Well, multiclassing will typically give you one additional skill, and there’s a few to train in a few new skills, but yeah, mostly.
I get the impression that they’re reflecting the fact that you’re too busy decapitating goblins and breaking all known scientific laws with godlike powers to really become an expert with cabinetry or interpretive dance. And okay, fine, Grognar the Barbarian is just never going to finally master pasta-making until he retires from dungeon-crawling and puts in the work.
Not true. If you are a Cleric, with a 20 wis, you are +5 in Survival (and all other Wis based skills). A few classes/subclasses do add extra skills, as do feats. Skill Expert is a really good choice.
Most classes have two skills, plus two from a background, and several races add a skill or two. I had a Tabaxi rogue that had ten skills trained.
Oddly, Chef adds +1 to con, which makes it a decent choice for barbarians.
No longer a skill in 5e, they have shortened the list of skills quite a bit.
Which is maybe fine if you’re talking about underwater basket weaving but makes less sense if you’re thinking “After falling down a few too many slopes, my character would want to become trained in Athletics to so they can climb better” or “That trip across the tundra made my character think that learning some Survival would help them forage for food and build shelter”. Those seem like perfectly reasonable skills for a character to pick up in between stabbing owlbears.
I agree. In one memorable campaign, one of the characters chose an extra proficiency slot over knowing Common. So, the rest of the party could not communicate with him until he leveled and was able to take another language.
I have run two 5E games from first to 17th level. Then I ran a game of Level Up in the same range. The players all thought that their characters were static in 5E skills, not having learned anything new since first level. In contrast, they all felt they learned more skills in LU and improved in the ones they had.
Thanks for the conversation!
Missed the edit window while I was editing it.
ETA: Any game you play in your group and you all have fun is great. I’m not down on anyone that plays a game. I’m only speaking to my preferences.
In my head, high level fantasy should be super heroes. Even though I played 1E/2E, 3E/PF is what stuck with me. I find that strange but I like how high level characters in 3E feel powerful. I don’t feel that about 5E characters, or monsters. I do think that 1E/2E character were super heroes but I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s the video games from back then? Maybe so many of my players played multi classed characters and multi classing was so different?
On that point, the Sly Flourish podcast has been comparing 5E 2014 to 5E 2024 and found some interesting differences. A 2014 lich requires the DM to use spells to hit at their CR. A 2024 lich has basic attacks that even if the spells aren’t used, it still hits at its CR. It makes 2024 a bit more newbie friendly in that regard.
I think 5E has subtle complexities. I used the three action economy in PF1 before I started playing PF2 and in that system, when someone uses their three actions, they are done. A few characters might get some freebies from time to time but those are exceptions. I knew when they were done with their turn. In 5E, thanks to Bonus Actions, I don’t always know when they are done with their turn.
None of these things are bad things. I’m merely pointing out weird little things I noticed with 5E that I don’t prefer. I would run it if the group wanted to play it, and we might try 2024 at some point since the story, and having fun, is more important than mechanics. It isn’t my first pick but it’s still a decent game.
Thanks for the discussion!
Then, use a feat for that.
And also DMs can allow PCs to train in or just learn extra skills.
You didnt allow any feats? And you didnt allow the optional rules to learn new skills?
It is very hard is 5e for your skills to be static- add +2 to an ability and the skills based on that get better. Of course there are feats that add nothing to abilities so it is possible.
Not to mention, at 5th, 9th, 13th and 17th, your proficiency bonus increases, thus all your proficient skills get better.
True, in order to learn new skills you have to gain certain feats, multiclass or use optional rules.
My point was simply that there’s plenty of valid and reasonable skills a character could be learning in the field besides “pasta making” and “cabinetry”. That said, I do like the PF* approach of regular skill points more than using one of your few feats or hoping the GM will use optional rules.
*And I assume 3.5e though I never played it
It is not impossible. You do it by saying “Bleepblop the druid can do this without a skill check because she’s wise in the ways of the forest, but Hoitytoit the noble bard wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
If you want a skill check where one person can always succeed and one person always fails, that isn’t a skill check. It’s just narration.
I not only allowed feats, in two of those campaigns, I gave them extra ones. One of those was LU, which already improved on skills. In the 5E campaign, my players felt certain feats were better than any skill adding feats. To be fair, the campaign up to that point showed feats to help them more than a skill improvement. I think the biggest improvement was maybe the rogue gaining double proficiency bonus in something? It’s been a while. They still felt like they hadn’t learned anything new in the 5E games since first level.
I like 5Es return to class features more than feats, as 3E/PF1 did, especially for fighters. PF1 had some class features for fighters that helped define the fighter better than more feats but looking back, it wasn’t enough. I like that PF2 has used that idea as well and I like it’s multi classing option much better.
In 1E/2E, I think this would be valid. At best, 1E/2E had the NWP system, so not as developed as a skill system. 1E/2E/OSR are games I appreciate more now but only as a forever DM.
In 5E, a player can ask for the skill attempt. The DM could still say no or allow it and let the dice fall as they may, again depending on the DM.
I appreciate the sentiment of what you are saying. I like character concept and try to hold that above the rules, or at least guide me in what I allow the player to do with their character. I’m not sure that follows RAW, though.
Thanks for the discussion!
Well sure, but that’s always the case for everything. These sorts of complaints come down to “I don’t like the way I and/or my DM choose to handle this skill system.”
Do I think the 5e skill system is fabulous? No. But does have some room for nuance.
I definitely don’t think any player should be able to attempt any skill check. 5e’s bounded accuracy system (Chronos is right that the range of bonuses is small relative to some other systems) means that allowing infinite skill checks leads to things feeling samey.
Also, you set the DC so that a skilled person +10 in a skill for example- always succeeds on a DC 10 check.
Some classes got upgrades in Tashas- and both Barbarian and Ranger gain skills. Not to mention, quite a few subclasses- entry at level 3 usually- get skills, such as the Scout for Rogues- and the Lore Bard. Also both Bards and Rogues get better at skills in the PHB- they gain expertise.
But there are indeed optional rules/guidelines for the DM to allow PCs to gain new skills thru training or doing.
You’re not really responding to my criticism, here. My problem is that there’s not enough change in your skills as you advance levels - maxing out your wis stat doesn’t change that, and of course, only helps you with wis-based skills. What if I want my 8 wis rogue to learn a little wilderness craft? I can’t do that, unless I want to burn one of my very few feats.
Yeah, I’m aware - that’s why I provided that as an example of something I can’t do in 5th edition.
Also, the decimated skill list is another think I don’t love about 5th.
Like I have said- there are optional rules for that. Not to mention, if you take the Scout subclass, you get it for free.
“Just play a scout!” is really missing the point of my complaint, here. What I liked about point buy systems is that it’s a relatively low-cost way to get a more generalized skill set. It lets me do something flavorful, with a bit of a mechanical effect, but at a very low opportunity cost. It’s not something I’m going to burn a whole-ass feat over. It’s definitely not something I want to choose my entire subclass over.
D&D is a game that is built around archetypes. Customization means finding an archetype that matches your character concept. If there isn’t one, the game as written doesn’t really support it, although any given table can find a work-around. But there often is an archetype (class, subclass, race, feat, etc) because D&D is also built around lots of splat books.
This isn’t a good or bad thing, it’s just the way the game is. Archetypes make it easy for players to grasp what their character can do. Archetypes also hobble players who can’t find an archetype that matches what they want to play.
FWIW, I don’t disagree with this. 5e does a lot of stuff “fine” and, if it excels in one thing, it’s in being reasonably acceptable to pretty much everyone. I kind of got tired of the direction it was taking post Xanathar’s and Tasha’s dropped me off the wagon of actively supporting/running games but if someone invited me to play in a 5e game, I’d join in without grumbling.
Although I overall prefer the skill/feat system used in PF2, if I was to find a flaw it would be that the number of feats you can pick up tends to make the developers more conservative. Because bonuses can help swing the math and because you wind up with a lot of various feats (skill and otherwise) you also wind up with a lot of “Gain a +1 circumstance bonus to Diplomacy once per day when discussing dog prices with a registered breeder” type entries that don’t exactly inspire the heroic imagination.
That’s not the skill system working. It’s an acknowledgement that it doesn’t work, and needs to be replaced, without saying what to replace it with.
Because first of all, you have to have some way of deciding whether someone is wise enough in the ways of whatever. The rules provide no guidance on this matter. And then you have people in between the person who always succeeds and the person who always fails, who might or might not manage it. So you have to set a DC for that person, anyway. And then once you do that, that person will say “Wait, with that DC, shouldn’t the druid still have had a chance for failure, too? Why does she get to do it guaranteed?”, and Hoitytoit can say “Wait, with that DC, I should have had a chance, too, so why did I auto-fail?”.
In 3rd edition, this worked. You still just told some people “You automatically succeed because you’re just that good”, and some people “You don’t have any chance because you’re just that bad”, but there was a way to determine that: If the character’s bonus was at least the DC (or rather, at least one less than the DC, because the die always adds 1), they were an auto-success, and if the character’s bonus was more than 20 less than the DC, they were an auto-fail.
In 5th edition, though, the underlying philosophy is “Everything should always have a chance of success and a chance of failure. And since that doesn’t work, sometimes things shouldn’t have a chance of success or of failure. Figure it out yourself.”
No doubt, point buy skills are antithetical to 5e’s game design, which generally forgoes flat d20 bonuses that aren’t directly tied to your proficiency or your stats (or else are completely separate dice rolls, like vardic inspiration or guidance).
This cuts way down on bookkeeping and increases accessibility, but it’s for sure less flavorful than a more complex system.
It absolutely is not. If a barbarian with an intelligence of 5 tells me he wants to craft a technomagical construct out of pine cones and whiskey I have no obligation, implicit or explicit, to let him start rolling dice. I can say no, you have no idea how to do that.
More to the point, I can think of at least one situation off the top of my head (climbing rules) that specify there’s no need for skill checks under most normal circumstances. I’m sure there are others.