Unsatisfied with the D&D 5e skill system

[Harzel]

If the core issue is "players have no idea what to do with their skills if they are not specific", then I wouldn't change the rules at all and instead simply give them a handout that lists each official D&D 5e skill with a list of things you can do with that skill.

This. And perhaps to do that in a way that leverages / integrates with how the OP has been thinking about the problem: go ahead and create and/or steal a more detailed list of skills. Then just figure out which 5e skill subsumes each one and use that (along with abilities/skills info from the PHB) to construct the list that @Rya.Reisender suggests. Seems like that would produce a set of ideas for the players that is as specific and suggestive as an expanded skill list would be without the trouble of having to muck about with rules changes.

I have another point to make, but I want to preface it by saying I intend no disrespect to @twofalls or your players - please don't take this comment in a way that is as extreme or dismissive as it may at first sound. Anyway, here's the thing: 5e skills are not meant as buttons to be pushed. The basic outlook for the player should be that the PC "can attempt anything". In the main, ideas for PC actions should arise from their circumstances, not from a preexisting list of things they can do.* Of course, it is reasonable that that should be tempered by knowing what each PC is good at, but in 5e that description by design comprises very general categories, not specific actions. The advantage of this is adaptability to varying circumstances. (The PHB section Chapter 7 Using Ability Scores >> Skills >> Variant: Skills with Different Abilities suggests one facet of this flexibility.)

Now, really, I expect that you understand this pretty well already and so it is possible that I am just a noisy intrusion. But several of your comments indicate, to me at least, that your players are leaning, perhaps oh so slightly, in the direction of wanting to have buttons to push. So I guess the suggestion is that, in addition to supplying the above-mentioned list, focus the players back on immersing themselves in the situation you describe, and understanding that (magic aside) they can attempt anything that would be physically possible (for a hero!) in that situation. If they want to know whether their abilities or skills will give them a leg up (so to speak) on a particular action, IMO there's nothing wrong with having that meta-discussion (as long as it doesn't turn into a lengthy debate).

* This is more or less a restatement of what other posters have already said; I hope different words will be additionally useful.

 

[twofalls]

I'm just brainstorming here. My point is that the skills aren't balanced right, and you don't want to exacerbate that problem by introducing a ton of minor skills that are more-unique but less-powerful.

Thank you. I understood this, but it was still well worth pointing out. I was actually convinced early on by 5ekyu's short essay on the topic of skills, and have decided to do this. I am uncoupling all skills from both stats and class/backgrounds and simply allowing the PC's to gain slots which they will freely choose their skills (most characters will thus have 4). Then I will be tying in game skill use to backgrounds. If the PC can make a logical case why their background will allow them to skillfully preform an action I will allow it dependent on the circumstances. The four extra skills represent things the PC's have picked up that are atypical or complimentary of their backgrounds, thus hopefully preventing cookie cutter similarities (ie. all farmers are not the same, all nobles are not the same, etc).

The problem my group is having with getting stuck on what to do has a lot to do with the makeup of the party. Everyone is bright, that isn't the problem, however they overthink absolutely everything to the point of paralysis. There are a great deal of politics and NP interaction in the game, and combats tend to be very dangerous most of the time. Everyone is very attached to their PCs (because I have designed things to encourage this attachment) and no one wants to die. Right now the two party leaders are on vicarages (I'm a seminarian and most of the rpg group are somehow associated with the seminary) and will be returning this Summer, however in the interim the party has suffered from indecision and a great amount of doing very little.

I don't know if changing the skill system will really help here, but I was considering it. Now however, I think I will run with the above idea, but not until the new campaign starts when the two leaders are back from their assignments. The players are having fun, or so they insist, and that is really the important thing.

This thread took on a life of its own, but everyone has been congenial which I very much appreciate. I'm so used to social media where the lowest common denominator is something evolved just beyond pond scum that reading ten pages on a forum of polite conversation is a breath of fresh air.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Maybe it works at your table, due to your own social contract, but it is very clearly against the process of play, which states that players declare their actions rather than their goals.

With all due respect, you are misunderstanding the plastyle. The statement of goals is a perfectly natural extension of declaring actions and simply allows the players to have greater agency over their PCs - with the added benefit of lessening the workload of the DM and perhaps even allowing a scene to go in a direction the DM never imagined. It's that last one which is very enjoyable to me.

How does that work, can you please provide an example?

I'm sure @Ovinomancer can provide more, but here are a couple just off the cuff:

Example 1 - climbing the tower with a stated goal
DM: "You reach the top of the hill leaving the forest below you. Before you is a 40' grey tower made of large, rough blocks of stone. The tower appears to have no door or windows. What do you do?"
Player 1: "I'd like to climb the tower using the blocks as hand/foot holds. But before getting to the top, I'd like to stop and get a good
look around to let the others what I see."
DM: "Roll a Strength (Athletics) check, DC 15 - the blocks are old and a bit crumbly"

The player clearly states an action (climb the tower) and a goal (to get a better view of the surroundings before reaching the top). Without the goal statement, the DM has to make a big assumption that since the PC wanted to climb the tower that they will get to the top with a successful roll and step into a group of quietly waiting orcs.... which is in no way what the player intended. And then you have an awkward phase of "that's not what I wanted to do" and the scene is, well, ruined. By stating a goal, the DM is now prompted to allow the perched climber a better chance to hear the whispers coming from above and give them a chance to act on that knowledge. If the player was explicit that they wanted to climb the tower and stop short of the top, but didn't explain their goal, then the DM has to prompt them again: "ok, you are almost near the top, now what?" - when that would have been obvious if they had just stated the goal in the first place. That last point is a subtle difference, but one that, IMO, makes the action flow more naturally with a much DM prompting.

Example 2 - knocking a creature out without a stated goal
Now in combat, declaring a goal is certainly not always necessary but there is at least one very important exception.
Player 1: "I swing my axe at the orc - I know a 17 hits - 8 damage!"
DM: "You cleave the orcs skull and it falls to the ground"
Player 1: "But my PC just wanted to knock it out!"
Because the goal was not stated, we now pause the game to have an awkward phase of rolling back the action when, with a simple stated goal, we can have the narrative just flow naturally.

Gotta run or else would add some more... but do those make sense @Sadras?

 

[Ovinomancer]

Maybe it works at your table, due to your own social contract, but it is very clearly against the process of play, which states that players declare their actions rather than their goals.

There's no way I could possibly play the way you run it, for the exact reason I don't play any of those other games which are designed to facilitate that sort of thing. It violates causality too much, which breaks immersion for me, and gives me a headache. It's great if you can run your game in such a way that everyone has fun, but you're fighting against the tide.

It 1) doesn't ever violate causality, but that a different duscussion* and 2) I borrow part of the concept, not the mechanics. 5e is very much a resolution at the end system, which means that you establish the fiction up to resolving the action and resolution possibilities are pinned to that fiction. I definitely use the 5e resolution mechanic, but am explicit as to what's at stake. My system mastery lets me be much more flexible in establishing these stakes on the fly rather than prepping them all ahead of time. This let's me be more reactive to the play at the table rather than what's in my prep. It isn't using the resolution in the middle* mechanics you're referencing -- 5e just does not support this play and will fight you if you use it.

An example of this play was a recent session. One character was trying to improve relations with a faction he had a poor reputation with. After setting the scene, the character offered his services as a means to improve relations, but failed the CHA check called for. I perverted his goal by having the faction representative assign a very hard test challenge of bringing a notorious murderer to justice and saying "don't show your face again without him." I made up the murderer right there because I had no idea at the beginning of the session that the player was going to do this or what that interaction would look like. But, the player presented a plausible course of action for the faction with a clear goal (improve my standing) and a clear approach (offer my services). I determined this was a CHA challenge and set the DC as hard due to previous history modified to moderate (DC 15) for a good approach (the PC skillset was valuable to the faction). At stake was the player goal of improved relations. Instead of closing that door on the failure, I elected to make it harder by setting up a hard challenge.

That challenge, as an aside, led to a TPK because the PCs decided to split up an charge into multiple different buildings, encounting all of the medium to hard difficulty challenge parts of the murder's gang (thrown together in a few moments using stock NPCs) at the same time and independently. And that was with good intel earned by successful checks investigating.

I have a house rule I'm trying out in this game that PCs don't die unless the player says so, but I get to be mean about it. No one chose to die, so I got to be mean. Since this is the first use in the campaign so far, I stuck to undercutting backstories with unwelcome truths and rolling back previous successes reputationally. Oh, and stealing gear. So much gear.

*A resolution in the middle system, like, say, Dungeon World, starts with a scene framing a challenge and then goes to player action declarations. The actions are resolved without establishing the precuse fiction of the action, and the result is then used to establish both the fiction of the action and the result. For instance, Dungeon World has an action called Spout Lore. If a player asks what their character knows about something in game, the GM either tells them or can ask for a Spout Lore. The check determines if the action succeeds, partially succeeds, or fails. On any success, the GM is now required to tell the player something interesting about what they asked about. This is important because whatever was asked about must now be important on a success. The GM is obligated to make this thing have importance and tell the player true things about it. On a failure, though, the GM can now make a move against the player, either introducing a new threat that must be addressed or paying off a threat that impacts the PC. Possible examples are being cursed by the runes you're trying to Spout Lore on, or a wandering monster, or even you do know what the runes say but it's really bad and not at all what you hoped.

Clearly this us very different from D&D in play and in concept. Every action makes the entire progression of the game fluid. These games react very poorly to preplotting or even drawing out maps before play. Not everyone's cuppa, and that's fine.

 

[Ovinomancer]

How does that work, can you please provide an example?

Sure! Let's say that there's a wall a PC wishes to climb. The player's idea is that he wants to sneakily climb the wall in case there's a guard, but the player only addresses the immediate challenge and asks for a check to climb the wall. The GM gets the roll, and narrates a successful climb, but then tells the player that they are spotted at the top by a guard because they weren't being stealthy. Argument, naturally, occurs.

A version of this happened to me, as GM, so it's not outlandish. And, yes, there are absolutely many ways this could have happened differently and avoided the situation. That's really neither here nor there, because I can absolutely say that had I ascertained the goal, it would not have happened. That other possibilities for avoidance exist doesn't undercut my method for making sure it doesn't happen again.

Also, on a failure, I now have more options than just narrating a problem.with climbing. That's still on the table, but I can now thwart the goal as well by doing what I did before, only this time as a failure mode.

 

[Oofta]

Perfectly valid! But, what's happening is that you're evaluating the sushi by how well cooked it is. You can prefer cooked fish all you want -- it's delicious! -- but you can't evaluate sushi by how well cooked it is.

What makes you think I haven't tried sushi? I have. Multiple times. Each time, convinced by someone that I just haven't had good sushi. Guess what? It's still raw fish. White rice is still bland. The "wassabi" you get here is still just horse radish with food coloring added.

Along the same lines as I've tried to explain I understand what you do, I just don't run my games that way. I find the way I run them better suited to my style.

What do I do differently? I encourage people to engage with the scene and not roll dice first but if they grab a die and say "I try to break down the door with an athletics check and get a 23" I'm okay with that even if they have no chance. In a lot of cases it just saves some time. While I make suggestions of what skill might be useful, and sometimes call for a specific skill check, the players know their characters better than I do. If they can suggest a way to use animal handling to determine what happened in a scene because they know how the animals would have responded in that situation, fantastic. If they say "I think they're lying and make an insight check" that's perfectly okay. They've read the book and know how skill contests work, I don't see any point in stopping them.

As far as misrepresenting, I try to simply give my preferences. However multiple people did state over on the other thread that if an NPC was telling the truth the DM should not call for an insight check because there's no attempt at deception. That's simply not how I run my game. People can attempt anything unless it should be obviously impossible to the player. Which is what you keep seeming to misunderstand (or at least acknowledge), by whose perspective is the attempt not possible? If the player knows its impossible there's no reason to roll. Until they know its impossible (something I usually hand-wave after the first roll) rolling the die is just representing the PC making an effort, no matter how futile. People do things all the time that will never succeed, but they keep on trying.

I just don't see it as a big deal. I assume we both want the same ultimate goal of player being engaged and empowered, using a variety of skills, not having players just throw dice at problems. You have your preference, I have mine.

 

[Sadras]

Sure! Let's say that there's a wall a PC wishes to climb. The player's idea is that he wants to sneakily climb the wall in case there's a guard, but the player only addresses the immediate challenge and asks for a check to climb the wall. The GM gets the roll, and narrates a successful climb, but then tells the player that they are spotted at the top by a guard because they weren't being stealthy. Argument, naturally, occurs.

A version of this happened to me, as GM, so it's not outlandish. And, yes, there are absolutely many ways this could have happened differently and avoided the situation. That's really neither here nor there, because I can absolutely say that had I ascertained the goal, it would not have happened. That other possibilities for avoidance exist doesn't undercut my method for making sure it doesn't happen again.

Also, on a failure, I now have more options than just narrating a problem.with climbing. That's still on the table, but I can now thwart the goal as well by doing what I did before, only this time as a failure mode.

Thanks (and to @DM Dave1). I guess my DMing playstyle in this regard matches very closely to your own and others here, in that I generally instinctively ask for further details about what the character wishes to do. I just have never thought about analysing/theory-crafting the actual how and why of an action declaration like has been done in these two threads (this and the Insight one).

I will definitely be more mindful of this going forward and I think it can only but improve my table's play experience.

 

[Oofta]

Sure! Let's say that there's a wall a PC wishes to climb. The player's idea is that he wants to sneakily climb the wall in case there's a guard, but the player only addresses the immediate challenge and asks for a check to climb the wall. The GM gets the roll, and narrates a successful climb, but then tells the player that they are spotted at the top by a guard because they weren't being stealthy. Argument, naturally, occurs.

A version of this happened to me, as GM, so it's not outlandish. And, yes, there are absolutely many ways this could have happened differently and avoided the situation. That's really neither here nor there, because I can absolutely say that had I ascertained the goal, it would not have happened. That other possibilities for avoidance exist doesn't undercut my method for making sure it doesn't happen again.

Also, on a failure, I now have more options than just narrating a problem.with climbing. That's still on the table, but I can now thwart the goal as well by doing what I did before, only this time as a failure mode.

Did the PC know the guard was there? If yes then I would have gently reminded the player about the guard or perhaps asked for a wisdom check. I may have asked for clarification on their approach if it was obvious they had just temporarily forgotten about the guard and didn't mention how they were avoiding them. I assume the PCs are not idiots.

If the PC didn't know about the guard then they should have been caught, or perhaps there would have been a chance to hear the guard overhead when they were halfway up the wall.

I don't see how any of that is affected by a stylistic preference for declaring actions.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Thank you. I understood this, but it was still well worth pointing out. I was actually convinced early on by 5ekyu's short essay on the topic of skills, and have decided to do this. I am uncoupling all skills from both stats and class/backgrounds and simply allowing the PC's to gain slots which they will freely choose their skills (most characters will thus have 4). Then I will be tying in game skill use to backgrounds. If the PC can make a logical case why their background will allow them to skillfully preform an action I will allow it dependent on the circumstances. The four extra skills represent things the PC's have picked up that are atypical or complimentary of their backgrounds, thus hopefully preventing cookie cutter similarities (ie. all farmers are not the same, all nobles are not the same, etc).

The problem my group is having with getting stuck on what to do has a lot to do with the makeup of the party. Everyone is bright, that isn't the problem, however they overthink absolutely everything to the point of paralysis. There are a great deal of politics and NP interaction in the game, and combats tend to be very dangerous most of the time. Everyone is very attached to their PCs (because I have designed things to encourage this attachment) and no one wants to die. Right now the two party leaders are on vicarages (I'm a seminarian and most of the rpg group are somehow associated with the seminary) and will be returning this Summer, however in the interim the party has suffered from indecision and a great amount of doing very little.

I don't know if changing the skill system will really help here, but I was considering it. Now however, I think I will run with the above idea, but not until the new campaign starts when the two leaders are back from their assignments. The players are having fun, or so they insist, and that is really the important thing.

This thread took on a life of its own, but everyone has been congenial which I very much appreciate. I'm so used to social media where the lowest common denominator is something evolved just beyond pond scum that reading ten pages on a forum of polite conversation is a breath of fresh air.

To be respectfully critical, I don't think changing skills is going to fix your issue. In the short term, it may even exacerbate it by adding more confusion about how things work. Don't get me wrong, here, I actually love your solution and how you codified it. I've long used backgrounds as a stealth skill system behind the listed ones, but i very much like your expression of it!

But, I do not think that this is your problem. Quite blunty, your issue appears to be one of communication and framing. And, it's common, but not altogether easy to fix. The issue is that you are not providing enough information so that the players can tell what's at stake and what's possible. There's a huge information disparity in D&D and it's sometimes hard to see from the GM side. You know all the important details, but the players don't. What's obvious to you isn't to them, and it's hard to "forget" things and put yourself in their shoes to see it. I heartily recommend erring on the side of oversharing information. Simplify situations to clear truths that can be related to the players easily and gives them good working knowledge of the various situations. Make things that are uncertain obviously so, so that the players can engage in resolving that uncertainty. Make stakes clear. This will feel like you're giving away the game, but you're not -- I've learned players will reliably and entertainingly screw up by the numbers even if you hand them your notes. By making things clear and identifying the crux points, you give the players the information the need to address the plot effectively. Remember, they can only know the gameworld through you, so keep that channel wide open.

Secondly, framing can be an issue. By framing, I mean the scene you set. If you set the scene as "you're in the big city, what do you do," this can be too open and you'll get indecision if the players don't already have a clear agenda. If they don't, aimless wandering and 20 questions show up as the players look for the game. In these cases, it's useful to elide stuff and go straight to a scene framing where the characters have to make a choice -- maybe they witmess a kidnapping that will pull them into a court intrigue and how they handle it will determine which faction they start aligned with. Don't be afraid to use "ninjas attack!"* if the game is bogging down and have a "ninja" drop some piece of plot to kick things into moving.

*"Ninjas attack!" doesn't have to be ninjas or attacking, but is a plot tool to put a relevant piece of plot in front of players in an unmistakable way.

 

[5ekyu]

With all due respect, you are misunderstanding the plastyle. The statement of goals is a perfectly natural extension of declaring actions and simply allows the players to have greater agency over their PCs - with the added benefit of lessening the workload of the DM and perhaps even allowing a scene to go in a direction the DM never imagined. It's that last one which is very enjoyable to me.



I'm sure @Ovinomancer can provide more, but here are a couple just off the cuff:

Example 1 - climbing the tower with a stated goal
DM: "You reach the top of the hill leaving the forest below you. Before you is a 40' grey tower made of large, rough blocks of stone. The tower appears to have no door or windows. What do you do?"
Player 1: "I'd like to climb the tower using the blocks as hand/foot holds. But before getting to the top, I'd like to stop and get a good
look around to let the others what I see."
DM: "Roll a Strength (Athletics) check, DC 15 - the blocks are old and a bit crumbly"

The player clearly states an action (climb the tower) and a goal (to get a better view of the surroundings before reaching the top). Without the goal statement, the DM has to make a big assumption that since the PC wanted to climb the tower that they will get to the top with a successful roll and step into a group of quietly waiting orcs.... which is in no way what the player intended. And then you have an awkward phase of "that's not what I wanted to do" and the scene is, well, ruined. By stating a goal, the DM is now prompted to allow the perched climber a better chance to hear the whispers coming from above and give them a chance to act on that knowledge. If the player was explicit that they wanted to climb the tower and stop short of the top, but didn't explain their goal, then the DM has to prompt them again: "ok, you are almost near the top, now what?" - when that would have been obvious if they had just stated the goal in the first place. That last point is a subtle difference, but one that, IMO, makes the action flow more naturally with a much DM prompting.

Example 2 - knocking a creature out without a stated goal
Now in combat, declaring a goal is certainly not always necessary but there is at least one very important exception.
Player 1: "I swing my axe at the orc - I know a 17 hits - 8 damage!"
DM: "You cleave the orcs skull and it falls to the ground"
Player 1: "But my PC just wanted to knock it out!"
Because the goal was not stated, we now pause the game to have an awkward phase of rolling back the action when, with a simple stated goal, we can have the narrative just flow naturally.

Gotta run or else would add some more... but do those make sense @Sadras?

"But before getting to the top, I'd like to stop and get a good "

Sorry but to me that isnt a goal, its not why you are climbing or what you are trying to achieve. Its telling the GM how far you will go.

As GM, if there is a corridor heading down to a T intersection and someone says "i walk down the corridor", do you just assume they head all the way out into the T without any further info or even asking how far?

I gotta say, this example seems to drive much more towards the depiction of this as a gotcha style than the protestations against it lead on to.

As for, the KO, have to check my 5e rulebook, but the KO blow vs killing blow is a clearly defined rule with clearly defined when its announced iirc. The attack,makes the choice when the creature drops to zero, doesnt have to declare it beforehand. Of course a gm can run otherwise and make his players say with every single swing whether they are trying to kill it or ko but well... Thats not a style i would see as beneficial to our games and really wont go near.


But in fact if it was a 5e game, the awkward moment was the GM ****skipping**** the stage where the player gets to choose the KO or kill decision when the creature hits zero.

Not to sound CR but you skipped the "how do you want to do this?" step 5e actually has when your melee attacks reduce monsters to zero.