Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana: Get Better At Skills With These Feats

The latest Unearthed Arcana from Jeremy Crawford and again featuring guest writer Robert J. Schwalb introduces a number of feats which make you better at skills. Each increases the skill's primary ability score, doubles your proficiency bonus, and gives you a little bonus ability. "This week we introduce new feats to playtest. Each of these feats makes you better at one of the game’s eighteen skills. We invite you to read them, give them a try in play, and let us know what you think in the survey we release in the next installment of Unearthed Arcana."

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[Hussar]

/snip
So I decided landing on the back of a flying dragon was not simple so I called for two athletics checks, one to leap onto the back of the dragon and land on it's neck the other to try to hold on (wrap her legs around it's neck). I decided to treat the first as a stunt during her movement, the second check as a grapple attack and she still had one action to swing her axe.
/snip

So, you ruled that a grapple check was a non-action and granted the character an extra action. Considering that the rules here are pretty clear that grapple is part of an attack action, I'm not sure why you think you were actually following the rules here.

It should have been - Athletics check to jump (part of movement and perfectly part of RAW and RAI) and then attack action. Presuming more than one attack per round, the character gives up one attack to grapple and then can attack with the great axe. If the character has only one attack per round, for whatever reason, then the player would have to choose between grapple and attacking with the axe.

But, in any case, the only issue I have here is that you might have given the character an extra attack. Not a biggie.

So if I describe an area of difficult terrain, say a muddy bog, and my player says, my years of running in the shallow waters of the Silvery Lake kicks in as I high step my way through the bog, I might determine okay, make a DC15 athletics check. On a success, your attempt to power your way through lets you avoid the normal movement penalty, on a failure, you get yourself stuck 5 feet in and are grappled by the bog.

See, this is why I have such a problem with dumping all these things in the DM's lap. Presuming a +6-8 Athletics skill, the character has a 35-45% chance of failure here. Now, if the character fails, the character gives up ALL movement, and is now Grabbed, meaning the character's movement is 0 until the character breaks free. Which costs an action. IOW, failure costs me the entire round.

That's the penalty. The reward is 15 feet of movement. Why on earth would a player attempt this? It's a total fools bet. Note, with the feat, there is no penalty for failure (other than the terrain still has effect) and all it costs is a bonus action to try. Never minding that the character could in that situation, simply move 10 feet (at a cost of 20 feet of movement) and jump 10 feet, losing 10 feet of total movement, true, but, at a 100% success rate.

 

[Oofta]

So, you ruled that a grapple check was a non-action and granted the character an extra action. Considering that the rules here are pretty clear that grapple is part of an attack action, I'm not sure why you think you were actually following the rules here.

Her grapple check was one of her attacks. She has two. Just for to be clear.

Grappling
When you want to grab a creature or wrestle with it, you
can use the Attack action to make a special melee attack,
a grapple. If you’re able to make multiple attacks with the
Attack action, this attack replaces one of them.​

It should have been - Athletics check to jump (part of movement and perfectly part of RAW and RAI) and then attack action. Presuming more than one attack per round, the character gives up one attack to grapple and then can attack with the great axe. If the character has only one attack per round, for whatever reason, then the player would have to choose between grapple and attacking with the axe.

But, in any case, the only issue I have here is that you might have given the character an extra attack. Not a biggie.

The jump included a stunt (aiming for the neck of the dragon), which is why I called for the first athletics check.

The point of the story though is that the current skills give some examples of things you might do, not a list of things you do with specific DCs and specific results. Codifying an Acrobatics check DC 15 to ignore difficult terrain goes against the spirit of 5E.

Or as it says on page 5 of the basic rules

Even in the context of a pitched battle,
there’s still plenty of opportunity for adventurers to
attempt wacky stunts like surfing down a flight of stairs
on a shield, to examine the environment (perhaps by
pulling a mysterious lever), and to interact with other
creatures, including allies, enemies, and neutral parties.​

Or in my story, jump on the back of a flying dragon. Because that's what barbarians do. That's what epic stories are made of, not playing the card with the set DC or contest that applies a condition or ignores a terrain feature.

 

[Satyrn]

See, this is why I have such a problem with dumping all these things in the DM's lap. Presuming a +6-8 Athletics skill, the character has a 35-45% chance of failure here. Now, if the character fails, the character gives up ALL movement, and is now Grabbed, meaning the character's movement is 0 until the character breaks free. Which costs an action. IOW, failure costs me the entire round.

That's the penalty. The reward is 15 feet of movement. Why on earth would a player attempt this?

Because something in the scenario itself makes those 15 feet exceptionally valuable to the player in a way that no whiteroom theorycrafting can replicate. I don't know what that would be, but it's probably some rare thing that will never come up again. And that one time it does, it's awesome.

Made more awesome because it comes from the fiction, and is quickly resolved by the DM saying "Yeah, roll an Athletics check, DC 15."

By the way, someone here (I completely forget who) provided me with exceptionally useful advice for determining DCs. Paraphrased (because I made the advice my own), its:

If the check really ought to succeed, it's DC 10.
If the check ought to be tricky, it's DC 15.
If the check really ought to fail, it's DC 20 (Because heroes ought not fail too often),

And it's a gut reaction which category to use. The swamp thing is really ought to succeed. Jumping on the dragon really ought to be tricky, and I don't use ought to fail unless I can't justify tricky even a bit.

 

[Corwin]

DMG, page 271: Climb onto a Bigger Creature

Just an FYI. Do with it what you will...

 

[OB1]

If the check really ought to succeed, it's DC 10.
If the check ought to be tricky, it's DC 15.
If the check really ought to fail, it's DC 20 (Because heroes ought not fail too often),

This is a fantastic guide.
[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] - in regards to why someone would make that bet on the muddy bog, it would be because they need all 30 feet of movement to close with an enemy with strong ranged attack. If they just needed an extra 5 feet, I would just give it to them because of their athletics skill, if they needed 10 extra feet I would make it a DC 10. Note that they still have the choice just to take the regular movement penalty and let the enemy range attack them for a round. But if you want to "break" the rules by using a skill, I'm going to make it a significant risk/reward decision point to do so.

My one quibble with [MENTION=6801204]Satyrn[/MENTION] 's guide is (Because heroes ought not fail too often). I would say rather (because heroes will take big risks to themselves to help others).

 

[Gradine]

Not specifically acrobatics related, but something that happened our last game.

The PCs were fighting a dragon. The barbarian had climbed a tower the previous round and the dragon had attacked other characters on the ground, ending it's flight close enough that the barbarian could leap on it's back (it was a young, stupid dragon that didn't know the barbarian had boots of springing and striding).

So I decided landing on the back of a flying dragon was not simple so I called for two athletics checks, one to leap onto the back of the dragon and land on it's neck the other to try to hold on (wrap her legs around it's neck). I decided to treat the first as a stunt during her movement, the second check as a grapple attack and she still had one action to swing her axe.

On the dragon's round he did a barrel roll as part of his movement to try to get the barbarian off (it didn't work) but I had her make another athletics check to hold on. I thought about having the dragon try to grapple the barbarian (to throw her off), but decided instead to just attack her because his breath weapon recharged.

It was a lot of fun, and very cinematic.

But according to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], the only thing she could have done was one athletics check per action. I don't see any support for that in the rules. I'm probably stretching the grapple a little bit, but she didn't ask "Can I jump on the dragon, grab it's wings and stop it from flying".

Like others, my concern is that if we start hard coding skills with specific results these types of things won't happen as often. It's very similar to how they handle stealth. They could have come up with very concrete rules, but chose to do more vague and give the DM a lot of leeway. That encourages me to reward my players for having their characters do creative things like hanging off the ceiling to hide from the guards entering the room even though there's technically line of sight.

The more skills with non-combat uses are "hard coded" the less creative the game gets.

I rather disagree with this point entirely. The reason for this is what I like to call the "blank page problem".

I teach creative writing (well, dramatic writing, so creative writing that's 95% dialogue) and I do a lot of in-class free-writing assignments. You know what free-writing assignment is consistently the most difficult for my students, every time?

Give them a blank page of paper and just tell them to "write."

Half the class will just stare at the page for a few minutes; the other half will start with something but most will hit a brick wall pretty early. Turns out having infinite possibilities with absolutely nothing to build on is pretty paralyzing, creatively speaking. But give them a prompt, any prompt, and the students will just write and write and some will even get upset when I tell them to stop. Parameters grease the wheels of creativity. Every time.

So when a feat or some other rule comes along and says "you can do X with Athletics" I don't (and I don't think my students would either) see "you can only X with Athletics". What we would all, collectively see, is a jumping off point. "Hey, if Athletics lets me do X, does that mean I can do Y also?" "Oh yeah! And what about Z?"

It's a pretty awesome thing to witness, really.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Not specifically acrobatics related, but something that happened our last game.

The PCs were fighting a dragon. The barbarian had climbed a tower the previous round and the dragon had attacked other characters on the ground, ending it's flight close enough that the barbarian could leap on it's back (it was a young, stupid dragon that didn't know the barbarian had boots of springing and striding).

So I decided landing on the back of a flying dragon was not simple so I called for two athletics checks, one to leap onto the back of the dragon and land on it's neck the other to try to hold on (wrap her legs around it's neck). I decided to treat the first as a stunt during her movement, the second check as a grapple attack and she still had one action to swing her axe.

On the dragon's round he did a barrel roll as part of his movement to try to get the barbarian off (it didn't work) but I had her make another athletics check to hold on. I thought about having the dragon try to grapple the barbarian (to throw her off), but decided instead to just attack her because his breath weapon recharged.

It was a lot of fun, and very cinematic.

But according to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], the only thing she could have done was one athletics check per action. I don't see any support for that in the rules. I'm probably stretching the grapple a little bit, but she didn't ask "Can I jump on the dragon, grab it's wings and stop it from flying".

Like others, my concern is that if we start hard coding skills with specific results these types of things won't happen as often. It's very similar to how they handle stealth. They could have come up with very concrete rules, but chose to do more vague and give the DM a lot of leeway. That encourages me to reward my players for having their characters do creative things like hanging off the ceiling to hide from the guards entering the room even though there's technically line of sight.

The more skills with non-combat uses are "hard coded" the less creative the game gets.

I would say that letting the player also attack is a bit of a stretch, regardless of whether athletics to do fancy things can be done as just part of he movement. Were you considering jumping on eh Dragon and grabbing hold one thing, but used multiple rolls to make it harder/more complex, and deal with "what if they make he jump, but can't get a hold of anything"?

The way you describe it, sounds like from your own POV, the character got a move, an action..and then maybe an attack as a bonus action?

I've considered that as a houserule, actually. If you do "fancy movement", ie something that is an Action, and you have the ability to attack as a bonus action when you take the attack action, you can do so when you take most physical skill actions. But it is *definately* a houserule, not just a different ruling.

 

[Oofta]

The way you describe it, sounds like from your own POV, the character got a move, an action..and then maybe an attack as a bonus action?

No. I even quoted the rules above. You can ask for an athletics check as part of movement to do a stunt (jumping to land on the dragon's neck wasn't guaranteed). If you have multiple attacks, one of those attacks can be a grapple.

So stunt while moving required a check, grapple required a check as part of the attack, character has two attacks so I let her swing her axe as her second attack.

 

[Satyrn]

My one quibble with [MENTION=6801204]Satyrn[/MENTION] 's guide is (Because heroes ought not fail too often). I would say rather (because heroes will take big risks to themselves to help others).

Well, summing it all up in one sentence can't capture every nuance, especially since I was trying to reverse/soften the "really ought to fail" bit that came before to highlight that even the crazy stupid stunts the players want to try ought to work regularly enough to be worth trying.

But again, the guide wasn't originally mine. Someone else said something like "the game works perfectly fine just using DC 10 and 15" and that stuck with me.

 

[Oofta]

Give them a blank page of paper and just tell them to "write."

This is something all DMs have to be aware of. You need to describe the environment in such a way that they can envision what is going on (I use minis and blocks made of clay for 3D effect to help with this). I do agree that knowing nothing about the environment, about the combat, about what obstacle they are facing would be annoying. The DM has to paint a picture, tell a story. The players then fill in the blanks and complete the story with how their hero would react.

I try not to set up situations where the players don't know what there options are. But in my example, they knew where the tower was. I was describing the dragon swooping in low and (not that I thought of it) they knew the top of the tower was above the dragon.

At that point my player asked to run up the tower (she has a lot of movement as a barbarian) at the end of turn 1, I had no clue what she was doing. The dragon ignored her and attacked her companions on the ground and on turn two she surprised me by jumping onto it's back.

She knew there was a dragon, and had a reasonable idea of it's tactics. She knew her character would rather go toe to toe with the dragon and decided it would be awesome if she could leap heroically on it's back. She didn't think in terms of the game mechanics, she thought "What would a half-orc barbarian do?" That's the whole point.

This was by no means a "blank page". If I ever have a character who doesn't know what to do (particularly new players) I will nudge them and give them hints and options. It doesn't take long before they start coming up with crazy awesome stuff on their own.

In previous editions (4E in particular, but 3.5 also had this somewhat) the rules for how you could interact were very detailed. In 4E, we had powers which most people I played with would print out and put in card sleeves. The game became a tactical war game. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but it wasn't what I play D&D for.

People stopped thinking "What would my raging half-orc barbarian do in this situation" they started thinking "what card can I play that would counter the card the opposition just played?"

I don't want to go there again.