Expanding Str and Con skills

[Vogie]

What proficiency-tied skills could be tied to the Strength and Constitution?

Not now, obviously. However if there is a 6e around the corner, I think there should be more flexibility for those skills. My ideas:

For Con:
Concentration - This seems like something casters should be able to specialize in
Performance - If anyone has ever performed, you know there is seldom much Charisma involved. Performance is an endurance activity

For Str:
Ride - Controlling a mount or ye olde vehicle has less to do with Animal Handling, which is more commonly used with non-mounted animals
Climb/Swim - The fact that a character needs to bend over backwards in character creation to gain one of these is absurd. Making this a proficiency also allows similar races, feat-users, and/or subclasses to not have the exact same speed

What other things would fall in those categories?

[JoeJ]

What proficiency-tied skills could be tied to the Strength and Constitution?

Not now, obviously. However if there is a 6e around the corner, I think there should be more flexibility for those skills. My ideas:

For Con:
Concentration - This seems like something casters should be able to specialize in
Performance - If anyone has ever performed, you know there is seldom much Charisma involved. Performance is an endurance activity

For Str:
Ride - Controlling a mount or ye olde vehicle has less to do with Animal Handling, which is more commonly used with non-mounted animals
Climb/Swim - The fact that a character needs to bend over backwards in character creation to gain one of these is absurd. Making this a proficiency also allows similar races, feat-users, and/or subclasses to not have the exact same speed

What other things would fall in those categories?

Taking them one at a time:

Concentration. What would this skill proficiency do? The only time a die roll is involved with concentrating is if you take damage while concentrating on a spell, and that's a Constitution saving throw. I don't see where a skill proficiency would fit.

Performance. I disagree. Enduring may be necessary for a strenuous performance, but being the last one standing doesn't generally get you judged the most impressive singer/actor/musician/etc. It's your ability to connect with and inspire the audience that makes or breaks the performance. That's Charisma.

Ride. This is too narrow. Skill proficiencies are very broad by design. And Dexterity Strength would be the wrong ability in any case. Riding well is much more about communicating with the horse than it is about being agile pushing it around. However, on those occasions where
Dexterity would be appropriate, the DM can already call for a Dexterity (Animal Handling) check.

Climb/Swim. Again, much too narrow. Taking these out of Athletics just means PCs who want to play jocks need three proficiencies instead of one, making them less versatile. I see no benefit to that at all.


Ed: I just realized I misread your post as suggesting Dexterity instead of Strength for Ride. I've altered my reply accordingly.

[Greywander]

For Con:
Concentration - This seems like something casters should be able to specialize in
CON save proficiency already exists. By making it an ability check, you open it up to certain exploits (as ability checks are generally less restrictively balanced), such as Expertise or Reliable Talent.


Performance - If anyone has ever performed, you know there is seldom much Charisma involved. Performance is an endurance activity
You can already choose to ignore the existing links between skills and ability scores. If you're dancing, then Dexterity (Performance) or Constitution (Performance), but if you're recounting the epic tale of how you stole Muradin's beard, that would be Charisma.

In general, I think CON has more to do with healthiness rather than endurance. Endurance would likely fit more closely with STR. It's kind of weird because they do seem to waffle back and forth a bit on that point.


For Str:
Ride - Controlling a mount or ye olde vehicle has less to do with Animal Handling, which is more commonly used with non-mounted animals
Vehicle proficiencies already exist (under tools), though fair point about mounts. If anything, though, I'd make mounts another tool proficiency, or include it with vehicles (land). I don't think this warrants its own skill.


Climb/Swim - The fact that a character needs to bend over backwards in character creation to gain one of these is absurd. Making this a proficiency also allows similar races, feat-users, and/or subclasses to not have the exact same speed
These are both explicitly under the domain of Athletics. You might choose to split them off as a separate skill, but my point is that these already exist in some form.


What other things would fall in those categories?
Honestly, I'm not sure. If CON mostly refers to healthiness, then I don't really think it would have any appropriate skills. If it's more endurance and fortitude, then something like a survival-type skill (Conditioning?) for resisting things like extreme cold/heat or hunger/thirst, though I think those are already covered by CON saves. You could also have something like marathon running, basically the ability to walk/jog for a long time and distance.

STR is mostly tricky just because Athletics is pretty much the catch-all for anything you'd want to be a STR skill. Anything you could think of that you'd want to be a STR skill is probably already covered by Athletics.

[PhoenixPhyre]

STR is mostly tricky just because Athletics is pretty much the catch-all for anything you'd want to be a STR skill. Anything you could think of that you'd want to be a STR skill is probably already covered by Athletics.

And IMO that's a good thing. Contra 3e fighters who could either climb, swim, OR ride. Maybe. If they had any skill points left at all. The more you split up skills, the fewer things people can be good at.

[Tanarii]

Concentration is a save. That's mostly important because baseline, the only full caster that gets it are Sorcerers. Which is a good thing. If you want to enhance it, you need optional feats or multiclassing.

Animal Handling is just Ride+stuff, 5e widened the extent of the Ride proficiency to cover some additional things.

Performance is a close to useless skill unless your DM uses it for pretending to be someone else (instead of or as a replacement for Deception or Disguise Kit). It really should be eliminated. But, you know, somehow Bards have become Troubadors in modern D&D.

Athletics is already Climb/Swim/Jump.

For all of these, there is an optional rule to allow variable ability score / skill combinations. Dexterity (Animal Handling), Constitution (Performance), or Constitution (Athletics).

If I was going to add more skills, they'd probably be Lore skills. There are a few 5e Mods for more modern scenarios that eliminate some of the baseline ones and add Intelligence (Technology) and/or Intelligence (Science) for example. SW5E for example.

[Lunali]

For Str:
Ride - Controlling a mount or ye olde vehicle has less to do with Animal Handling, which is more commonly used with non-mounted animals

Huh!? If I were to make a list of stats for riding a mount and/or controlling a vehicle, strength would be dead last. Dex for most maneuvers, wis to preemptively notice threats, cha to convince the animal who's in charge, int to know what to do, con to ride for an extended period or hold on while breaking an animal. It's a very rare case when your strength is going to matter versus an animal that's large enough to ride.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Huh!? If I were to make a list of stats for riding a mount and/or controlling a vehicle, strength would be dead last. Dex for most maneuvers, wis to preemptively notice threats, cha to convince the animal who's in charge, int to know what to do, con to ride for an extended period or hold on while breaking an animal. It's a very rare case when your strength is going to matter versus an animal that's large enough to ride.

Yeah. And for vehicles in particular, there's already a proficiency for that: Vehicles, Land.

[DwarfFighter]

In my opinion, it is a bad idea to add more codified skills into the system. This is because the character creation and development process provides a limited set of proficiency resources. You might say you have x points of proficiency resources with which to select from n proficiency-modifiable skills or tools. If you increase n by +1, by adding a new skill/tool, what do you do about x?

If your added skill/tool is a key feature for your campaign, e.g. Plunderrr! in a Pirate themed campaign, do you grant all player characters extra proficiencies so they can take that in addition to their normal proficiencies, or not, leaving them to prioritize between this new important skill and standard selection of skills/tools?

Is your new skill so marginal of use that it will only rarely come into play? If so you essentially created a trap for your players to invest a proficiency in a worthless resource.

Is your new skill so important that going without it will cripple a character? Either you give all characters proficiency in the skill for free ("You all know how to ride space horses!") or you drain all the PCs of a valuable proficiency resource that could have been applied to their standard skill selection.

In short: If you feel your campaign world needs a new skill, just give it to everyone.

[5eNeedsDarksun]

And IMO that's a good thing. Contra 3e fighters who could either climb, swim, OR ride. Maybe. If they had any skill points left at all. The more you split up skills, the fewer things people can be good at.

This was my first thought. Strength/ Athletics is actually good because it comes up a lot and is broad. Some of the other areas, to me, are too narrow and require too many skills to cover. I'd rather consolidate some of the others if I had a choice.

[Greywander]

In my opinion, it is a bad idea to add more codified skills into the system. This is because the character creation and development process provides a limited set of proficiency resources. You might say you have x points of proficiency resources with which to select from n proficiency-modifiable skills or tools. If you increase n by +1, by adding a new skill/tool, what do you do about x?
I don't think this is quite true, but I understand what you're saying. I think for tools, specifically, they're designed so that you can add as many tool proficiencies as you like and it won't change the balance of the game. Tool proficiencies are treated as an optional extra, while skills are considered more important. This is why every skill is already on your character sheet, whether you have proficiency in it or not, while you need to write in any tools you're proficient with yourself. I think languages have a similar status to tools in this respect.

As for skills, I think what you're saying mostly applies if you split an existing skill into more than one skill, e.g. splitting Athletics into Swimming, Climbing, etc. If you add an entirely new skill that covers something that no skill currently covers, then the effect is still there but greatly minimized. Two skill additions I've proposed before are Business (appraising items, running a shop, writing up contracts, etc.) and Warfare (logistics, sieges, fortification, etc.). You would really have to stretch to cover these subjects using a different skill, so adding these skills will have a minimal effect on players who don't take them. However, for the players who do take them, it's true that they'll be doing so at the expense of one of the other skills they could have taken, and if these skills didn't exist they could have just written them into their background for free.

Something else you could do is deliberately create new skills that overlap with two or more existing skills instead of covering something new. If Skill 1 relates to A, B, and C, while Skill 2 relates to X, Y, and Z, then you could make a new skill that covers A, X, and Z. For example, a Law skill that includes religious law as well as the history of law. Other religious or historical topics would not be included. In this case, it's not exactly like you have X points to spend and N + 1 options, because you could skip on Law entirely as long as someone in the party has History and Religion. In other words, Law isn't a new skill, but rather simply an alternative to History and Religion. The value in having these overlapping skills is that you can customize your character a bit better, though at some point it would be worth asking if you shouldn't just break skills down into narrower categories and give people more skill proficiencies.

[Nefariis]

Something that I allow in my games is to have Strength or Charisma for intimidation.

I believe there are plenty of buff people out there who are both ugly and socially awkward that I personally wouldn't ever want to fight - it always seemed weird that the meat head group isn't represented in the intimidation skill when it's clearly represented in every facet of media (Sloth from Goonies being the most important).

Also I am completely pro splitting athletics into swimming, climbing, etc. - I believe there are plenty of mountainous Goliaths that might have never seen deep water before, so to assume they can swim just because they are strong seems ridiculous.

Truthfully I kind of miss the 20ish separate skills we had in 3.5

[Frogreaver]

And IMO that's a good thing. Contra 3e fighters who could either climb, swim, OR ride. Maybe. If they had any skill points left at all. The more you split up skills, the fewer things people can be good at.

Or you grant more skill proficiencies when you break apart skills more.
Or change picking proficient skills into picking X skills you aren't proficient with.