Examining Frequency of Skill Use

[Catullus64]

This is my attempt to:

A). Categorize the skills based on how often they are tested in a "balanced" game, which I define as a game with strong presence of all three pillars of gameplay even if they are not quite even in terms of playtime. I'm drawing upon my own memory from many games with many DMs and players; other people's samples will yield different results, and that's good; I want to compare. I'm generally not including the games I DM, since I deliberately respond to my own perceptions of what skills are more niche, so that kind of skews things.

B). Hypothesize about why certain skills are called upon so much more frequently than others (as seems to be the case).

C). Brainstorm ways that DMs can more substantially incorporate these lesser-used skills. It seems pretty self-evident to me that this is a good thing to do; if players don't perceive certain skills as useful, they won't take them, and the variety of characters at the table will be that much impoverished. However, I don't want to fall into the trap of thinking that all skills need to be used with the same frequency; it's fine to have some skills be more niche than others, but I think we can mostly agree that some skills need love.

With my aims established, I would divide the skills into three categories: skills that are tested many times per session in most games, skills that are likely to be tested once or twice in a session, and skills that are tested less than once per session, if at all.



Athletics
Acrobatics
Stealth
Investigation
Perception
Survival

A couple things to not about the group of what I consider the most frequently tested skills. The first is that most of them have some standardized presence in the Combat pillar, with Perception and Stealth contesting one another, and Athletics and Acrobatics being used in Shoves, Grapples, and Grapple Escapes. I would also say that, Perception, Stealth, Acrobatics, and Athletics are all skills that are more likely to be tested by the entire party during Exploration sequences, rather than simply being tested by the party's specialist like Survival, Investigation, or many of the skills in the latter two groups. Perception almost belongs in a class by itself; many DMs seem to call for more Perception skill checks than all other skills combined, often in places where more niche skills could be used.



Arcana
Insight
Deception
Intimidation
Persuasion


Note the presence of three out of four Charisma skills, and the non-Charisma social skill. With a slight prejudice towards Insight, I would say that all four see relatively similar and robust frequency of use within the parameters of social encounters; but in most games, I would say that few sessions see more than one social encounter of any real substance.

Arcana is an odd man out; as process of elimination may have alerted you, all the other lore skills seem to fall squarely in the most niche category. I put this down to the fact that, unlike History, Nature, and Religion, Arcana is pretty much a constant element across all D&D plots. Furthermore, since it tends to deal with things that don't exist in the real world, it's more likely that players will require the expository aid of a skill check rather than simply being able to piece things together from context.




Sleight of Hand
History
Nature
Religion
Animal Handling
Medicine
Performance

This is where the meat of my interest lies, since these are the skills that I think should be utilized more often than they typically are.

Sleight of Hand and Animal Handling, I think, are here mostly because they cover a very specific type of action, as opposed to the more broad action types encompassed under something like Athletics.

Medicine has a standardized combat interaction, which you think would make it more prevalent, but that particular interaction (Stabilizing a dying creature) is generally trivialized by magic. Its other potential uses fall into the same problems as the lore skills. Speaking of which...

Religion, History, and particularly Nature, are woefully underserved. I think many DMs really only think about them as vehicles for exposition rather than as meaningful player action. Not wanting to potentially gate off important information behind a bad roll, they ignore them.

Performance also sees little use, and I have a theory why, but I'll save that for the improvement section.


With my personal opinions about frequency thus laid out, I proceed to how I think the third group can be more regularly incorporated into a game.


These are, frankly, the skills where I have the least idea what to do with them, but I'll give an attempt. Medicine, for starters, should probably be the skill for deducing facts from wounds and corpses, rather than the Investigation which the PHB recommends for such a task. I also think that it should be useable for assessing Hit Points (yes, yes, I know, "HP aren't meat points" crowd, it's a pragmatic compromise).

Animal Handling's narrow field is often narrowed even further by DMs. I think it ought to be the default hunting and trapping skill, rather than survival. Likewise, many DMs neglect the skill for any PC that can magically communicate with animals, using said magic as a bridge right into the standard Charisma skill. Furthermore, I think that it should cover the standard uses of Insight when it comes to creatures of bestial intellect, even if they are supernatural in nature. The split between "Beasts" and other creatures is mostly defined by which animals we have in the real world, rather than anything diagetic, so I think that animalistic creatures of all origins ought to be covered by this skill. (See a similar approach to Nature below).

Sleight of Hand has me stumped. What can it be interpreted to include other than the very specific acts of legerdemain listed in the PHB?



The best (and most difficult) way to include these in your game is to make games that are richly steeped in these facets of the real world. But there's another problem, which is that the lines between these lores are blurred in the worlds of D&D. In a world where people worship dragons and faeries, what is the line between Religion and Arcana? In a world suffused with magic, what is the distinction between Arcana and Nature?

I think that the best way to answer these questions is not with a clear division between subject matters, but between disciplines. An example of such a division:

History is empirical; it deals with sources and witnesses. It is generally amoral, and concerned with understanding the actions of sentient beings.

Religion is practical; it deals with the forms and rites which allow effective interaction with the world and its full range of inhabitants. It is prescriptive, and primarily concerned with charting a course of correct action.

Nature (Lore) is observatory; it deals with habitats and systems. It is most akin to history, in that it is amoral, but unlike history, does not read intent or purpose into the systems it examines.

Arcana is abstract; it deals with things perceived by the mind and not the senses. It seeks pure understanding, uncoupled from earthly particulars.

If you think about these skills not as branches of subject matter, but as ways of thinking and reasoning, it becomes much easier to create challenges and puzzles that demand those kinds of thinking. When your players ask questions about the things they encounter, pay attention to the tenor of their inquiries, and ask yourself whether the question represents a historical, religious, naturalistic, or arcane problem. For example, upon encountering a magically sealed door:

Who built this door? What is it meant to keep out, or in? (Historical)
How was this door made? What keeps it from opening? (Nature)
Is forcing entry through this door dangerous? Is there a correct action to open this door? (Religion)
What kind of magics were used in sealing this door? What kind of soul could wield such magics? (Arcana)


The problem with Performance as I see it is that, outside of professional context (performing for money or other compensation), most DMs don't imagine dance, music, or poetry as a serious solution to the problems that confront an adventuring party. The best antidote to this skill's underuse is to push against that assumption. Establish that well-constructed speech, dancelike motions, and musicality of voice are as vital a part of social encounters as diplomacy, deceit, or menace. Emphasize that the emotional and sensuous elements of conversation, what we would call charm, are distinct from the argumentative nature of Persuasion or Deception; they have more to do with mastery of the voice, face, and body than with arguments or ideas. Build worlds in which poetry and song are understood to have real and impactful power, and not just in the instance of the Bard class.

[meandean]

I think your analysis is spot on. Unfortunately, the larger answer IMO is that there isn't a whole lot that can be done absent a new version of the game. A lot of the skills that the devs thought would make sense to include simply didn't work out. You can nudge that a bit, but you can't altogether change it. Although I suppose it might undermine the simplicity of "proficiency", it could also be nice if backgrounds allowed, or at least suggested, specific things you can do with the skills provided by that background. Again, though, that's not part of this version.

You also have the issue, analogous to the martial/caster problem, that skills eventually get surpassed by magic – and often a lot quicker than casters surpass martials, even. As you allude to, healing word is superior to a Medicine check stabilization. You would never choose the Medicine option unless you simply couldn't cast healing word. And it's not like it's tough to get healing word or will take you a long time (or, indeed, any time at all).

One thing you can at least do is be very liberal with letting players use different abilities towards the skill. That means fewer things are closed off altogether to each character. Now your Wizard can do Medicine (for all the good that does), or your Fighter can Intimidate, or etc. Again, though, unless you have very detailed Session 0 discussions, will your players be in full position to take advantage of that? When they're creating their characters, they're gonna be looking at character sheets that basically assume you can't do those things. And that also applies to other skill redefinitions you might want to do. It's tough.

Comments on specific skills:

You forgot to mention Survival. The difficulties of running exploration more interesting than "you make the roll and proceed/you fail the roll and wander around aimlessly until I let you roll again" have been oft-discussed. I suppose at least no one disputes that Survival is the exploration skill, anyway.

Nature has the issue that it's tied to the wrong ability. Your Druid or Ranger might want it, but figures there's little point when they're dumping INT, while your Wizard could more profitably take it, but doesn't want to. I agree that Nature, Religion, and Medicine can be used in or after combat to find out facts about monsters, opponents, and allies. (This of course has less value if your players are experienced and already know the monsters, but what the hey.)

Sleight of Hand made more sense with the old-school "thief" class whose flavor was much more street-level. "Rogue" has moved so far away from that – and the game has become so much more grandiose – that it's not at all surprising that many Rogues have no interest in pickpocketing and three-card monte games.

I agree that Animal Handling should be used when dealing with unintelligent beasts, even if a spell is allowing you to communicate with the beast. I have to think a bit about whether it should expand to all creatures below a certain intelligence, but probably, why not. Still, at least over the course of a long-running campaign, most of your "animal interactions" are likely with summoned familiars or steeds... who, by definition, do as you say. (And of course aren't even "animals", really.) There's no way in any game I ever heard of that animal handling is going to come up nearly as often as combat or socializing with people... or, really, on more than an extremely occasional basis.

I have a Bard who took Expertise in Performance, simply because my DM often lets me sing a song/etc. and get the kind of result more stereotypically achieved by Persuasion. So, that at least empowers it... I suppose it still doesn't make it better than Persuasion, but I like it for my character. And even if it weren't a Bard, you can still have that sort of character... anyone can sing or otherwise perform. Also, Performance can essentially equate to "acting". e.g. if you're pretending to be someone else, that's Performance, not Deception. Yes, your larger goal is to deceive the target, but whether that actually works depends on whether you successfully delivered a "performance" of this other person's voice, mannerisms, etc. Broadening this a bit, in the "We're fine... how are you?" scene in Star Wars, Han Solo wasn't impersonating a specific person, but he failed a Performance check.

[Reach Weapon]

It's worth considering the extent to which skills and expertise are there to make a character proficient at something their profession should be better at then their typical stat ranges would allow, and to what extent the purpose is to boost abilities into the competing with magic range.

On the one hand, one might argue that a rogue's expertise in sneaking allows them to execute on their archetype, on the other, being at least skilled in athletics might allow the second story work that should be beyond their dumped strength.

It seems like it might be difficult to properly account for uses that limit liabilities with the same metric you count maximized effectiveness.

[MrStabby]

I broadly agree with much of this, but (obviously) a lot depends on DMs and local approaches at your table.

For example, I try and make all skills pretty equal, though not entirely successfully.


One key distinction that I think it is important to make is between player led and DM led skill checks. "I will try and move quietly to the corner and look round" is a player inviting a DM to ask for a stealth check. "I inspect the drawer, looking for signs it has been tampered with" is probably inviting an investigation check. Grapples, identifying spells etc. are all player lead. This gives players a chance to control how often they come up.

Others are more DM dependant. Percpetion is common, but still tends to be DM asking for a check rather than PC inviting it. At the other end of the scale is medicine - it is rare a PC can decide to come accross a sick person.

It is a bit of a sliding scale, rather than a simple pair of poles.



Then there is the stat needed to match the skill (usually). Arcana is thematically aligned with artificers and Wizards - your archetypal wizard will probably be proficient in the skill for RP reasons AND it matches a strong stat. On the other hand animal handling (cha) is going to be thematically aligned to rangers and druids (yeah a broad generalisation and there are loads of exceptions) who won't tend to have Cha as a primary stat. I think where there is alignment between the stat a skill usually uses and the classes it is thematic for, there will be a push to make the skill work more often.


I think these in a minor way accound for some of the differences.




The one skill I would say could be very,very different from your rating is History. If anything has had a relationship with the past, a player can pretty much try a history check: "do I recall from my studies a time when a settlement was threatened by vampires? Do I recall how they were defeated?" Or "when similar cities were under seage in the past, do I recall how were the walls breached?".

[Man_Over_Game]

I think an easy solution would be just to clump tools in with skills, and then start mixing smaller stuff with bigger stuff until you have no outliers.

For instance, Nature and Animal Handling are to be mixed together, along with most of the herbalism/alchemy tools. Take Investigation and divide it evenly between Perception, History (which is changed to "Lore") and Medicine. Performance gets mixed into Deception. Sleight of Hand gets mixed with Thieves' Tools and is now called "Thievery". Create a better divide between Arcana and Religion by converting them into "Light Arcana" (which focuses on Religion, spirits, demons and wards) and "Dark Arcana" (which is centered around physical, draconic, planar or elemental energies). Survival gets blended between the new Nature and Perception.

So you'd end up with:


Nature
Athletics
Thievery
Deception
Perception
Persuasion
Lore
Medicine
Light Arcana
Dark Arcana


Which has very little overlap and very little that it doesn't already cover.

The other benefit of this is that now each skill is essentially an all-encompassing archetype that you'd expect with the kinds of characters that would be proficient in those things. For instance, you'd expect someone who is good with plants to also be good with animals. Regardless of realism, that's what you'd expect in a fantasy game. If you combined all of 5e's proficiencies that you'd expect out of one Nature-focused character (Poisoner's Kit, Herbalism Kit, Alchemy Kit, Animal Handling, Nature), you'd still end up with one proficiency that still didn't get as used as the current Perception.

To take it one step further, so that the skills aren't class-restricted, you could just have all skills function without ability scores and just have them use double your Proficiency. Any skill that'd otherwise get Expertise instead is rolled with Advantage. Skills mathematically have a massive problem with scaling (a normal character goes from an average of +5 across 20 levels to their skills), and pulling more value from Proficiency makes skills allow more interesting archetypes (imagine a Zealot Barbarian that knows Light Arcana very well) as well as fixes the scaling/consistency issues with skills. Even though attacks use the same system, they function just fine through an additional step that does get scaling through more damage (Barbarian) or more attacks (Fighter), but skills do not get the same benefit and so they end up feeling more bland as you level.

Plus, it's 10 skills, and the nerd in me finds that very satisfying.

I've tried to come up with solutions to the problems with skills, but there are a lot. Whether it comes down to the math of skills in 5e, the consistency of specific skills, the fact that some of the things you'd expect with some skills are gated behind tool proficiencies, or even just the lack of support for some skills (what's a DC 20 History check supposed to look like?), most solutions I'd recommend would require an overhaul. Even if you're the best DM in the world and attempt to not cause any major changes, you're still going to have to resort to ignoring the glaring problems and hope that nobody cares enough to want better.

[NorthernPhoenix]

Personally, i make the knowledge skills useful by (in addition to still being there for "lore"), they all work to access, use, and directly handle and interact with various types of "plot magic" such as magic ruins, runes, ancient artifacts, cursed or supernatural environments, and so on. Arcana for wizard/sorcerer stuff and, well, "the arcane" (i.e netherese or imaskari ruins). Religion for divine magic of all kinds (i.e lost and not so lost temples and their wonders), and Nature for druidic, primal or fey stuff (i.e natural Elemental phenomena or anything fey related (mushroom circle)). This often still puts Arcana ahead, but to a much lesser degree. That still leaves History, which is tougher to use in this way but which i do use for finding places that are not "wild" (which is still Survival) such as cities and other such points of interest, and sometimes for interacting with various mundane "historical" machines and mechanisms if it wouldn't overshadow a more specialized skill.

I don't personally agree with your take on Performance though, and that's mostly because i don't like the idea of it replacing Persuasion (or Deception/Intimidation). To me, Performance is the act of Performances, while being good at various ways of socializing (including body language and such things) is covered entirely by the other 3. I'd certainly let a good performance make someone like you more, but i wouldn't let you convince people of anything specific with the skill. With the right group, i do find that rewarding people who take Performance with it being the skill for being "good at sex" to always get a laugh though (fade to black, roll Performance).

For Sleight of Hand, i have it used for any kind of stealing and many forms of distraction, which is moderately useful, and for Animal Handling, i find letting it work on any non-intelligent creature that is vaguely "beast like" (i.e Wyverns, Chimaera, and so on) (and disallowing the 3 regular social skills for this) generally expands it enough to be moderately useful too.

[quindraco]

Athletics
Acrobatics
Stealth
Investigation
Perception
Survival

A couple things to not about the group of what I consider the most frequently tested skills. The first is that most of them have some standardized presence in the Combat pillar, with Perception and Stealth contesting one another, and Athletics and Acrobatics being used in Shoves, Grapples, and Grapple Escapes. I would also say that, Perception, Stealth, Acrobatics, and Athletics are all skills that are more likely to be tested by the entire party during Exploration sequences, rather than simply being tested by the party's specialist like Survival, Investigation, or many of the skills in the latter two groups. Perception almost belongs in a class by itself; many DMs seem to call for more Perception skill checks than all other skills combined, often in places where more niche skills could be used.



Arcana
Insight
Deception
Intimidation
Persuasion


Note the presence of three out of four Charisma skills, and the non-Charisma social skill. With a slight prejudice towards Insight, I would say that all four see relatively similar and robust frequency of use within the parameters of social encounters; but in most games, I would say that few sessions see more than one social encounter of any real substance.

Arcana is an odd man out; as process of elimination may have alerted you, all the other lore skills seem to fall squarely in the most niche category. I put this down to the fact that, unlike History, Nature, and Religion, Arcana is pretty much a constant element across all D&D plots. Furthermore, since it tends to deal with things that don't exist in the real world, it's more likely that players will require the expository aid of a skill check rather than simply being able to piece things together from context.




Sleight of Hand
History
Nature
Religion
Animal Handling
Medicine
Performance

This is where the meat of my interest lies, since these are the skills that I think should be utilized more often than they typically are.

Sleight of Hand and Animal Handling, I think, are here mostly because they cover a very specific type of action, as opposed to the more broad action types encompassed under something like Athletics.

Medicine has a standardized combat interaction, which you think would make it more prevalent, but that particular interaction (Stabilizing a dying creature) is generally trivialized by magic. Its other potential uses fall into the same problems as the lore skills. Speaking of which...

Religion, History, and particularly Nature, are woefully underserved. I think many DMs really only think about them as vehicles for exposition rather than as meaningful player action. Not wanting to potentially gate off important information behind a bad roll, they ignore them.

Performance also sees little use, and I have a theory why, but I'll save that for the improvement section.



I'm shocked to see you put Acrobatics up in tier 1. It does exactly two things in general: helps you jump into rough terrain without falling over, and can be used to resist a grapple or shove. That's it. Granted, if you're a Dex build, you'll lean into it to resist Grapples, but it pales in comparison to Athletics. On the other hand, you have some other skills that are less common as well in that same list. Perception, Stealth, and Athletics are far and away the most common skills called upon if the DM has a good understanding of the rules - almost everything you'd think would be Acrobatics is actually Athletics or a Dex save, for example.

My take:

Tier 0 (If you don't take this, you will suffer):
Perception

Tier 1 (Common as dirt; you can, with absolute confidence, assume these skills will either come up constantly, or you can exert player agency and make them come up constantly):
Stealth, Athletics, Persuasion


Tier 2 (Still common and you have a lot of agency over it, but more niche than tiers above):
Deception, Insight, Investigation


Tier 3 (Situational, but if you're in the right situation, you need these or you'll have a bad time):
Arcana, Survival


Tier 4:
This is your Tier 3 list, with Intimidation added (you roll Intimidation only when Persuasion has already failed and you don't care about long-term consequences; reaching for Intimidation as a social skill of choice only makes your game/life harder, not easier) and Acrobatics added (the only general use for it is giving a Dex build grapple resistance - you can't even use it to escape spells like Maximilian's Earthen Grasp!).

Fixing the skills: Mostly I fold tool proficiencies into skills to give them more uses, but Sleight of Hand and Performance get extra love.

Sleight of Hand:
--Covers these tools, with Advantage for dual proficiency as normal:
Thieves' Tools
Forgery Kit
--Passive Sleight of Hand opposes Passive Perception when casting a spell with an S or M component; if you win, no one sees you employ either component (you still wave your hand around - it just looks innocuous). Can be used actively if you don't mind additional dice rolls as part of spellcasting.

Medicine:
--Covers these tools, with Advantage for dual proficiency as normal:
Alchemist's supplies
Brewer's supplies
Herbalism kit
Poisoner's kit

Survival:
--Covers these tools, with Advantage for dual proficiency as normal:
Cartographer's tools
Cook's utensils
Leatherworker's tools
Navigator's tools

Performance:
--Covers these tools, with Advantage for dual proficiency as normal:
This already covers all musical instruments, per the skill's description - just being explicit.
All gaming sets (roll with Intelligence for Dragonchess)
Disguise Kit
--Passive Performance opposes Passive Perception when casting a spell with a V component; if you win, no one understands your intonations as being part of casting a spell. Can be used actively if you don't mind additional dice rolls as part of spellcasting.

Animal Handling:
--Covers these tools, with Advantage for dual proficiency as normal:
Vehicles (any) when animal-driven, like a horse-drawn cart or a dolphin-drawn... uh... paddleboard?

Acrobatics:
--Covers these tools, with Advantage for dual proficiency as normal:
Vehicles (any) when not animal-driven, including most ships and airships

The lore skills are tougher, but...

Arcana: You can roll against a DC equal to a target's CR. If you succeed, and the creature is not native to your own home plane or is a Construct, and isn't an Aberration, you identify its type.
History: You can roll against a DC equal to a target's CR. If you succeed, you identify its type. If you fail, you identify its type incorrectly.
Nature: You can roll against a DC equal to a target's CR. If you succeed, and the creature is both native to your own home plane and neither a Construct nor Undead, you identify its type. This also works on Fey and Elementals, regardless of what plane they're from, and doesn't work on Aberrations, regardless of what plane they're from.
Religion: You can roll against a DC equal to a target's CR. If you succeed, you identify its type as Celestial, Fiend, Undead, or none of the above.
---For all of these, once identified, you can determine specific traits of the creature - immunities, resistances, vulnerabilities, senses, and so on - one at a time by rolling again, or with degrees of success, the DM answering one question for every 5 by which you beat the DC. History checks always produce false information when you fail them.

[Sigreid]

I tend to use the skills you have marked as low use quite a bit. In fact my current character I'm playing uses animal handling all the time as the idiot keeps trying to tame and break to the saddle large predators.

But I'm the type of person that takes those skills and makes my own fun.

[kingcheesepants]

This is all so DM and table dependent that it seems almost silly to try and examine the most and least used skills. Some groups will use persuasion and deception basically all the time while others won't care much about it. Some groups sneak everywhere others don't care if they get seen. Some groups make all kinds of intelligence checks to find out tons of info about everything, others pass their lives in blissful ignorance.

In games I'm in the skills I've seen used most often are persuasion, arcana, investigation, perception and, insight. The ones I've seen least often are intimidation, animal handling, performance and, athletics. But even those see a fair amount of use in certain games.

I think something that's helpful in making all the skills relevant is having partial success and failure for checks, revealing different (but still useful) information with different kinds of skills and having multi-stage roleplaying and exploration encounters.

[Seclora]

Sleight of Hand is the skill I generally have players roll for casting spells when they don't want to be noticed casting, like a physical form of deception. I also sometimes use it for escaping traps and drawing weapons unnoticed. It's not a lot, but it's a narrow skill.

I'd also like to second using Religion for Cleric magic and Nature for Druid magic. It does encourage players to be knowledgeable in their fields.

The other thing is that I often offer my players a choice of two skills potentially related to a task when I ask for a roll. Like Athletics or Acrobatics to scale a wall, Arcana or Nature to identify Fey, or Performance or Sleight of Hand to do a card trick. A Perception check is a perception check, but knowledge overlaps.

[meandean]

My take:

Tier 0 (If you don't take this, you will suffer):
PerceptionI obviously understand where you get this from, but at least in some groups, most Perception checks are passive and in the presence of the entire party... which ultimately means only one person has to have high Perception. It's tier 1, but I don't think Tier 0.


Tier 1 (Common as dirt; you can, with absolute confidence, assume these skills will either come up constantly, or you can exert player agency and make them come up constantly):
Stealth, Athletics, PersuasionYou can certainly force lots of Athletics checks if you're a grappler... but what percentage of characters is that? If most characters aren't going to call for it often, and if it doesn't often come up in the absence of the player attempting it, then I don't think it's tier 1.

I personally would say Stealth and Perception are the tier 1 skills. In other words, if you told me someone with 8 DEX took Stealth proficiency, or someone with 8 WIS took Perception proficiency, I wouldn't be surprised. If you told me someone did that with other skills, even though there are many possible good reasons to do that, I'd still initially be a little surprised.


Tier 2 (Still common and you have a lot of agency over it, but more niche than tiers above):
Deception, Insight, InvestigationInsight depends on whether the DM lets you use it as a lie detector. Needless to say, they should not... they should at least be asking you what specifically you're trying to notice. But I do think that's common, which makes Insight a helluva skill to have.


Tier 4:
This is your Tier 3 list, with Intimidation added (you roll Intimidation only when Persuasion has already failed and you don't care about long-term consequences; reaching for Intimidation as a social skill of choice only makes your game/life harder, not easier) and Acrobatics added (the only general use for it is giving a Dex build grapple resistance - you can't even use it to escape spells like Maximilian's Earthen Grasp!).I feel like Intimidation and Persuasion are often treated as a character-based choice that ultimately accomplish the same thing. Perhaps the thought is that a successful Intimidation means that the intimidated person also is intimidated out of planning your future demise.

You would think -- or at least hope! -- that Intimidation could be more appropriate than Persuasion depending on the situation. If you're challenging the leader of a barbarian tribe, the tribe members may not care about your fancy words, but they'll be impressed if you come off like the bigger badass. On the other hand, if you're a Bard who sang a cute love song to the barmaid and now want to ask her out on a date, using Intimidation rather than Persuasion would be an odd call.

Now, having pointed out a lot of "it depends" situations, I certainly disagree with the notion that skill use is all entirely table-dependent and no useful generalizations can be made. I think those generalizations can and indeed should be made (understanding of course that they are generalizations), since you can't improve the system without a starting point.

I will say that I think empowering skills is positive when it lets you do things that aren't well-covered by the rules, or that normally are minor features of a different class. I think it probably goes too far when skills are allowed to replace feats, or major class features. If you can use Sleight of Hand to essentially serve as Subtle Spell -- something that a Sorcerer has to make a large investment to get -- I don't think that's good.

[Havlock]

-For all of these, once identified, you can determine specific traits of the creature - immunities, resistances, vulnerabilities, senses, and so on - one at a time by rolling again, or with degrees of success, the DM answering one question for every 5 by which you beat the DC.

Surely you don't mean thats "as an action"? .. because, speaking as a player, there is no way I'm wasting five rounds of combat to get standard info on the beastie we're fighting.

One check and if its decent, just give the player the stat block man. Don't be so stingy.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Our group used medicine(and before that heal) as a kind of forensic tool. Yes was stabbed but he was also poisoned or those ghoul bites were made post-mortem etc.

[Tanarii]

I'd say the top skills IMC were, roughly in order of frequency: Perception, Stealth, Investigation, Althletics, all Lore skills, Survival, Animal Handling, and Intimidation

More rarely used skills were Acrobatics, Slight of Hand, Deception/Persuasion, and Insight.

Almost never used were Medicine and Performance. The latter I consider a worthless skill that should be removed from the game.

[LudicSavant]

The Lore Skills: Nature, Religion, History (and their greedy sibling, Arcana)
The best (and most difficult) way to include these in your game is to make games that are richly steeped in these facets of the real world. But there's another problem, which is that the lines between these lores are blurred in the worlds of D&D. In a world where people worship dragons and faeries, what is the line between Religion and Arcana? In a world suffused with magic, what is the distinction between Arcana and Nature?

I think that the best way to answer these questions is not with a clear division between subject matters, but between disciplines. An example of such a division:

History is empirical; it deals with sources and witnesses. It is generally amoral, and concerned with understanding the actions of sentient beings.

Religion is practical; it deals with the forms and rites which allow effective interaction with the world and its full range of inhabitants. It is prescriptive, and primarily concerned with charting a course of correct action.

Nature (Lore) is observatory; it deals with habitats and systems. It is most akin to history, in that it is amoral, but unlike history, does not read intent or purpose into the systems it examines.

Arcana is abstract; it deals with things perceived by the mind and not the senses. It seeks pure understanding, uncoupled from earthly particulars.

If you think about these skills not as branches of subject matter, but as ways of thinking and reasoning, it becomes much easier to create challenges and puzzles that demand those kinds of thinking. When your players ask questions about the things they encounter, pay attention to the tenor of their inquiries, and ask yourself whether the question represents a historical, religious, naturalistic, or arcane problem. For example, upon encountering a magically sealed door:

Who built this door? What is it meant to keep out, or in? (Historical)
How was this door made? What keeps it from opening? (Nature)
Is forcing entry through this door dangerous? Is there a correct action to open this door? (Religion)
What kind of magics were used in sealing this door? What kind of soul could wield such magics? (Arcana)


The biggest problem I've encountered is not that the lines between these skills are blurred... but that some try to force them to be distinct, with hard, exclusionary edges. In so doing, they diminish the usefulness of the skills by forcing them into far narrower boxes than intended.

Basically, it's not wrong for more than one skill to be able to answer a question, indeed the game appears to be designed to work this way. For example, the DMG tells us that an Arcana check can both detect and disable all magic traps, yet that it's not the only skill that can be used to solve these problems.

My main piece of advice, then, is for a DM to embrace the softness of these skills. Ask not "is this stepping on another skill's toes" (because they're apparently supposed to have overlap), but instead "can this skill apply, and how?" It's totally okay for the answer to be "yes" for more than one skill.

A question about the Elf Pope might be answerable in different ways by History, Nature, Religion, and Arcana, with each giving a bit of different spin or focus on the kind of information you provide.

___

This advice extends to many skills: For example, instead of saying "You should use Medicine instead of Investigation to derive clues about a corpse," both could apply. There's no need for an "instead." As surely as both Arcana and Investigation can apply to finding magical traps (per the DMG rules).

[Reach Weapon]

The biggest problem I've encountered is not that the lines between these skills are blurred... but that some try to force them to be distinct, with hard, exclusionary edges. In so doing, they diminish the usefulness of the skills by forcing them into far narrower boxes than intended.

Very much this. The question with skills is simply is it applicable enough to justify adding a proficiency bonus to the underlying skill check that resolves the action. Conversely, tools actually give characters capabilities they would otherwise not have, while proficiency with a tool kit demonstrates the requisite knowledge to grant the bonus to checks related to it's area.

The power in skills isn't in asking what they can do, it's in arguing how having any one of them makes you better at what you might attempt.

[JellyPooga]

To put up a defence of Sleight of Hand, I use it (both as GM and PC) for a lot more than just picking pockets or thievery. Like some of the "lesser used" skills, a lot of it comes down to playstyle and adventure design, but I've used it or seen it used for:
- Tying knots (where testing the quality of such becomes necessary)
- Games of dexterity (pin-finger, shell-game, pick-up-sticks, jacks, etc.)
- Catching dropped, falling or thrown objects or people
- Palming, hiding or otherwise obfuscating small objects (vs. Perception)
- Sign Language/Complex gestures/Secret handshakes (when unfamiliar, improvised or attempting to copy/recreate with little practice).
- Shadow puppetry
- "Steady hands" work (Alchemists' assisstant, balancing or careful placement of objects)

Not an exhaustive list and little of it is combat-focused, but isn't it rather the point that many of the lesser used skills are only lesser used because combat takes up so much table-time? For me, the "solution" to skills not getting used as much as they perhaps should be is to address the disease and not the symptom and stop giving combat so much spotlight.

[Sorinth]

I'm not really sure the skills need to be all that balanced. I don't really have a problem with some skills being more flavourful and rarely come up and some being ones that come up regularly. Every character has access to every skill thanks to the background so I'm not sure they need to be super balanced and most skills can be rendered irrelevant thanks to magic.


As a DM if you want to see those lesser skills be more applicable a simple solution that doesn't involve designing specific encounters is to have skill challenges where the party need X number of successful skill checks to "win". And have it so using the same skill increases the DC by 5.

So for example in a situation where you try to rally the common folk to defend the city. The party needs 3 successful checks. One person might make a speech (Persuasion check), one person might try to inspire the crowd by recounting a heroic tale (Performance check), another might conduct a ceremony to bless everyone (Religion check), and another might use a spell to enhance one of the other checks.

Let everyone do 1 thing, and most players will try to get creative and not reuse the same skill since the DC will get really bad if they do. Be lenient with what skills do, so in the example above the recounting a heroic tale could have just as easily been Persuasion, or History, even Deception if they make up a tale.

[Sorinth]

One option for Sleight of Hand is to make the variant Disarm attempt use Sleight of Hand instead of an attack roll. That gives it a very solid combat utility.

I've also seen it used to hide Somatic casting where the DC is 10 + twice the spells level.

[Merudo]

I counted the number of ability checks for two of the published modules:

- Dragon Heist (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?579691-Dragon-Heist-Most-Common-Skills-for-Ability-Checks)
- Tomb of Annihilation (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?579965-Tomb-of-Annihilation-Most-Common-Skills-for-Ability-Checks)

[Chronos]

I'm surprised you have Sleight of Hand so low. It is, in general, the skill for dexterously manipulating small objects. When Indiana Jones replaced the golden idol with a sandbag, that was a Sleight of Hand check (and apparently a failed one). I've used it for cheating at games of chance, or to make it look like others were cheating (the classic scene of a bunch of bored guards sitting around playing cards-- I wanted to get them to fight each other, with the help of my Arcane Trickster mage hand). Use it for hiding an item, when you're being searched. And yeah, don't neglect pickpocketing, either: If the reason you're fighting an enemy is to get the MacGuffin away from them, just skip ahead to the important part. It's not just for unethically making money on city streets.

Mention should also be made of Thieves' Tools. This edition seems to be designed with the expectation that tool proficiencies are less powerful than skills, and mostly used for flavor purposes... except that they took what used to be two of the most important skills, combined them together, and called it a tool proficiency.

[J-H]

So, related question: The party has been told about ogres. The ogres are actually half ogres. What knowledge check is appropriate for knowing about this? It's not Arcana, History, or Nature... there is no Knowledge:Local any more to cover humanoids and general creatures.

[Woggle]

So, related question: The party has been told about ogres. The ogres are actually half ogres. What knowledge check is appropriate for knowing about this? It's not Arcana, History, or Nature... there is no Knowledge:Local any more to cover humanoids and general creatures.

I personally just use History to cover general humanoid knowledge, and identifying humanoids. Most of the stuff that would have been covered by Knowledge: Local in 3.5 I've wrapped up into History. It seems to work well enough for me, anyway.

[KorvinStarmast]

This is all so DM and table dependent that it seems almost silly to try and examine the most and least used skills. I concur.

persuasion, arcana, investigation, perception and, insight. The ones I've seen least often are intimidation, animal handling, performance and, athletics. But even those see a fair amount of use in certain games.
What I see most of: Perception, Persuasion, Athletics, Stealth, Arcana, History, Insight, Survival, Investigation (traps!) and in games with a bard (or a warlock with the Entertainer background) Performance.

I think something that's helpful in making all the skills relevant is having partial success and failure for checks, revealing different (but still useful) information with different kinds of skills and having multi-stage roleplaying and exploration encounters. I see a lot of DMs do this.

Sleight of Hand is the skill I generally have players roll for casting spells when they don't want to be noticed casting, like a physical form of deception. Passive sleight of hand versus rolled or passive perception their opponent? I had a DM use passive sleight of hand for just that purpose. Only one, though.

I'd also like to second using Religion for Cleric magic and Nature for Druid magic. Neat idea, I may steal this.


The other thing is that I often offer my players a choice of two skills potentially related to a task when I ask for a roll. Like Athletics or Acrobatics to scale a wall, Arcana or Nature to identify Fey, or Performance or Sleight of Hand to do a card trick. A Perception check is a perception check, but knowledge overlaps. I have seen numerous DMs do this also.

Our group used medicine(and before that heal) as a kind of forensic tool. Yes was stabbed but he was also poisoned or those ghoul bites were made post-mortem etc. Likewise.

More rarely used skills were Acrobatics, Slight of Hand, Deception/Persuasion, and Insight. we play in different environments, it seems. Our games have quite a bit of social pillar, so Insight is used a lot. And performance. And persuasion. And Deception, though it's lower down the ladder.

Almost never used were Medicine and Performance. The latter I consider a worthless skill that should be removed from the game. I disagree. My bard and my warlock/entertainer used it with some frequency. Medicine, not used? Hmm, as a triage or diagnostic skill, it's a useful tool. We use it some, but It's not a top five.

[Xervous]

Arcana: You can roll against a DC equal to a target's CR. If you succeed, and the creature is not native to your own home plane or is a Construct, and isn't an Aberration, you identify its type.

Oh no, it’s bear lore all over again. How about we don’t.

[Tanarii]

we play in different environments, it seems. Our games have quite a bit of social pillar, so Insight is used a lot. And performance. And persuasion. And Deception, though it's lower down the ladder. Definitely. Social pillar usually means Intimidating denizens. The other social skills don't get used nearly as much.



I disagree. My bard and my warlock/entertainer used it with some frequency. Medicine, not used? Hmm, as a triage or diagnostic skill, it's a useful tool. We use it some, but It's not a top five.What are examples of things that you've used Performance for that actually warranted a check? Most commonly I see it used as a standin for Persuasion/Deception/Disguise Kit, or used in a "roll Acrobatics to avoid tripping walking to the bar" method, where a check isn't warranted.

[KorvinStarmast]

What are examples of things that you've used Performance for that actually warranted a check? Attempts to earn money for equipment at low level. "sing for your supper" (and a bit more) on a bard without the entertainer background. (Kind of like those guys in the subway station with a guitar or violin, and an open instrument case hoping for folks to toss in a few cons - busker? Can't recall if that's the term).

Gained favor with the queen based on a public performance where she was there incognito.

Changed a dragon's attitude toward us during a very tense stand off - where I offered a song as a gift. Bad performance check was (per the DM) gonna result in "roll initiative" based on an insight check.
(No pressure, but sing pretty!) Those are but a few.

My warlock provided (entertainer background) with a good performance, cover for the rest of our party to slip into the basement and free a hostage in a tavern. Distraction/misdirection, using "hey, look at this!" kind of performance (juggling and singing).
Same warlock got a laird's wife to ask the laird to reconsider, based on a performance check (sing a sad song to evoke empathy). (Our barbarian was in jail, sentence passed was to cut off a hand - grabbed a barmaid's behind one too many times, IIRC the tavern scene. This is about five years ago).

When my brother DM'd, battle of the bands happened in a trading town. Our bard won, so we got to stay the night in the barn, the other party did not. (It was raining). Contest/Performance.

Last night: contest in front of a fiend for the rights to my songs and music. (My bard). Performance Contest was with a band who was performing my songs and claiming them as their own - and they were minions of the fiend.

I'll offer the movie Crossroads, Steve Vai versus Ralph Macchio (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqdL36VKbMQ), guitar contest "cutting heads" for a cinematic reference, and I asked the DM if he was familiar with that. He wasn't, he just wanted me to try and win the contest. No, I did NOT play a fiddle of gold. :smallwink:


Most commonly I see it used as a standin for Persuasion/Deception/Disguise Kit, Well, maybe your bard players need to see the Crossroad's scene. :smallbiggrin: See also the TV show some years ago where Divas would try to out Diva one another.
Heck, just go to the ZZ Top Fandango album, and listen to the Mellow Down Easy contest between Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill (RIP Dusty).
Or consider MC Hammer: Don't Touch This.
That song's all about "Yeah, I am a better performer and dancer than any of the rest of you!" Can't touch this means "You see this move I just did? You can't do it this well and I can!" (roughly)

[Chronos]

Besides, how else are you going to challenge Ronan the Accuser to a dance-off as a prelude to winning the Macguffin artifact via the Power of Friendship?

[Tanarii]

Well, maybe your bard players need to see the Crossroad's scene. :smallbiggrin: See also the TV show some years ago where Divas would try to out Diva one another.
Apparently I need to. Because I'm the one deciding proficiency that applies, and the majority of those I'd call not-a-check, or Persuasion, Deception, Tool (musical instrument), or Cha check with no proficiency that applies.

[Pex]

As DM I make Medicine more useful by having a player make a Medicine check whenever he asks how a bad guy is looking to determine how close to zero hit points it has.

[Reach Weapon]

What are examples of things that you've used Performance for that actually warranted a check? Most commonly I see it used as a standin for Persuasion/Deception/Disguise Kit, or used in a "roll Acrobatics to avoid tripping walking to the bar" method, where a check isn't warranted.

I'd argue that Performance is applicable to most ability checks involving crowd interaction, as well as physical checks related to background justified stunts and other staged feats.

As such, someone with Performance could use it to add proficiency when they need to read the room, land a joke, sway emotion or command attention, such as shifting the reaction when another party member offers grave insult from anger to mirth.

Player: I think I should get my proficiency bonus on this complicated act, it's just like part of one of the performance pieces listed in my background.
DM: I don't recall that. What was it called?
Player: The Aristocrats!

[Seclora]

Passive sleight of hand versus rolled or passive perception their opponent? I had a DM use passive sleight of hand for just that purpose. Only one, though.


Rolled Sleight of Hand versus either rolled Perception or Arcana/Nature/Religion(Class Dependent) roll if someone would be looking for magic, such as in combat, or a DC of 10+spell level otherwise.

[Tanarii]

I'd argue that Performance is applicable to most ability checks involving crowd interaction, as well as physical checks related to background justified stunts and other staged feats.
Turning it into an Oratory/Rabble Rouser skill might have some uses in specific city based campaigns.

But it sounds like you're doing what I'm talking about, letting it stand-in for Persuasion (and apparently Athletics/Acrobatics) as soon as there's enough creatures involved to count as a 'crowd'.

[Reach Weapon]

But it sounds like you're doing what I'm talking about, letting it stand-in for Persuasion (and apparently Athletics/Acrobatics) as soon as there's enough creatures involved to count as a 'crowd'.

I'd argue that I can not be doing that, because there are no skill checks in 5E. (Other than that, you're not incorrect.)


The power in skills isn't in asking what they can do, it's in arguing how having any one of them makes you better at what you might attempt.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'd argue that I can not be doing that, because there are no skill checks in 5E. (Other than that, you're not incorrect.)

Exactly. The DM sets the ability used and may suggest a source of proficiency that may apply. The player can and should try to explain why (other proficiency) might apply. Tool, skill, weapons, armor, language, whatever.

[Tanarii]

I'd argue that I can not be doing that, because there are no skill checks in 5E. (Other than that, you're not incorrect.)
I never implied that. But what's being suggested to me sounds like trying to have Performance cover multiple other skills, as long as there's a crowd or trick involved.

Similarly, I don't generally allow Acrobatics as a stand-in for Athletics when attempting to climb something.

Skills apply their bonus for specific things. Not just whatever the player can invent. And Performance is "determines how well you can delight an audience with music, dance, acting, storytelling, or some other form of entertainment." IMC delighting an audience is rarely something that requires a check in the first place, and when it might be it's by far the most uncommon situation that requires a check. Even Medicine is more likely to see use once in a blue moon as a stabilization check or diagnosing an illness.

[Sorinth]

I never implied that. But what's being suggested to me sounds like trying to have Performance cover multiple other skills, as long as there's a crowd or trick involved.

Similarly, I don't generally allow Acrobatics as a stand-in for Athletics when attempting to climb something.

Skills apply their bonus for specific things. Not just whatever the player can invent. And Performance is "determines how well you can delight an audience with music, dance, acting, storytelling, or some other form of entertainment." IMC delighting an audience is rarely something that requires a check in the first place, and when it might be it's by far the most uncommon situation that requires a check. Even Medicine is more likely to see use once in a blue moon as a stabilization check or diagnosing an illness.

Are you saying there's no performance aspect to delivering a speech to a crowd? Look at any big political speech and you'll see there's a lot more that goes into a good speech then just saying the words, half the commentary after a speech from the news is about performance related stuff like how much they smiled, or moved their arms when emphasizing a point, etc... in part it's because the news media sucks, but it's also because the performance aspects like that do in fact play a big role on how well the speech hits home.

Consider a street magic show, it's both performance and sleight of hand. For simplicity D&D you generally only make one check so there's no reason a player can't pick which one to use.

[KorvinStarmast]

Apparently I need to. Because I'm the one deciding proficiency that applies, and the majority of those I'd call not-a-check, or Persuasion, Deception, Tool (musical instrument), or Cha check with no proficiency that applies. I can see that one (bolded) being an option for a few of those. But in context, performance makes more sense in each of those cases. Your choosing to limit yourself to Deception / Persuasion is kind of like how my brother makes nearly everything a perception check. You can do that as a DM and it can work well enough, but there are other tools available. As with most DM stuff, take what you like and leave the rest - what you have described as your approach seems to me unnecessarily restrictive. But if it works at your table, cool! :smallsmile:

Similarly, I don't generally allow Acrobatics as a stand-in for Athletics when attempting to climb something. Likewise.
And Performance is "determines how well you can delight an audience with music, dance, acting, storytelling, or some other form of entertainment." IMC delighting an audience is rarely something that requires a check in the first place, and when it might be it's by far the most uncommon situation that requires a check. Given that I have sung as part of a choir (in my younger years) and played (badly) guitar for a band, I am going to disagree with your perspective on this. I've also done some MCing and (amateur) stand up. Performance is a thing. And Medicine checks at low levels is a way to keep fellow players alive when resources are scarce. (Heck, it's how I have kept some NPCs alive). My example of trying to earn some coin by playing music is an in game case in point.

Are you saying there's no performance aspect to delivering a speech to a crowd? Thank you. I am decent at public speaking, and I support your point on how any public speaking instance has an element, or even a preponderance, of a performance in it. I like to move when I talk, some people seem to hide behind a podium.

[Tanarii]

Given that I have sung as part of a choir (in my younger years) and played (badly) guitar for a band, I am going to disagree with your perspective on this. I've also done some MCing and (amateur) stand up. Performance is a thing. And Medicine checks at low levels is a way to keep fellow players alive when resources are scarce. (Heck, it's how I have kept some NPCs alive). My example of trying to earn some coin by playing music is an in game case in point.
That's my point. Delighting an audience and earning coin aren't things that generally require a check. They aren't important enough to warrant a chance of failure/success. And earning coin is explicitly not a check thing.

Making someone change their mind by performing, to get what you want? You aren't delighting them, that part came first. Persuasion, not a Performance check.

Disguising yourself or pretending to be someone else? You aren't delighting them, that part came first or later. Disguise Kit or Deception.

Causing a distraction? You aren't delighting them, that part came first. DM fiat, or maybe a straight Cha check.

A bonus checks to delighting an audience is a pretty worthless and incredibly narrow skill. If your DM has allowed you as a player to expand the scope of the skill, or is calling for unneeded checks, of course it'll seem more valuable than it is.

[PhoenixPhyre]

That's my point. Delighting an audience and earning coin aren't things that generally require a check. They aren't important enough to warrant a chance of failure/success. And earning coin is explicitly not a check thing.

Making someone change their mind by performing, to get what you want? You aren't delighting them, that part came first. Persuasion, not a Performance check.

Disguising yourself or pretending to be someone else? You aren't delighting them, that part came first or later. Disguise Kit or Deception.

Causing a distraction? You aren't delighting them, that part came first. DM fiat, or maybe a straight Cha check.

A bonus checks to delighting an audience is a pretty worthless and incredibly narrow skill. If your DM has allowed you as a player to expand the scope of the skill, or is calling for unneeded checks, of course it'll seem more valuable than it is.

From your descriptions of your games, you play with a very narrow social pillar. Not everyone does that. This sort of stuff (being flexible about proficiencies) is key to having a robust social (and exploration) pillar.

Remember, the only fixed part is the ability score. To quote the DMG--



Often, players ask whether they can apply a skill proficiency to an ability check. If a player can provide a good justification for why a character’s training and aptitude in a skill should apply to the check, go ahead and allow it, rewarding the player’s creative thinking.


That's as prescriptive as the DMG gets. And narrow parsing of "you can't do that with X skill" only makes the magic/non-magic divide stronger--it's by far best to be narrow with spells and broad with skills. Persuading someone via performance is totally within the expected bounds of things. There are no skill checks. There are only ability checks where the player may be able to add proficiency in one or more skills, tools, etc. A tools check isn't a thing--proficiency in a tool is one way that proficiency can be added.

In addition, often, getting someone to agree is the easy part; getting someone to the point where they're willing to agree (changing attitudes) is the hard part. And that's completely in the wheelhouse of Performance. And completely worthy of a check.

[NorthernPhoenix]

From your descriptions of your games, you play with a very narrow social pillar. Not everyone does that. This sort of stuff (being flexible about proficiencies) is key to having a robust social (and exploration) pillar.

Remember, the only fixed part is the ability score. To quote the DMG--



That's as prescriptive as the DMG gets. And narrow parsing of "you can't do that with X skill" only makes the magic/non-magic divide stronger--it's by far best to be narrow with spells and broad with skills. Persuading someone via performance is totally within the expected bounds of things. There are no skill checks. There are only ability checks where the player may be able to add proficiency in one or more skills, tools, etc. A tools check isn't a thing--proficiency in a tool is one way that proficiency can be added.

In addition, often, getting someone to agree is the easy part; getting someone to the point where they're willing to agree (changing attitudes) is the hard part. And that's completely in the wheelhouse of Performance. And completely worthy of a check.

If you just want to be nice to someone who took Performance by letting them use that instead, i can totally agree with that! My issues with forcing Performance into social encounters come from the other end, when it seems like a cheap attempt to lock someone out of using their usually better Persuasion score using shaky logic to divide the two.

[PhoenixPhyre]

If you just want to be nice to someone who took Performance by letting them use that instead, i can totally agree with that! My issues with forcing Performance into social encounters come from the other end, when it seems like a cheap attempt to lock someone out of using their usually better Persuasion score using shaky logic to divide the two.

There's a balance. If you let everything be Persuasion, then it becomes the "one proficiency to rule them all". On the other hand, the players should have flexibility. Remembering that it's always a Charisma check, which you may get to add one of many different proficiencies to (so it should be a Charisma (Performance|Persuasion|Deception|Intimidation) check, depending on exactly what they're saying they're doing). Not on exact wording, but on the approach they're taking to the problem.

And the real solution is to
1) not do one-check-to-rule-them-all social encounters (at least ones that are supposed to be challenges).[0]
2) don't always let the party substitute the person with the best modifier.[1]
3) when players initiate things, don't let them dictate the mechanics--they describe what they're doing (approach, intent, details if necessary) and the DM calls the check. Then negotiate, based on those ideas. But the approach generally dictates what proficiencies work.

[0] the equivalent would be combat run as "roll Fight, DC 10". A single check is an attack + damage roll. So if it's not trivial, it should require multiple check opportunities[3] from multiple people.
[1] sometimes, the bard isn't the right one for the conversation. If the foppish noble tries to talk to the suspicious barbarians, that's DC Nope (or at least much harder, at disadvantage). Because they just don't trust him. Attitude matters, and attitude is individualized. The party is not a multi-headed hydra or a tag team where they can just switch which personality is "in the lead". And the players don't always initiate the encounters.

Specific cases:

Negotiating with the music devils (as was mentioned?) That was a sing-off. Deciding who had the rights to the song based on who could perform it better (because that's the copyright law for that group). Not really persuading at all--that came later (in that particular case, the two sides were already in the ZONA and the ask was trivial). But showing that the bard had a better handle on it and was the original author.

Making friends with the queen? That's not Persuasion at all--in part because there was no intent. It was a consequence of a good performance check, to improve attitudes; she just happened to be there in the audience.

As I see it, if you ask for something they're already willing to give, at a price they're already fine with, no check is needed at all. The Big Three CHA proficiencies are all about asking for something. But you can also get there by changing attitudes until the "Charisma check" to ask for something is trivial.

And I'd totally let someone use Performance in an attempt to calm down wild animals--"music hath charms to soothe the savage breast" and all that. Might be Wisdom (Performance), because it's not the same as performing for people.

[Chronos]

Distracting a crowd is definitely something that one can succeed or fail at, and it's definitely something that could have meaningful consequences. And so it's something that you should roll a check for. What other skill would even be applicable to that check? I mean, I guess you could really stretch to fit in Persuasion, or Deception, or even Stealth, but you don't need to stretch at all to call it Performance.

[Catullus64]

If you just want to be nice to someone who took Performance by letting them use that instead, i can totally agree with that! My issues with forcing Performance into social encounters come from the other end, when it seems like a cheap attempt to lock someone out of using their usually better Persuasion score using shaky logic to divide the two.

I'm inclined to agree vis a vis the shakiness of logic. I think that rather than try to redefine Performance from what it is in the rulebook, it's better to try to shift how you DM social encounters so that what Performance is in the book ("delight an audience with music, dance, acting, storytelling, or some other form of entertainment") is a more frequently recurring element of social encounters. And I don't think that doing so is as much of a logical stretch as some people imply.

Real life is replete with cultures where one's ability to call upon artistic and cultural traditions carries just as much weight as being persuasive in prose, and but for forum rules I would cite many examples. Skill at music, poetry, or dance betokens learning and wisdom in pre-literate societies. Adherence to ritual forms of speech and action, a form of performance in itself, can count for a lot when speaking to someone as an outsider, a scenario that D&D adventurers encounter a lot. And people are attracted to beautiful singers and dancers!

Rather than trying to redefine Performance to fit social encounters as we understand them, I think it's more profitable to take the existence of the Performance skill as a suggestion to broaden the way we run social encounters.

[NorthernPhoenix]

There's a balance. If you let everything be Persuasion, then it becomes the "one proficiency to rule them all". On the other hand, the players should have flexibility. Remembering that it's always a Charisma check, which you may get to add one of many different proficiencies to (so it should be a Charisma (Performance|Persuasion|Deception|Intimidation) check, depending on exactly what they're saying they're doing). Not on exact wording, but on the approach they're taking to the problem.

And the real solution is to
1) not do one-check-to-rule-them-all social encounters (at least ones that are supposed to be challenges).[0]
2) don't always let the party substitute the person with the best modifier.[1]
3) when players initiate things, don't let them dictate the mechanics--they describe what they're doing (approach, intent, details if necessary) and the DM calls the check. Then negotiate, based on those ideas. But the approach generally dictates what proficiencies work.

[0] the equivalent would be combat run as "roll Fight, DC 10". A single check is an attack + damage roll. So if it's not trivial, it should require multiple check opportunities[3] from multiple people.
[1] sometimes, the bard isn't the right one for the conversation. If the foppish noble tries to talk to the suspicious barbarians, that's DC Nope (or at least much harder, at disadvantage). Because they just don't trust him. Attitude matters, and attitude is individualized. The party is not a multi-headed hydra or a tag team where they can just switch which personality is "in the lead". And the players don't always initiate the encounters.

Specific cases:

Negotiating with the music devils (as was mentioned?) That was a sing-off. Deciding who had the rights to the song based on who could perform it better (because that's the copyright law for that group). Not really persuading at all--that came later (in that particular case, the two sides were already in the ZONA and the ask was trivial). But showing that the bard had a better handle on it and was the original author.

Making friends with the queen? That's not Persuasion at all--in part because there was no intent. It was a consequence of a good performance check, to improve attitudes; she just happened to be there in the audience.

As I see it, if you ask for something they're already willing to give, at a price they're already fine with, no check is needed at all. The Big Three CHA proficiencies are all about asking for something. But you can also get there by changing attitudes until the "Charisma check" to ask for something is trivial.

And I'd totally let someone use Performance in an attempt to calm down wild animals--"music hath charms to soothe the savage breast" and all that. Might be Wisdom (Performance), because it's not the same as performing for people.

I actually don't disagree with most of this. I'm all for taking a broad-ish view of Performance. What i am against, is taking a overly narrow view of Persuasion.

[Slipjig]

It really depends on the kind of game you are running, and the strategies your players take. Outside of combat, there are all kinds of things where Sleight of Hand might be useful, but they will only come up if the players try them.

In defense of Intimidation, I think there are times when Persuasion just shouldn't be an viable option. Bandits waylaying you on the road, the guards who just caught you red-handed standing over a corpse, or an enraged husband who just found you in bed with his wife just aren't going to be swayed, no matter how charming you are. All of them, however, might be convinced that you are sufficiently Intimidating that they would let you leave.

On the flip side, of course, there are situations where Persuasion is viable where Intimidation would be ridiculous. A king in his own court surrounded by his knights is unlikely to be intimidated by anything short of an epic display of power.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I actually don't disagree with most of this. I'm all for taking a broad-ish view of Performance. What i am against, is taking a overly narrow view of Persuasion.

Persuasion, just like Performance, is useful when it's useful. In that case, when people can be persuaded by logic, reason, and appeals to emotions, traditions, etc. By what the Greeks called Rhetoric. But that's...not all the time. Or even, really, most of the time. People are irrational, driven by motives and urges that fail to respond to rhetoric.

The venal guard at the gate? Can't be Persuaded, although he can be Deceived, Intimidated, or bribed (which isn't a skill at all).

The pillar of righteousness? Can be Persuaded, if the cause is right, but cannot be Intimidated. Can be deceived, but at a tremendous cost if that deception is discovered.

The fickle fey lady? Immune to Persuasion and Intimidation. Likes deception (although thinking that mortals really stink at it), but entrapped utterly by Performance.

The proud noble? May be Persuaded by an appeal to honor or pride, probably won't react well to Intimidation or Deception.

The avatar of the deity of justice? Can neither be Persuaded, Intimidated, nor Deceived. At most, it can be appealed to by the truth, but what it does is its own divine will.

The bandit on the road? Immune to Persuasion. Vulnerable to Intimidation and Deception.

The bestial ogre? Doesn't understand your Persuasion, reacts really really badly to attempts at Intimidation, but can be deceived easily. And can be charmed (common meaning, not game condition) by music and performance.

The modron? Effectively immune to all of it--its course is fixed.

And so on. You can always attempt to persuade, but your approach will not always help. And will often hurt your cause should you choose the wrong one.

Generally, the approach sets what proficiencies may be added to the base check. And you're free to attempt any of them. But doing so will change the DC anywhere from converting a check into a trivial one or making an easy check impossible.

[NorthernPhoenix]

Persuasion, just like Performance, is useful when it's useful. In that case, when people can be persuaded by logic, reason, and appeals to emotions, traditions, etc. By what the Greeks called Rhetoric. But that's...not all the time. Or even, really, most of the time. People are irrational, driven by motives and urges that fail to respond to rhetoric.

The venal guard at the gate? Can't be Persuaded, although he can be Deceived, Intimidated, or bribed (which isn't a skill at all).

The pillar of righteousness? Can be Persuaded, if the cause is right, but cannot be Intimidated. Can be deceived, but at a tremendous cost if that deception is discovered.

The fickle fey lady? Immune to Persuasion and Intimidation. Likes deception (although thinking that mortals really stink at it), but entrapped utterly by Performance.

The proud noble? May be Persuaded by an appeal to honor or pride, probably won't react well to Intimidation or Deception.

The avatar of the deity of justice? Can neither be Persuaded, Intimidated, nor Deceived. At most, it can be appealed to by the truth, but what it does is its own divine will.

The bandit on the road? Immune to Persuasion. Vulnerable to Intimidation and Deception.

The bestial ogre? Doesn't understand your Persuasion, reacts really really badly to attempts at Intimidation, but can be deceived easily. And can be charmed (common meaning, not game condition) by music and performance.

The modron? Effectively immune to all of it--its course is fixed.

And so on. You can always attempt to persuade, but your approach will not always help. And will often hurt your cause should you choose the wrong one.

Generally, the approach sets what proficiencies may be added to the base check. And you're free to attempt any of them. But doing so will change the DC anywhere from converting a check into a trivial one or making an easy check impossible.

I'd certainly agree there are many cases (especially in a fantasy world) where you simply cannot Persuade someone, but i don't think it's reasonable to carve up Persuasion so that it includes anything less than every form of rhetoric (logical, emotional, and all the rest), or that it somehow doesn't include the necessary body language or other non-verbal elements that are part of being persuasive.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'd certainly agree there are many cases (especially in a fantasy world) where you simply cannot Persuade someone, but i don't think it's reasonable to carve up Persuasion so that it includes anything less than every form of rhetoric (logical, emotional, and all the rest), or that it somehow doesn't include the necessary body language or other non-verbal elements that are part of being persuasive.

And where did I say it didn't? But many people (especially things other than human people) may not respond to rhetoric at all. And rhetoric is culturally differentiated--being trained in court rhetoric won't work among a barbarian tribe, or among goblins. For example.

[Tanarii]

Persuastiin:
When you attempt to influence someone or a group of people with tact, social graces, or good nature, the DM might ask you to make a Charisma (Persuasion) check. Typically, you use persuasion when acting in good faith, to foster friendships, make cordial requests, or exhibit proper etiquette. Examples of persuading others include convincing a chamberlain to let your party see the king, negotiating peace between warring tribes, or inspiring a crowd of townsfolk.

Note that it specifically covers inspiring a crowd.

And rhetoric has got nothing to do with it.

[NorthernPhoenix]

And where did I say it didn't? But many people (especially things other than human people) may not respond to rhetoric at all. And rhetoric is culturally differentiated--being trained in court rhetoric won't work among a barbarian tribe, or among goblins. For example.

Skills generally work across those kinds of cultural barriers for the simplicity of heroism. Survival works for any terrain or biome, not just ones your character would reasonably know, athletics covers... all kinds of athletics at once (where "realistically", people would specialize), and so on. If something can't be persuaded, it's probably because it doesn't want to hear what you have to say for any reason, not because you have the wrong cultural training.

[Reach Weapon]

Remember, the only fixed part is the ability score. To quote the DMG--

Often, players ask whether they can apply a skill proficiency to an ability check. If a player can provide a good justification for why a character’s training and aptitude in a skill should apply to the check, go ahead and allow it, rewarding the player’s creative thinking.
That's as prescriptive as the DMG gets.


And Performance is "determines how well you can delight an audience with music, dance, acting, storytelling, or some other form of entertainment."

While you certainly have a strong RAW case Tanarii (although I think DMG p. 239 supersedes), that is a truly horrible definition of performance (especially in limiting the emotion elicited to delight) and (as you've argued yourself) makes the skill virtually useless.

As I tried to get at very early in this thread, I believe there are two archetype servicing extremes when it comes to skills (for example):

Sleight of Hand (Dex) seems to primarily exist to boost an emphasized ability to bring extreme competence to difficult tasks, so that a Rogue may hide in your saucer and steal the cream from your tea.
Nature (Int) seems to exist so that Druids and Rangers aren't incompetent against type when called upon to use an unemphasized (dumped) ability in their milieu.
Not only does Performance (CHA) look like the former type by matching an emphasized ability, but Bards can already get that (singularly applicable) bonus from their instrument proficiency (which also grants them bonuses to DEX for amazing runs, INT for repertoire recall, WIS for improvising, etc.) making it otherwise useless as a skill twice over.

[Tanarii]

While you certainly have a strong RAW case Tanarii (although I think DMG p. 239 supersedes), that is a truly horrible definition of performance (especially in limiting the emotion elicited to delight) and (as you've argued yourself) makes the skill virtually useless.
Yup. That's pretty much my argument. Options are to expand it, or just nix the skill. My preference is the latter, but I totally get those at want to do the former.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Skills generally work across those kinds of cultural barriers for the simplicity of heroism. Survival works for any terrain or biome, not just ones your character would reasonably know, athletics covers... all kinds of athletics at once (where "realistically", people would specialize), and so on. If something can't be persuaded, it's probably because it doesn't want to hear what you have to say for any reason, not because you have the wrong cultural training.

Strong disagree. Doing this means that Persuasion becomes the social skill to rule them all by swallowing the others whole. Things should be interpreted so as not to make other rules surplus. It also shatters any concept of verisimilitude. Because it doesn't work that way. Doing that means that the world must be a hollow shell, a stage with 2D scenery. And that's something I won't tolerate.

Consider the following:

Preconditions
A group of villagers have been captured by a band of ogres and will be eaten if the party does not intervene. The party has, for whatever reason, decided to attempt the non-violent route. They have two people willing to make the attempt: the entertainer (court bard) bard, with expertise in Persuasion and decent Charisma (low levels), and the half-orc outlander barbarian, with racial proficiency in Intimidation and 10 CHA.

Choices
They could approach this in multiple different ways. A few of those are:

1. The barbarian goes in and threatens the ogres. He's big, he's burly, and he's decent at showing that strength. Charisma (Intimidation)
2. The bard goes in and threatens the ogres. He's a small, foppish man, with delicate court mannerisms. Charisma (Intimidation)
3. The bard goes in and tries to sweet-talk the ogres, using tact, good manners, and good faith. Charisma (Persuasion)
4. The bard goes in and tries to trick the ogres (possibly lying about soldiers on the way or something). Charisma (Deception)
5. Someone goes in and tries to bribe the ogres. Wisdom (Insight) to figure out what they're willing to accept, no social check needed.
Edit: 6. The bard goes in and starts weaving tales, distracting the ogres so the rest of the party can break out the villagers and get them away. Charisma (Performance)

The first one fits what the ogres think of as strong. Thus at advantage. The second one fits what the ogres think of as weak. Thus at disadvantage. The third is an outright failure--ogres don't respond to good manners, tact, and good faith. The big words hurt their heads and the tone shrieks of weakness. In fact, that's likely to anger them. The fourth is straight up, but against a relatively easy DC (ogres are dumb and canonically pretty easy to trick). The fifth is pretty straight up, but risks the ogres getting greedy and trying to both have and eat their villagerscake. Edit: the 6th is risky (failure means the bard is basically unsupported and people very well could get hurt), but is classically performance, not persuasion. He's not trying to get the ogres to do anything except listen. And it can't be a tool proficiency, because he's just telling stories. No music. He's just baffling them with BS.

Note that if the bard were instead a tribal skald from a barbarian tribe, comfortable with people who basically only understand physical strength, he'd not be at disadvantage. In this way, character backgrounds and histories and descriptions matter, just like they would in real life. There is no fluff--it's all rules and it all matters.

Different approaches mean different DCs, ranging from DC: 0 to DC: Impossible. Different people and backgrounds mean advantage, disadvantage, or might even make some things that are otherwise possible impossible (or vice versa).

Context matters. That's why I'm glad there are no hard and fast social rules--the rules cannot encode this kind of thing without putting heavy constraints on the kinds of stories you can tell.

[Kane0]

With my personal opinions about frequency thus laid out, I proceed to how I think the third group can be more regularly incorporated into a game.


These are, frankly, the skills where I have the least idea what to do with them, but I'll give an attempt. Medicine, for starters, should probably be the skill for deducing facts from wounds and corpses, rather than the Investigation which the PHB recommends for such a task. I also think that it should be useable for assessing Hit Points (yes, yes, I know, "HP aren't meat points" crowd, it's a pragmatic compromise).

Animal Handling's narrow field is often narrowed even further by DMs. I think it ought to be the default hunting and trapping skill, rather than survival. Likewise, many DMs neglect the skill for any PC that can magically communicate with animals, using said magic as a bridge right into the standard Charisma skill. Furthermore, I think that it should cover the standard uses of Insight when it comes to creatures of bestial intellect, even if they are supernatural in nature. The split between "Beasts" and other creatures is mostly defined by which animals we have in the real world, rather than anything diagetic, so I think that animalistic creatures of all origins ought to be covered by this skill. (See a similar approach to Nature below).

Sleight of Hand has me stumped. What can it be interpreted to include other than the very specific acts of legerdemain listed in the PHB?


Animal Handling I split into a portion of Survivial (which means it's no longer just for use in exploration) and a tool proficiency (for controlling a mount, much like proficiency in land or water vehicles).
Medicine I merge with the Herbalism tool proficiency, and agree that Medicine can be used in many cases where the books might otherwise recommend Nature or Investigation. I also had the idea of failed death saves only resetting after a successful medicine check instead of any HP recovery, but haven't gone too far with the concept.
Sleight of Hand I merge with the Thieves tools proficiency and just call it 'Thievery', encompassing all sorts of larcenous acts.




The best (and most difficult) way to include these in your game is to make games that are richly steeped in these facets of the real world. But there's another problem, which is that the lines between these lores are blurred in the worlds of D&D. In a world where people worship dragons and faeries, what is the line between Religion and Arcana? In a world suffused with magic, what is the distinction between Arcana and Nature?

I think that the best way to answer these questions is not with a clear division between subject matters, but between disciplines. An example of such a division:

History is empirical; it deals with sources and witnesses. It is generally amoral, and concerned with understanding the actions of sentient beings.

Religion is practical; it deals with the forms and rites which allow effective interaction with the world and its full range of inhabitants. It is prescriptive, and primarily concerned with charting a course of correct action.

Nature (Lore) is observatory; it deals with habitats and systems. It is most akin to history, in that it is amoral, but unlike history, does not read intent or purpose into the systems it examines.

Arcana is abstract; it deals with things perceived by the mind and not the senses. It seeks pure understanding, uncoupled from earthly particulars.

If you think about these skills not as branches of subject matter, but as ways of thinking and reasoning, it becomes much easier to create challenges and puzzles that demand those kinds of thinking. When your players ask questions about the things they encounter, pay attention to the tenor of their inquiries, and ask yourself whether the question represents a historical, religious, naturalistic, or arcane problem. For example, upon encountering a magically sealed door:

Who built this door? What is it meant to keep out, or in? (Historical)
How was this door made? What keeps it from opening? (Nature)
Is forcing entry through this door dangerous? Is there a correct action to open this door? (Religion)
What kind of magics were used in sealing this door? What kind of soul could wield such magics? (Arcana)


I actually merge History, Religion and Nature into a single broad 'Lore' skill, though that is specific to my group and wouldn't recommend it in general. I agree that often the best way is just to fill in those details where you can as DM and let characters using those skills apply them as often as possible, preferably with information specific to the knowledge they applied. I hate throwing everything that is classified as 'magic' into Arcana, especially considering Religion and Nature are literally called out as sources of magic for some classes.




The problem with Performance as I see it is that, outside of professional context (performing for money or other compensation), most DMs don't imagine dance, music, or poetry as a serious solution to the problems that confront an adventuring party. The best antidote to this skill's underuse is to push against that assumption. Establish that well-constructed speech, dancelike motions, and musicality of voice are as vital a part of social encounters as diplomacy, deceit, or menace. Emphasize that the emotional and sensuous elements of conversation, what we would call charm, are distinct from the argumentative nature of Persuasion or Deception; they have more to do with mastery of the voice, face, and body than with arguments or ideas. Build worlds in which poetry and song are understood to have real and impactful power, and not just in the instance of the Bard class.


I ditch it as a skill entirely and incorporate more tools, much like how musical instruments are handled. There can be situations where a straight Cha check is called for, the same way that Str checks can be called that Athletics would not apply to.

[Tanarii]

Unless you never ride horses or use a mule train, Animal Handling is an important skill.

That's a pretty normal unless of course. I'm sure there are lots of campaigns that don't do either.

[KorvinStarmast]

That's my point.
What you are describing are stylistic choices by a DM, and an attempt to simplify the choices a DM has to make. Why have a menu with 11 items when a menu with 7 items will suffice? It does clear some head space inside the DM's mental baggage compartment / overhead bin which can get cluttered. :smallsmile: (For any of us). It's a way to use the tools at hand.

Your assertion (position?) that they are not needed is an opinion based on style, I think. It is also, in my view, unnecessarily reductionist. (But thank you for explaining why, in your opinion, it is a valid approach).

If you do tend to play a more dungeon crawly game, the grouping of which skill checks come up more often will swing in a particular direction. That's for sure.

[Tanarii]

What you are describing are stylistic choices by a DM,
What I am describing is reading the PHB for what Performance actually applies a proficiency bonus to. If you want to call that a stylistic choice, more power to you.

Edit: ah, I went back and found where that quote had come from. Yes, whether small and simple things without significant consequences for success/failure nor impact on the flow of the game require a check or not is an opinion and stylistic choice.
(^-- blantantly frames the argument :smallamused: )

[KorvinStarmast]

What I am describing is reading the PHB for what Performance actually applies a proficiency bonus to. If you want to call that a stylistic choice, more power to you. I disagree with your position that the skills overlapping is a bad thing. I do not find the stovepipe approach to ability score checks to be a useful approach. When you limit yourself to 'it's only that, see, there's some text' it looks to me like stovepipe thinking. (For spell casting, on the other hand, that approach allows for a more consistent game since magic throws a wrench in nearly everything - as Crawford points out, it's where most of the the exceptions to General versus Specific arise).

I like that the skill ability/skill checks have some overlap; that gives me as a DM more room to work; I like having a larger menu. And a performance check as a contest also came up in our ToA game, with my Ranger involved in what was basically a contest based on performance! (He had no proficiency, but so what? The DM ran it as a group check; we were in Port Nyanzaru trying to generate support for our adventuring party ... and what he didn't do was have the bard do a performance and one of us help.) The lesson being taught to the group was to re emphasize that you don't have to be proficienct to use an ability check! (My brother still forgets that - he still has a lot of 3.xe baggage languishing in his DM brain).

You appear to dislike that overlap. (Well, the position you have taken leads me to that understanding). The RAW being used as a limitation to role play is, philosophy wise, in opposition to what D&D has been since I started playing a long time ago. The rules are (1) a tool set and (2) a point of common reference, and also a point of departure.

That said, most of the D&D 5e rules hold together pretty well - it's a pretty good package with a few outlier 'WTF' elements.

I noticed that you also were throwing some shade at Deception checks earlier on. It's a great skill application for a variety of situations, but if one is mostly doing a dungeon crawl, it won't come up that often. (And frequency of application is the topic if the thread).
As to Skills

Each ability covers a broad range of capabilities, including skills that a character or a monster can be proficient in. A skill represents a specific aspect of an ability score, and an individual’s proficiency in a skill demonstrates a focus on that aspect.
{snip}
In either case, proficiency in a skill means an individual can add his or her proficiency bonus to ability checks that involve that skill. Without proficiency in the skill, the individual makes a normal ability check.
We then go to using other ability scores for a given check.

For example, if you have to swim from an offshore island to the mainland, your DM might call for a Constitution check to see if you have the stamina to make it that far. In this case, your DM might allow you to apply your proficiency in Athletics and ask for a Constitution (Athletics) check. ... if you’re proficient in Athletics, you apply your proficiency bonus to
the Constitution check just as you would normally do for a Strength (Athletics) check. Similarly, when your dwarf fighter uses a display of raw strength to intimidate an enemy, your DM might ask for a Strength (Intimidation)
check, even though Intimidation is normally associated with Charisma. Your stovepipe position is at odds with that approach, and seems to me too narrow a reading of the whole message of chapter 7.

But as above, is this works best for you as a DM, and your table responds well to it, that's the way to roll with it. (Pun intended). :smallwink:

[Tanarii]

I disagree with your position that the skills overlapping is a bad thing. I do not find the stovepipe approach to ability score checks to be a useful approach. When you limit yourself to 'it's only that, see, there's some text' it looks to me like stovepipe thinking. (For spell casting, on the other hand, that approach allows for a more consistent game since magic throws a wrench in nearly everything - as Crawford points out, it's where most of the the exceptions to General versus Specific arise).
More than one skill or tool can potentially apply to the same ability check ... provided it falls into what the skill description says in the PHB.

If you want to expand that description, go for it. If you want to make calls on if a skill applies to something based on your personal interpretation of the word used for the skill name instead of the description provided, go for it. But as it stands, as described in the PHB, the Performance skill is pretty much useless.

[NorthernPhoenix]

Context matters. That's why I'm glad there are no hard and fast social rules--the rules cannot encode this kind of thing without putting heavy constraints on the kinds of stories you can tell.

I think we agree with this if nothing else. But these kinds of threads are great to trade different takes on how and why one does various rulings, provided they don't get too spicey. Certainly beats fights over "RAW".

[PhoenixPhyre]

I think we agree with this if nothing else. But these kinds of threads are great to trade different takes on how and why one does various rulings, provided they don't get too spicey. Certainly beats fights over "RAW".

Yeah. I'm a big fan of "here's how I rule *and how it's worked out and why*" discussions, the later part being the important part. And I find "because RAW" to be relatively useless at answering why.

I also prefer concrete, fixed, actual play scenarios over the always mutable shifting goalposts and Schrodinger's characters that dominate much of the discussion here.

[Tanarii]

Yeah. I'm a big fan of "here's how I rule *and how it's worked out and why*" discussions, the later part being the important part. And I find "because RAW" to be relatively useless at answering why.
From that perspective, the best answer is eliminating the Performance skill. Delighting audiences specifically, and Performing in general, isn't a fundamental way of interacting with others. So best way to rule it is to get rid of it and replace it with something else. It really only exists because Bards exist as a class, so therefore it seems like it should exist.

For example, a skill that represents skill at interactions without properly knowing the local language, or local idioms and best practices even if you know the language, would be far more useful.

[NorthernPhoenix]

From that perspective, the best answer is eliminating the Performance skill. Delighting audiences specifically, and Performing in general, isn't a fundamental way of interacting with others. So best way to rule it is to get rid of it and replace it with something else. It really only exists because Bards exist as a class, so therefore it seems like it should exist.

For example, a skill that represents skill at interactions without properly knowing the local language, or local idioms and best practices even if you know the language, would be far more useful.

While i wouldn't personally do that, i will admit that relatively little actually breaks if you split performance between the various social skills, athletics, and tool use. (Contrast to Athletics, which is used in a lot of stuff making it harder to cut up).

[Reach Weapon]

It might also be interesting to consider which skills are most on offer.

I didn't drill down into subclasses, so Drunken Master Monks aren't listed for Performance, but here's which classes are offered proficiency in each skills.


Acrobatics (Dex): Bard, Fighter, Monk, Rogue

Animal Handling (Wis): Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Fighter, Ranger

Athletics (Str): Barbarian, Bard, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue

Arcana (Int): Artificer, Bard, Druid, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard

Deception (Cha): Bard, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock

History (Int): Artificer, Bard, Cleric, Fighter, Monk, Warlock, Wizard

Insight (Wis): Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Wizard

Intimidation (Cha): Barbarian, Bard, Fighter, Paladin, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock

Investigation (Int): Artificer, Bard, Ranger, Rogue, Warlock, Wizard

Medicine (Wis): Artificer, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Wizard

Nature (Int): Artificer, Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Ranger, Warlock

Perception (Wis): Artificer, Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Fighter, Ranger, Rogue

Performance (Cha): Bard, Rogue

Persuasion (Cha): Bard, Cleric, Paladin, Rogue, Sorcerer

Religion (Int): Bard, Cleric, Druid, Monk, Paladin, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard

Sleight of Hand (Dex): Artificer, Bard, Rogue

Stealth (Dex): Bard, Monk, Ranger, Rogue

Survival (Wis): Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Fighter, Ranger

A few things I notice from looking at the list:

Ignoring Bards being able to select any skill, Acrobatics and Stealth are only offered to classes requiring their ability scores.
Athletics, on the other hand, is offered to both classes that might dump it's ability score as well as to one's that require it.
Insight is the most widely offered skill.

[Tanarii]

Athletics, on the other hand, is offered to both classes that might dump it's ability score as well as to one's that require
Athletics is available to all six Martial Classes. Full casters wouldn't get it at all, except for Bards special class feature.

One I've noticed in the past is the Intimidation is available to the powerful (Str) and those with strong personalities (Cha). Similarly, it's a skill for Half-Orcs and Soldiers. Even if you as a DM don't allow variant Str (Intimidation) checks, it certainly implies that flexing your physically appearing dangerousness a chunk of getting good at it.

[Morty]

I have two insights on this topic. First, I think perception is an overused skill. Not just in D&D. GMs should rein in the instinct to say "roll perception/awareness/Wits+Composure/local equivalent" whenever the players want to take a closer look at anything. Alternately, perception should be an automatic proficiency. Otherwise it's a skill tax. People who want to be better at it can still have expertise or a good wisdom score.

Second, medicine is hampered by the fact that, as written, it can't actually heal anyone. There seem to be some specific effects from monsters or magic items that call for a medicine check, but otherwise it's overshadowed by magical healing. Or simply regaining HP on rest.

[Abracadangit]

I have two insights on this topic. First, I think perception is an overused skill. Not just in D&D. GMs should rein in the instinct to say "roll perception/awareness/Wits+Composure/local equivalent" whenever the players want to take a closer look at anything. Alternately, perception should be an automatic proficiency. Otherwise it's a skill tax. People who want to be better at it can still have expertise or a good wisdom score.

Second, medicine is hampered by the fact that, as written, it can't actually heal anyone. There seem to be some specific effects from monsters or magic items that call for a medicine check, but otherwise it's overshadowed by magical healing. Or simply regaining HP on rest.

Yep, agreed. Sense skills (Insight, Investigation, Perception) should be passive virtually all of the time, while knowledge skills should be sometimes passive (to know the wizard's research notes are talking about making explosive potions) and sometimes active (to try and replicate the wizard's research with his lab to manufacture said potion).

Also - can we get more social skills? Feels weird that almost all social skills get squished through three tubes. When a player intends to use an intentionally barbed insult to provoke or distract someone, the default is... Intimidation? When a paladin wants to rally the rest of the peasants to form a militia with a rousing speech... Persuasion? It feels like a lot of character and personality bandwidth gets skooshed when it has to fit into one of three buckets. "I will either punch you, lie to you, or smooth-talk you."

Something I was thinking of experimenting with in a game I have coming up - to make knowledge skills feel more weighty, when you select a knowledge skill at character creation, it also comes with a tool proficiency thematically linked to said skill. Like Arcana can choose from alchemist supplies or calligraphy kit, Nature can choose from herbalism kit or woodcarving supplies, etc. Do people feel like that's too much? Background would then be limited to one language/tool proficiency accordingly, and the skill profs from the background wouldn't offer the package deal, so they don't end up proficient in like five tools.

[Catullus64]

Second, medicine is hampered by the fact that, as written, it can't actually heal anyone. There seem to be some specific effects from monsters or magic items that call for a medicine check, but otherwise it's overshadowed by magical healing. Or simply regaining HP on rest.

The best fix I've found for this is to impose injuries that are both nonmagical in nature but don't go away with a simple rest; instead, they require rest and a successful Medicine check. I seldom impose them in combat, unless it's something drastic like the same person being KO'd three times in one fight. Sprained or broken limbs when someone falls a long distance (or, as in one circumstance, tried to punch down a door with bare hands, rolling a natural 1.) Things like rusted blades or poisonous thorns that cause infected cuts. Frostbite, sunburn, windburn. And diseases too! They're too seldom utilized, although they can sadly be utterly negated by a Paladin or any 3rd level Cleric/Druid.

[Mjolnirbear]

TL:DR; I wanted less powerful options like Medicine to be more useful, so I added more uses. I wanted skills to be more useful in general for combat, so I added special attacks for those skills. I wanted proficiency to be more than a mechanical bonus, so I added abilities you can choose from upon gaining proficiency or expertise in a skill.

In my games, my house rules are as follows:

Nature is removed. The animal aspect goes to Animal Handling, and the plant and weather aspect goes to Survival. I can see two nature-themed skills, but three seems extremely pointless. I split it between two arguably more practical skills. And in my mind, if you need to know about nature, why would you only learn the theoretical (Nature) instead of the practical (AH / Survival) especially if you're, say, a druid or nature cleric? And if you choose Nature, it's like you're trying to get both Animal Handling and Survival for the price of one.

Performance is instead a tool in whatever performance aspect you choose (instrument, oratory, juggling, etc). Because frankly, I think it's rather pointless as a skill. Or to put another way, there's a clear delineation between tools and skills, in that tools are largely character fluff while skills are more broadly useful. I can see the argument that Performance could be the 'crowd social skill', but honestly, performances mostly are about affecting emotion, and performances (like speeches) that are about convincing a crowd of something is extremely rare. So I as DM almost never ask for a performance check (I literally cannot recall ever having done so) and if I'm not calling for checks, it's really really unfair for the person who wasted one of their precious skill proficiencies on it. I've removed it from a skill purely to prevent players from taking a 'trap' choice in my games.

Along the same lines, Thieves' Tools is far too useful in any games to be a mere story/character fluff option. I've made it an Intelligence skill called Mechanics (yes, there are some Dex usages; intelligence is merely the most common Mechanics roll simply because you're figuring out how the trap or weird lock works).

Since I almost never use passive skills, I likewise removed Observant because it is essentially a trap option in my games.

Lastly, having proficiency or expertise in a skill grants you an actual ability. I knicked this almost entirely from Advanced Skill System by Mattia Festa (I'm pretty sure I got it from DMSGuild). For example, for Proficiency for Medicine, you can make a medicine check and spend a charge of a healing kit to permit the target to roll a HD for battlefield healing. If you're Expert, you can make a check and spend a Healer's Kit charge to allow someone to reroll if they failed a save against Blinded, Deafened, Paralyzed, Poisoned, or Stunned. I added some for Mechanics, rearranged some, but basically, the characters actually get something unique for being proficient or expert in something.



Those are the house rules; next is how I use skills.

Climb Onto Bigger Creature, Tumble/Overrun, and Disarm from the DMG are officially options in my games. Not Mark, though, mostly because it requires a lot of tracking that will slow **** down.

In an effort to boost Medicine, I've added a few universal actions and modified others. Stablizing a player is an action; if you're proficient in Medicine and are using a Healer's Kit, it instead heals 1d4 HP. Thief healer becomes an actual option this way. Yes, the Healer feat is removed entirely, because this should have been baked into the skill. Further, Search for Weakness is a bonus action involving either Medicine or Investigation contested by the bad guy's Deception; success grants you Advantage on your next attack roll against that bad guy (once per bad guy per combat). Evaluation is a bonus action involving Medicine, success means you know to the closest 25% how wounded a creature is (Unharmed from 100% to 75% remaining hit points, Wounded from 75%-50%, Badly Wounded from 50%-25%, and Near Death from 25%-1%.).

I almost always use Investigation instead of Perception if it involves anything other than pure sensory input.

Survival has become a major skill in my game to avoid getting lost, setting up camp, performing various travel jobs, and the like. I largely use Giffyglyph's Darkest Dungeons module for travel and camping, though again I modified it to suit my games.

Athletics didn't need a boost, but I guess I technically gave one anyways by expanding the grapple rules to include throws, locks, and chokes. Mostly to offer martials options besides "kill the thing".

Acrobatics got a slight buff with Plunging Attack, a Special Attack Option when you're above your enemy. You roll both together, and if you succeed at the Acrobatics check your fall damage is transferred entirely to the enemy. After resolving the attack roll, the enemy is then knocked prone.

Deception got a slight buff with Feint, another Special Attack option. Your deception vs the target's insight. If you succeed, your next attack (if it succeeds) does maximum damage.

Sleight of hand got a slight buff; after a successful disarm, you can make a check to catch the weapon. If you succeed you can immediately make a free attack roll with the weapon, with advantage.

[Tanarii]

Also - can we get more social skills? Feels weird that almost all social skills get squished through three tubes. When a player intends to use an intentionally barbed insult to provoke or distract someone, the default is... Intimidation? When a paladin wants to rally the rest of the peasants to form a militia with a rousing speech... Persuasion? It feels like a lot of character and personality bandwidth gets skooshed when it has to fit into one of three buckets. "I will either punch you, lie to you, or smooth-talk you."IIRC from my AL time, most DMs tend to think of it as "Brow beat you, deceive you, or straight-talk you".

That does cover a large variety of approaches to getting someone to do what you want, with difficulty depending on their initial attitude and how much risk they face doing so. Of course, many DMs aren't even aware that's the DMG standard for social interactions, and just totally wing Cha checks. Which is IMO totally fine, but of course results in our many varied expectations for what is involved in a check. In terms of intent, approach, outcomes, consequences.

[KorvinStarmast]

But as it, as described in the PHB, the Performance skill is pretty much useless.
No it isn't - I have already described three different scenarious where a performance contest was done in play.

That you don't care for it is one thing, that you are unable to see how it can be used strikes me as an odd case of tunnel vision. The descriptions in the PHB do not define a hard limit.

A performance isn't, by definition, tool use, particularly when you sing, and play music, and talk to the audience as a part of the performance. The performance itself can take from a few minutes to an hour in "in-game" time.

A virtue of your preference is that you have chosen to simplify the head space you have to devote to DMing. That's a matter of your DMing style, not a limitation built into the PHB.

Delighting audiences specifically, and Performing in general, isn't a fundamental way of interacting with others. did you just read what you wrote? It's the interaction with the audience that makes or breaks a performance. See stand up comedy and juggling for but two examples. See also any magician on stage. Interacting with the audience is a key to that successful performance.

[Telok]

Second, medicine is hampered by the fact that, as written, it can't actually heal anyone. There seem to be some specific effects from monsters or magic items that call for a medicine check, but otherwise it's overshadowed by magical healing. Or simply regaining HP on rest.

Well do we want Medicine to work more like RL healing skills or more like a magical luck & morale pumping ability?

Mostly the issue is that everything except the poisoned condition, exhaustion, and magic statuses is rolled into HP, which of course isn't physical but some nebulous luck and will to fight thing.

Possibly the easiest solution is to let a medicine check remove status effects that would normally be cured by a long rest during a short rest. Of course you'll have to add stuff about one attempt by and for one person etc., etc., to keep check spam down.

[KorvinStarmast]

Second, medicine is hampered by the fact that, as written, it can't actually heal anyone. There seem to be some specific effects from monsters or magic items that call for a medicine check, but otherwise it's overshadowed by magical healing. Or simply regaining HP on rest. It can stabilize someone, though, and it can be used for triage (what's wrong with them?); the game has chosen to gate actual healing to potions, a feat, and magic.
I've always felt that the potential to get more out of that skill was an opportunity lost, though.

It's one of those choices that might have been made to prevent skill check abuse: not sure, can't read the devs minds on that.

Also - can we get more social skills? Apparently not; apparently there are too many already. :smallyuk:

[Catullus64]

It can stabilize someone, though, and it can be used for triage (what's wrong with them?); the game has chosen to gate actual healing to potions, a feat, and magic.
I've always felt that the potential to get more out of that skill was an opportunity lost, though.

It's one of those choices that might have been made to prevent skill check abuse: not sure, can't read the devs minds on that.

It's definitely a shame that when they put out Xanathar's Guide, with hard-and-fast rules for making healing potions, they put it down to proficiency with an Herbalism kit. I think that was a missed opportunity to make Medicine a more practical skill.

[KorvinStarmast]

It's definitely a shame that when they put out Xanathar's Guide, with hard-and-fast rules for making healing potions, they put it down to proficiency with an Herbalism kit. I think that was a missed opportunity to make Medicine a more practical skill. Agree.
How hard would it have been to say Herbalism or Medicine, as they did with some crafting (tools or arcana).

[Reach Weapon]

Nature is removed. The animal aspect goes to Animal Handling, and the plant and weather aspect goes to Survival. I can see two nature-themed skills, but three seems extremely pointless.

Nature (Int) seems to exist so that Druids and Rangers aren't incompetent against type when called upon to use an unemphasized (dumped) ability in their milieu.
What happens with Int checks for Druids, et al. at tables with such modifications?


Or to put another way, there's a clear delineation between tools and skills, in that tools are largely character fluff while skills are more broadly useful.
I'm under the impression that Xanathar’s Guide to Everything is inconsistent with the "fluff" designation for tools. Do you not use that book, or disagree?

[Mjolnirbear]

What happens with Int checks for Druids, et al. at tables with such modifications?


I'm under the impression that Xanathar’s Guide to Everything is inconsistent with the "fluff" designation for tools. Do you not use that book, or disagree?

They can still use INT (animal handling) and INT (survival)? Do you not use 'alternate abilities' variant? Maybe you don't, but I thought I made it clear I do when I mentioned Mechanics wasn't always an INT skill.

As for Xanathar's, it made a well-intentioned attempt to make tools useful, but in actual play at actual tables, Thieves' Tools is the only tool consistently mentioned in any game I've played in or any of the books I own.

And my players aren't interested in them. The Darker Dungeon rules promote some tools, so they at least get seen in camp activities at my tables... Or they would if anyone actually picked them. The PHB turned tools into an afterthought and that's the only book all my players actually have. Since we can't play in person, they've never really had the opportunity to look at my XGE. Should I force them to pick tools? Should I call for checks that can only be done with an individual tool and if they overlooked it too bad for them? I use them for camp activities and for downtime and for crafting, none of which actually interest my players.

I can only do so much to entice their interest. If they don't engage with tools, I can't force them to do so. At my table, tools are an afterthought during character creation, something they write down and forget by the second session. Skills are something they actually use.

[Morty]

Well do we want Medicine to work more like RL healing skills or more like a magical luck & morale pumping ability?

Mostly the issue is that everything except the poisoned condition, exhaustion, and magic statuses is rolled into HP, which of course isn't physical but some nebulous luck and will to fight thing.

Possibly the easiest solution is to let a medicine check remove status effects that would normally be cured by a long rest during a short rest. Of course you'll have to add stuff about one attempt by and for one person etc., etc., to keep check spam down.

It would be easier if D&D's health and injury system didn't hold together by glitter glue and good vibes, but it is what it is. Being able to remove conditions before you rest, but only once, might work.

[Tanarii]

Since we can't play in person, they've never really had the opportunity to look at my XGE. Should I force them to pick tools? Should I call for checks that can only be done with an individual tool and if they overlooked it too bad for them? I use them for camp activities and for downtime and for crafting, none of which actually interest my players.
The major benefit of Xan to Tools is it:
- changes the PHB rules so they help with knowledge related to the Tool use, not just actually using the tool
- give you advantage on checks where you have both a Proficiency in a skill that applies, and Proficiency in a Tool that would give you related knowledge.

[Mjolnirbear]

The major benefit of Xan to Tools is it:
- changes the PHB rules so they help with knowledge related to the Tool use, not just actually using the tool
- give you advantage on checks where you have both a Proficiency in a skill that applies, and Proficiency in a Tool that would give you related knowledge.

Which, again, would only be useful if my players actually picked tools. Navigators tools Grant advantage on the Survival check to not get lost. Vehicle grants advantage on animal handling checks to drive a horse-drawn carriage. Games with persuasion, or insight. They can't benefit this way if they don't pick the tool, and I can't force them.

I've tried suggesting, I've tried by example in one-shots where I'm playing and not DMing, I've explained crafting and downtime options... What else do you suggest I do, tie them down and write it on their character sheets?

Wotc blew it hard with respect to tools; optional rules only work if the players have read the book and are engaged in using the options.

Were I to redo this part of the game, none of the skills would be tied to only one ability score (some exceptions, such as grapple, would apply), and all proficiencies would be on the same part of the sheet. There'd be, say, seven to ten lines and you'd put down each proficiency. When I called for a Charisma check, they could see Brewr's Tools, Intimidation, and Dragon Chess, all next to each other as actual options to influence their shape of their ability rolls. Instead of pressing the Persuasion button to interact with the PC, the Charisma check has a different approach depending on which proficiency they choose.

[Reach Weapon]

They can still use INT (animal handling) and INT (survival)? Do you not use 'alternate abilities' variant? Maybe you don't, but I thought I made it clear I do when I mentioned Mechanics wasn't always an INT skill.
Multiple people have made similar suggestions. From here it looks like it's costing an additional skill to get the low ability score boost that had been available with just one skill. It doesn't read like that's the intent (or in-play result?) so I am just trying to understand the methodology.


I've tried suggesting, I've tried by example in one-shots where I'm playing and not DMing, I've explained crafting and downtime options... What else do you suggest I do, tie them down and write it on their character sheets?
It might be worth a try. I have seen decent results where a DM has discussed an underutilized mechanic pre- or post-session, used an NPC's sales pitch to extoll the virtues of something, or brazenly introduced an NPC primarily to demonstrate the effectiveness of something with exaggerated eye-rolls towards the party. (Admittedly, most of the groups I've played with extensively have explicitly made space for group check-ins and addressing player's feelings, so this is less fraught than it reportedly is at some tables.)


Instead of pressing the Persuasion button to interact with the PC, the Charisma check has a different approach depending on which proficiency they choose.
I am occasionally shocked that Insight (or equivalent) isn't the default button pushed for social interactions; it's like trying to address a trap without doing any sort of investigation.

[Chronos]

Quoth Mjolnirbear:

Along the same lines, Thieves' Tools is far too useful in any games to be a mere story/character fluff option. I've made it an Intelligence skill called Mechanics (yes, there are some Dex usages; intelligence is merely the most common Mechanics roll simply because you're figuring out how the trap or weird lock works).
Sure, adventurers do come across a fair number of weird locks. But what if it's a normal lock? How it works is you stick the key in that hole and turn it, and the shape of the key lets it fit past wards and/or push tumblers to the correct depths. Anyone proficient with thieves' tools already knows that.

[Mjolnirbear]

Multiple people have made similar suggestions. From here it looks like it's costing an additional skill to get the low ability score boost that had been available with just one skill. It doesn't read like that's the intent (or in-play result?) so I am just trying to understand the methodology.

Except there is almost no call for a purely theoretical understanding of nature in the game. It's just not gonna help Samwise that he knows that Bagheera kiplingii is the only known vegetarian spider, that the aorta of a blue whale is big enough to crawl through, or that vriesa splendens is from a family of plants that largely grow on trees with a central cup formed by its leaves to hold rainwater. And its great that you know digitalis is toxic and that its toxin can be used to treat the heart, that doesn't actually help you because you don't know how to extract it. You know what does cover extracting useful substances from plants? Survival.

So Nature becomes by default the "try to cover all my nature bets with one skill instead of three". Which bothers me; it's like trying to climb, shove, or grapple with Acrobatics, or letting Performance completely replace persuasion, deception and intimidation.

I am thus *completely" fine with streamlining crap. There is no real need for purely theoretical knowledge that isn't already covered by Survival or Animal Handling. Removing it as an option means my players will spend their precious skill selection on something I'll actually call for.



It might be worth a try. I have seen decent results where a DM has discussed an underutilized mechanic pre- or post-session, used an NPC's sales pitch to extoll the virtues of something, or brazenly introduced an NPC primarily to demonstrate the effectiveness of something with exaggerated eye-rolls towards the party. (Admittedly, most of the groups I've played with extensively have explicitly made space for group check-ins and addressing player's feelings, so this is less fraught than it reportedly is at some tables.)

So to satisfy your feeling that tools should be promoted more at my table than my efforts already have, you suggest I force-engage content my players have no interest in, leading to more boredom at my table. What an...interesting suggestion. That seems to completely ignore the fact that I have literally written rules to try to engage tool use because I, personally, love them.

Allow me to cast Bugsby's Expressive Digit. I've done as much promotion as I can. It was a universal failure. I now concentrate my efforts on other projects. Your opinion that apparently I'm not doing enough, having never seen any of my houserules or played in any of my games, is patently ridiculous.

But if it makes you feel better, if I ever get different players, they will already have several systems to engage in tool use should they become interested. You may therefore refrain from telling me how to run my table or engage my players' interest.


I am occasionally shocked that Insight (or equivalent) isn't the default button pushed for social interactions; it's like trying to address a trap without doing any sort of investigation.

When I play, insight is my first social skill pick.

[Mjolnirbear]

Sure, adventurers do come across a fair number of weird locks. But what if it's a normal lock? How it works is you stick the key in that hole and turn it, and the shape of the key lets it fit past wards and/or push tumblers to the correct depths. Anyone proficient with thieves' tools already knows that.

I'm not understanding your question. What about if it's a normal lock? They're still engaging springs and levers. They can still open it with mechanics roll. I didn't remove thieves tools. I changed the name and effectively added more uses.

[KorvinStarmast]

I'm under the impression that Xanathar’s Guide to Everything is inconsistent with the "fluff" designation for tools. Do you not use that book, or disagree? I don't think tools are fluff, and certainly find the position that they are to be at odds with how our groups play the game.

It would be easier if D&D's health and injury system didn't hold together by glitter glue and good vibes, but it is what it is. Being able to remove conditions before you rest, but only once, might work. Which brings us to the clumsy implementation of the exhaustion condition ... but that would be neat.

[Eric Diaz]

I'm trying to reduce the number of skills because of that; skills are one of my least favorite parts in 5e. I'm down to six "skill sets", more or less:

- athletics (+acrobatics)
- Nature: animal handling, survival, nature, maybe perception when in nature.
- Lore: religion, history.
- Thievery: sleight of hand + thieves' tools, maybe stealth.
- Arcana: well, arcana.
- Medicine: just medicine.
- Maybe perception/insight;

But I'm this close to just giving everyone proficiency in everything. I'm half convinced it won't break the game, and it will make things a lot easier.

I didn't like this in 4e - a high-level wizard going from +0 to +15 in athletics felt like too much - but +2 to +6? Well, why not, Gandalf can jump over that chasm after all.

That level 20th fighter? Yes, he DOES know a thing or two about arcana. He cannot cast spells, but he has seem plenty of sorcerers, spells, monsters and magic weapons.

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2021/01/minimalist-d-vii-six-skill-sets.html


I counted the number of ability checks for two of the published modules:

- Dragon Heist (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?579691-Dragon-Heist-Most-Common-Skills-for-Ability-Checks)
- Tomb of Annihilation (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?579965-Tomb-of-Annihilation-Most-Common-Skills-for-Ability-Checks)

This is very useful, thank you!

[Tanarii]

But I'm this close to just giving everyone proficiency in everything. I'm half convinced it won't break the game, and it will make things a lot easier.
Have you looked at the proficiency variants in the DMG?

[Amnestic]

But I'm this close to just giving everyone proficiency in everything. I'm half convinced it won't break the game, and it will make things a lot easier.
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It won't break anything, but you should consider what classes who get additional proficiencies (eg. rogue, bard, ranger) get 'in return' for losing their niche.

[lall]

It’s okay that some skills are used less frequently. My bard has expertise in Performance solely for bedroom stuff. That part is almost always blacked out with no checks. The proficiency and expertise are in place so that I know my character excels in that area even if no one else does, or even cares.