Here, I want to remove Constitution and Wisdom from the character sheet. Relatedly, I want to combine Athletics and Acrobatics into the Athletics skill, thus remove Acrobatics from the character sheet.
The game Vaesen from Free League, is a Nordic horror game emphasizing the darker aspects of the folk belief of Nordic cultures. It is awesome. I am looking forward to playing it!
The game has four abilities: • Physique • Precision • Logic • Empathy
I feel this is the optimal format. The four correspond to D&D Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Charisma. Notably, here Physique/Strength handles all of the mobility, including running, jumping, falling, climbing, balancing, tumbling, and so on. Logic via the Investigation skill handles perception, albeit the special senses of animals (eg smell, hearing) are bonuses that are handled separately. A neat thing is there is no such thing as "finesse" since Physique handles everything anyway: large weapons and small weapons, and natural weapons like punching and wrestling. All of this four feels ideal to me. It seems optimally accurate while still maintaining the simplicity necessary for a table game. Each of the abilities are roughly equally valuable to any character. These four solve many of the problems of imbalance and redundancy among the six abilities.
I would love for the DnDBeyond character sheet to allow me to consolidate the abilities in this way!
I can (and will) tweak the skills, such as making Acrobatics key off Strength and Perception key off Intelligence. But I would love to give the Will save to Charisma.
Equally important to character sheet customization is the ability to remove mechanics that are not in use.
This is an example of my personal customization. But more generally, it would be able to remove content from the character sheet, as well as being able to add content to it.
D&D Beyond focuses first and foremost on supporting the official core rules of D&D, which includes the six core abilities and the various associated skills. As such, there are always going to be some limitations on what you can and can't do with the character sheets, homebrew tools etc, in order to keep things in line with the core rules.
If you're trying to run a non-D&D game system, D&D Beyond might not be your best tool system to use.
In the mean time, being able override the default key ability of a skill helps alot.
For now, I will let the players choose whether they want to use Strength or Dexterity for both Athletics-Acrobatics. The separation of these skills feels too awkward for me (eg, characters who know how to jump dont know how to land). But allowing the same ability for both skills goes a long way to remedy the discongruency.
Also, I feel Charisma requires strong social intelligence including the ability to read people. So making Insight a Charisma skill is easy enough to do.
If players want to make Perception an Intelligence check, that is fine too.
Ideally, as DM, I would love to reassign a number of things, such as give an agile accurate Strength the AC bonus, thus remove finesse and Dex grappling along with Acrobatics.
Even so, the ability to assign a key ability to a skill helps for many situations.
To my surprise, I was able to override the Dex bonus to AC. I made the AC dodge bonus +2 from Strength instead. I am happy about this.
With Strength handling Acrobatics and the AC bonus, it is genuinely the go-to ability for an athletic character concept. Now Strength is consistently agile, as is appropriate for hand-to-hand, weapon aiming, climbing, and so on.
The DnDBeyond character sheet customization tools are powerful.
Also, I feel Charisma requires strong social intelligence including the ability to read people. So making Insight a Charisma skill is easy enough to do.
If players want to make Perception an Intelligence check, that is fine too.
I can see your reasoning on Athletics/Acrobatics, but baffled by these ones.
Perception is using your senses to notice details others might miss. When you see and hear and such, that information is processed and filtered - what the mind feels is irrelevant is discarded and the rest is retained and pushed to your conscious awareness. Some people have minds that will retain more information than others and therefore see/hear more details. Training your senses (taste/smell for cooking, for example) is a mind thing not a physical thing: because you can't change how your eyes see or your tastebuds taste, you just train your mind to retain more data. And it has absolute jack to do with how smart you are. You could outsmart Einstein like he was a child, but be oblivious to details an actual child might notice right away. This method of discerning your environment is reliant on your mind's instinctual sensory filter. Hence Wisdom, the instinct stat.
Investigation is trying to discern hidden things using logic and intelligence - how well you see a hidden pattern, how quickly you recognise certain key notes from some music being played, etc. You might know where the best hiding spots for treasure might be, the most likely places a hidden switch could be, to realise hidden doors and tunnels might have airflow so you pay more attention to changes in the air as you slowly move around, etc. This heavily relies on your memory and logic, hence Intelligence.
Both Perception and Investigation are "learn things about environment" skills, but they gain different types of information using different parts of the mind - swapping the stats doesn't make sense. (Sorry, couldn't resist).
-
And Charisma is not the "everything social" stat you seem to think. Charisma by origin is "using what is inside to influence the outside" - it is your presence in the world and your ability to influence it. This is why it's also used for spellcasting like sorcs and bards. It's less a "mind" stat in modern thinking and more like a "soul" stat, if that makes sense. It's you manifesting your personality either as raw potential or as a way to press upon the personality of others to influence them. It's not a specific body language, or a specific way of speaking but rather the mysterious "x factor" some people just have. Having this force of personality, this presence, this unseen aura can make you better at lying or persuading - but doesn't somehow make you better at instinctually (*cough*wisdom*cough*) recognising the intentions, body language and such as that would give you a sense of "I believe them" / "I don't believe them". Insight is not "active", for the record, by that I mean "insight checking" isn't something the character chooses to do, it's a mechanic for you as the player to see if your character would actually believe something, or how well they might pick up on certain emotions from a person. It's how well you can "read" if a person is sad, happy, honest, or if they're about to attack etc. It's instinctual empathy and how charismatic you are has no effect on how well your brain picks up the signals. You can learn to enhance how well you can do this - and that's represented by your Proficiency in the skill, not the stat used.
Now, there can be specific situations where you may use a different ability score (trying to convince somebody using pure data and logic - make an Intelligence (Persuasion) check). But these are ad hoc - exceptions not the rule - to cover specific circumstances where the default ability is not specifically relevant for that particular task.
They could also say that being an expert in Deception makes it easier for you to detect when somebody is lying - this would still be a Wisdom (Insight) check due to how it works, but your DM might give you advantage on the check or possibly let you add the proficiency bonus even though you're not normally proficient in Insight. Or let you add 1d4, or something.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond. Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ thisFAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
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Here, I want to remove Constitution and Wisdom from the character sheet. Relatedly, I want to combine Athletics and Acrobatics into the Athletics skill, thus remove Acrobatics from the character sheet.
The game Vaesen from Free League, is a Nordic horror game emphasizing the darker aspects of the folk belief of Nordic cultures. It is awesome. I am looking forward to playing it!
The game has four abilities:
• Physique
• Precision
• Logic
• Empathy
I feel this is the optimal format. The four correspond to D&D Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Charisma. Notably, here Physique/Strength handles all of the mobility, including running, jumping, falling, climbing, balancing, tumbling, and so on. Logic via the Investigation skill handles perception, albeit the special senses of animals (eg smell, hearing) are bonuses that are handled separately. A neat thing is there is no such thing as "finesse" since Physique handles everything anyway: large weapons and small weapons, and natural weapons like punching and wrestling. All of this four feels ideal to me. It seems optimally accurate while still maintaining the simplicity necessary for a table game. Each of the abilities are roughly equally valuable to any character. These four solve many of the problems of imbalance and redundancy among the six abilities.
I would love for the DnDBeyond character sheet to allow me to consolidate the abilities in this way!
I can (and will) tweak the skills, such as making Acrobatics key off Strength and Perception key off Intelligence. But I would love to give the Will save to Charisma.
Equally important to character sheet customization is the ability to remove mechanics that are not in use.
This is an example of my personal customization. But more generally, it would be able to remove content from the character sheet, as well as being able to add content to it.
he / him
D&D Beyond focuses first and foremost on supporting the official core rules of D&D, which includes the six core abilities and the various associated skills. As such, there are always going to be some limitations on what you can and can't do with the character sheets, homebrew tools etc, in order to keep things in line with the core rules.
If you're trying to run a non-D&D game system, D&D Beyond might not be your best tool system to use.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
DnDBeyond does many things I do like.
In the mean time, being able override the default key ability of a skill helps alot.
For now, I will let the players choose whether they want to use Strength or Dexterity for both Athletics-Acrobatics. The separation of these skills feels too awkward for me (eg, characters who know how to jump dont know how to land). But allowing the same ability for both skills goes a long way to remedy the discongruency.
Also, I feel Charisma requires strong social intelligence including the ability to read people. So making Insight a Charisma skill is easy enough to do.
If players want to make Perception an Intelligence check, that is fine too.
Ideally, as DM, I would love to reassign a number of things, such as give an agile accurate Strength the AC bonus, thus remove finesse and Dex grappling along with Acrobatics.
Even so, the ability to assign a key ability to a skill helps for many situations.
he / him
To my surprise, I was able to override the Dex bonus to AC. I made the AC dodge bonus +2 from Strength instead. I am happy about this.
With Strength handling Acrobatics and the AC bonus, it is genuinely the go-to ability for an athletic character concept. Now Strength is consistently agile, as is appropriate for hand-to-hand, weapon aiming, climbing, and so on.
The DnDBeyond character sheet customization tools are powerful.
he / him
I can see your reasoning on Athletics/Acrobatics, but baffled by these ones.
Perception is using your senses to notice details others might miss. When you see and hear and such, that information is processed and filtered - what the mind feels is irrelevant is discarded and the rest is retained and pushed to your conscious awareness. Some people have minds that will retain more information than others and therefore see/hear more details. Training your senses (taste/smell for cooking, for example) is a mind thing not a physical thing: because you can't change how your eyes see or your tastebuds taste, you just train your mind to retain more data. And it has absolute jack to do with how smart you are. You could outsmart Einstein like he was a child, but be oblivious to details an actual child might notice right away. This method of discerning your environment is reliant on your mind's instinctual sensory filter. Hence Wisdom, the instinct stat.
Investigation is trying to discern hidden things using logic and intelligence - how well you see a hidden pattern, how quickly you recognise certain key notes from some music being played, etc. You might know where the best hiding spots for treasure might be, the most likely places a hidden switch could be, to realise hidden doors and tunnels might have airflow so you pay more attention to changes in the air as you slowly move around, etc. This heavily relies on your memory and logic, hence Intelligence.
Both Perception and Investigation are "learn things about environment" skills, but they gain different types of information using different parts of the mind - swapping the stats doesn't make sense. (Sorry, couldn't resist).
-
And Charisma is not the "everything social" stat you seem to think. Charisma by origin is "using what is inside to influence the outside" - it is your presence in the world and your ability to influence it. This is why it's also used for spellcasting like sorcs and bards. It's less a "mind" stat in modern thinking and more like a "soul" stat, if that makes sense. It's you manifesting your personality either as raw potential or as a way to press upon the personality of others to influence them. It's not a specific body language, or a specific way of speaking but rather the mysterious "x factor" some people just have. Having this force of personality, this presence, this unseen aura can make you better at lying or persuading - but doesn't somehow make you better at instinctually (*cough*wisdom*cough*) recognising the intentions, body language and such as that would give you a sense of "I believe them" / "I don't believe them". Insight is not "active", for the record, by that I mean "insight checking" isn't something the character chooses to do, it's a mechanic for you as the player to see if your character would actually believe something, or how well they might pick up on certain emotions from a person. It's how well you can "read" if a person is sad, happy, honest, or if they're about to attack etc. It's instinctual empathy and how charismatic you are has no effect on how well your brain picks up the signals. You can learn to enhance how well you can do this - and that's represented by your Proficiency in the skill, not the stat used.
Now, there can be specific situations where you may use a different ability score (trying to convince somebody using pure data and logic - make an Intelligence (Persuasion) check). But these are ad hoc - exceptions not the rule - to cover specific circumstances where the default ability is not specifically relevant for that particular task.
They could also say that being an expert in Deception makes it easier for you to detect when somebody is lying - this would still be a Wisdom (Insight) check due to how it works, but your DM might give you advantage on the check or possibly let you add the proficiency bonus even though you're not normally proficient in Insight. Or let you add 1d4, or something.
The defaults in D&D are rather well matched.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.