D&D 5E Why Don't Barbarians or Fighters Get Bonus Skills?

[Manbearcat]

@Johnny3D3D Yeah. Post 47 absolutely puts this one to bed. Thorough, clear and spot on. As such, I suspect it won't be meaningfully engaged.

 

[Sunseeker]

The guy devoting all his time to religion knows about religion. The guy devoting all his time to combat knows about combat.

Define "combat", are we talking about military history? "Knowledge: Combat"? "Weapon Lore"? Athletics? Endurance? History: Warfare?

I mean, there's a LOT to "combat" that's well beyond "hitting things with a stick". Even for Barbarians, a lot of whom were very well-trained and intelligent people...they just didn't bathe much so people thought they were morons.

 

[GX.Sigma]

Define "combat", are we talking about military history? "Knowledge: Combat"? "Weapon Lore"? Athletics? Endurance? History: Warfare?

If there ends up being a general "knowledge: combat" or "athletics" skill, they should get it. It is impossible to be a Fighter without knowing about combat, or being an athlete.

 

[Li Shenron]

It is impossible to be a Fighter without knowing about combat, or being an athlete.

I think that's an overstatement, unless by "knowing" you include instinct as a possibility. There are a lot of people who have never trained in martial arts, but if engaged they would know how to fight.

I also think too many people have the habit of seeing 1st level characters are people who are already vastly superior to average Joe, and thus must have trained somewhere to get that 1st level. It's not necessarily true, and while it is just the way some fantasy settings types work (e.g. Points of Light, Game of Thrones), it's not how all fantasy settings types work. Not every fantasy world must follow the rules of our 21st century Earth, where everybody gets a degree before starting a job (and adventuring is not a job in all settings anyway).

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

I also think too many people have the habit of seeing 1st level characters are people who are already vastly superior to average Joe, and thus must have trained somewhere to get that 1st level. It's not necessarily true, and while it is just the way some fantasy settings types work (e.g. Points of Light, Game of Thrones), it's not how all fantasy settings types work. Not every fantasy world must follow the rules of our 21st century Earth, where everybody gets a degree before starting a job (and adventuring is not a job in all settings anyway).

I think the rules assume that by level one you're badass enough to walk into a dungeon full of supernatural beasts with a few friends and expect to come out alive. For a wizard, this might happen after a week at magic school, Harry Potter style, or it could take decades of study - but for a fighter, it almost certainly takes a broader array of skills that just swordsmanship. How does a fighter get good enough at combat to BE a fighter if not by exposing himself to dangerous situations that broaden his skill set?

 

[Bluenose]

I think that's an overstatement, unless by "knowing" you include instinct as a possibility. There are a lot of people who have never trained in martial arts, but if engaged they would know how to fight.

I also think too many people have the habit of seeing 1st level characters are people who are already vastly superior to average Joe, and thus must have trained somewhere to get that 1st level. It's not necessarily true, and while it is just the way some fantasy settings types work (e.g. Points of Light, Game of Thrones), it's not how all fantasy settings types work. Not every fantasy world must follow the rules of our 21st century Earth, where everybody gets a degree before starting a job (and adventuring is not a job in all settings anyway).

How long did a samurai spend training before they were considered fit to use weapons in combat? A European knight, a maryannu, a jeni-ceri, a legionary? People who pick up a weapon and try to fight with it are a danger to themselves as well as anyone near them.

 

[Sunseeker]

I think that's an overstatement, unless by "knowing" you include instinct as a possibility. There are a lot of people who have never trained in martial arts, but if engaged they would know how to fight.

What does martial arts have to do with it?
A fighter fights...fighting, trained or not, tends to make one more athletic rather than not.

I also think too many people have the habit of seeing 1st level characters are people who are already vastly superior to average Joe, and thus must have trained somewhere to get that 1st level. It's not necessarily true, and while it is just the way some fantasy settings types work (e.g. Points of Light, Game of Thrones), it's not how all fantasy settings types work. Not every fantasy world must follow the rules of our 21st century Earth, where everybody gets a degree before starting a job (and adventuring is not a job in all settings anyway).

I'm pretty much a "average Joe" as far as anything is concerned, and I can climb a tree and swim just fine. Most children practice tree-climbing, especially in societies without video games and the internet and they usually get fairly good at it. Swimming has historically been a matter of necessity, people from coastal fishing societies generally know how, people from landlocked, prairies or mountainous regions with smaller water-sources don't.

It's not like we're suggesting the Fighter needs a ton of skills, heck 4e only gave them 3 just like everyone else. But on a shorter skill list, having some general skill in Athletics because waving a sword around and wearing heavy armor tends to melt the fat away, being imposing due to said muscular figure and sharp pointy sword, a maybe one other skill of choice rounds out a basic character pretty well.

We cannot go down the road again in DDN of applying real-world rules to fighters while letting anyone with even a hit of magic being allowed to run rampant through the game with no restrictions.

 

[steeldragons]

Now, granted this is all based on my own personal taste of what I think, in my own opinion and preferences of what makes sense for D&D class archetypes...to me, so take it as such. That said, I could totally see a system that just gives out the below. Whatever else you get is from Background. But "class wise", this all seems fairly self evident.

And the Fighter really doesn't get any more jipped than other big classes, like wizard and druid. Actually, odd that the fighter ends up there with most of the spellcasters. My thinking was, since they have magic, they don't rally need more than these coupla skills (though sorcerer was a stretch). Fighter can't really get away with that...I suppose, it's a case of the Fighter being the broadest simplest archetype that covers so much. Then, as you start hammering down other warrior specifics (Warlord and Paladin...Ranger and Barbarian) they need more skills to make them...well, them. A Fighter doesn't really need more than what I've put...but if you want a more specified warrior (Gladiator, Swashbuckler, Knight, etc. etc...) then you do need to add in a couple of more...but they can't be baked into the Fighter class from the start.

Barbarian is downright skill-tastic! Turning out as a rangery/fightery/roguey combo...which I actually really like and think it harkens back to its Conan roots. It's interesting [to me, anyway] the classes that kinda coagulated as the "middling" skill-dependent. And, of course, the heavy skill-dependents are mostly rogue classes.

Fighter: Athletics, Intimidate.
Mage: Lore: Arcana, Lore: Ancient History.
Warlock: Stealth, Use Magic Device.
Druid: Lore: Nature, Survival.

Cleric: Lore: Religion, Healing, Insight.
Warlord: Athletics, Lore: Military History, Healing.
Paladin: Athletics, Lore: Religion, Diplomacy.
Sorcerer: Search, Bluff, Use Magic Device.

Rogue: Search, Stealth, Thievery, Gather Information.
Ranger: Tracking, Stealth, Keen Senses, Lore: Nature.
Barbarian: Athletics, Endurance, Keen Senses, Survival.
Monk: Acrobatics, Stealth, Athletics, Insight.
Assassin: Stealth, Thievery, Deception, Streetwise.
Bard: Perform, Gather Information, Lore: Ancient History, Diplomacy.

 

[Kraydak]

From a balance perspective, unless people can come up with different Fighter class-abilities that apply out of combat, giving the Fighter bonus skills is practically mandatory. I'll add here that lots of Fighter-Concepts are in fact require high/many-skill (Noble Knights, Military Commanders, Aragorn etc...) and that people had a lot of trouble building them in 3e, when Fighters got a pathetic 2 SP/lvl (they often had to splash in Rogue, which wasn't satisfying).

I'd suggest giving Fighters a full extra background, but from a limited set: Knight, Soldier, Thug, maybe Bounty Hunter.

 

[Obryn]

[MENTION=92511]steeldragons[/MENTION], [MENTION=12306]Kraydak[/MENTION] - I like both of those ideas.

More and more though, I kind of long for a skill-free system, where you get +X to anything kind of related to class or background. The downside, of course, is huge table variation, where some DMs evidently don't think there's anything Fighters and Barbarians learn other than smashing stuff...