Pretty sure it used to be 15 which would make more sense since medicine itself should be hard. But since the errata pdf says nothing about it. Ill yield.
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DM of two gaming groups. Likes to create stuff. Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games --> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
Ranking skills in tiers just encourages new players to all pick the same 3-6 skills because they're the "best" ones, and makes for a far less effective (and interesting) party
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Ranking skills in tiers just encourages new players to all pick the same 3-6 skills because they're the "best" ones, and makes for a far less effective (and interesting) party
even the noobs picks the best spells because the rest are useless... why are people thinking the suboptimal way is the only good way ? being sub optimal isn't going to help your party.
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DM of two gaming groups. Likes to create stuff. Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games --> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
Ranking skills in tiers just encourages new players to all pick the same 3-6 skills because they're the "best" ones, and makes for a far less effective (and interesting) party
even the noobs picks the best spells because the rest are useless... why are people thinking the suboptimal way is the only good way ? being sub optimal isn't going to help your party.
1st -- in general, it is because it allows the most space for character growth, the greatest degree of flexibility, and generally more fun in campaigns where combat is not the focus, and where being able to kill things quick is actually a danger to the whole party.
2nd - See above, last example. In certain campaigns and styles of play, being sub-optimal is actually better for the party as a whole, because it allows you to have a greater spread of abilities and capabilities, especially hen your DM is the sort who considers minmaxers (the optimal build type of folks) to be the thing that poisons the game the most.
The problem with optimal builds is that they are static and predictable. When designing a campaign, static and predictable means you can maximize use of the inherent weaknesses built into the "optimal" builds and essentially make them a danger to the party and to themselves -- because no one builds an optimal character and then doesn't use all that cool stuff at the first opportunity.
And it applies no matter *how* one focuses the optimization. If someone optimizes to be the handyperson, and deprecates dpr builds, they may find temselve sin a combat focused situation and have to scarable and get more creative about how they use things. If they focus on DPR, they inevitably lose out on all the additional skill that will be required to effectively navigate a campaign -- because it was built and designed to take advantage of those skills that are overlooked.
While their are optimal builds for certain play styles, there is no universal optimal build that can meet all the possible styles of play.
The reason? "What defines best" is always a subjective measure. What skills are the Best Skills, or what spells are the Best Spells, is going to depend entirely on the campaign, the play style, and the table.
Every DM eventually moves beyond the "dungeon of the day" style play -- they stop using only published adventures, they create a world other than one that is published, they get wild and freaky and creative. And they get really tired of murder hobo sessions, and start to look to ways to make murder hobo habits the wrong way to achieve something.
Here's a few tests for you:
What is the optimal build for a Open World without dungeons campaign?
What is the optimal build for a game where if you break the laws, and get caught, you can be sent to fight in the crusades? Or indentured. That is, where your actions have consequences?
What is the optimal build when you have a vague idea that the story involves freeing the world from two great evils, but you have to get to level 20, and you don't have the first plot hook because it is an open world, and you have to go find the plot hook?
What is the optimal build for a world where a cross country journey may put you up against a monster you can handle, or one you cannot, and there's no way of knowing what?
What is the optimal build to avoid frostbite, heat exhaustion, or disease? What is the optimal build for dealing with a hurricane at sea?
The moment you step away from DPR, optimal builds become suboptimal. And what if, in combat, those monsters are all optimal? What if the chances of encountering a monster essentially immune to your weapons is around 50%? IF the chances of living in the game are suddenly set to between 42 and 54%?
What if you still have to solve puzzles while doing all of that, and those puzzles rely on history, animal handling, and nature?
Now, what if none of the existing classes or species were there?
It's still D&D. Same spells, same rules, some stuff added on, but the classes and races are entirely different -- there are more skills, there's crafting to do, and there is nothing like the Forgotten realms anywhere?
What if the real optimization was the friends you make along the way?
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
1st -- in general, it is because it allows the most space for character growth, the greatest degree of flexibility, and generally more fun in campaigns where combat is not the focus, and where being able to kill things quick is actually a danger to the whole party.
2nd - See above, last example. In certain campaigns and styles of play, being sub-optimal is actually better for the party as a whole, because it allows you to have a greater spread of abilities and capabilities, especially hen your DM is the sort who considers minmaxers (the optimal build type of folks) to be the thing that poisons the game the most.
The problem with optimal builds is that they are static and predictable. When designing a campaign, static and predictable means you can maximize use of the inherent weaknesses built into the "optimal" builds and essentially make them a danger to the party and to themselves -- because no one builds an optimal character and then doesn't use all that cool stuff at the first opportunity.
And it applies no matter *how* one focuses the optimization. If someone optimizes to be the handyperson, and deprecates dpr builds, they may find temselve sin a combat focused situation and have to scarable and get more creative about how they use things. If they focus on DPR, they inevitably lose out on all the additional skill that will be required to effectively navigate a campaign -- because it was built and designed to take advantage of those skills that are overlooked.
While their are optimal builds for certain play styles, there is no universal optimal build that can meet all the possible styles of play.
The reason? "What defines best" is always a subjective measure. What skills are the Best Skills, or what spells are the Best Spells, is going to depend entirely on the campaign, the play style, and the table.
Every DM eventually moves beyond the "dungeon of the day" style play -- they stop using only published adventures, they create a world other than one that is published, they get wild and freaky and creative. And they get really tired of murder hobo sessions, and start to look to ways to make murder hobo habits the wrong way to achieve something.
Here's a few tests for you:
What is the optimal build for a Open World without dungeons campaign?
What is the optimal build for a game where if you break the laws, and get caught, you can be sent to fight in the crusades? Or indentured. That is, where your actions have consequences?
What is the optimal build when you have a vague idea that the story involves freeing the world from two great evils, but you have to get to level 20, and you don't have the first plot hook because it is an open world, and you have to go find the plot hook?
What is the optimal build for a world where a cross country journey may put you up against a monster you can handle, or one you cannot, and there's no way of knowing what?
What is the optimal build to avoid frostbite, heat exhaustion, or disease? What is the optimal build for dealing with a hurricane at sea?
The moment you step away from DPR, optimal builds become suboptimal. And what if, in combat, those monsters are all optimal? What if the chances of encountering a monster essentially immune to your weapons is around 50%? IF the chances of living in the game are suddenly set to between 42 and 54%?
What if you still have to solve puzzles while doing all of that, and those puzzles rely on history, animal handling, and nature?
Now, what if none of the existing classes or species were there?
It's still D&D. Same spells, same rules, some stuff added on, but the classes and races are entirely different -- there are more skills, there's crafting to do, and there is nothing like the Forgotten realms anywhere?
What if the real optimization was the friends you make along the way?
I think that both the optimization crowd and the anti-optimization crowd are both trending towards extremes that are not healthy for the game.
Should a player generally pick the class and skills that they like/work well diversifying the party, without worrying too much beyond that? Sure. Does that mean they shouldn’t be conscious about certain classes and skills that could be sub par and hurt their chances of success in and out of combat? No.
As with most things, striking a healthy balance is key.
1st -- in general, it is because it allows the most space for character growth, the greatest degree of flexibility, and generally more fun in campaigns where combat is not the focus, and where being able to kill things quick is actually a danger to the whole party.
2nd - See above, last example. In certain campaigns and styles of play, being sub-optimal is actually better for the party as a whole, because it allows you to have a greater spread of abilities and capabilities, especially hen your DM is the sort who considers minmaxers (the optimal build type of folks) to be the thing that poisons the game the most.
The problem with optimal builds is that they are static and predictable. When designing a campaign, static and predictable means you can maximize use of the inherent weaknesses built into the "optimal" builds and essentially make them a danger to the party and to themselves -- because no one builds an optimal character and then doesn't use all that cool stuff at the first opportunity.
And it applies no matter *how* one focuses the optimization. If someone optimizes to be the handyperson, and deprecates dpr builds, they may find temselve sin a combat focused situation and have to scarable and get more creative about how they use things. If they focus on DPR, they inevitably lose out on all the additional skill that will be required to effectively navigate a campaign -- because it was built and designed to take advantage of those skills that are overlooked.
While their are optimal builds for certain play styles, there is no universal optimal build that can meet all the possible styles of play.
The reason? "What defines best" is always a subjective measure. What skills are the Best Skills, or what spells are the Best Spells, is going to depend entirely on the campaign, the play style, and the table.
Every DM eventually moves beyond the "dungeon of the day" style play -- they stop using only published adventures, they create a world other than one that is published, they get wild and freaky and creative. And they get really tired of murder hobo sessions, and start to look to ways to make murder hobo habits the wrong way to achieve something.
Here's a few tests for you:
What is the optimal build for a Open World without dungeons campaign?
What is the optimal build for a game where if you break the laws, and get caught, you can be sent to fight in the crusades? Or indentured. That is, where your actions have consequences?
What is the optimal build when you have a vague idea that the story involves freeing the world from two great evils, but you have to get to level 20, and you don't have the first plot hook because it is an open world, and you have to go find the plot hook?
What is the optimal build for a world where a cross country journey may put you up against a monster you can handle, or one you cannot, and there's no way of knowing what?
What is the optimal build to avoid frostbite, heat exhaustion, or disease? What is the optimal build for dealing with a hurricane at sea?
The moment you step away from DPR, optimal builds become suboptimal. And what if, in combat, those monsters are all optimal? What if the chances of encountering a monster essentially immune to your weapons is around 50%? IF the chances of living in the game are suddenly set to between 42 and 54%?
What if you still have to solve puzzles while doing all of that, and those puzzles rely on history, animal handling, and nature?
Now, what if none of the existing classes or species were there?
It's still D&D. Same spells, same rules, some stuff added on, but the classes and races are entirely different -- there are more skills, there's crafting to do, and there is nothing like the Forgotten realms anywhere?
What if the real optimization was the friends you make along the way?
I think that both the optimization crowd and the anti-optimization crowd are both trending towards extremes that are not healthy for the game.
Should a player generally pick the class and skills that they like/work well diversifying the party, without worrying too much beyond that? Sure. Does that mean they shouldn’t be conscious about certain classes and skills that could be sub par and hurt their chances of success in and out of combat? No.
As with most things, striking a healthy balance is key.
Precisely.
I'll note that there isn't anything wrong with optimization or with being "suboptimal" in either case -- the issue lies in the idea of there being a single optimal way to create a given character type that would work in all situations and cases.
Once a campaign starts, from zero to finish, I don't particularly worry about or care about what a player does to create their ideal for that given character. But it should be recognized that in my campaigns, the idea of a "dump stat" means there is going to be a hurt for that character, that lacking a skill is going to leave them in a hard place, that quick thinking and creative problem solving are goin to be more useful than smashing, and that the way you do something is just as important as what you do.
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Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Does that mean they shouldn’t be conscious about certain classes and skills that could be sub par and hurt their chances of success in and out of combat? No.
But that's just it, this thread is about skills... aside from Athletics, which is useful for a specific type of melee character, or maybe a rogue who uses their bonus action to Hide every round, skills generally don't come up in combat. There's no such thing as a "subpar combat skill"
Otherwise, the "usefulness" of skills is situation and campaign dependent, so coming up with a general ranking of them is kind of silly -- doubly so when you consider that the most effective party is one that has a broad range of skills covered, and not just one where everyone has maxed out Perception and Stealth while ignoring the ones in your C/D tiers
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Does that mean they shouldn’t be conscious about certain classes and skills that could be sub par and hurt their chances of success in and out of combat? No.
But that's just it, this thread is about skills... aside from Athletics, which is useful for a specific type of melee character, or maybe a rogue who uses their bonus action to Hide every round, skills generally don't come up in combat. There's no such thing as a "subpar combat skill"
Otherwise, the "usefulness" of skills is situation and campaign dependent, so coming up with a general ranking of them is kind of silly -- doubly so when you consider that the most effective party is one that has a broad range of skills covered, and not just one where everyone has maxed out Perception and Stealth while ignoring the ones in your C/D tiers
While I don’t disagree with you, what you are failing to mention is that we can talk about the concept of an “average” campaign, with a balanced mix of exploration, dungeon crawling, combat, and social interaction with NPCs. The sort of “classic” adventure style that you find in most published adventures.
Maybe I should have mentioned it but this tier list is operating under the assumption of such a campaign. Is that to say that a DM couldn’t prep a game where skills like religion are extremely important and something like perception rarely comes up? Sure. But that is the exception not the rule.
And anyways at the end of the day it is one dude’s opinion (mine). Don’t take it as gospel. Looking at the poll results I may have undervalued arcana and survival. Certainly possible.
I personally pick skills I think are fun and match my character concept. If I have a rouge that is both a compulsive liar and a kleptomaniac, then I’m gonna take favor to stealth, deception, and sleight of hand. If I have a ranger that is a reclusive survivalist, I’ll take survival, animal handling, and nature. Of course, I’ll take other skills that are generally practical, but overall, I just think the best skills are dependent on your campaign and your character idea.
Does that mean they shouldn’t be conscious about certain classes and skills that could be sub par and hurt their chances of success in and out of combat? No.
But that's just it, this thread is about skills... aside from Athletics, which is useful for a specific type of melee character, or maybe a rogue who uses their bonus action to Hide every round, skills generally don't come up in combat. There's no such thing as a "subpar combat skill"
Otherwise, the "usefulness" of skills is situation and campaign dependent, so coming up with a general ranking of them is kind of silly -- doubly so when you consider that the most effective party is one that has a broad range of skills covered, and not just one where everyone has maxed out Perception and Stealth while ignoring the ones in your C/D tiers
While I don’t disagree with you, what you are failing to mention is that we can talk about the concept of an “average” campaign, with a balanced mix of exploration, dungeon crawling, combat, and social interaction with NPCs. The sort of “classic” adventure style that you find in most published adventures.
Maybe I should have mentioned it but this tier list is operating under the assumption of such a campaign. Is that to say that a DM couldn’t prep a game where skills like religion are extremely important and something like perception rarely comes up? Sure. But that is the exception not the rule.
And anyways at the end of the day it is one dude’s opinion (mine). Don’t take it as gospel. Looking at the poll results I may have undervalued arcana and survival. Certainly possible.
Well, as a note, I almost never run a published adventure (and when I do it is heavily modified), because I never use any published world.
Ever. In this one gal's opinion, all the published worlds and most of the published adventures pretty much suck so bad I am forbidden to express the fullness of it in mixed company. Most of them are unbalanced, lack depth, are absent genuinely creative value, and suffice to serve entirely as murder hobo playgrounds. I will also note that most people (huge majority) like being murder hobos on bland, forgettable worlds that reduce creativity and exist as least common denominator background noise -- nevermind, I will go off and I don't need to.
However, my worlds and campaigns are always a classic, balanced mix of exploration, dungeon crawling, combat, and social interaction with NPCs. Which means they make use of all of the skills and ability scores and class features of the classes and the species features of the species. Nothing is a "dum stat" or ranked as of lower importance because all of them willbe needed at least once in a given adventure (that's, after all, necessary for a balanced mix).
Religion, Arcana, History, Nature, Animal Husbandry, Medicine, Performance, and Survival are always going to be at least as important in any setting or campaign I run as any other skill.
Which is not to say that perception is unimportant -- we finally just said screw it and made it its own ability score (so we have Int, Wis, and Per), and hard to argue it isn't critical if we do that; I can totally concede that it is essentially the most important one -- which is why we made it a stand alone score (we also made all the classes MAD lol).
(We added more, too -- Affray (long before the Brawler UA, lol), Brawl, Endure, Eldritch Secrets, Mysticism, Crafting, Etiquette, Metaphysics -- because we do place a key importance on skills.)
Indeed, design wise, the idea is that none of these are throw away or dump skills -- they are a resource. Intended for a DM to develop circumstances and situations in which they can be used precisely to avoid the notion that any of them are less important or less optimal than the others.
It is arguable, readily, that a campaign or adventure that does not take advantage of all of these different skills -- or make such a use possible, is not balanced. Because it doesn't make use of the core ability skills of the characters, and so is leaning towards some form of unbalanced adventure that doesn't make use of them.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
soooo.... we all agree that all skills are equivalent just because of fun and games then ? so to the OP... there is no sklls better then others, they are all equally as important to the fun of the game.
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DM of two gaming groups. Likes to create stuff. Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games --> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
soooo.... we all agree that all skills are equivalent just because of fun and games then ? so to the OP... there is no sklls better then others, they are all equally as important to the fun of the game.
Could be said about many threads on this site, every table, player and character is different. I think the fun is supposed to be in the debate.
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CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
I'm late to the thread but I love tier lists, here's mine
S tier - Persuasion. Best skill in the game by a mile imo. This skill gives you an opportunity to avoid combat, to avoid consequences of failure, to gain extra treasure, the list is endless and it's generally all with no repercussion if you fail your roll (worst outcome is they say No which is the same as just not asking). Not every character needs it, but every player who wants to impact the story needs their character to have it.
A tier - Perception/Investigation. Overlapping skills that are both critical for every character. Finding stuff is always important.
- Insight. Can be S tier with DMs that basically treat it as a Lie Detector test, but that really isn't how it should work so I'd only give it A tier. Still very strong though for deciphering NPC intentions while totally not meta gaming based on the way the DM words their answers
- Survival. I would never do a gritty realism campaign but even with the simplest of travel, almost every DM does some sort of "roll a survival check to see if you get there quickly or get lost". Getting to your quest quickly without wasting session time on random side activities warrants A tier, but only for 1 maybe 2 characters per party.
- Sleight of Hand. Hardest skill on the list to rate, this could be anywhere S tier to C tier depending on the DM in terms of whether they actually allow useful items to be stolen or just stupid knick knacks, and how prevalent traps and locks are.
- Athletics. Strong for specific builds that want to Grapple, and then decent for various physical skill checks.
B tier - Animal Handling. Rarely used, but generally strong when it does get used. Calming down a hostile beast, or gaining a faithful animal companion (even if temporarily) are huge.
- Deception/Intimidation. Same upside as Persuasion but often comes with massive downsides to failing a roll, so far less useful. Still good in a pinch though, if NPCs are already hostile or otherwise not amenable to Persuasion.
- Acrobatics. Basically the same skill as Athletics, minus the offensive Grapple/Shove maneuvers, so slightly less useful.
C tier - Stealth. Completely overrated skill that is nearly useless to put proficiency into because of Pass Without Trace for group stealth, and Familiars for scouting ahead with no risk of failure.
- Nature / Arcana / History / Religion. Everything about Intelligence in DnD is generally useless since so much is based around the Players' intelligence and not the characters. These can be useful but it takes great creativity on the part of the player AND the DM to find uses. These really ought to be combined instead of having 4 separate Knowledge skills that each are rarely ever used.
F tier
- Performance. This skill has no point, just use Persuasion instead.
- Medicine. Just a completely useless skill that could be deleted from the game and no one would notice. Always use healing instead.
I'm late to the thread but I love tier lists, here's mine
S tier - Persuasion. Best skill in the game by a mile imo. This skill gives you an opportunity to avoid combat, to avoid consequences of failure, to gain extra treasure, the list is endless and it's generally all with no repercussion if you fail your roll (worst outcome is they say No which is the same as just not asking). Not every character needs it, but every player who wants to impact the story needs their character to have it.
A tier - Perception/Investigation. Overlapping skills that are both critical for every character. Finding stuff is always important.
- Insight. Can be S tier with DMs that basically treat it as a Lie Detector test, but that really isn't how it should work so I'd only give it A tier. Still very strong though for deciphering NPC intentions while totally not meta gaming based on the way the DM words their answers
- Survival. I would never do a gritty realism campaign but even with the simplest of travel, almost every DM does some sort of "roll a survival check to see if you get there quickly or get lost". Getting to your quest quickly without wasting session time on random side activities warrants A tier, but only for 1 maybe 2 characters per party.
- Sleight of Hand. Hardest skill on the list to rate, this could be anywhere S tier to C tier depending on the DM in terms of whether they actually allow useful items to be stolen or just stupid knick knacks, and how prevalent traps and locks are.
- Athletics. Strong for specific builds that want to Grapple, and then decent for various physical skill checks.
B tier - Animal Handling. Rarely used, but generally strong when it does get used. Calming down a hostile beast, or gaining a faithful animal companion (even if temporarily) are huge.
- Deception/Intimidation. Same upside as Persuasion but often comes with massive downsides to failing a roll, so far less useful. Still good in a pinch though, if NPCs are already hostile or otherwise not amenable to Persuasion.
- Acrobatics. Basically the same skill as Athletics, minus the offensive Grapple/Shove maneuvers, so slightly less useful.
C tier - Stealth. Completely overrated skill that is nearly useless to put proficiency into because of Pass Without Trace for group stealth, and Familiars for scouting ahead with no risk of failure.
- Nature / Arcana / History / Religion. Everything about Intelligence in DnD is generally useless since so much is based around the Players' intelligence and not the characters. These can be useful but it takes great creativity on the part of the player AND the DM to find uses. These really ought to be combined instead of having 4 separate Knowledge skills that each are rarely ever used.
F tier
- Performance. This skill has no point, just use Persuasion instead.
- Medicine. Just a completely useless skill that could be deleted from the game and no one would notice. Always use healing instead.
How fascinating to see, how tables use skills differently. At my table your skill explanations would look totally different. That is why most people say, there is no way to rank skills. ;)
I'm late to the thread but I love tier lists, here's mine
S tier - Persuasion. Best skill in the game by a mile imo. This skill gives you an opportunity to avoid combat, to avoid consequences of failure, to gain extra treasure, the list is endless and it's generally all with no repercussion if you fail your roll (worst outcome is they say No which is the same as just not asking). Not every character needs it, but every player who wants to impact the story needs their character to have it.
A tier - Perception/Investigation. Overlapping skills that are both critical for every character. Finding stuff is always important.
- Insight. Can be S tier with DMs that basically treat it as a Lie Detector test, but that really isn't how it should work so I'd only give it A tier. Still very strong though for deciphering NPC intentions while totally not meta gaming based on the way the DM words their answers
- Survival. I would never do a gritty realism campaign but even with the simplest of travel, almost every DM does some sort of "roll a survival check to see if you get there quickly or get lost". Getting to your quest quickly without wasting session time on random side activities warrants A tier, but only for 1 maybe 2 characters per party.
- Sleight of Hand. Hardest skill on the list to rate, this could be anywhere S tier to C tier depending on the DM in terms of whether they actually allow useful items to be stolen or just stupid knick knacks, and how prevalent traps and locks are.
- Athletics. Strong for specific builds that want to Grapple, and then decent for various physical skill checks.
B tier - Animal Handling. Rarely used, but generally strong when it does get used. Calming down a hostile beast, or gaining a faithful animal companion (even if temporarily) are huge.
- Deception/Intimidation. Same upside as Persuasion but often comes with massive downsides to failing a roll, so far less useful. Still good in a pinch though, if NPCs are already hostile or otherwise not amenable to Persuasion.
- Acrobatics. Basically the same skill as Athletics, minus the offensive Grapple/Shove maneuvers, so slightly less useful.
C tier - Stealth. Completely overrated skill that is nearly useless to put proficiency into because of Pass Without Trace for group stealth, and Familiars for scouting ahead with no risk of failure.
- Nature / Arcana / History / Religion. Everything about Intelligence in DnD is generally useless since so much is based around the Players' intelligence and not the characters. These can be useful but it takes great creativity on the part of the player AND the DM to find uses. These really ought to be combined instead of having 4 separate Knowledge skills that each are rarely ever used.
F tier
- Performance. This skill has no point, just use Persuasion instead.
- Medicine. Just a completely useless skill that could be deleted from the game and no one would notice. Always use healing instead.
How fascinating to see, how tables use skills differently. At my table your skill explanations would look totally different. That is why most people say, there is no way to rank skills. ;)
I agree. That is the kind of discussion I was hoping to promote.
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Pretty sure it used to be 15 which would make more sense since medicine itself should be hard. But since the errata pdf says nothing about it. Ill yield.
DM of two gaming groups.
Likes to create stuff.
Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses
If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games
--> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
Ranking skills in tiers just encourages new players to all pick the same 3-6 skills because they're the "best" ones, and makes for a far less effective (and interesting) party
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
even the noobs picks the best spells because the rest are useless...
why are people thinking the suboptimal way is the only good way ?
being sub optimal isn't going to help your party.
DM of two gaming groups.
Likes to create stuff.
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1st -- in general, it is because it allows the most space for character growth, the greatest degree of flexibility, and generally more fun in campaigns where combat is not the focus, and where being able to kill things quick is actually a danger to the whole party.
2nd - See above, last example. In certain campaigns and styles of play, being sub-optimal is actually better for the party as a whole, because it allows you to have a greater spread of abilities and capabilities, especially hen your DM is the sort who considers minmaxers (the optimal build type of folks) to be the thing that poisons the game the most.
The problem with optimal builds is that they are static and predictable. When designing a campaign, static and predictable means you can maximize use of the inherent weaknesses built into the "optimal" builds and essentially make them a danger to the party and to themselves -- because no one builds an optimal character and then doesn't use all that cool stuff at the first opportunity.
And it applies no matter *how* one focuses the optimization. If someone optimizes to be the handyperson, and deprecates dpr builds, they may find temselve sin a combat focused situation and have to scarable and get more creative about how they use things. If they focus on DPR, they inevitably lose out on all the additional skill that will be required to effectively navigate a campaign -- because it was built and designed to take advantage of those skills that are overlooked.
While their are optimal builds for certain play styles, there is no universal optimal build that can meet all the possible styles of play.
The reason? "What defines best" is always a subjective measure. What skills are the Best Skills, or what spells are the Best Spells, is going to depend entirely on the campaign, the play style, and the table.
Every DM eventually moves beyond the "dungeon of the day" style play -- they stop using only published adventures, they create a world other than one that is published, they get wild and freaky and creative. And they get really tired of murder hobo sessions, and start to look to ways to make murder hobo habits the wrong way to achieve something.
Here's a few tests for you:
What is the optimal build for a Open World without dungeons campaign?
What is the optimal build for a game where if you break the laws, and get caught, you can be sent to fight in the crusades? Or indentured. That is, where your actions have consequences?
What is the optimal build when you have a vague idea that the story involves freeing the world from two great evils, but you have to get to level 20, and you don't have the first plot hook because it is an open world, and you have to go find the plot hook?
What is the optimal build for a world where a cross country journey may put you up against a monster you can handle, or one you cannot, and there's no way of knowing what?
What is the optimal build to avoid frostbite, heat exhaustion, or disease? What is the optimal build for dealing with a hurricane at sea?
The moment you step away from DPR, optimal builds become suboptimal. And what if, in combat, those monsters are all optimal? What if the chances of encountering a monster essentially immune to your weapons is around 50%? IF the chances of living in the game are suddenly set to between 42 and 54%?
What if you still have to solve puzzles while doing all of that, and those puzzles rely on history, animal handling, and nature?
Now, what if none of the existing classes or species were there?
It's still D&D. Same spells, same rules, some stuff added on, but the classes and races are entirely different -- there are more skills, there's crafting to do, and there is nothing like the Forgotten realms anywhere?
What if the real optimization was the friends you make along the way?
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I think that both the optimization crowd and the anti-optimization crowd are both trending towards extremes that are not healthy for the game.
Should a player generally pick the class and skills that they like/work well diversifying the party, without worrying too much beyond that? Sure. Does that mean they shouldn’t be conscious about certain classes and skills that could be sub par and hurt their chances of success in and out of combat? No.
As with most things, striking a healthy balance is key.
Precisely.
I'll note that there isn't anything wrong with optimization or with being "suboptimal" in either case -- the issue lies in the idea of there being a single optimal way to create a given character type that would work in all situations and cases.
Once a campaign starts, from zero to finish, I don't particularly worry about or care about what a player does to create their ideal for that given character. But it should be recognized that in my campaigns, the idea of a "dump stat" means there is going to be a hurt for that character, that lacking a skill is going to leave them in a hard place, that quick thinking and creative problem solving are goin to be more useful than smashing, and that the way you do something is just as important as what you do.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
But that's just it, this thread is about skills... aside from Athletics, which is useful for a specific type of melee character, or maybe a rogue who uses their bonus action to Hide every round, skills generally don't come up in combat. There's no such thing as a "subpar combat skill"
Otherwise, the "usefulness" of skills is situation and campaign dependent, so coming up with a general ranking of them is kind of silly -- doubly so when you consider that the most effective party is one that has a broad range of skills covered, and not just one where everyone has maxed out Perception and Stealth while ignoring the ones in your C/D tiers
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
While I don’t disagree with you, what you are failing to mention is that we can talk about the concept of an “average” campaign, with a balanced mix of exploration, dungeon crawling, combat, and social interaction with NPCs. The sort of “classic” adventure style that you find in most published adventures.
Maybe I should have mentioned it but this tier list is operating under the assumption of such a campaign. Is that to say that a DM couldn’t prep a game where skills like religion are extremely important and something like perception rarely comes up? Sure. But that is the exception not the rule.
And anyways at the end of the day it is one dude’s opinion (mine). Don’t take it as gospel. Looking at the poll results I may have undervalued arcana and survival. Certainly possible.
I personally pick skills I think are fun and match my character concept. If I have a rouge that is both a compulsive liar and a kleptomaniac, then I’m gonna take favor to stealth, deception, and sleight of hand. If I have a ranger that is a reclusive survivalist, I’ll take survival, animal handling, and nature. Of course, I’ll take other skills that are generally practical, but overall, I just think the best skills are dependent on your campaign and your character idea.
Well, as a note, I almost never run a published adventure (and when I do it is heavily modified), because I never use any published world.
Ever. In this one gal's opinion, all the published worlds and most of the published adventures pretty much suck so bad I am forbidden to express the fullness of it in mixed company. Most of them are unbalanced, lack depth, are absent genuinely creative value, and suffice to serve entirely as murder hobo playgrounds. I will also note that most people (huge majority) like being murder hobos on bland, forgettable worlds that reduce creativity and exist as least common denominator background noise -- nevermind, I will go off and I don't need to.
However, my worlds and campaigns are always a classic, balanced mix of exploration, dungeon crawling, combat, and social interaction with NPCs. Which means they make use of all of the skills and ability scores and class features of the classes and the species features of the species. Nothing is a "dum stat" or ranked as of lower importance because all of them willbe needed at least once in a given adventure (that's, after all, necessary for a balanced mix).
Religion, Arcana, History, Nature, Animal Husbandry, Medicine, Performance, and Survival are always going to be at least as important in any setting or campaign I run as any other skill.
Which is not to say that perception is unimportant -- we finally just said screw it and made it its own ability score (so we have Int, Wis, and Per), and hard to argue it isn't critical if we do that; I can totally concede that it is essentially the most important one -- which is why we made it a stand alone score (we also made all the classes MAD lol).
(We added more, too -- Affray (long before the Brawler UA, lol), Brawl, Endure, Eldritch Secrets, Mysticism, Crafting, Etiquette, Metaphysics -- because we do place a key importance on skills.)
Indeed, design wise, the idea is that none of these are throw away or dump skills -- they are a resource. Intended for a DM to develop circumstances and situations in which they can be used precisely to avoid the notion that any of them are less important or less optimal than the others.
It is arguable, readily, that a campaign or adventure that does not take advantage of all of these different skills -- or make such a use possible, is not balanced. Because it doesn't make use of the core ability skills of the characters, and so is leaning towards some form of unbalanced adventure that doesn't make use of them.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
soooo.... we all agree that all skills are equivalent just because of fun and games then ?
so to the OP... there is no sklls better then others, they are all equally as important to the fun of the game.
DM of two gaming groups.
Likes to create stuff.
Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses
If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games
--> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
Could be said about many threads on this site, every table, player and character is different. I think the fun is supposed to be in the debate.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
I'm late to the thread but I love tier lists, here's mine
S tier
- Persuasion. Best skill in the game by a mile imo. This skill gives you an opportunity to avoid combat, to avoid consequences of failure, to gain extra treasure, the list is endless and it's generally all with no repercussion if you fail your roll (worst outcome is they say No which is the same as just not asking). Not every character needs it, but every player who wants to impact the story needs their character to have it.
A tier
- Perception/Investigation. Overlapping skills that are both critical for every character. Finding stuff is always important.
- Insight. Can be S tier with DMs that basically treat it as a Lie Detector test, but that really isn't how it should work so I'd only give it A tier. Still very strong though for deciphering NPC intentions while totally not meta gaming based on the way the DM words their answers
- Survival. I would never do a gritty realism campaign but even with the simplest of travel, almost every DM does some sort of "roll a survival check to see if you get there quickly or get lost". Getting to your quest quickly without wasting session time on random side activities warrants A tier, but only for 1 maybe 2 characters per party.
- Sleight of Hand. Hardest skill on the list to rate, this could be anywhere S tier to C tier depending on the DM in terms of whether they actually allow useful items to be stolen or just stupid knick knacks, and how prevalent traps and locks are.
- Athletics. Strong for specific builds that want to Grapple, and then decent for various physical skill checks.
B tier
- Animal Handling. Rarely used, but generally strong when it does get used. Calming down a hostile beast, or gaining a faithful animal companion (even if temporarily) are huge.
- Deception/Intimidation. Same upside as Persuasion but often comes with massive downsides to failing a roll, so far less useful. Still good in a pinch though, if NPCs are already hostile or otherwise not amenable to Persuasion.
- Acrobatics. Basically the same skill as Athletics, minus the offensive Grapple/Shove maneuvers, so slightly less useful.
C tier
- Stealth. Completely overrated skill that is nearly useless to put proficiency into because of Pass Without Trace for group stealth, and Familiars for scouting ahead with no risk of failure.
- Nature / Arcana / History / Religion. Everything about Intelligence in DnD is generally useless since so much is based around the Players' intelligence and not the characters. These can be useful but it takes great creativity on the part of the player AND the DM to find uses. These really ought to be combined instead of having 4 separate Knowledge skills that each are rarely ever used.
F tier
- Performance. This skill has no point, just use Persuasion instead.
- Medicine. Just a completely useless skill that could be deleted from the game and no one would notice. Always use healing instead.
How fascinating to see, how tables use skills differently. At my table your skill explanations would look totally different. That is why most people say, there is no way to rank skills. ;)
I agree. That is the kind of discussion I was hoping to promote.