Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9260993" data-attributes="member: 6790260">The thing that still baffles me about the actual use of 5e skills at many tables, not what the rules say to do but what people actually do do with them, is how painfully limited and restrictive they tend to be.That is, the text itself is pretty neutral or even positive toward the idea that skills should be expansive and flexible, able to achieve a fair amount of stuff all on their own and welcoming creative applications or reinterpretations.Yet a huge amount of both the actual practice I have personally seen, and the ways people have described using them, hearkens back to the worst ways that 3.X used skills. Every use must be precisely and narrowly pre-defined or it simply doesn't work. Attempting to do something creative or off-label is often viewed with intense skepticism or even outright instant disapproval, for no real reason other than &quot;the book didn't explicitly say you can, therefore you can't&quot; (or, worse, capricious fiat opposition, but I find the former is more common.)And what gets me the most about this is...I also see a ton of DMs out there complaining that players don't think creatively, that they stick to tried and true methods and &quot;never think beyond the character sheet&quot; etc. Of course they don't! When they've tried, they got slapped down for it! You can only be shut down for creative approaches so many times before you start realizing that there's no point if the answer is essentially always no.I just do not understand this pattern, at all. It makes no sense. The text doesn't mandate it. The DMs don't seem to like the results of it. The players certainly don't seem to cotton to it. Why on earth do so many 5e DMs hobble the skill rules and then complain about the skill rules being mostly ignored?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9260993, member: 6790260"] The thing that still baffles me about the actual use of 5e skills at many tables, not what the rules say to do but what people actually do do with them, is how painfully limited and restrictive they tend to be. That is, the text itself is pretty neutral or even positive toward the idea that skills should be expansive and flexible, able to achieve a fair amount of stuff all on their own and welcoming creative applications or reinterpretations. Yet a huge amount of both the actual practice I have personally seen, and the ways people have described using them, hearkens back to the worst ways that 3.X used skills. Every use must be precisely and narrowly pre-defined or it simply doesn't work. Attempting to do something creative or off-label is often viewed with intense skepticism or even outright instant disapproval, for no real reason other than "the book didn't explicitly say you [I]can,[/I] therefore you can't" (or, worse, capricious fiat opposition, but I find the former is more common.) And what gets me the most about this is...I also see a ton of DMs out there complaining that players don't think creatively, that they stick to tried and true methods and "never think beyond the character sheet" etc. Of course they don't! When they've tried, they got slapped down for it! You can only be shut down for creative approaches so many times before you start realizing that there's no point if the answer is essentially always no. I just do not understand this pattern, at all. It makes no sense. The text doesn't mandate it. The DMs don't seem to like the results of it. The players certainly don't seem to cotton to it. Why on earth do so many 5e DMs hobble the skill rules and then complain about the skill rules being mostly ignored? [/QUOTE]

Verification