D&D 5E What I think I'm going to do about skills

[Li Shenron]

No, because I use the skills method recommended by Next, so anyone who has the skill is allowed to add their bonus to the check - regardless of whether they got that skill from their class or background, or what their background is. When you try to gather food by fishing, it's a Wisdom (Survival) check rather than a Wisdom (Sailor-related-background) check; and when you try to balance across a storm-tossed deck it is a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check rather than a Dexterity (Sailor-related-background) check.

Are you aware of the fact that Mearls mentioned they have been working on alternative Backgrounds that in fact work like mega-skills?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Are you aware of the fact that Mearls mentioned they have been working on alternative Backgrounds that in fact work like mega-skills?

No, and I'm all for more options on that level. As I mentioned, there are merits and drawbacks to each system. There's no reason you should be denied such a simple alternative, if you find it preferable.

 

[Umbran]

And if you strife for balance, lets remove all character customization. Thats prefect balance.

Derren, the post where you criticize the quality of someone's position is probably not the time to whip out the equivalent of the schoolyard strawman, "Well, if you love balance so much, why don't you marry it?" It doesn't make your position look solid, or reasonable. Yes, there are extremes of just about anything. But not liking the extreme application does not in any way argue that the thing is entirely undesirable. Game design is not all-or-nothing.

There's a middle ground between just gritting teeth on pain, and overdosing on analgesics. We can discuss how much is a proper dose, but not if you're going to argue that aspirin is evil because it is bad to swallow the whole bottle.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I'm not sure I understood what you are actually going to do about skills (as per the title)

Are you going to port the Fate skill system into your 5e games, to replace the standard skills system?
Is it possible to use it as-is, or what kind of adjustments does it need?

Yeah, I was just speaking so off the cuff about what I was feeling that I never really ended up with a solid position, did I? Heh!

I suspect my primary decision point will probably be to use whatever Aspect-like module they include in the game (assuming that they do include in in the game.) Mainly because I feel as though having descriptive phrasing to illustrate what a PC is good at has more of a feeling of connection between the fluff of the background and the mechanics that they give you.

On the one hand, a person could easily just use the Background itself as the skill system. If you are a Charlatan, then you can add your prof bonus to any ability check for which you can justify your Background applying. (And way back when they first were talking about open-ended skill lists and not aligning skills to ability scores... this seemed like a strong way to go.) But on the other hand... adapting a descriptive or Aspect-like system to build off a Background could focus a PC's story even further. So a PC's background might be Sailor... and the three(?) descriptive foci the player creates for himself based on that Sailor background could be (as an example) "At Home In The Crow's Nest", "Does What The Captain Ordered", and "Piracy In The Blood". And when situations occur during the game where an ability check is called for... the PC has to figure out and illustrate why any of those descriptions might warrant gaining the prof bonus.

Admittedly, it would still be quite easy for this kind of system to then devolve into a de facto "skill list" if I wasn't careful. So for example, the PC says that being At Home In The Crow's Next means he can spot things out on the horizon, and thus it ends up becoming a "Perception" skill (in all but name) when all is said and done. But then its really up to me as a DM to start making judgement calls on the types of "Perception" checks that I'm calling for, and when and where his At Home In The Crow's Next might apply. So for instance, listening at a dungeon door, which in a skill list system would have Perception apply... I might determine that nope, At Home In The Crow's Nest wouldn't because that's really geared towards long-distance spotting with a minimum of terrain interferring.

It puts more impetus on both the player and me to really delve into just what the PC is truly exceptional at, which hopefully gets us both thinking about how his Background really and truly informs his character... rather than just him and three other party members all having "Perception", which does not actually distinguish any of those characters from each other.

 

[Li Shenron]

On the one hand, a person could easily just use the Background itself as the skill system. If you are a Charlatan, then you can add your prof bonus to any ability check for which you can justify your Background applying. (And way back when they first were talking about open-ended skill lists and not aligning skills to ability scores... this seemed like a strong way to go.) But on the other hand... adapting a descriptive or Aspect-like system to build off a Background could focus a PC's story even further. So a PC's background might be Sailor... and the three(?) descriptive foci the player creates for himself based on that Sailor background could be (as an example) "At Home In The Crow's Nest", "Does What The Captain Ordered", and "Piracy In The Blood". And when situations occur during the game where an ability check is called for... the PC has to figure out and illustrate why any of those descriptions might warrant gaining the prof bonus.

...

So for instance, listening at a dungeon door, which in a skill list system would have Perception apply... I might determine that nope, At Home In The Crow's Nest wouldn't because that's really geared towards long-distance spotting with a minimum of terrain interferring.

It puts more impetus on both the player and me to really delve into just what the PC is truly exceptional at, which hopefully gets us both thinking about how his Background really and truly informs his character... rather than just him and three other party members all having "Perception", which does not actually distinguish any of those characters from each other.

Even tho I'm heading to the opposite direction (i.e. using Backgrounds as suggestions but essentially allowing to pick your proficiencies freely) I like your idea, it's narratively dense. It is appropriate especially for a game where the players aren't interested in rules minutia and trust their DM. Rules lawyers and people obsessed with "mother may I" would stay away from such game, and that's a fringe benefit

 

[DEFCON 1]

Even tho I'm heading to the opposite direction (i.e. using Backgrounds as suggestions but essentially allowing to pick your proficiencies freely) I like your idea, it's narratively dense. It is appropriate especially for a game where the players aren't interested in rules minutia and trust their DM. Rules lawyers and people obsessed with "mother may I" would stay away from such game, and that's a fringe benefit

Truth be told... what will end up being the issue at my table I suspect will be that many of my players just don't actually care about delving that far into character. And me asking them to create aspect-like descriptors and then actually use and explain away their use during the course of play will probably have no truck with them.

While it would certainly make the game more interesting for me... most of my players will just handwave it whenever possible just because they don't delve that far like I do. So it'll be finding a middle ground where they can placate my desire for more of a connection between story and mechanics, while not being too much of a pain in the ass to use themselves.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The thing about FATE Aspects I never liked much is the gulf that can happen between what a player thinks a skill can do and what a DM thinks that same skill can do. The open-ended nature also leads to occasional "superskills" (I can use this for practically everything!) and useless skills (geeze, why did I think I could use this for anything?!). FATE itself is very narrative/cinematic, so it tends to put a lot of focus on explicitly MAKING use of skills and in setting things up so that great skills are occasionally pointless, but that's difficult to do in the sandbox-y way I'm into playing D&D like at the moment.

Backgrounds-as-skills (ie, "Secondary Skills") might work well for me, but we still have the issue of some things that will be awesome and some things that will suck, which leads to a lack of interesting choice in play, which is part of what I'm looking for out of a skill system (a la [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] ).

Maybe I need to do what 5e once did with the ranger's favored enemy: think about some aspect of the background that would be relevant accross most D&D situations (perhaps filling a point in the grid), and use that....which means my grid might look something like...

[table="width: 500, class: grid, align: center"]
[tr]
[td][/td]
[td]Explorer[/td]
[td]Warrior[/td]
[td]Face[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Town[/td]
[td]Minstrel: You tell stories, other people tell you stories...you can use an Extended Rest to gather information in town.[/td]
[td]Thug: You're mean and everyone knows it. Your reputation makes others avoid making you angry.[/td]
[td]Noble: You are good at cajoling others into doing what you want. [/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Wilderness[/td]
[td]Vagabond: You have no problem getting along in the wilderness[/td]
[td]Campaigner: You know how to equip yourself for survival in the wilderness, and can endure many ills without a problem.[/td]
[td]Beastfriend: You understand animals and wild beasts, and they understand you.[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Dungeon[/td]
[td]Burglar: You can sneak and disable traps. [/td]
[td]Delver: The lore of the creatures and history of the underground is open to you. [/td]
[td]Mediator: You're good at brokering arrangements with hostile natives.[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

...hmmm....so "Sailor" would fit in the Wilderness/Explorer category, and someone with that background would be an asset to have whenever the party was exploring the wilderness, and would overlap with anyone who did the same (like, say, "Guide," or "Mountaineer" or somesuch).

...which makes me feel like I re-invented 4e's roles for this....hmm...

 

[Derren]

I think it depends on how you define balance.

To me, balance means that the players have to make decisions where no course of action is obviously better than another - their choices are balanced. (It's important to note that there must be a difference in the outcome - otherwise there's no decision to be made.)

If you want players to make meaningful decisions about their backgrounds during character creation - which is not necessary to play the game - then you'll want to balance the choices the players make.

That's my argument for balance.

So you do see the background as just another choice for optimization?
I ask you this, if someone wants to make a "peasant hero" type character he obviously takes farmer as background. Do you ensure that the farmer background is now balanced with all the other backgrounds? Even when the player did not take the background because of optimization reasons?
And how much much freedom do you allow your players in your campaign? What when the sailor characters in the naval campaign say they have enough of ships and decide to go inland? DO you rebalance backgrounds on the fly?

Derren, the post where you criticize the quality of someone's position is probably not the time to whip out the equivalent of the schoolyard strawman, "Well, if you love balance so much, why don't you marry it?" It doesn't make your position look solid, or reasonable. Yes, there are extremes of just about anything. But not liking the extreme application does not in any way argue that the thing is entirely undesirable. Game design is not all-or-nothing.

There's a middle ground between just gritting teeth on pain, and overdosing on analgesics. We can discuss how much is a proper dose, but not if you're going to argue that aspirin is evil because it is bad to swallow the whole bottle.

I used this specifically to show the conflict between versimilitude/RP potential and balance. Sure, different people believe different middle grounds, but so far in this discussions many of the pro balance arguments did not acknowledge that balance has a tradeoff at all.

...hmmm....so "Sailor" would fit in the Wilderness/Explorer category, and someone with that background would be an asset to have whenever the party was exploring the wilderness, and would overlap with anyone who did the same (like, say, "Guide," or "Mountaineer" or somesuch).

...which makes me feel like I re-invented 4e's roles for this....hmm...

Where would farmer and craftsmen (90% of the population) fall into this grid? Or are only backgrounds " relevant accross most D&D situations" allowed?

 

[DEFCON 1]

The thing about FATE Aspects I never liked much is the gulf that can happen between what a player thinks a skill can do and what a DM thinks that same skill can do. The open-ended nature also leads to occasional "superskills" (I can use this for practically everything!) and useless skills (geeze, why did I think I could use this for anything?!). FATE itself is very narrative/cinematic, so it tends to put a lot of focus on explicitly MAKING use of skills and in setting things up so that great skills are occasionally pointless, but that's difficult to do in the sandbox-y way I'm into playing D&D like at the moment.

True enough... which is why I'm strictly coming at this from a personal "What should I do for my game?" perspective, rather than a "Here's what WotC should do with their game!" perspective. My issues aren't gonna reflect the other 95% of the D&D populace by any stretch.

But you do definitely highlight one of the pitfalls of aspects, the gulf between player and DM. It's one thing that will be my job as DM to keep tabs on. And goodness knows... that kind of job ain't gonna be one that most DMs would ever want to bother with. From my perspective though... I'd much rather take the time to make those decisions if it means my players become invested in who they are and what their background is, rather than just having a random list of four skills that were given a bundle heading that never actually impacts how their character plays.

Looking at it honestly... I think my real issue is that Backgrounds are just not mechanically unique like Races and Classes are. They all use the exact same overlapping skills. Now granted, each Trait they have is unique... but I feel almost like each Background almost needs three to five relatively unique Traits, just like Races have three to five relatively unique racial features, to make that Background have actual heft. And a small selection from a list of 15 skills just isn't it.

I'm interested to see what the eventual game has included and whether I'll still feel this way when I do.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Where would farmer and craftsmen (90% of the population) fall into this grid? Or are only backgrounds " relevant accross most D&D situations" allowed?

For the most part, I'd treat these as "crafts," or "professions" as distinct from other kinds of skills. One of the issues of skill lists as I see them is that some skills are clearly "better" than others (*cough*Perception*cough). So rather than one of the nine "skill roles," I'd allow them to create items/gain coin during their down time. So a Farmer would use an extended rest to get some food or make some money (for me, this ties into the idea of extended rests being really long periods of time -- weeks, months, seasons, even a year).

I think this would be distinct from those skill roles. A Farmer could also be, say, a Merchant, who fills the Town/Face role. Likewise, a Noble (Town/Face) could also be an Aristocrat as a profession (take an extended rest to collect taxes?). A Sailor (Wilderness/Exploration) could also be a Laborer (take an extended rest to heft some boxes for sp).

Just kind of rolling ideas around in my head like the OP.

True enough... which is why I'm strictly coming at this from a personal "What should I do for my game?" perspective, rather than a "Here's what WotC should do with their game!" perspective. My issues aren't gonna reflect the other 95% of the D&D populace by any stretch.

Sure, I figured that was what the thread was for! Which is why I've been doinking around with ideas myself.

But you do definitely highlight one of the pitfalls of aspects, the gulf between player and DM. It's one thing that will be my job as DM to keep tabs on. And goodness knows... that kind of job ain't gonna be one that most DMs would ever want to bother with. From my perspective though... I'd much rather take the time to make those decisions if it means my players become invested in who they are and what their background is, rather than just having a random list of four skills that were given a bundle heading that never actually impacts how their character plays.

What you might want to do to strengthen this connection is to take these aspects and literally build your adventures around them.

Like, grab one aspect from each of your PCs, and see what kind of adventure you can make out of those seeds.

So if someone has "Does What The Captain Ordered" as an aspect, that player can be pretty dang sure that at some point, that's going to crop up as a useful thing to do. Because you are going to make SURE that happens.

Looking at it honestly... I think my real issue is that Backgrounds are just not mechanically unique like Races and Classes are. They all use the exact same overlapping skills. Now granted, each Trait they have is unique... but I feel almost like each Background almost needs three to five relatively unique Traits, just like Races have three to five relatively unique racial features, to make that Background have actual heft. And a small selection from a list of 15 skills just isn't it.

This is part of why I've begun thinking about backgrounds more in terms of powers than in terms of skill bonuses -- an active thing you can do that is special, rather than just a bonus to kinds of checks. The difference between "I slay giants and get a +2 to to hit them!" and "I slay giants and because giants hurl boulders, I resist bludgeoning damage!" I think 5e feats might also be big enough to make a "background feat" something noticeable and distinct.