D&D 5E Wait, what IS the point of Acrobatics?

[sidonunspa]

yes, parkour, very good idea, and reducing falling damage should have been hardcoded into it. I think a check to halve falling damage would be cool.

I would do something like 0 damage from 15' or less..... half damage if you fall 16+ but have something to slow your fall (a knife in a sail for example)

 

[Juriel]

Parkour-ing, running up the back of a Giant to stab him in the back of the neck after he swag and missed a friend of yours, sliding between an orc's legs, and so on

None of which are rule-supported actions, or which might as well be met by DM going 'okay, roll Athletics, since parkouring is obviously jumping/climbing'.

Which is my point. Seems much cleaner to use Athletics with Dex for those, than to concoct a separate skill that... is... well, Wizards say it's only good for balance, and whatever you can talk your DM into. Which applies to any skill, really.

 

[Dungeoneer]

Acrobatics seems to only get used for balance. In 3e, Tumbling could prevent opportunity attacks from moving past enemies, while in 4e you could reduce falling damage with Acrobatics, which are concrete listed mechanical benefits.

But Basic Acrobatics just lists 'balance on stuff. Oh yeah, DM may ask for this if you flip, roll, dive'.

Perhaps the whole point was to give a 'talk your DM into allowing you to do Athletics tasks with your Dex' way to Rogues. Which could be done by just using Athletics with Dex, surely...

Why is this skill even around?

4e had the same problem, really. Even though a couple of Acrobatics-specific use cases were described, in practice it was not obvious what actions should be Athletics and what should be Acrobatics. I defaulted to letting players use whichever was highest for them unless the check was OBVIOUSLY strength-based (no, you cannot use acrobatics to break down a door).

Yes, but the skill itself does not seem to DO anything. Why not just use Athletics with Dex?

This... makes a lot of sense, actually!

 

[doctorhook]

Regarding why not just use Athletics with Dex: my guess is WotC wasn't ready to take the plunge and say, "This skill can be either Strength- or Dexterity-based."

Skills still need polishing. Animal Handling -> Nature.

 

[Zaran]

None of which are rule-supported actions, or which might as well be met by DM going 'okay, roll Athletics, since parkouring is obviously jumping/climbing'.

Which is my point. Seems much cleaner to use Athletics with Dex for those, than to concoct a separate skill that... is... well, Wizards say it's only good for balance, and whatever you can talk your DM into. Which applies to any skill, really.

You are going to see non-"rule-supported actions" a lot in 5e. It's because stuff like this is supposed be left up to the GM. If you think it's not important of a skill then don't use it in your game. I for one will call for it quite often.

 

[jadrax]

Regarding why not just use Athletics with Dex: my guess is WotC wasn't ready to take the plunge and say, "This skill can be either Strength- or Dexterity-based."

They tried it in the open play test - given it got dropped I am guessing it proved unpopular.

 

[Gargoyle]

The way I'm interpreting it is that you can use Athletics to jump and climb, and you can use Acrobatics to balance and move through or around enemies in ways that you normally cannot without provoking an attack of opportunity. I suspect the tactical rules will support the latter, thus making Acrobatics look weak in the Basic rules as somersaults and tumbling are not defined yet.

With just the Basic rules, you could interpret "somersaults and "tumbling" to mean just a stylish way of jumping, making it so that Acrobatics is for balancing and jumping, causing it to overlap a bit with Athletics, and that could work, but I don't think that's the intention and is probably just the result of having only part of the full game.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Yup... once they decided to hard-code specific skills to specific abilities, they pretty much had to keep Athletics and Acrobatics separate (flippity-floppity uses with STR and flippity-floppity uses with DEX). But there will probably be many of us that once we decide to use the Variant Rule (as the Basic Game accounts) of allowing various abilities to be used with skills... the elimination/combining of Athletics and Acrobatics will occur.

As it stands now... given my druthers of a workable skill list for my table... I'm expecting I will use the Variant rule, and also rework the skill list to eliminate/merge what I consider to be duplicate skills or skills with not enough heft.

My skill list will probably look something like this:

Arcana
Athletics (Acrobatics combined into it)
Deception
Dungeoneering (added back into skill list)
High Society (for all checks involving urbane/upper class people or situations)
History
Insight
Investigation (acquiring ALL search functions-- hidden doors, traps, clues, secret compartments etc. plus ACTIVE search for hidden enemies)
Low Society (Sleight of Hand/Streetwise combined into it-- for all checks involving the common/criminal/lower classes)
Nature (Animal Handling combined into it)
Persuasion (Intimidation/Performance combined into it)
Religion
Stealth
Survival (Medicine combined into it)

And Perception gets eliminated entirely, with all its passive 'alertness' / 'danger sense' checks getting absorbed into the respective skills that apply to the situation the PC finds itself in. So outdoors in the forest, you make a Wisdom (Nature) check to spot the deadfall trap or notice the hidden enemy. Underground it's a Wisdom (Dungeoneering) check. In a castle, it's a Wisdom (High Society) check. So on and so forth.

This skill may be one I'll re-introduce when I see the full rules and find out just how often 'Passive Perception' is incorporated / used in the game in different situations. If it's included quite a bit... then I may leave the skill in strictly as a "passive" Wisdom check skill. However ANY active "looking around" will always be Investigation.

 

[Juriel]

And Perception gets eliminated entirely, with all its passive 'alertness' / 'danger sense' checks getting absorbed into the respective skills that apply to the situation the PC finds itself in. So outdoors in the forest, you make a Wisdom (Nature) check to spot the deadfall trap or notice the hidden enemy. Underground it's a Wisdom (Dungeoneering) check. In a castle, it's a Wisdom (High Society) check. So on and so forth.

Definitely, this here, yeah. It's what I tend to do with my own designs, but I don't think my gaming group is ready to go that far yet. One-size-fits-all Perception is just such an uber-skill and lame.

 

[sidonunspa]

None of which are rule-supported actions, or which might as well be met by DM going 'okay, roll Athletics, since parkouring is obviously jumping/climbing'.

Which is my point. Seems much cleaner to use Athletics with Dex for those, than to concoct a separate skill that... is... well, Wizards say it's only good for balance, and whatever you can talk your DM into. Which applies to any skill, really.

Because GM's are expected to, well... GM.....

the more you detail rules the smaller the creative box becomes....

my keeping the rules lose players feel free to come up with actions, in 3.5 there are no rules for using the giant's sword blade as a platform to leap up and strike at it's neck (nice way to describe a stunning blow)

by keeping the rules lose the adjudication of actions falls to the GM and the players are free to attempt those items.

GMs just need to remember, if it's reasonable (though difficult), just set a TN and let the players have fun..... and hand out advantage or disadvantage...

but let the players have fun, and have fun with them.

most systems don't brake down the minutiae of every skill just for this reason.