D&D 5E What skills are used most in your game?

[koga305]

I have been running a game set in the Nentir Vale for the past 2.5 years, and I've noticed that there is a definite imbalance of skills in terms of their regular use. Here are some of the "best" skills in our game:

Athletics. This one comes up a lot. The PCs will inevitably have to do a lot of climbing and jumping to navigate wilderness environments and dungeons.

Investigation. My game has a lot of dungeon exploration and with that comes searching. This one is actually more used than Perception, which contradicts the common wisdom.

History/Religion. Because of the Nentir Vale's long history, with the ruins of multiple empires scattered about, figuring out lore can help a lot with decision-making. With a cleric, paladin, and shadow monk (who has a direct relationship with the Raven Queen) in our game, we tend to see gods and their lore come up a lot as well.

Insight. This skill is sometimes used as the straightforward "figure out if they're lying" check, but is just as commonly used to get a read on what NPCs are thinking or gauge a crowd.

By contrast, I'd say there are a few skills that I almost never see used.

Acrobatics. Athletics stands out as just better; there's never been a need for balancing or tumbling in my game.

Deception. Because the Nentir Vale has few large power structures, there's rarely a need to trick someone that's too powerful to fight. My players are usually comfortable being honest with their allies and openly hostile toward their enemies.

Sleight of Hand. Nobody's ever needed to steal something, and that's most of what this skill is good for.

Nature/Survival. I tend to handwave these kinds of things as a DM, and figuring out lore doesn't tend to help very often. This got to the point where a Druid/Ranger substitute character neglected to take the Survival skill and actually got the party lost once.

What skills are used the most in your game, and which are almost never used?

 

[Shiroiken]

My campaign is running some of the classic Greyhawk adventures, which tend to be dungeon crawls.

Perception is the winner, hands down. Investigation comes next, along with stealth (we do have a rogue). Most of the other skills of have had some use, but the clear loser is Medicine, which has yet to be rolled.

 

[El Gallo Negro]

By far, Stealth and Perception. This is probably based on my DM's style. Arcana and Investigation come up often, too.

 

[iserith]

Athletics and Perception for reasons that are probably obvious.

The rest are used about equally with some variance for the type of campaign that is being played. I try to present a variety of challenges where different skills and tools could be of use.

 

[Rhogar_Rarr]

Skills that see a lot of use:
Athletics gets used for grappling, shoving, jumping, climbing, swimming which have all been used in our game (especially the shoving/grappling with our barbarian).
Acrobatics is useful escaping grapples, balancing, and landing from long falls (apparently also common in the Underdark).
Arcana/Religion for general knowledge and knowing a lot of monsters, useful anywhere.
Perception gets used all the time.
Stealth is also used quite a bit.
Survival for gathering food, navigating terrain, even uh... what to call this... Butchering dead things? Like taking apart a dragon to get all its useful bits or finding the edible parts of a Myconid.
The Charisma skills, except Performance, all see regular use as well (Persuasion, Deception, and even Intimidation).

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

My campaigns so far have seen a lot of use of Insight, Perception, Athletics, and Persuasion.

Survival also would have come up quite a bit, but didn't because of characters with appropriate background to have the Wanderer feature and thus not having to roll in order to find food and water for the party.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

Perception, Investigation, Stealth and Arcana are the winners. The others get their share of the spotlight, but not a lot.

 

[empireofchaos]

Perception and Stealth are common everywhere. My game has a druid and a ranger accounting for half the party, and it's turned toward a lot of wilderness trekking and exploration, so Survival is equally common. Nature and Athletics probably come next. Some social skills get a lot of use when the party is in a social setting - Persuasion particularly, but also Intimidation (by the half-orc ranger). And I do get a bit of mileage out of the knowledge skills - History, Religion, Arcane (and Nature again) - the party is learning about a new continent (which, as it turns out, is really an old one from which their ancestors escaped long ago), so knowledge is quite handy.

Skills that generally get underutilized:

Acrobatics - seems too specialized compared to Athletics.

Medicine - increasingly useless when half the party has some healing ability.

Investigation - that may be a party issue - they should spend a little more time scrutinizing scenes more intensively.

Deception - can't recall the last time this came up. One of the characters is s gnome, but it's decidedly not a tricky party.

Insight - I find the whole "do I think he's lying" use of this ability a bit distasteful. If an NPC is decidedly nervous or unpracticed, there is a good chance it will work, but competent liars (the ones that matter) are pretty hard to catch. In any event, it doesn't see a lot of use in this game for the same reason Investigation and Deception don't.

 

[ChrisCarlson]

Sometimes its a self-fulfilling prophecy. Do certain skills just get called on for use more often? Or do players seek out ways to exploit and utilize the skills they chose to take and are good at?

Some of both? More likely a bit more of the latter if I had to guess.

 

[Joddy37]

Perception, Athletics and Survival are the most used skills in our current campaign. We're in underdark so it fits. When we were playing a city campaign though, Investigation and Deception checks were in abundance. There were several situations where we needed to persuade the Npcs. It really depends on the campaign you are in.