Skilled feat - Do you use it for flavor reasons?

[Chrizzt]

Hello fellows!

The skilled feat gives you the possibility to learn 3 proficiencies in skills. While this could make sense from an optimisation point of view for certain skill monkey builds, my question to you is of a different kind:

Have you ever used the feat to give your characters skills to make them more well rounded personalities? Along the lines of “I dont create builds, I create characters“.

Which experiences did you make? A feat is a hefty tax, as you have to take it instead of an ASI, and much on these boards here is about combat optimization. So I'm keen on hearing your stories how you used the feat to make a more interesting character.

I am toying with the idea to take it for a wizard char of mine, to give him more social skills (persuasion, perhaps deception or insight). As he has no charisma bonus he would be an example of a learned diplomat without a natural gift for the topic, who earned his skills. (In my group, we do not have a dedicated party face so far, so it might even make sense, though a wizard is certainly not stereotypical for such tasks).

(Prodigy feat is in a similar vein, if you can recount interesting ideas for this as well)

[Duff]

Similar but different. As a GM, I often allow each character to have a "hobby" skill - musical instrument for non-bards, cooking, carpentry, writing fanfic or motorcycle repair.
If I'm doing it right, it someone's hobby comes up about 1 session in 10 or so (more if the player is creative in use of it or brings it up in roleplay.

[Desteplo]

I went beast master ranger. Most of the damage comes from the beast. At lvl11 the beast gets extra attack and you get one attack

-so I went with skilled feat for poisoners kit, leather workers tools to make barding and thieves tools for general utility.

I also took magic initiate wizard and ritual caster Druid

I didn’t get much further than that but I probably would have added more to the wisdom or intellect stats before I maxed out my dex

It worked fine. A 1 or 2 isn’t a big deal. It’s only 5% each. If you are playing the meta game, Max main stat. If you are playing the roleplay game, you won’t struggle. It’s very hard to struggle in 5e

[Particle_Man]

I did it because it came at the right time and someone needed to learn brain swapping surgery fast. I was temporarily the world’s best and worst such surgeon. :smallsmile:

[TripleD]

Took it on a Champion Fighter with maxed out INT. Gave them every knowledge skill and made them the party know-it-all.

[Willie the Duck]

The skilled feat gives you the possibility to learn 3 proficiencies in skills. While this could make sense from an optimisation point of view for certain skill monkey builds, my question to you is of a different kind:Have you ever used the feat to give your characters skills to make them more well rounded personalities? Along the lines of “I dont create builds, I create characters“.

As a GM, I often allow each character to have a "hobby" skill - musical instrument for non-bards, cooking, carpentry, writing fanfic or motorcycle repair.

I have done similar to both of these. However, I came to the conclusion that I am against the practice (mostly as a DM, but also also a little as a player in that I think the DM should not be incentivized to think this way) and am going to argue against the adoption of such practice.
Here is my reasoning: If a player is willing to make a character with some level of sub-optimality for flavor reasons, rather than hyper-focus in mechanical superiority, they shouldn't feel obligated to also spend an ASI (which is a lot bigger deal in this edition than a feat or NWP in previous editions) just to fulfill that character conceptualizing. Whatever minor thing like attribute allocation or background selection that they did ought to be enough.

[Misterwhisper]

I was playing a rogue swashbuckler so the feat had a little more kick for me than some other builds but I took it to get performance, persuasion, and knowledge history because his false identity was as a bumbling floutist bard.

[stoutstien]

Personally I just turned the skill feat into the prodigy feat for all. Instead of language I added a tool proficiency also.

[Nagog]

Personally I just turned the skill feat into the prodigy feat for all. Instead of language I added a tool proficiency also.

Agreed. While extra skills are nice, Expertise is much much more valuable. I took it on my Druid for persuasion and a few tools, and it's worked wonders for him, both personality wise and mechanic wise.

[Chrizzt]

Right now I am also contenplating taking it instead of skilled: also for persuasion on an otherwise non charismatic wizard.

I read somewhere that Expertise brings the danger of brokenness when it tohether with high ability scores hits bounded accuracy. And I read that it was meant for exactly such cases: eg help an non intelligent thief get good investigation checks and so on.

[stoutstien]

Right now I am also contenplating taking it instead of skilled: also for persuasion on an otherwise non charismatic wizard.

I read somewhere that Expertise brings the danger of brokenness when it tohether with high ability scores hits bounded accuracy. And I read that it was meant for exactly such cases: eg help an non intelligent thief get good investigation checks and so on.
The whole argument that expertise breaking BA has no base. A player is taking an opportunity cost to be go a one skill check so yes they will be good at that skill in the same way a player taken alert is going to be good at not being surprised. As long as you spread out the love for ablity checks instead of only asking for Wis(perception) every time expertise is a fine mechanic.

[Rukelnikov]

The whole argument that expertise breaking BA has no base. A player is taking an opportunity cost to be go a one skill check so yes they will be good at that skill in the same way a player taken alert is going to be good at not being surprised. As long as you spread out the love for ablity checks instead of only asking for Wis(perception) every time expertise is a fine mechanic.

There are some skills that will inevitably come up more often than the rest, specially those than can be player triggered, Stealth and Athletics for instance, and Perception is almost required to be rolled before each combat to determine surprise, so its unreal to expect Perform or Knowledge(Religion) to come up as often as those in the vast majority of campaigns.

However they don't completely break BA, if we consider the highest possible modifier to be a +17, even someone with +0 would beat him 3 out of 400 times, and tie with the same frequency.

[Sigreid]

We allow the training of skills, so the feat is useless at our table. Prodigy is a good one though.

[Chrizzt]

Sometimes I think the error lies in thinking a high check allows for supernatural stunts.

Eg that a persuasion check of +30 allows you to persuade a king to give you his castle out of the blue and persuade a cleric to renounce his faith just for fun.

That is not how it works. Persuasion allows you to achieve the upper limit of what people are willing to do given the circumstances.

Also less interpretation prone proficiencies like stealth are sometimes used wrongly, even in my own group, according to my estimation.

This is because (at least until recently) my DM allowed our halfling (high dex, expertise) to basically hide in plain sight, which is simply not possible without additional powers. Or he played our enemies in a too stupid way (they fell at least trice for the same hide-and-sneak-attack trick of the halfing, who basically just jumped behind and from a corner).

[Warlush]

I made a Vhuman GOOlock with prodigy at lvl1. He had a 14 INT and double proficiency in Arcana, with standard prof in all the other knowledge skills. He was definitely not as combat or face optimized as any of my other warlocks but it was really fun to play a genius loosing his mind.

[Man_Over_Game]

I have done similar to both of these. However, I came to the conclusion that I am against the practice (mostly as a DM, but also also a little as a player in that I think the DM should not be incentivized to think this way) and am going to argue against the adoption of such practice.
Here is my reasoning: If a player is willing to make a character with some level of sub-optimality for flavor reasons, rather than hyper-focus in mechanical superiority, they shouldn't feel obligated to also spend an ASI (which is a lot bigger deal in this edition than a feat or NWP in previous editions) just to fulfill that character conceptualizing. Whatever minor thing like attribute allocation or background selection that they did ought to be enough.

I agree with you.

If the character had skills that they wanted as part of their concept, they can obtain those easily through the Custom Background rules (which are official, not technically a variant or optional rule, technically more official than V-Human).

Which basically works like this:

Pick 2 skills. Then pick 2 of any combination of Languages or Tool Proficiencies. Then pick a background feature and gear (if relevant) that matches your character.

Between 4 proficiencies and the background feature of your choosing, not including anything you might get from your class/race, how much more mechanical flavor do you need?

[bobofwestgate]

Hello fellows!

The skilled feat gives you the possibility to learn 3 proficiencies in skills. While this could make sense from an optimisation point of view for certain skill monkey builds, my question to you is of a different kind:

Have you ever used the feat to give your characters skills to make them more well rounded personalities? Along the lines of “I dont create builds, I create characters“.

Which experiences did you make? A feat is a hefty tax, as you have to take it instead of an ASI, and much on these boards here is about combat optimization. So I'm keen on hearing your stories how you used the feat to make a more interesting character.

I am toying with the idea to take it for a wizard char of mine, to give him more social skills (persuasion, perhaps deception or insight). As he has no charisma bonus he would be an example of a learned diplomat without a natural gift for the topic, who earned his skills. (In my group, we do not have a dedicated party face so far, so it might even make sense, though a wizard is certainly not stereotypical for such tasks).

(Prodigy feat is in a similar vein, if you can recount interesting ideas for this as well)

I believe Xanathar's guide introduced skill learning as a downtime activity, which makes this feat kind of pointless.

[Chrizzt]

I believe Xanathar's guide introduced skill learning as a downtime activity, which makes this feat kind of pointless.

Not for skill proficiencies, only for languages and tool proficiencies.