The Case for Hide and Move Silently (Splitting Skills)

[Xeviat]

How we have come full circle. Hi everybody. I find the skill system to be too simple in 5E. A few players in my group don't like that they feel like they can't improve their skills beyond leveling or multiclassing to get Expertise. Also, I've noticed that some skills seem far more useful than other skills. So I wanted to come in and spitball an idea.

Goal: to add some complexity and options to the current skill system. This would be done to balance the skill choices against each other, while providing a way to improve upon skills for exploration and interaction without substantially hampering combat.

Idea: The idea comes in two parts. The first part is to identify any "offender" skills, skills which are chosen far more than other skills (I'm looking at Athletics, Perception, and Stealth initially). Along with this, classes will be given more proficient skills to compensate. The thought here isn't to nerf the most used skills in practice, but simply even out the choices so they feel more like choices.

I like this part, though even as I type it, I'm a little skeptical. I say this because I have a hard time thinking of someone who would want to choose Hide and not Move Silently. But I can think of people who may choose jump and not swim, or spot and not listen. I do feel weird saying it, because I was totally part of the group who wanted to see the skills combined in the first place back in 3E. But playing old Baldur's Gate again got me thinking; maybe they were split purposefully to make them more expensive because they're more useful.

The second part of the idea is to add back skill ranks. But ranks wouldn't be to up your skill modifier, but to up your abilities with skills. Characters would get additional skill proficiencies at certain levels. 4s? 3s? We'll see. They can either spend those skills to gain new proficiency, or to learn new abilities with the skills they already have. Feats like Athlete, Actor, dungeon delver, linguist, observant, and skulker would fall in here. "Skill Talents", let's call them, to enhance skills and add new uses to them, especially those that aren't particularly used for combat.

Feats are nice, but D&D is a war game at its roots and giving up +2 to my primary attacking stat (or Con) is a tough sell, especially when that stat is adding to the very skills I want to be good at. Feats should be for combat I say.

Other Skill Talents can be added so they're well represented. Maybe things like expertise or situational advantage could be given out. More combative skill uses could remain as feats, but noncombat could be supported by a Skill Talent system.

What are your thoughts?


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[MechaPilot]

What I do is this:

I allow players to be better at certain uses of certain skills in exchange for being worse at other things. For example, a player might choose to play a deaf character. This character will automatically fail any hearing-related Perception checks, but it could have advantage on Perception checks related to another sense.

Another example is a desert dwelling character who suffers disadvantage on Athletics checks to swim but can survive longer without exhaustion in hot climates.

 

[CapnZapp]

I completely agree on not asking the player to choose between combat, social and exploratory powers (that is, not make them choose between +2 Strength and the Drive Cart skill)

 

[CapnZapp]

To me, the most straight-forward solution would be to do way with "proficiency" as a binary toggle and instead hand out skill proficiency points individually.

That is, in the simplest case of a two-skill dimwit, instead of once and for all choosing "proficiency" in Athletics and Brawling, the player would get 4 proficiency points at first level, and then two more each time the regular proficiency bonus would increase (at levels 5, 9, 13, 17).

Of course, assuming we add (back) more skills (including the split of stealth into hide and move silently) this could be made more granular. With more skills you would want to hand out more proficiency points.

You would also probably want to price different skills differently (Perception has way more in-game benefits than Agriculture or Calligraphy and so should probably cost more).

So let's introduce three categories of skills: Background, Common, Heroic:

Background skills (2 SP) have no or small impact on the game, and mainly serve to give the character a background history and to provide characterization and color. Examples: pottery, cobblery, play a music instrument, local history. Background skills cost 2 SP per proficiency point.

Common skills (3 SP) include everyday common activities anybody would do and does do. These skills do help the adventurer, but only insofar that they would help anyone. Examples: Swim, Hide, sleight of hand, History, Nature, Animal Handling. Common skills cost 3 SP per proficiency point.

Heroic skills (4 SP) are the skills that heroes (and villains) use to make a difference. The skills common people theoretically could use, but usually don't, since they require ambition, courage, initiative or ruthlessness. Also includes uncommon skills that require special training. Examples: arcana, perception, intimidate, poison use

The cost should be based mostly on utility. A skill like Herbalism probably only merits a 2 SP cost in a game like D&D where herbs doesn't matter much for purposes of healing. In another game where magical healing is much more scarce, and indeed could be herb-based (Middle Earth Role Play anyone?) it would cost 4 SP.

Now, the first step would to finalize a list of skills and their SP costs.

I can't do that here and now, but I can still give you a general idea of what I meant by "be made more granular" above. If we have enough skills that cost enough skill points, we need to hand out so many of them that we can hand out some each level, instead of just at specific levels.

Example: A basic Fighter gets four skills (including the two everyone gets from their background).

If we (for the sake of this example) assume skills cost 3 SP on average (per proficiency point), then we should hand out 3x4=12 skill points since this enables the character to place four +1's on his character sheet.

So at 1st level that's 24 SPs. At fifth level it's another 12 SP etc. We end up with 6x12=72 SP at level 17.

So if we desire to hand out an equal helping of skill points at each level, that would be 4 skill points per level.

But wait! We've split skills and encourage many more skills. Obviously this must be calibrated and playtested, but this should serve to illustrate the point.

Let's quadruple the helping at level 1, to allow characters to be more realistically grounded in Background and Common skills, and generally increase it to 6 skill points per level instead.

So our level 1 fighter would have 24 SPs to spend. It would only be enough for four Common skills at +2 each, but remember, this game hands out more skill points at every level.

And after all, the lowest levels are considered apprentice levels. At fourth level, for instance, the fighter would have enough skill points (42) for the following:
Two Background skills at +1 each (4 SP)
Two Background skills at +2 each (8 SP)
Two Common skills at +1 each (6 SP)
Two Common skills at +2 each (12 SP)
One Heroic skill at +1 (4 SP)
One Heroic skill at +2 (8 SP)

That's ten skills total.

A rule that probably would work well is to say that you make "untrained" skill checks at disadvantage. You remain untrained in any skill where you have no proficiency points, where your skill bonus is +0.

You would still normally be limited to a maximum of +2 on levels 1-4, +3 on levels 5-8 etc.

Then you could say that you need to pay double whenever you want to exceed this normal maximum, but that this doesn't apply to rogues etc who have double the normal maximum. A level 8 rogue, for instance, could purchase a +6 in Stealth without that costing more than usual.

All this to represent Expertise, I mean.

It might sound like a lot of work, but really, all you need to do is import the skill list from your favorite gritty fantasy game, assign each skill to one of the six abilities and the players will do the rest

 

[CapnZapp]

One more thing:

Retraining.

Any system that expects you to make all important decisions already at first level, and then simply execute that decision at subsequent levels is a bad system in my view. It requires system mastery and is difficult for newbies. It doesn't encourage experimenting. It doesn't really give you choices throughout your career.

This is because as all powergamers know, the only skill bonuses that matter, are the maximized ones. In other words, you'd be best off to plan all your skill purchases already at level 1. Already from the game start decide on which skills to maximize, and then simply do that over the twenty levels. And that's boring and bad.

The above system is one such system, if we don't add a retraining rule, so your character can adapt to changing circumstances. Perhaps he encounters a monastery or secret society that can learn him new things? Perhaps the player tires of playing a farmer and would like to change his background to tailor?

So we'll say that at levels 5, 9, 13 and 17 you can reallocate all skill points/proficiency points from one skill to another.

Or if you want to be fancy, instead allow characters to reallocate a number of existing skill points equal to half the number of skill points they're getting at a level. In our Fighter's example, when he next levels to level 5, he gains 6 more skill points.

In addition he can move around 3 SP. Perhaps he'll move the +1 from one Common skill to another Common skill. Perhaps he'll embark on a more ambitious retraining regime where he'll slowly change his maxxed-out Heroic skill. Since he's invested 8 SP so far it will take him three levels to complete his retraining.

But again, that's fancy. Perhaps too fiddly. Then the first suggestion is simple and fast, and still allows for four changes (big or small) during a character's career.

 

[Xeviat]

With splitting skills, I don't think we'd have to rank them. The more valuable skills are cut in two.

I'm not sure I'd like skill ranks back. I think skill talents would be good enough to show advanced expertise.


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[bgbarcus]

I like the intent of this but added complexity bothers me.

How about tying skills to proficient bonus? Give one class skill, one background skill, and one for each PB point. That means starting with four skills then adding more as the character levels. To make it more interesting, allow trading a new skill gained at higher levels for expertise in an existing skill.

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[DEFCON 1]

The only possibly helpful solution I can give is to how to reduce the power of Perception as a skill:

Perception only applies to finding living creatures that can move around and are Hiding.
Investigation applies to finding all inanimate hidden things, like secret doors and traps.

People who are trying to Hide have to mask not only their location based upon sight, but also their sounds, their scents, any indications they have left behind like tracks and such. And all of that tends to be at a distance. The person is "out there" somewhere, and you just get a sense of noticing where they might be. And becoming good at noticing those people is different than being good at noticing slight differences in how things look. Finding a secret door means getting right up close and noticing small thin gaps in the wood or stone, noticing slight color differences, slight texture differences, extremely slight changes in air movement. There's no "sixth sense" about finding secret doors like there is finding people hiding out in the wild. Instead, it's just very careful, slow investigation of the ever-so-slight clues that are right there in front of you that you can barely see. Getting on your hands and knees and finding where that thin tripwire is. Tapping the ground and hearing the hollow ring that comes from having nothing underneath it indicating a pit.

If you treat finding Hidden creatures and secret doors/traps as two different skills to be good at (which I do)... Perception as the uber-skill gets cut down in half.

 

[guachi]

Even dividing up like this (and it's how I do it) both Perception and Investigation are fantastic skills that at least one person in the party should be really good at.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The Case for Hide and Move Silently (Splitting Skills)

Please, no.

For one thing, and this was painfully obvious going all the way back, needing to use both to sneak up on someone further reduces your chance of success. If you're 50/50 in each, you've only a 1:4 chance of stealthing successfully. That's awful.

Group skill checks actually made sneaking past a monster remotely plausible, don't go undoing that.

Now, for my standard rant against splitting or adding skills: Creating incompetence. The more skills in the game, the more likely a given character will lack the exact right skill when it matters and come off as incompetent. Especially true if you don't think to give more skills as you proliferate them.

I find the skill system to be too simple in 5E.

Fine, elaborate on the resolution of skills, don't expand the number of them. Adapt something like Skill Challenges to add depth and complexity.

The first part is to identify any "offender" skills, skills which are chosen far more than other skills (I'm looking at Athletics, Perception, and Stealth initially).

The problem with Athletics isn't so much that it's too broad, it's that it's the only STR skill and one of very few skills a STR-based fighter can select in the first place.

I have a hard time thinking of someone who would want to choose Hide and not Move Silently.

As much as I hate the idea, I can. Especially if you base them on different stats (move silently might be DEX, but Hide could be INT or WIS for spotting good hiding places or using camouflage or something). An armored character might give up on moving silently, but be good at hiding so he can at least participate in planned ambushes. A light-dependent delver might give up on hiding because his light will generally give him away.

But I can think of people who may choose jump and not swim, or spot and not listen. I do feel weird saying it, because I was totally part of the group who wanted to see the skills combined in the first place back in 3E.

And with good reason. Jump, Climb & Swim really weren't worth the ranks individually. Athletics is hardly worth the proficiency, now. Splitting it up just to give the illusion of choice (while actually creating incompetence) is hardly a good reason.

Characters would get additional skill proficiencies at certain levels. 4s? 3s? We'll see. They can either spend those skills to gain new proficiency, or to learn new abilities with the skills they already have. Feats like Athlete, Actor, dungeon delver, linguist, observant, and skulker would fall in here. "Skill Talents", let's call them, to enhance skills and add new uses to them, especially those that aren't particularly used for combat.

Might help, but probably not.

IMHO, it'd be better to look at ways to add depth to skill use in play rather than try to make something of the mechanics.