Adaptive skills

[saucerhead]

Skills are kind of limited in 5th edition unless you become a lore bard or waste a feat on “skilled”. What I am proposing to my DM is the opportunity to change skills in your character class when you reach a level that gives you an ASI. That way if you chose a skill at first level that is doing nothing for your character, you can choose to give up that skill for a different one available to that class. If, for example, you have a ranger that took animal handling, insight, and stealth when you started out, you could at fourth level ditch one of them to become proficient in survival. It seems reasonable that you would have been using it as you adventured all along. You just get better at it at the expense of one of your existing skills. Your total number of skill proficiencies doesn't change.

You can never change a background skill, and if you are multi-classed you can never change out one class skill for a different class skill (a warlock skill for a rogue skill). The class that you increase in level to get an ASI must be the class that you potentially change the skill in. I think it would be too powerful a change otherwise.

What do you guys think?

[sophontteks]

Just let players level 1-3 edit their characters. If a player notices something in their character isn't working, they can change it before they get too far in the game without requiring a whole system built around it.

[Unoriginal]

Sorry, but how are Ability checks limited?

[mephnick]

What do you guys think?

I mean, it's always fair to let a player change something that they didn't understand and now aren't happy with.

But before we assume that skills are limited enough they require a houserule to fix, there are a couple of things to remember:

1). Proficiency is just a little bonus and not a gate-keeping mechanism. Every character can attempt anything. The d20 is by far more important than any proficiency bonus for most characters. In terms of ability checks, characters are only limited by the fiction of the world, not the dots on their stat sheet. A barbarian can still make Int (Arcana) checks if his score is -1 and succeed. It's up to you and your players to figure out why.

2). It's up to you as a DM (after the players have agreed to play your concept) to give guidance during character creation that will lead the characters to be successful and engaging. If you think Animal Handling will be worthless, tell them that. If you think Performance isn't going to be much use in the wilds of Bleakrock Isle, make sure they know that. If you're going to hand-wave travel, random encounters and foraging, tell them "nature guide" probably isn't a role they should strive for. This should cut down on choices they regret.

If you are going to gate character flexibility behind proficiency, make sure that is known before the game starts and maybe introduce your rule. However, maybe consider why you actually feel that this is a problem and whether you're engaging with the rules properly.

[sophontteks]

Yeah proficiency in itself isn't a big deal.
I'm a bard in my group and we have a cleric. Pretty much anyone can be good at any skill with guidance + Inspiration. They are adding 1d4 + 1d8 to their roll.

[JellyPooga]

Personally, I have a distaste for arbitrary changes like that; even to the point of changing spells known on the likes of a Sorcerer (unless it's an "uograde" like losing Burning Hands for Fireball). How has your character forgotten his +4 in Nature, to replace it with Perception, for example? Did you have a brain-enema or something? It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

That said, I don't see anything unbalancing or otherwise wrong with it, per se.

[sophontteks]

Did you have a brain-enema or something?

Everyone is getting them these days. It's the next big fad.