuff not skills

[Frostmarrow]

I've always enjoyed reading skill lists. I like to see skills on my character sheets since they both show what you can do and at the same time convey a feel for what kind of world we are dealing with. Recently, over the past few years, skill lists seems to become more and more thought through and scientific. Skills are for instance combined and given better and more suited names. However, this trend is a dead-end, in my opinion, as a lot of the feel I enjoy so much is lost. It has now gotten to the point that I'm willing to drop skills all together.

I like to propose stuff, items, equipment instead of skills. We already have ability scores and I can see three advantages in using stuff in place of skills:

1) Equipment convey what can be found and expected of the world. Equipment set the technology level quite clearly.

2) Equipment can be found, lost, and bought. We need macguffins and rewards. The DM also need a way to rob the players of certain capabilities (in order to set the stage for the scenario).

3) Equipment tells tales. A piece of equipment can carry a message or bring verzimulinaturde to the game in a way skills seldom do.

—But we already have equipment, why can't we have skills too?

1) Skills focus on the wrong things. Skills make characters self-sufficient which is not great in a game that should be about cooperation.

2) Skills are self-explanatory. You don't always have to describe how you apply your skills. This is not great since the game is supposed to be about interaction and exposition.

3) Skills include patented solutions and exclude improvisation. This is not perfect since the game should encourage imagination and creative thinking.

Yeah, that's how I feel.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

The problem with this is that I believe that characters should be much more than their collection of gear (e.g., mechanically, there are no differences between 2 RC Fighters other than their choice of equipment).

I would hate to see that go away.

Also:

verzimulinaturde

Best misspeelling ever.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I disagree. I would like the focus to move from gear to the character, not the other way around. There's already too much emphasis on equipment, especially magic equipment.

On the other hand, I like the idea of interaction between equipment and skills. Advanced (mundane) climbing shoes that give +8 to a climb check and allow a check at skill of 1 for for a character who doesn't have the skill would be great. As long as the skill is more important than the gear, it's fine with me.

Interaction between magic and skills is good too. Say that a knock spells adds +10 to an open locks check rather than just opening the door. This makes having the skill very useful even when the spell is available.

(Disclaimer: I haven't been playtesting, so I don't know how well these would fit with the latest iteration of the system)

 

[Neonchameleon]

—But we already have equipment, why can't we have skills too?

1) Skills focus on the wrong things. Skills make characters self-sufficient which is not great in a game that should be about cooperation.

2) Skills are self-explanatory. You don't always have to describe how you apply your skills. This is not great since the game is supposed to be about interaction and exposition.

3) Skills include patented solutions and exclude improvisation. This is not perfect since the game should encourage imagination and creative thinking.

Yeah, that's how I feel.

There is a style of DMing which I've seen described as 'Zipper DMing' (i.e. you didn't specify you put your junk away so you caugt it in...), and I feel that your complaints are heading towards that territory. Some things are so obvious that I don't want to have to bother spelling them out. If I'm using a grappling hook and rope to climb a wall, the how should be obvious. If I'm using a rope to tie someone up, I don't want to go into the complexities of Shibari in game. The ability for skills to (a) be used where what you are doing is obviousn and (b) be used for things your character would obviously know that you don't, I see as a positive.

And if prefab results solved the problem, why would you bother getting adventurers?

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

I don't think it should be all stuff or all skill, there should be a compromise between the two in which players who want to be the best they can be {mechanically} at something seek out both, not just max out skill points in 'open lock' and figure they can do the Fonz hip-bump to open up Fort Knox....

Flip side, players shouldn't need to acquire diamond tipped, exquisite Gnomish lock pick set for left handed locks in order to crack an ancient treasure chest.

If we have bounded accuracy then skill bumps from 1 to 3 and equipment bumps from 1 to 3, and stat mod from 1 to 4... you can have a balance were a naturally gifted with the right tools can be as good as a trained thief with adequate tools.

And of course a naturally gifted, trained thief with the right tools will be the best...

 

[Mattachine]

Just once, please just once, have alchemical items that aren't pointless.

Just about every version of these (acid, fire, smokesticks, etc) has been such a cost-heavy, sub-optimal choice, with the exception of 3e tanglefoot bags.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Back last spring I introduced a topic calling for more mundane equipment. Have a bigger variety of mundane equipment that matters well into the middle power levels--and maybe even a few bits that matter into epic. Then you can have "barely magical" stuff that is still pretty nice. A basic grappling hook is good (+3 to climb checks). A hook treated in a dwarven forge is better (+5 to climb checks). A dwarven grappling hook +1 (+6 to climb checks) is something you won't throw away, but it's not the be all and end all of climbing gear.

Part of the idea behind that is that if stuff is accounting for a certain amount of the "leveling" bonus so that ability scores and skills can account for less of it. But we could have our cake and eat it too. Make skills give a basic plus (+2 or +3), but have improved skills expand the range of gear that the character knows how to use. Anyone can pick a lock (Dex check) with a basic lock pick (+0). But to really get the full advantage out of master lockpicks (+5), you need some skill.

Now "skills" become things that are important to describing what the character can do (and improvise, such as using a small knife to pick a crude lock), but it's that findable/losable gear that gets the bonus up there to go after the really tough challenges. Anyone can use a basic healing kit, but to use a "complete healer's pack" effectively, a character needs some training. Any old character can still use such an advanced pack as a mundane kit, because it's got bandages in it. They just end up saying, "what's this?" on 75% of the stuff in the kit, potentially wasting it.

 

[MoonSong]

Actually I think the OP proposses a false dicotomy, IMO and if I'm not mistaken, past editions that focussed on an ample range of mundane gear also focussed on a wide assortment of skills, but of course take this with a grain of salt, I haven't really played or seen any version before the last compilation of BECMI and 2nd edition, yet I cannot help but feel the editions that have the smallest amount of mundane gear also happen to be the ones with the lesser focus on skills overall.

In fact I'm pretty sure a wide variety of tools implies a similarly wide variety of skills, after all when you have lots and lots of gear, it becomes important how capable you happen to be with it (skills). Not enough gear and skills become a futile exercise on number crunching, not enough skills and the gear becomes useless fluff.

On my head they happen to be related: more mundane gear = more skills and viceversa.

 

[1of3]

Interesting. I'm in the directly opposite camp, but interesting arguments non the less.

 

[Li Shenron]

1) Skills focus on the wrong things. Skills make characters self-sufficient which is not great in a game that should be about cooperation.

2) Skills are self-explanatory. You don't always have to describe how you apply your skills. This is not great since the game is supposed to be about interaction and exposition.

3) Skills include patented solutions and exclude improvisation. This is not perfect since the game should encourage imagination and creative thinking.

I agree on these points, but I believe that better designed skills can overcome these problems. I don't mean skills individually, but a better design of the skills system as a whole.