Skill-Learning Homebrew?

[GreatWyrmGold]

Talking with my 5e DM out of game, he mentioned that he was considering adding some kind of system for characters to acquire new skill proficiencies as the game went on. Two ideas he was thinking about were gaining a new proficiency every time one's proficiency bonus increased, or having 1 day of training equate to +1% chance of adding proficiency to the skill; he made it clear that these were raw ideas that he hadn't thought through yet.

I figured that someone around here had to have had similar thoughts, and wondered if anyone had thought of a way to turn those thoughts into actual homebrew mechanics. (And if not, I figured someone might be willing to give it a shot on the spot.) Any thoughts?

[Grod_The_Giant]

I feel like the best bet would be to make it a downtime thing, like acquiring new tools. You certainly don't want to do cumulative percentages, I don't think; that'll lead to you sitting and rolling d100s for an hour of real-time. Find an instructor, spend X days at a cost of 1 gold/day, pick up the proficiency. (I'd say ~50% more than it takes to get a tool or language, because skills are usually more useful, but those already take a disgusting 250 days, so...)

[Sigreid]

My group decided almost immediately to apply the rules for learning a tool proficiency or language to skills.

[Easy_Lee]

There's nothing wrong with the concept of spending downtime days for this, like tools and languages. But 250 days on tools and languages is stupid. You can quest for a magic item that grants the desired proficiency in less time.

Figure out how many downtime days you give per session, then decide how many sessions it should take to learn a new skill, and you'll have your answer.

[Sigreid]

There's nothing wrong with the concept of spending downtime days for this, like tools and languages. But 250 days on tools and languages is stupid. You can quest for a magic item that grants the desired proficiency in less time.

Figure out how many downtime days you give per session, then decide how many sessions it should take to learn a new skill, and you'll have your answer.

Depends on the campaign I guess. In our game there is nothing stopping the party from having time between adventures.

[Unoriginal]

There's nothing wrong with the concept of spending downtime days for this, like tools and languages. But 250 days on tools and languages is stupid.

A bit less than 9 months to learn a new language or craft doesn't seem outlandish to me. It's actually pretty quick.



You can quest for a magic item that grants the desired proficiency in less time.


I don't know many people who would quest for a magic item that do that. At least, I don't know many people who would quest for that kind of magic item and then keep it.

[Easy_Lee]

A bit less than 9 months to learn a new language or craft doesn't seem outlandish to me. It's actually pretty quick.



I don't know many people who would quest for a magic item that do that. At least, I don't know many people who would quest for that kind of magic item and then keep it.

Guy at the gym fallacy. Just because it would take you or I nine months to learn a language doesn't mean it should take a character that long. Besides the fact that learning a new language doesn't take that long if you dedicate all of your time to it. One of my uncles learned passable Japanese in about two months. He didn't pay anyone for lessons, he just had a crush on a woman he later married.

And as far as tools go, some of them might take 250 days or longer, such as blacksmithing. But have a look at the tool list. Do you really think all of those tools would take equally long? Because I don't. And I also don't believe in putting game balance up on a pedestal. Just because it's balanced according to someone doesn't make it the right choice.

[Grod_The_Giant]

"Appropriate amount of downtime" is entirely campaign dependent. I've played some that had weeks of downtime, and I've played some where everything happened pretty much back-to-back-to-back and months of sessions only covered a few days of in-game time. In a kingdom-building game where major events are separated by months or years, 250 days isn't bad. In a stop-the-BBEG-before-the-ritual game, you might not have any downtime, and 250 days is a pipe dream.

[GreatWyrmGold]

A bit less than 9 months to learn a new language or craft doesn't seem outlandish to me. It's actually pretty quick.
This is a decent simulationist argument, but D&D is a terrible simulationist game. You might as well point out that thirteen encounters is a ridiculously short amount of time to get better at not dying, especially with the drastic increases at low levels.


I don't know many people who would quest for a magic item that do that. At least, I don't know many people who would quest for that kind of magic item and then keep it.
Depends on why they wanted the proficiency, and what their other options were.


Maybe it's just the fact that he posted in the thread, but Grod's Law seems relevant here. It's annoying to have to spend 250 downtime days on a proficiency that may or may not be useful by the end of that time (if the campaign even goes on long enough), especially in games where you can't "store up" downtime days for later use (the only campaign I've played thus far which made notable use of downtime days had this caveat). Other than that, the mechanic's only purpose is to keep PCs from freely picking up every proficiency in the book.

[90sMusic]

I've never liked the idea of having hard and fast (ie, exploitable) rules for learning a new proficiency.

Most classes are very intentionally not proficient in a broad variety of things because that is one of perks of being a rogue or bard. They are the diverse skill monkeys. If you let any class learn additional skills, it drastically cheapens one of the core functions of those two classes.

I don't think a skill should be something you just "learn" through any kind of casual use over a short period of time. Imagine going from knowing nothing about something like blacksmithing to rivaling the greatest master craftsmen of the world in the span of a couple of days or whatever other arbitrary length of time. The only way i'd allow something like that is if it was a campaign where you had a LOT of downtime and could spend at the very least a solid year working on it.

I wonder how one "trains" perception. Doing those dumb little puzzles with two pictures where like 3 things are different between them?

Anyway, that is my take on it. Only if it is a very long time to work on it and even then it's kind of sketchy. If you want a lot of skills, you should play a bard or a rogue. Trying to take the role or abilities of other classes and just add them to your own is disruptive to the game's design.

[Sigreid]

I've never liked the idea of having hard and fast (ie, exploitable) rules for learning a new proficiency.

Most classes are very intentionally not proficient in a broad variety of things because that is one of perks of being a rogue or bard. They are the diverse skill monkeys. If you let any class learn additional skills, it drastically cheapens one of the core functions of those two classes.

I don't think a skill should be something you just "learn" through any kind of casual use over a short period of time. Imagine going from knowing nothing about something like blacksmithing to rivaling the greatest master craftsmen of the world in the span of a couple of days or whatever other arbitrary length of time. The only way i'd allow something like that is if it was a campaign where you had a LOT of downtime and could spend at the very least a solid year working on it.

I wonder how one "trains" perception. Doing those dumb little puzzles with two pictures where like 3 things are different between them?

Anyway, that is my take on it. Only if it is a very long time to work on it and even then it's kind of sketchy. If you want a lot of skills, you should play a bard or a rogue. Trying to take the role or abilities of other classes and just add them to your own is disruptive to the game's design.

Well, when I was in the military they sent me to school for 8 months to learn electronics. 8 hours of intensive schooling every day was pretty effective, but there was nothing casual about it.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I've never liked the idea of having hard and fast (ie, exploitable) rules for learning a new proficiency.
"Hard and fast" != "Exploitable"
Not a good first impression...


Most classes are very intentionally not proficient in a broad variety of things because that is one of perks of being a rogue or bard. They are the diverse skill monkeys. If you let any class learn additional skills, it drastically cheapens one of the core functions of those two classes.
1. They can use these rules, too.
2. I know that rogues, at least, have a class feature which makes them better at skills in a way that just adding proficiencies wouldn't.


Imagine going from knowing nothing about something like blacksmithing to rivaling the greatest master craftsmen of the world in the span of a couple of days or whatever other arbitrary length of time.
That's a critical flaw with the proficiency system itself. You're either an average Joe working off of pure natural ability or intuition, or you're basically as good as you can get without fighting a bunch of monsters or something.


If you want a lot of skills, you should play a bard or a rogue. Trying to take the role or abilities of other classes and just add them to your own is disruptive to the game's design.
You do understand that there's a middle ground between "you never get to broaden your areas of competence no matter how long the campaign runs" and "everyone (except skill monkies) gets tons of new skill proficiencies rendering them obsolete," right? And that even if everyone had more skill proficiencies, they would probably specialize in different things, because that's what specialization is for?

[D-naras]

We are about to implement gaining proficiency in a class skill whenever the proficiency bonus goes up in our campaign (any of your classes' if you multiclassed).

I feel it does a good job of granting a feeling of lateral progression without stepping on the toes of the skill monkey classes, since they have a broader selection of skills already. And tying it too the proficiency bonus makes it independent of class features as well.

[clash]

I feel like the solution already exists. It is the skilled feat. It allows you to add more proficiencies as you increase in level. It is generally accepted as a fairly weak feat so I would suggest tweaking it a bit but I think that is the right approach.

[90sMusic]

Well, when I was in the military they sent me to school for 8 months to learn electronics. 8 hours of intensive schooling every day was pretty effective, but there was nothing casual about it.

That's the idea. Took you 8 months, doing it 8 hours a day. That is more reasonable, like I said it should be around a year if it were possible at all.


"Hard and fast" != "Exploitable"
Not a good first impression...
It is a figure of speech. But since you are unfamiliar, the idea is if you present a path to people that they can take to get stronger, they more often than not will take it. If you have established, posted rules that always apply on ways to gain more skills, people will be doing it as often as they can because why wouldn't you?


1. They can use these rules, too.
2. I know that rogues, at least, have a class feature which makes them better at skills in a way that just adding proficiencies wouldn't.
So not only do you take away the unique, swiss army knife quality of rogue and bard and make it available to everyone, but you make rogues and bards lag further behind and close the gap even more unless they exploit the system as well. So you're stuck choosing between roleplaying and story related activities for downtime that is what downtime is typically used for right now, to "everyone is going to school during their time off" and anyone who doesn't is going to become less useful, especially the skill monkeys who are forced to either learn even more skills to keep up or have part of their class identity taken from this.



You do understand that there's a middle ground between "you never get to broaden your areas of competence no matter how long the campaign runs" and "everyone (except skill monkies) gets tons of new skill proficiencies rendering them obsolete," right? And that even if everyone had more skill proficiencies, they would probably specialize in different things, because that's what specialization is for?

Specializing is the entire point of the current skill system. That is why you have limited options and pick the handful of things you are good at. THAT is specializing. When you allow everyone to learn all skills that is the opposite of specializing, that is making it the norm to be able to do everything.

If you want to break your game then by all means, go right ahead, but limited proficiency is there for a reason. It's like giving people more saving throw proficiency without the associated feat cost.

[Sigreid]

That's the idea. Took you 8 months, doing it 8 hours a day. That is more reasonable, like I said it should be around a year if it were possible at all.


My understanding of the rules for learning a language or tool (which my group applies to skills) is that we are also talking about 8 months or so of doing that as your dedicated downtime activity, with an instructor.

[Kane0]

Sounds like a good downtime thing.

Something like Xgp per week, each week gives you like a d10 or d12 % progress towards proficiency. Other circumstances (eg paying more) might alter the number or size of the die/dice.

[GreatWyrmGold]

It is a figure of speech. But since you are unfamiliar, the idea is if you present a path to people that they can take to get stronger, they more often than not will take it. If you have established, posted rules that always apply on ways to gain more skills, people will be doing it as often as they can because why wouldn't you?
I have never heard that used as a figure of speech. What, does this forum have its own established idioms now?
And to answer your question, there are two main possibilities. (Or at least, two possibilities that matter here.)
1. Because they can get something else with [x]. [x] is whatever resource you tie to getting the power; in this case it's probably downtime days. If a basic tradeoff is "exploiting the system," then the word "exploit" has no meaning, because just about every mechanical decision you make is exploiting the rules system, and most other decisions you make in-game are also exploiting some kind of system.
2. They will do it because it's automatic. But it's not really exploiting the system if you literally have no agency in it, is it?
In other words,


So not only do you take away the unique, swiss army knife quality of rogue and bard and make it available to everyone, but you make rogues and bards lag further behind and close the gap even more unless they exploit the system as well. So you're stuck choosing between roleplaying and story related activities for downtime that is what downtime is typically used for right now, to "everyone is going to school during their time off" and anyone who doesn't is going to become less useful, especially the skill monkeys who are forced to either learn even more skills to keep up or have part of their class identity taken from this.
What roleplay and story-related activities? I've never encountered one. The closest are a couple of roleplaying scenes in between adventures which didn't consume downtime days, because what kind of moronic DM would charge a valuable resource for something that is never going to affect the game in any way?
Unless you're asserting that researching lore, looking for allies, earning money (gambling/prize money/theft/honest work) or favors, learning language or tool proficiencies, and buying/crafting gods-darn magic items count as "roleplaying and story-related activities". And I guess they kinda do, but so does learning a new skill. (Many stories have segments devoted to the protagonist learning some new skill, even when that skill isn't related to fighting. Heck, some stories are based around that concept!) It's just not automatically dressed up in the story language like some (but not all) of the UA's downtime activities.
If your players always go for skill proficiencies over other options, without so much as a second thought, either you're not giving them any reason to care about the other options or you balanced the skill-prof option worse than WotC balanced the druid.

Anyways, onto the claim that I'm taking a quality of skillmonkies and making it available to everyone. Erm...no. First off, you ignored one of my critical points on the subject. Rogues, at least, have class features which ensure they will always be better than other classes at skills, because the other classes don't have those class features. I've never played with a bard (aside from one who could only show up every few sessions), so I don't know about their class features, but I'm guessing they have some other class feature that would help them keep their edge if they lost it.
Second, they wouldn't lose their edge. If the rogue buys a sweet magic crossbow, does that take away the fighter's unique, oversized butcher knife quality? If the bard buys a bunch of healing potions, does that take away the cleric's unique, healing shiv quality? Of course not! That's ludicrous! Letting someone spend resources to do slightly more of what someone else does much better is not the same thing as taking away the else's specialty!


Specializing is the entire point of the current skill system. That is why you have limited options and pick the handful of things you are good at. THAT is specializing. When you allow everyone to learn all skills that is the opposite of specializing, that is making it the norm to be able to do everything.
Dude. There is a middle ground between having a few proficiencies that never change from the first session to the end, and everyone learning all skills. I...I don't have to explain that, right? You already knew that and were just building a strawman, right? There aren't actually people in this world stupid enough to not realize that proposing some small thing does not mean you have to agree to the most abso-fecking-lutely ridiculous possible extention of that idea which exists in the fecking world, you mother-fecker?!?
If your next post has one argument anywhere near this fallacious or utterly brain-dead, which ignores my actual proposals and/or the rules to the extent of 2/3 the ones in this post, I'm going to just ignore it. At some point, this slog just ain't worth it.


EDIT: Kane0's idea sounds nice, though the numbers might need some tweaking.