D&D 3E/3.5 Thoughts on skill checks

[Greenfield]

While this is labeled as 3.5, I thing just about anyone can chime in on this.

Every skill in the game has an ability score it's tied to. That's standard through every edition since 3.0, and it works.

Sort of.

The fact is that sometimes it seems like it's hard tied to the wrong ability score, or that more than one might come into play.

For example: In D&D3.* there's a skill called Jump. Since it's Strength based, and gets bonuses from faster movements, that suggests that Elephants are champion long and high jumpers. The move faster than people do and have immense strength.

Yeah, that was a test designed to fail, but that was the point. To try and find a fail point.

Anyway I'm thinking about situations where there might be two ways to see something done. Can a mastermind Intimidate with a knowing smile and a cruel laugh? Oh heck yeah. The Intimidate skill is Charisma based, after all.

By those rules though, the seven-foot Barbarian who just ripped the cell door off as he entered won't intimidate anyone. Charisma was his dump stat.

In all of those cases a good DM will call for the check using something other than the standard ability as a base. (Okay, the mastermind can keep his, he earned it )

But for those of us playing characters that aren't elephants, it still seems like movement, timing and a good take-off should count for something.

So I'm suggesting the idea of a hybrid skill check: For the long jump perhaps take the hard average of Strength and Dex scores.

Climb is still Strength. Swim is currently Strength, but I could see Dex and possibly Con entering in there. Okay, Con would be accounted for in an Endurance check, but averaging the STR and DEX scores seems like a not-unreasonablle approach.

WHat other skills can you think of that might call for that kind of split-decision in play?

 

[commandercrud]

See 5e DMG p175

 

[Charlaquin]

Yeah, 5e beat you to this punch by 5 years. Personally, I don’t even call for skill checks any more. I call for ability checks, and let the player decide if they think one of their trained skills is applicable.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The idea of breaking skills free from stats was floated in the Next Playtest (if not earlier - 4e featured a number of feats & utilities that substituted different checks or stats for eachother; STR as intimidation was one of those Gleemax discussions that wouldn't die), it didn't make it into the 5e PH standard rules, but it is an option in the DMG, as has been noted.

 

[Charlaquin]

The idea of breaking skills free from stats was floated in the Next Playtest (if not earlier - 4e featured a number of feats & utilities that substituted different checks or stats for eachother; STR as intimidation was one of those Gleemax discussions that wouldn't die), it didn't make it into the 5e PH standard rules, but it is an option in the DMG, as has been noted.

It’s interesting, the way checks are worded in 5e - e.g. “Dexterity (Stealth)” instead of just “Stealth” is kind of an artifact of this. It was conceived during the playtest to better facilitate the mixing and matching of skills with different abilities, yet it stuck around in the final version despite skills with different abilities not being in the PHB. Not that I’m complaining, mind - it makes the optional rule smoother and easier to implement. Just an interesting curiosity.

 

[Scott Aguirre]

While this is labeled as 3.5, I thing just about anyone can chime in on this.

Every skill in the game has an ability score it's tied to. That's standard through every edition since 3.0, and it works.

Sort of.

The fact is that sometimes it seems like it's hard tied to the wrong ability score, or that more than one might come into play.

For example: In D&D3.* there's a skill called Jump. Since it's Strength based, and gets bonuses from faster movements, that suggests that Elephants are champion long and high jumpers. The move faster than people do and have immense strength.

Yeah, that was a test designed to fail, but that was the point. To try and find a fail point.

Anyway I'm thinking about situations where there might be two ways to see something done. Can a mastermind Intimidate with a knowing smile and a cruel laugh? Oh heck yeah. The Intimidate skill is Charisma based, after all.

By those rules though, the seven-foot Barbarian who just ripped the cell door off as he entered won't intimidate anyone. Charisma was his dump stat.

In all of those cases a good DM will call for the check using something other than the standard ability as a base. (Okay, the mastermind can keep his, he earned it )

But for those of us playing characters that aren't elephants, it still seems like movement, timing and a good take-off should count for something.

So I'm suggesting the idea of a hybrid skill check: For the long jump perhaps take the hard average of Strength and Dex scores.

Climb is still Strength. Swim is currently Strength, but I could see Dex and possibly Con entering in there. Okay, Con would be accounted for in an Endurance check, but averaging the STR and DEX scores seems like a not-unreasonablle approach.

WHat other skills can you think of that might call for that kind of split-decision in play?

You bring up some good points. One other possible way to address this is to use "Favorable and Unfavorable Conditions" from page 64 of the 3.5e PHB. So for your Barbarian example, either give him +2 or make the DC -2 when he does his Intimidate check.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

By those rules though, the seven-foot Barbarian who just ripped the cell door off as he entered won't intimidate anyone. Charisma was his dump stat.

I always thought this was a problem with barbarian design. They get stronger by tapping in to the power of their feelings. Barbarians should totally be Charisma-based. Sadly, no one (or almost no one) agrees with me on this.

 

[Stoutstien]

All mental/ personally based ablities are, and always have been, clunky.
The example of the barbarian ripping off the cell door is a good one. The challenge was whether or not the barbarian could succeed in that action and the player shouldn't rely on a secondary checky to see if the NPCs where intimidated or not. The individual personalities should dictate that.
Now if the barbarian wants to go further and rip the the door off IN an intimidating fashion that is a different check. Maybe they want to make it look like it's practically made of paper as far as they are considered so what I would do is allow them to make the Strength check without proficiency and then make the CHA (intimidation) challenge with proficiency. If they also have proficiency in intimation I would grant them advantage on the challenge as well. The challenge would be against the NPCs' morale 1D20 + Wis modifier.

Not exactly how the book says to do it but I like players to feel like they can do more than the sum of their stats.

 

[Don Durito]

If you can rip a door off it's hinges why do you need to roll intimidate?

You just ripped a door of it's hinges. If the person who your trying to scare is likely to be scared by that sort of thing than they're scared. Why roll the dice?

The barbarian rolls intimidate when he wants to convince someone he's more scary than he looks.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If the person who your trying to scare is likely to be scared by that sort of thing

a) Because you don't know if the person you are trying to intimidate is the kind of person who would be impressed by that sort of thing.

b) Because in the process of ripping the door of it's hinges you might drop it on your toe, making yourself look like an idiot and ruining the effect.