New Idea for Stats and skills at chargen.

[87blue]

Part of my idea comes from reading up on how Pathfinder initially combined and reduced the amount of skills to remove some overlap and redundancy. After reading that, I realized that some of the skills there are things no adventurer worth his salt should be without. A part of me always wondered why you need to buy these skills separately, especially since some rely alot on natural skill. Now my idea is basically to have certain skills attached to a stat at chargen automatically with no need for point buy. First off I feel the need to preface this that I use AGL to DEX as I feel agility as a term better fits the concept of both reflexes and hand-eye coordination, while dexterity only covers the latter. WIS is replaced with PERception as that stat seems to be more about sensory actions than being quick witted, which I feel should be folded into INT. Finally Spirit(SPR) replaces CHR as it covers both force of will and charisma both.

Now for the skills:

STR: Athletics(covering climbing, jumping, and swiming)
AGL: Stealth & Acrobatics(Balancing and tumbling)
CON: Healing(mostly used to help recover HP outsite of battle, representing your natural healing ability) & Survival(Mostly used to foraging and fighting against environmental hazards)
INT: Craft
PER: Investigate & Sense Motive
SPR: Persuasion(Combine with Deception) & Performance

Thoughts?

[GalacticAxekick]

This is a great way to increase the power of player characters, because it gives everyone more skills for free.

But this also limits character options severely, because it forces characters to take combinations of unrelated skills.

In other words, it's good for 5e as a game but bad for 5e as a storytelling medium.

For example, your rules make it impossible to play someone great at Persuasion, but bad at Deception, or vice versa. I cannot play a charming but naive nobleman who is too honest with people he should not trust. And I cannot play a cynical hustler who keeps safe from city lowlives by lying about his wealth, success and personal life, and who never really learned to ask for help or vouch for himself.

Or for example, your rules make it impossible to play someone good at Stealth but bad at Acrobatics, or vice versa. I cannot play a sneaky scholar who is very good at stealing obscure tomes, but who could never walk a tightrope or do a backflip. I cannot play a horse-riding Bandit who can leap easily from his steed to a moving carriage, but who cant move much at all without roaring and carousing.

If you think skills are too costly, just let people pick more skills, or make skills stronger by giving people expertise.

[GalacticAxekick]

Also, I dont see why Con is responsible for any skills.

Healing doesnt require a skill check, unless a the player is practicing Medicine, in which case it has nothing to do with Con and everything to do with (in my opinion) Int.

Foraging is a combination of knowledge of nature (Int) and perceptiveness (Wis). Tracking is a combination of knowledge of nature (Int) and perceptiveness (Wis). Starting fires and building shelters are some of the only survival skills I would consider unique, and they certainly have nothing to do with Con. If anything, they're crafts (which would make them Int skills under your system).

[87blue]

This is a great way to increase the power of player characters, because it gives everyone more skills for free.

But this also limits character options severely, because it forces characters to take combinations of unrelated skills.

In other words, it's good for 5e as a game but bad for 5e as a storytelling medium.

For example, your rules make it impossible to play someone great at Persuasion, but bad at Deception, or vice versa. I cannot play a charming but naive nobleman who is too honest with people he should not trust. And I cannot play a cynical hustler who keeps safe from city lowlives by lying about his wealth, success and personal life, and who never really learned to ask for help or vouch for himself.

Or for example, your rules make it impossible to play someone good at Stealth but bad at Acrobatics, or vice versa. I cannot play a sneaky scholar who is very good at stealing obscure tomes, but who could never walk a tightrope or do a backflip. I cannot play a horse-riding Bandit who can leap easily from his steed to a moving carriage, but who cant move much at all without roaring and carousing.

If you think skills are too costly, just let people pick more skills, or make skills stronger by giving people expertise.

I was thinking that the skills would come in levels represented by modifiers. Starting a novice, then journeyman, ect...

[GalacticAxekick]

I was thinking that the skills would come in levels represented by modifiers. Starting a novice, then journeyman, ect...

This sounds like exactly the same thing as proficiency and expertise.

Which isnt bad! By all means, give everyone more proficiencies and access to expertise!

But dont bunch unrelated skills together while you're at it.

[Bjarkmundur]

After multiple years of the skill debate the answer is honestly always: Do what works at your table, that brings your players the most enjoyment, and allows you to tell the best stories.

I also have my own skill system. Its no better or worse than any other, it is simply different.

Does this mean you are removing skills from the game, and instead just using naked ability checks for everything? Like, when you want to roll for a skill, you look up it's associated ability modifier, and roll with that instead.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm honestly generally a proponent for more granularity in skill training, not less. On the other hand there are some rare circumstances where it just makes sense to separate it out.

Perception is the classic example. We can debate on if Perception should be a skill or a stat for a long time, the short answer is that in terms of value is probably somewhere in between, but that everybody wants it. It might be worthwhile just giving every PC training in it for free, because it's pretty much the first skill any experienced player invests in.

As to the idea of combining skills with stats, it does make sense to combine a few things into the raw stat, eh. It's going to make characters more samey, but skills are an afterthought in modern D&D anyway. I'd rearrange the stats sightly differently, but honestly from the perspective of 5e your rearranged mental stats are likely better balanced than the core.