NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6430617" data-attributes="member: 2067">It's goes a bit against what D&D did in 3e and 4e, but I personally think it's kind of frickin' genius. Here's the way I think about it:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> First, you have ability scores. You roll straight ability checks when there is no element of personal skill or training involved (like a STR check to lift a gate)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Second, you have skills. You use a skill when there is some specialized training, but it is a part of you that you can always do, much like an ability score. A skill is a specialized application of an ability check. Perform is a skill -- you can be naked and thrown in prison and still do a Perform check. IYKWIMAITYD.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Third, you have tools. Tools require some object to do, and proficiency represents your ability to use that object. A tool proficiency represents your ability to use a certain item to a certain end well. Tools can also be used with any ability score that the DM deems worthy. Tool proficiencies are also "cheap," because anyone can learn to do it. </li> </ul>I think to a certain degree for experienced players this will be one of 5e's many Yoda Moments: "You must unlearn what you have learned."Why is picking a lock or disarming a trap related to theives' tools now? Because you need thieves' tools to do it. Without that tool, you can't do the thing. And with the tool, sometimes it might be a Dex check (steady hands), sometimes it might be an Int check (figuring out how a mechanism works), sometimes it might be, I dunno, a Wis check (the room is pitch black and you're disarming the combination lock entirely by feel!). And thus, anyone can learn to do it -- it isn't class-specific.Meanwhile, Sleight of Hand is a skill. Your character is pretty much always capable of Sleight of Hand, and they don't need any equipment to do it, and doing it is a deliberate function of Dexterity, and it is a certain, specialized application of that general ability score. Animal handling is a general ability to influence beasts. But proficiency in, say, land vehicles, lets you make a donkey pull a cart. Performance is an application of Charisma to put on a good show, but playing a specific instrument is a tool proficiency (and if you had to play a particularly complex piece, you might have to make an Int or Dex check with the thing -- or maybe a CON check if it's a horn!). The division conveys quite clearly where the specialized training is applied, and lets skills be ability-score-narrow, but with broad application (so good for classes to grant), while the tools are application-narrow, but with broad ability score potential (so great to allow anyone to get).</blockquote>

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