Ok some of you, I'm an old Grognard. I've been playing since the pink book came out up through 3.5. I then switched to PF since 4E was a complete CF (in my opinion). I still don't like 5E as well as PF1, but 2 of my groups only play 5E, so slowly learning the details of the system.
So you don't want to technically call it 'skill checks' fine. Use whatever phrase you want to use. Every 5E group I've seen and every 5E Adventure's League session I attended called them 'skill checks.' Several of you seem to be getting hung up on what is (to me) a silly distinction without a significant difference. Whatever.
I am talking about a character that can handle some of those 'things' that come up which aren't just straight roleplaying discourse or an attack role. Happier?
Onward. I don't want to go into too much detail and possibly hurt some feelings if some particular people read this.
Current campaign. We did have a session zero (some 2 years ago). The campaign started with the PC being mercenaries hired to help with a minor war. The focus on combat abilities did fit with the theme of the group, PC's, and campaign. However, due to PC choices, the campaign path took a hard left turn (after we lost the war) and kept getting further and further away from a mercenary company.
We have 5 PC's. I believe of those there are proficient; 4 perception, 4 acrobatics, 3 athletics, 3 or 4 stealth, etc... Several with a lot of overlap. But those seemed to become less important as the campaign progressed.
Everyone else assumed the druid would have nature and the cleric would have religion. But both dumped intelligence, so didn't take those.
No one terribly good at investigation, intimidation, arcana, sleight of hand,
No one at all with religion, nature, history, handle animal, or medicine.
Other than one person with thieves tools, no one had any equipment proficiencies which were ever useful.
All these 'things' started becoming more and more common with the goals we were trying to accomplish.
In total we had around 12+ proficiencies which were either not covered at all or covered fairly poorly. So we tended to fail those checks most of the time even thought they ended up becoming fairly prominent in the campaign. I am trying to avoid that situation, if the other players again make focused combat machines.