Tomb of Annihilation: Most Common Skills for Ability Checks

[Merudo]

I've searched through the adventure Tomb of Annihilation and counted the number of times that a given skill is used in an ability check.

Here are my results:

• Athletics: 51
• Acrobatics: 14
• Sleight of Hand: 1
• Stealth: 10, plus extra opportunities if moving at slow pace
• Arcana: 5
• Investigation: 10
• History: 4
• Nature: 2 + recognize 8 plants/animals
• Religion: 6
• Animal Handling: 4 + dinosaur race
• Insight: 2
• Medicine: 4
• Perception: 96
• Survival: 13 + navigation checks
• Deception: 8
• Intimidation: 3
• Performance: 1
• Persuasion: 11

Summary: survival (for navigation checks), perception, and athletics are the most frequently used skills.

[Slipperychicken]

I like this a lot. This kind of count is a great way to quantify and highlight extreme skill/power imbalance in roleplaying games.

[OvisCaedo]

I'm actually surprised there were that many investigation checks. I didn't remember running into, like... any. At all. I know there were supposed to be some unfeasibly high investigation checks at the very end for some rune traps, but uh... in my case our entire party was so sick of the campaign at that point that a lot of stuff was just being glossed over to get it over with.

[Merudo]

I'm actually surprised there were that many investigation checks. I didn't remember running into, like... any.

Yeah, half of them are to identify Glyphs of Warding.

[Keravath]

I like this a lot. This kind of count is a great way to quantify and highlight extreme skill/power imbalance in roleplaying games.

In this case it isn't an imbalance at all. It is the nature of this campaign in particular.

You are doing a jungle crawl with dungeons scattered here and there. One would expect perception and survival to be very commonly used skills in this type of environment. In addition, given the heavy rains, heavy jungle growth, overgrown temples and dungeons among other physically challenging aspects to encounters ... it is also not surprising that athletics would be among the most common skill checks in this setting.

[Marcloure]

Are these checks that your group made or the ones explicitly put in the book?

[Zaharra]

Hey, but at least the bard who put expertise in performance gets a chance to use it, that usually doesn't happen :)

[Slipperychicken]

In this case it isn't an imbalance at all. It is the nature of this campaign in particular.

You are doing a jungle crawl with dungeons scattered here and there. One would expect perception and survival to be very commonly used skills in this type of environment. In addition, given the heavy rains, heavy jungle growth, overgrown temples and dungeons among other physically challenging aspects to encounters ... it is also not surprising that athletics would be among the most common skill checks in this setting.

I'd be interested in seeing similar counts for other published adventures to see what their counts look like.

[Shuruke]

I could go through and count strahd, cloud giant strife, and the. Primordial adventure one > EE < can't remember name haven't ran it

[Merudo]

In this case it isn't an imbalance at all. It is the nature of this campaign in particular.

You are doing a jungle crawl with dungeons scattered here and there. One would expect perception and survival to be very commonly used skills in this type of environment. In addition, given the heavy rains, heavy jungle growth, overgrown temples and dungeons among other physically challenging aspects to encounters ... it is also not surprising that athletics would be among the most common skill checks in this setting.

I'm pretty sure a lot of folks expected the Nature skill and the Medicine skill to be more helpful in Cthul - you know, because it's a land where nature and disease are everywhere.

Are these checks that your group made or the ones explicitly put in the book?

Those put in the book.

I'd be interested in seeing similar counts for other published adventures to see what their counts look like.

I also made a list for Waterdeep: Dragon Heist.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

I think you need to add your list to the 5e Notable Threads

[follacchioso]

Religion is more frequently used than what I thought.