D&D 5E The skill system is one dimensional.

[Jaeger]

I just said I don't think one roll Pass/Fail is bad. I think it's bad when it's absurdly asymmetrical.

Well, that makes your stance crystal clear.

It's unfair to assume that I haven't played or don't like other systems just because I say here that D&D's skill system is fuzzy and lacks rules... Because it is... And does... In other systems it doesn't really matter, because they don't have flawless magic that can't fail.

That is the core issue.

Which doesn't change my assessment in my previous post: "You either need to make spells work like skills, or skills work like spells."

It roughly functions like skill feats in PF2 except rather than being a distinct thing they are baked into the skill itself.

If your alternative system uses a die-roll; then you are just creating yet another asymmetrical skill system.

I don't see how that fundamentally fixes your core issue of the absurdly asymmetrical systems D&D uses; Spell Slots for Magic, and Roll + Proficiency Bonus for Skills.

FWIW: I think you would have an easier time making casting work off of a die roll using the Proficiency bonus the way skills do, than remaking the skill system from the ground up.

 

[Pedantic]

That is the core issue.

Which doesn't change my assessment in my previous post: "You either need to make spells work like skills, or skills work like spells."


If your alternative system uses a die-roll; then you are just creating yet another asymmetrical skill system.

I don't see how that fundamentally fixes your core issue of the absurdly asymmetrical systems D&D uses; Spell Slots for Magic, and Roll + Proficiency Bonus for Skills.

FWIW: I think you would have an easier time making casting work off of a die roll using the Proficiency bonus the way skills do, than remaking the skill system from the ground up.

I am not persuaded by this. You're really just trading off two different resource systems, one that handles the pacing of higher level abilities with a chance of failure at time of activation, and one that consumes limited daily resources. There's implications for other parts of the design, resting and pacing and so on, but there's nothing fundamentally problematic about having more than one kind of resource management in your game.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I almost think that the base skill resolution should be tiered

Untrained: Raw Ability check
Proficient: Ability check with proficiency
Expert: Ability check with proficiency and reroll or double proficiency (your choice)
Master: Ability check with proficiency and reroll, double proficiency, or minimum of 10 as roll (your choice)
Grandmaster: Ability check with proficiency and reroll, double proficiency, or minimum of 10 as roll (your choice or 2)

Skill Feats require Expert or Master or Grandmaster

It seems to me that there are four axes we can use for this, as noted in part by @MuhVerisimilitude. I'll be using terms I'm inventing more or less on the spot, other than "impact" since that's already been named, but hopefully they will be reasonable.

You have two of those four elements. Quantity, which is all the bonuses (proficiency), and control, which is all the manipulate-the-die stuff (reroll/advantage, minimum roll result.) The third, as MV says, is impact, which is the potential effect of the result. Finally, as noted upthread, we have access, where gaining greater skill opens pathways that were not open before. Each has good and bad:

• Quantity is good, because it clearly shows progression: numbers go up. It also innately carries some amount of "unlocking" things, in that when quantity is a valid way to grow, there can be target numbers that were once impossible and aren't anymore. Quantity goes bad when it gets out of hand, whether because of too much bonus or too many bonuses. Further, just because something becomes theoretically possible does not make it practical; all of these axes are affected by this to some extent, but quantity is the most susceptible.
• Control is good, because it keeps things grounded. Both targets and bonuses remain familiar, and if someone says they passed a DC 30 check, you always know that that is supposed to be a rough thing--interoperability. Control goes bad firstly when it deadens choice and distinctiveness (e.g. the way Ad/Dis is massively over-used in 5e), but more importantly, when it fails to actually show growth. If the boundaries never expand, if the things you can do never actually change, you just are less likely to screw it up...the growth can feel muted at best and nonexistent at worst.
• Impact is good, because it directly shows how things get better. You don't just nebulously succeed 5% more often--you actually get more bang for your buck (sometimes literally more bang!) Further, by giving more impact, the stakes are raised; failure now carries the opportunity cost of not getting the extra things you'd get from succeeding. Impact goes bad in the qualitative version of how quantity goes bad: an ever-expanding horizon of what you can achieve becomes unwieldy and hard to grok. Further, oftentimes there's only so much you can do to expand impact, because it's deeply intertwined with the underlying design of the game.
• Access is good, because it walks a middle road between quantity and impact (what one might call "quality.") That is, you objectively gain access to something new, so growth is obvious and concrete, but whether and how you use that new thing depends on context and situation, reaping the best of both worlds. It also tends to be easier to design around, since it doesn't risk the ever-expanding issue for either of those. Access goes bad in the most obvious way of the four, the dreaded, "everything not permitted is forbidden." Further, while it is easier to design challenges around access levels, the fact that these things mix qualitative and quantitative makes it much harder to design the choices themselves, because they must be both mechanically useful and thematically warranted.

I think any system attempting to deliver a satisfying skill experience should aim to use all four approaches in order to balance out their faults. So, for example:

Someone can be Untrained, but still get various bonuses (e.g. Jack of All Trades.) They will always have the lowest tier of access (unless some other feature applies to grant it narrowly), but might have contextual sources of quantity or control. Impact is generally not available.
Moving on to Trained, this nets you a baseline of quantity (e.g. Proficiency in 5e) and most, but not all, access benefits. There may still be things restricted to higher development, but they're rare, and justifiably inaccessible to most. Control and impact are generally derived from context, not from how much one has learned.
An Expert gains reliable control features (e.g. 5e Rogue's Reliable Talent), and possibly expands their existing quantity features (e.g. double Proficiency in 5e.) All or very nearly all forms of access are now granted, some of which may (likely should) give influence over impact.
A Master has the highest possible level of investment, and thus if it can be achieved through this skill, the Master is capable of it, though dice may of course still produce failure. All four axes are at their peak, barring unfavorable circumstances, and conversely, favorable circumstances allow the Master to achieve things which some would consider impossible (or at least implausible.)

Coupled with the above, you need skills that are potent and flexible, and it needs to be clear to those running the game that that is what skills are for. To design or run skills as narrow, ineffective things that pale in comparison to other approaches is to basically make skills a superfluous element. Skills need to be genuinely worth using if people are going to want to use them!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Which doesn't change my assessment in my previous post: "You either need to make spells work like skills, or skills work like spells."

Or, alternatively, you need to have the things skills do be more powerful than they are...but not the kinds of things spells can do. And then, likewise, spells need to do things that skills can't...and not do things skills can.

People talk a great deal about "niche protection" and then D&D magic strolls in and gobbles it all up without a care in the world.

 

[DEFCON 1]

People talk a great deal about "niche protection" and then D&D magic strolls in and gobbles it all up without a care in the world.

Yeah, but in any specific party at the time the challenge arises, there's going to be any number of pieces of magic that the party just won't have on hand. Which essentially means that magic might as well not even exist as far as the players and characters are concerned.

If (general) you don't have any PC that took 'Find Traps', then it doesn't matter if that spells exists in the totality of D&D because it's not going to help the characters at the time they need it. And at which point the Rogue with the appropriate skills will still have their place. How often do Wizard PCs actually have 'Knock' prepared (let alone in their spell book)? 'Comprehend Languages'? 'Spider Climb'? Does the Cleric or Druid PC have 'Water Breathing' prepared when the group is dungeon crawling (before coming upon an underground river tunnel to swim through?

I do not disagree with the claim that a lot of magic and spells duplicate the functionality that skills do (and don't involve a check for it to work). I just disagree with how often they are ready available to the PCs when they need it most. Now maybe your table always seems to has the proper spell at hand at all times and thus makes some characters superfluous... but that is certainly not the experience at my tables. When we play, occasionally a PC might have a utility spell on hand to use at just the right time... but more often than not the ability check and skill system will still be the most frequent mechanic engaged with in the game.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yeah, but in any specific party at the time the challenge arises, there's going to be any number of pieces of magic that the party just won't have on hand. Which essentially means that magic might as well not even exist are far as the players and characters are concerne.

If (general) you don't have any PC that took 'Find Traps', then it doesn't matter if that spells exists in the totality of D&D because it's not going to help the characters at the time they need it. And at which point the Rogue with the appropriate skills will still have their place. How often do Wizard PCs actually have 'Knock' prepared (let alone in their spell book)? 'Comprehend Languages'? 'Spider Climb'? Does the Cleric or Druid PC have 'Water Breathing' prepared when the group is dungeon crawling (before coming upon an underground river tunnel to swim through?

I do not disagree with the claim that a lot of magic and spells duplicate the functionality that skills do (and don't involve a check for it to work). I just disagree with how often they are ready available to the PCs when they need it most. Now maybe your table always seems to has the proper spell at hand at all times and thus makes some characters superfluous... but that is certainly not the experience at my tables. When we play, occasionally a PC might have a utility spell on hand to use at just the right time... but more often than not the ability check and skill system will still be the most frequent mechanic engaged with in the game.

Being able to invalidate non-magical approaches at all is the problem.

Well, that and that skills are treated as being weak, anemic garbage. Which sucks! Because that's one of the worst possible 3e-isms that 5e could have inherited...and the text doesn't even support it. It's purely a culture-of-play issue now.

 

[Scott Christian]

Being able to invalidate non-magical approaches at all is the problem.

Well, that and that skills are treated as being weak, anemic garbage. Which sucks! Because that's one of the worst possible 3e-isms that 5e could have inherited...and the text doesn't even support it. It's purely a culture-of-play issue now.

It is just so table dependent. I feel like wherever you are playing, a place where skills are anemic and always overrun by spells, is a place I wouldn't enjoy. But I really have never seen it happen. I have seen where the wizard is the utility expert and always solving problems. But that same wizard was trash in combat compared to the cleric, barbarian, rogue, and warlock.

I can see an argument against wanting the wizard to have to choose a path like all other classes, instead of getting to choose their path every morning they wake up. But I have found, even that problem to be small.

Can I ask a question. Can you give some examples from your table that highlights skill checks as being anemic in value?

(This is not a gotchya question. It is me simply trying to understand how this is such a problem for your table.)

 

[Pedantic]

Or, alternatively, you need to have the things skills do be more powerful than they are...but not the kinds of things spells can do. And then, likewise, spells need to do things that skills can't...and not do things skills can.

People talk a great deal about "niche protection" and then D&D magic strolls in and gobbles it all up without a care in the world.

I don't know that strict separation is necessary here either, particularly if you have a sharp divide in access to skills (or to the most effective levels/proficiencies in skills, or whatever you're using). It's kind of fine if the wizard spends a slot to levitate over the wall and a rogue climbs it, if the consequences/risks/costs of those actions are held equitable in some way. Heck, it's even desirable if the rogue outstrips the wizard in those cases, where levitation would clearly work, but the skill is less costly. By the time the wizard can fly regularly, the rogue should be balancing on clouds anyway.

While we probably disagree on the magnitude of what spells should do and possible at which levels they should do it, more limited access to them is certainly something I'd advocate for alongside an expansion of skills. Less Wizard, more Fire Mage and Dread Necromancer.

 

[Jaeger]

There's implications for other parts of the design, resting and pacing and so on, but there's nothing fundamentally problematic about having more than one kind of resource management in your game.

I tend to agree.

But the OP's objection was the asymmetry specific to D&D of Magic vs. Skills.

The most direct solution to address his complaint would be to make the disparate systems symmetrical - going one direction or the other.

MuhVerisimilitude's seems to want to try and fill in holes in the skill system, but still keeping it otherwise asymmetrical.

I just don't see how that will just not lead to other unforeseen asymmetric issues.

But ultimately my opinion is worth as much as anyone else's.

People talk a great deal about "niche protection" and then D&D magic strolls in and gobbles it all up without a care in the world.

Ain't that the truth...

 

[Pedantic]

I tend to agree.

But the OP's objection was the asymmetry specific to D&D of Magic vs. Skills.

The most direct solution to address his complaint would be to make the disparate systems symmetrical - going one direction or the other.

MuhVerisimilitude's seems to want to try and fill in holes in the skill system, but still keeping it otherwise asymmetrical.

I just don't see how that will just not lead to other unforeseen asymmetric issues.

But ultimately my opinion is worth as much as anyone else's.

I think it's a mistake to focus on asymmetric systems, when we're talking about asymmetric impact. Homogenizing your systems necessarily involves shrinking the play space as you give players less levers to pull. It's why I'm so pointedly against generic difficulty tables and scaling DCs: they reduce what has the potential to be a quite broad system of action declarations down to one in the interests of making it easier to balance and plan around.

It will absolutely lead to unforeseen difficulties, and it should do so! Game design that provides more options to the player is necessarily a harder task than game design that funnels them into limited action declarations. I've argued before that if we had to pick one basic task resolution system to run the game on, it would be better to give everyone access to low level spells than skills; assigning a limited daily resource to overcome problems and playing a press-your luck game as you run out of it is more interesting than the usual reactive skill rolls. At least then players have a choice of what they prepare to do each day, when they sped their resources, and so on. Skills don't have very good gameplay.