What Skills are Underused?

[Smoke Jaguar]

Streetwise, Dungeoneering, & Heal are the least common.

Religion/Arcane, Insight, and Perception are the more common ones.

As I have mention in my other thread Bluff, Stealth, and Thievery is used quite frequently... almost too frequently for my liking.

I am getting them to use Nature more but it hasn't come up that much.

 

[Mengu]

Now, side question - which skills are only really an issue for _one_ person to have, vs ones that are useful for anyone to have.

Assistants are always good, but barring that, you could probably do with one primary person having Arcana, Bluff, Diplomacy, Dungeoneering, History, Intimidate, Nature, Religion, Streetwise, and Thievery.

Athletics, Heal, Insight, Perception, Stealth are useful for multiple people to have, though Heal slowly loses its appeal as you level up.

Endurance and Acrobatics help the individual, less so than the party. So it doesn't really matter much one way or the other, if you want it, you get it, if not, no big deal.

 

[Smoke Jaguar]

I guess I am not seeing much heal or endurance, but these are things that could be hugely important when they come up. Also, my players could certainly get more use of their skills then they do, but they do use them. In any case, this seems like a strength of the edition.

A pair of guys in my group like to get into drinking contest in almost every tavern they go into. I have them do an endurance check along with NPC drinking partner. The DC increases with each round. First one not to make the check loses. Depending on how many rounds it goes, I decrease certain stats for a period of time.

That might not be the right way to do it but everybody seems to enjoy it. One of them is a gnome. So for being a little smaller I give him a penalty to begin with -2. He is a funny drunk so when it is over I give him a +1 to cha and str but a -1 to int and wis, usually.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Its real hard to say. Endurance hasn't come up much. In the current game Bluff seems rather underutilized as well. Dungeoneering is sporadic, as is Streetwise, but in the right areas they see a decent amount of use. Acrobatics is somewhat overshadowed by Athletics but it does see a fair amount of use for some characters. Honestly there is no one skill that doesn't get used often enough that someone is trained in it. Endurance really is probably the least useful skill overall and admittedly has a rather non-skill-like feel to it. Even so its not hard to come up with situations where it would be vital to have, they just aren't that common, especially at low levels.

 

[jbear]

We have had a lot of Urban Encounters in my game so Streetwise has seen a good share of the lime light.

History springs to mind... but then my players like to use it to glean any general information they can about a situation using history, so that might be unfair.

Heal... was definitely on the hardly ever used list but has saved a life on two occaisions. Then again we have a Taint System going on in my game whereby the PCs can tap into a reserve of mysterious dark power when in dire danger the source of which is the main motor turning the wheels of the world in the game. So when things get really tough Heal gets used a lot more. So used infrequently but very important when it does get used.

And seeing Endurance on a few peoples lists, I'll just add that Endurance is probably the skill my PCs consider most useful. hen again they have been trapesing through a deadly bog, are suffering from a severe case of delerium inflicted by the major villains infected swamp creepy crawlies and have often dipped into the pool of Taint which gives them only 24 hours to rid themselves fo the corrupting effects before the Taint left is permanent ... I'm sure that has something to do with it. Still, I like to use Endurance a lot.

Thievery...Noone in my group has a particularly high thievery modifier so people try and invent ways around traps using their ingenuity or dungeoneering. And as for locked doors... well they either bust them down or look for another way in... Definitely the least used skill in my group... besides they have a tendency to walk straight into my traps and set them off... which certainly makes the need for thievery even more redundant

I do make a conscious effort to include all the skills into the game, so that everyone has a chance to shine outside of combat or during combat interacting with the terrain/situation in non-combat ways. I think only thievery has slipped under the radar... not for lack of opportunities to use it mind....

 

[Gradine]

Streetwise, being the functional equivalent of Gather Information (with a dash of Knowledge: Cities splashed in) suffers the same problems its analogues suffered in the previous edition: said information being gathered is usually critical to advancing the quest and/or story. Since a failed skill check should never keep the plot from moving on, DMs got used to providing said information gratis (or attaching it to a more generalized skill, a la Diplomacy) and players got used to having such information provided without having to shill out for the skill.

Truth is it's much more difficult to include clever (but not necessarily vital) ways to include Streetwise into skill challenges. In my estimation it boils down to the kind of campaign you're running. Some games (particularly urban campaigns, or where the characters have to play detective often) would get a ton of use out of it; other games would rarely see it used at all. That said, it does appear to have some fun skill powers. If you ever wanted to play an Aladdin-esque character, there's your skill.

Thievery is similarly underutilized. I think there exists a mentality that Thievery encompasses the classic Thief skills (Open Locks, Pick Pockets, Find/Disarm Traps) and that's about it. The skill itself can have far broader use in any skill check or challenge that requires any sort of manual dexterity. I recall the comic from the PSG about the character who learned to pick locks in a macrame club. This idea can be reverse-engineered, and suddenly your thief is a natural talent at anything that requires a sharp eye and nimble fingers. To adventurer the classic Thief skills are probably going to be the most often examples of such use, but they don't have to be the only ones. I remember a story (I think from ancient literature; though it may have been from a modern novel I read a few years back) where a hero was given only one opportunity to pass a thread through the eye of a needle at arm's length. You might make the argument for perception (which everyone is going to take) in this particular challenge, but I'd likely give more bonuses to the player trying to use Thievery here.

 

[Stalker0]

Streetwise and Endurance would be my top two.

For those who say history, note that history also includes tactics and military knowledge as well (its why dragonborn get it). I found it the second most useful knowledge skill after arcana.

 

[jester_gl]

In the campaign I played, I trained my sorcerer in thievery and never regretted it. Thievery is a skill where the player as to come up with ways to use it instead of just the DM pointing it out.

Sure you can disarm traps and lockpick door. Stealthily lockpicking a door is an almost sure way to grant a surprise round for the entire group. In a social encounter that is almost sure to lead to a fight, it can disarm a humanoid opponent before the fight begins. During a fight you do get -10 to use thievery on a target, but I am pretty sure that it can has it's shining moment there too.

Don't forget that thievery covers all legerdemain stuff now. And I also see it as covering knowledge related to man-made poison (by opposition to plant or beast poison which are related to nature or dungeoneering).

The one skill I see as under used is Endurance. The problem with Endurance is that it is more passive than anything. Either the DM will ask checks, or he won't. You can't really decide to actively use your Endurance skill for something. But I'm sure it is gonna change in the upcoming Dark Sun setting where not having Endurance means you ARE gonna suffer. A lot.

 

[Stalker0]

The one skill I see as under used is Endurance. The problem with Endurance is that it is more passive than anything. Either the DM will ask checks, or he won't.

Yeah Endurance is one of those skills that is often involved in overland travel, and a lot of people gloss over that part for good reason.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Intimidate. It's sod all use in combat. And worse than diplomacy most of the rest of the time.