D&D 5E When is it OK to let a player substitute one skill for another?

[Charlaquin]

I’ve seen a character sheet out somewhere out there that grouped the skills under each ability. Makes a lot more sense. If I can track it down again I’ll post a link.

There are a lot of those, including one official alternative sheet. Those are, in my opinion, even worse because they imply that skills are intrinsically linked to the abilities they’re listed under, which doesn’t work for me as I use the Skills With Different Abilities variant rule. What I want (and did eventually find) is a character sheet with a big ol’ blank, possibly lined, space for writing your proficiencies in. Of the two such sheets I have found, neither are perfect for my preferences, but they’re close enough that I’d rather use them than get Photoshop.

 

[MNblockhead]

1. When it makes sense.

2. When it doesn't make sense but is fun and if that works out, maybe it'll earn some inspiration.

I'd rather players look for creative ways to apply their characters' skill in novel ways than worry that they are using their within some set of skill-use boundaries.

 

[Rune]

It's not just the official ones. I went through lots of character sheets on the web, before finally realising that if I wanted one without the complete skill list I needed to use a PDF editor to remove it myself.

Not to go off on a tangent, but there are probably a number of them in EN World’s downloads section. I’ve made a couple of light-weight ones, myself. (Here and here.)

 

[Swarmkeeper]

There are a lot of those, including one official alternative sheet. Those are, in my opinion, even worse because they imply that skills are intrinsically linked to the abilities they’re listed under, which doesn’t work for me as I use the Skills With Different Abilities variant rule. What I want (and did eventually find) is a character sheet with a big ol’ blank, possibly lined, space for writing your proficiencies in. Of the two such sheets I have found, neither are perfect for my preferences, but they’re close enough that I’d rather use them than get Photoshop.

Ah, right, I can understand how that formatting might be misleading for the SwDA variant.

If others are curious, here's one with the blank space simply to list skill proficiencies:

D&D 5E - A character sheet for Skills With Different Ability Scores?

So, I’m a huge fan of the Skills With Different Abilities optional rule. I love being able to just ask for ability checks, and have my players chime in with Proficiencies they have that might be appropriate. But it feels like I have to fight the character sheet to do it. Every character sheet -...

www.enworld.org

Which you had apparently been looking for back then...

 

[Don Durito]

Listing all the skills I feel distorts the rules slightly even if you are not adding or swapping them around.

There are no trained skills. If you only list the proficiency you have it not only saves space, but you take the emphasis away from all the skills you don't have. You no longer have a list of things you don't have, and which it therefore implies you can't do.

What you instead have is a small list of things you are particularly good at.

 

[Don Durito]

I actually think the approach from Numenera would work quite well in 5e. (Not surprising as Monte Cook was working on Next for a while). The primary different is that there's not a defined list of skills. You just get training from various sources.

One of the consequences of 5e is that it doesn't matter if skills overlap.

So for example you could give classes the following skills.
Barbarian: Carousing/Survival/Athletics
Fighter: Athletics/Warfare
Rogue: Thievery, Stealth, (Experiste in one), Expertise in Climbing
Bard: Charm/Knowledge/Performance

The barbarian is good at all athletics, but the the Rogue is specifically good at climbing - they don't get the Barbarian's ability with swimming and running long distances. The Barbarian's social skill is much narrower than a bards.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I think it's a heck of a lot easier to ask for a "Deception check" or a "Deception Skill Check" than a "Charisma ability check adding your Deception proficiency bonus" or even "Charisma (deception) check". The list isn't sorted by ability, it's sorted by skill. I don't want to explain to my newbie players every time that I really mean is look down the skill list to find the appropriate skill. Saying "Give me a deception check" is just a common sense straightforward way of saying it.

Very true. I call out checks by the skill because that is what is written on people's character sheets, and even many experienced players aren't really used to thinking about what is theoretically going on with game mechanics to give them that particular bonus.

Now this might be overly constraining, except that the one to three times per session when they are actually doing something that best suits a check not run as they appear on the character sheet "skill menu" I just explicitly talk through what we are doing and why. "Okay, you're proficient in performance, so to impress people on the beach with your muscles roll a strength check and then add +3 from your proficiency bonus."

I do appreciate the "no skill checks, only ability checks" distinction, and think it is a valuable one to understand as the DM. I just think it comes up rarely enough that most players don't really need to worry about it. I'd rather lean into the play that naturally arises from the character sheet, and just talk through the parts that it doesn't work well for when they come up.

 

[Oofta]

Listing all the skills I feel distorts the rules slightly even if you are not adding or swapping them around.

There are no trained skills. If you only list the proficiency you have it not only saves space, but you take the emphasis away from all the skills you don't have. You no longer have a list of things you don't have, and which it therefore implies you can't do.

What you instead have is a small list of things you are particularly good at.

But if someone wants to climb a wall, I know they need to make an athletics check whether they're proficient or not. Since I don't know off the top of my head what each PC is proficient in, if they're climbing a wall I'd have to say "give me strength check an apply your skill proficiency in athletics if you have one". Do people really do that? Isn't it just easier to say "give me an athletics check?" In other cases such as lifting a heavy object where I don't think athletics applies I might just ask for a straight strength check.

We can debate other hypothetical systems (or implementations from other systems/editions) but I'm talking about 5E.

 

[Charlaquin]

Ah, right, I can understand how that formatting might be misleading for the SwDA variant.

If others are curious, here's one with the blank space simply to list skill proficiencies:

D&D 5E - A character sheet for Skills With Different Ability Scores?

So, I’m a huge fan of the Skills With Different Abilities optional rule. I love being able to just ask for ability checks, and have my players chime in with Proficiencies they have that might be appropriate. But it feels like I have to fight the character sheet to do it. Every character sheet -...

www.enworld.org

Which you had apparently been looking for back then...

Yup. That’s one of the two I’ve found that suits my needs, though I don’t care for the way it re-arranges the ability boxes compared to the standard sheets. The other one I’ve found is a little closer to the standard layout but does away with the space on the right for Personality Traits, Ideal, Bond, and Flaw, in favor of a blank field for “description and personal details.” Which is a pretty minor grievance, and arguably makes it more versatile.

 

[Charlaquin]

Listing all the skills I feel distorts the rules slightly even if you are not adding or swapping them around.

There are no trained skills. If you only list the proficiency you have it not only saves space, but you take the emphasis away from all the skills you don't have. You no longer have a list of things you don't have, and which it therefore implies you can't do.

What you instead have is a small list of things you are particularly good at.

Also more newbie friendly as it eliminates the problem of inexperienced players wondering what the skills they don’t have are “for”