What I'm curious about is; how many characters with good Wisdom are likely to have poor Dexterity?
Druids, Monks and Rangers are often Dexterity based as it gives you a good mixture for skill rolls as well as tying into your defence. Clerics will depend if you're going for a frontline armoured "I cast hammer" build I guess, but in that case you're not going to be terribly stealthy anyway.
Yeah, front-line clerics are likely to be wearing a lot of jingly armor.
Switching to wisdom might not make druids, rangers, or monks better or worse, but it has the potential to make rogues worse. I'd probably put wisdom as my second dump stat, because I like to have Int for checking for traps and Cha for deception.
The Angry GM once said something that a lot of DMs miss, and which people should deeply consider before making blanket statements such as "[X] skill isn't [Y] stat, it's [Z] stat."
His answer to the question "Which ability score is this?" for a roll that could conceivably fall under two or more attributes is as follows: "Which attribute is the one likely to cause the action to fail if the character is deficient?"
His example was jumping across a gap. That's a Strength (Athletics) check no matter how much the player argues that they should be able to clear it with Dexterity (Acrobatics) instead, because no amount of physical coordination or agility means a damn thing to that jump if you don't have the ability to generate the raw muscle power needed to clear the gap. If the player wants to use Acrobatics instead, they're going to have to figure out a way to get over that gap that relies on agility and coordination, not main strength.
That's the proper way to do it, and it's why I've grown to honestly loathe the fact that skill proficiencies are so tightly, inextricably bound to specific attributes. Yes yes, the DMG says "you can optionally call for a skill check with a different ability bonus!"...but then you have to recalculate the modifier for the check, since it's hard-coded into the very DNA of a character sheet that every single skill is tied to one UND PRECISELY VUN attribute, and should never be used with a different attribute unless something bizarre happens. No player is really prepared to do that, and many players actively resist the DM "screwing up" their skills that way. It's a big part of why the 5e skill system just sucks infinite rocks.
The Angry GM once said something that a lot of DMs miss, and which people should deeply consider before making blanket statements such as "[X] skill isn't [Y] stat, it's [Z] stat."
His answer to the question "Which ability score is this?" for a roll that could conceivably fall under two or more attributes is as follows: "Which attribute is the one likely to cause the action to fail if the character is deficient?"
His example was jumping across a gap. That's a Strength (Athletics) check no matter how much the player argues that they should be able to clear it with Dexterity (Acrobatics) instead, because no amount of physical coordination or agility means a damn thing to that jump if you don't have the ability to generate the raw muscle power needed to clear the gap. If the player wants to use Acrobatics instead, they're going to have to figure out a way to get over that gap that relies on agility and coordination, not main strength.
That's the proper way to do it, and it's why I've grown to honestly loathe the fact that skill proficiencies are so tightly, inextricably bound to specific attributes. Yes yes, the DMG says "you can optionally call for a skill check with a different ability bonus!"...but then you have to recalculate the modifier for the check, since it's hard-coded into the very DNA of a character sheet that every single skill is tied to one UND PRECISELY VUN attribute, and should never be used with a different attribute unless something bizarre happens. No player is really prepared to do that, and many players actively resist the DM "screwing up" their skills that way. It's a big part of why the 5e skill system just sucks infinite rocks.
To be fair, D&D Beyond's character sheet makes it not too much of a hassle to roll with a different ability and not have to recalculate things yourself. The Avrae Discord bot makes it even easier. And I don't play with strangers, so I acknowledge that my sample is self-selecting, but my players pretty universally love how I divorce proficiencies from abilities.
Hrmmm... How complicated is it to use one number or at worst add two numbers together, one of which should be the same for all the characters at a given point in time ? Just take the stat bonus for the stat that you want to use, and add the proficiency bonus (the same for all characters, probably) if the character is proficient. End of story, and the simplest way to do this ever since the inception of D&D. And still you loathe it ? Too complicated ? Not enough ? I'm lost.
Moreover, this is an option clearly stated here... So how tightly is it bound when the rules themselves propose that capacity and it needs a simple addition of two integers, one of which varies every few levels only. And that is if the addition is even necessary, if the character is not proficient, just use the ability bonus... Come on...
Her generalizations of player sentiment aside, Yurei was pretty clear that she's talking about the "DNA of the character sheet." The sheet lists each skill with a default ability, and it auto-calculates the total based on that. Like I said, changing it isn't too much of a hassle, it's two or three clicks, but Yurei is right that the sheet absolutely treats this as a weird optional rule that most people will ignore. I've had players try to take the auto-calculated character sheet value and then add onto that total their bonus for the ability I actually called for, leading them to report, for example, a perception bonus of proficiency + int + wis. The sheet does not do us DMs any favors here.
Buddy, if you’re going to playact astonishment while simultaneously misrepresenting what other people are saying, I hate to say it, but I’m speechless too.
I think what is being said and what is being misunderstood is that the character sheet encourages you to let it do the math, so your proficiencies listed on the sheet are already calculated proficiency + ability bonus. There isn't an stat swap option in the character sheet, so it puts an inconvenient math burden on players not accustomed to it. It would be cool if the character sheet had some sort of dynamic cascade where the DM could choose one or more stats a proficiency could combine so you're sheet would have something like "stealthINT and stealthWIS" to accommodate a RAW I'm not sure is optional, an allowance, or explicit within PC or DMs right to insist on the alternative in game.
That said, the WIS as discussed herein is more an athletic or kinetic judgment call, why not free up athletic to CHR to see if you're character will make that leap of faith across a chasm (since some of those jumps are physically possible, it's the head game that leads to falters). Some games may allow to play around with it, but again no task on a d20 text is IRL bound to an ability score so the game goes with a broad consideration. People think stealth, they think catlike, so DEX. Games are welcome to bargain for different considerations with their DMs, and I for one would be cool on a case by case basis; but at the end of the day this topic is trying to attack common game sense, and while some aspects of the argument are true, I don't see it overwhelming the present consensus.
Lyxen, what I am saying - which I am certain I have explained to you specifically before - is that the D&D 5e Default Character Sheet predisposes players towards a certain mode of thinking. Nobody ever really rolls an ability check - they roll a skill check, which can cause problems of its own. And when any given typical DM calls for such, they say something to the effect of "roll Stealth for me", which disposes the player towards rolling a d20 and adding the "Stealth" modifier on their character sheet, which defaults to Dexterity plus proficiency level with Stealth.
Can a DM say "roll a Wisdom Stealth check for me" and explain to the player how to do so? Of course. However, it adds extra steps to the process that do not need to be there and requires players to actively un-learn what the Standard Default 5e sheet teaches them, which is that any given skill is tied to exactly one ability. As Saga succinctly summarized, the character sheet treats "alternative" skill checks as an optional rule nobody is likely to use.
A DM can say "Stealth is Wisdom-based in this game" and a player can edit their DDB sheet accordingly. A DM that would like to dissociate skill training and ability scores, however, needs to teach her players to ignore the skills section of their character sheets entirely, instead combining ability score modifier and proficiency bonus on the fly. Is that hard to do? No. Is that the way the 5e sheet teaches and predisposes people to play? Also no. And that second part is the problem.
Note that the "Skills" section of the character sheet no longer exists. Instead, 'Skills' was replaced with a large box for one's Proficiency bonus and a list of empty lines one could write their proficiencies into. Rather than listing 18 skills and their default numbers, you simply write down what you're proficient in. It's beautiful. It allows the DM to effortlessly call for any ability+skill combination they like, it eliminates the strong bias towards "skills" over any other form of proficiency (i.e. tools), and also allows the DM invent or modify new skill or tool proficiencies as they require without any trouble whatsoever. It's such a dramatic improvement over the default sheet that I'm legitimately sad there's absolutely no way in hell DDB could never adopt it as an alternative option. And yes, yes yes, I know that you can add new skills to a DDB sheet, change the modifier for a skill on the DDB sheet, or just roll a d20 and do the math yourself.
But man...wouldn't it be great if the character sheet reflected the way the DM wanted to run the game?
I agree with Yurei1453, the default 5e (physical) character sheet isn't ideal for skills, though I'd stop short of saying that "5e sucks infinite rocks" 😝
My personal preference for a physical sheet is a big empty lined box, like the one Yurei1453 linked to, as it lets me fill it out how I want. What I prefer to do is to try and leave space between skills, so I can squeeze "alternate" or "preferred" versions in between.
For example, on a brawny martial character I might take Intimidation as a proficiency, but with low Charisma it's not going to be much use, however, my group commonly allows Strength (Charisma) instead, so I'd add that as an extra line and use that as my default unless the situation doesn't support it. For example, if we're in a diplomatic setting and I'm trying to intimidate on the basis of the size of an enemy army, then it would have to be the default Charisma (Intimidation), but when trying to loom over someone menacingly I'd absolutely argue for Strength (Intimidation) instead.
Of course on D&D Beyond switching skills isn't that hard; on my brawny martial characters what I do is just set Strength as the ability score, then add Charisma (Intimidation) at the bottom for when I need to go back to the default, so I always have both on hand at all times. Of course the D&D Beyond sheet has its own issues doing it that way, as there's not a lot of free space for more skill entries, and I often like to put tools in there too. I'm hoping we might get proper (tabbed) tools support in the skills box someday to help with that.
Yeah, front-line clerics are likely to be wearing a lot of jingly armor.
Switching to wisdom might not make druids, rangers, or monks better or worse, but it has the potential to make rogues worse. I'd probably put wisdom as my second dump stat, because I like to have Int for checking for traps and Cha for deception.
Again, I'm not suggesting that the change from Dexterity (Stealth) to Wisdom (Stealth) should be made, I just don't see why anyone would want to switch Dexterity for Wisdom, as the classes that could benefit almost always won't. It doesn't make particular thematic sense, and it doesn't seem like there's really any mechanical benefit either.
There is an argument to be made that Rogues should have more abilities that specifically push them towards another ability score, as currently you can go all in on Dexterity with little penalty, even as an Arcane Trickster, but changing stealth would be the wrong way to do it. They could probably do with more Intelligence checks, e.g- on lockpicking?
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And man, wouldn't it be great if instead of criticising free things (because, as a reminder, the DDB sheet is free if with restrictions) all the time, people started appreciating what they have ?
I don't think Yurei1453 is specifically criticising D&D Beyond, they're criticising the default 5e character sheet, i.e- this one, which encourages players to pre-calculate all their skills for specific abilities. As a character sheet it's… fine, but if you're a player without your own handbook, and you just show up and play from one of these sheets, you might never realise you could argue a different ability score for any of these checks.
D&D Beyond does follow that style, which unfortunately results in it being a bit crushed and inflexible in some ways (as I've noted above), but it does at least make switching ability a lot easier if you regularly do it.
I think it's a perfectly reasonable point to make; though Yurei1453 maybe could leave some hyperbole for the rest of us 😂
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There is an argument to be made that Rogues should have more abilities that specifically push them towards another ability score, as currently you can go all in on Dexterity with little penalty, even as an Arcane Trickster, but changing stealth would be the wrong way to do it. They could probably do with more Intelligence checks, e.g- on lockpicking?
I actually think rogue is one of the more balanced classes, and it's already really hard to pick your second-best stat. Of course Dex is first, but most classes have a clear first choice. Cha and Int are already really good second choices. If only for role-playing, it's fun to play a smooth-talking rogue like Lando Calrissian or Robin Hood. But specifically Deception is good for any basic rogue. Fail your stealth check and get caught? Make up a good alibi. Int is good for checking for the traps you're going to disarm with your Dex and your Thieves' Tools, but also makes sense for investigation if you're going to play a noir private detective type character.
An interesting adjunct to this discussion is the way tools are presented in 5e. With the exception of Thieves' Tools, which are basically handled identically to a 'normal' skill, tool proficiencies are left floating. No guidance is given on which attribute a player should use for a given tool kit, or which functions a tool kit governs. Usually this means both players and DMs ignore tool kits altogether, especially as most of the checks a player tends to care about are 'In the Moment', single-action checks usually best governed by a skill...but it also means tool proficiencies kinda work the way all skill proficiencies should. They're simply written on the sheet, and when the player describes an action they're taking with their tools, it's up to the DM to decide how that action works.
A good example that many players and DMs both run across is cook's utensils. Every table has their armchair gourmand (hell, my table has an actual professional chef at it, you better believe we have rules about cook's utensils), and they all want to cook tasty meals for their group. How do you do that?
Are you improvising a meal on the spot from whatever ingredients are ready to hand? That tends to be a Wisdom check, leaning on Wisdom's putative role as the 'Sensory' attribute in 5e and the cook's ability to feel his way through meal preparation via taste and scent with unfamiliar ingredients.
Are you executing a recipe you've learned by rote and prepared many times? That's either a Dexterity check, if the dish is particularly finicky or if it's being cooked under pressure/on the clock, or an Intelligence check if the meal is particularly complex and demanding to get right.
Is it an ordinary meal, and somebody just wants to roll to see how tasty it ends up being? Then just roll raw proficiency, modeling the character relying solely on their experience and basically cooking on autopilot.
That's a great example of how all skills should honestly work. Let the circumstances of the check dictate which attribute governs a given roll, rather than trying to force all rolls for a given skill to conform to a single attribute regardless of how unfitting that attribute may be for a specific roll.
I do cooking as a Performance check. Most of those things you mention - the ability to either improvise creatively or execute technically - are things that are improved with the practice of any skill. A trained carpenter will be good at both following a blueprint and designing custom cabinets.
Playing a musical instrument also requires dexterity, but by default it's ruled as a charisma check. Because it's about picking up on what they audience likes and doing more of that. Musicians likewise have the same experiences as you're describing for chefs. Sometimes they're playing sheet music, sometimes they're improvising.
Now if you're proficient in chef's tools, I won't use Performance, because proficiencies don't stack. But I would still use charisma.
Let the circumstances of the check dictate which attribute governs a given roll, rather than trying to force all rolls for a given skill to conform to a single attribute regardless of how unfitting that attribute may be for a specific roll.
Unfortunately, this is the part which ruins your post, at least for me. No one is forcing you to do anything. The game explicitly tells you that rules are not the main point of the game, that you can change them as you want, etc. and it even provides suggestions to do exactly what you want. And you are doing it in your games, obviously.
Why do you have to put yourself in this position of complaining about being forced to do things when it is not the case at all, factually. It really detracts from the basic reasoning of your argument, which is sensible and even, when you look at it in the right light, supported by the game to a large degree.
So, again, you're responding to a statement that wasn't actually said. Yurei is not saying anyone is forced to roll anything. She's saying the rules force (without loss of generality) all stealth rolls to be dexterity rolls. Because the rules do do that.
Is there an optional rule that fixes this deficiency? Yes. But don't pretend that "optional rule" carries the same weight with the vast majority of players as a core rule does. With the exception of feats, almost no optional rule has official support on this website. A lot of players (and DMs!) will not even know this optional rule exists, because the character sheet assumes it doesn't.
Attacking the character of a poster based on a failure to pay attention to what they're actually saying is really frustrating to see!
That's a great example of how all skills should honestly work. Let the circumstances of the check dictate which attribute governs a given roll, rather than trying to force all rolls for a given skill to conform to a single attribute regardless of how unfitting that attribute may be for a specific roll.
That is how it works in 5e. Your only complaint is that it's not stated in bold up front, and many DMs don't make use of this option. That's not really your concern, though. If you're DMing, you can use the rules that allow you to mix any stat modifier and any proficiency. If you're playing, you can politely request that your DM read up on that section of the rules and consider your requests to apply a base stat you think is more appropriate.
As a culinary enthusiast, I appreciate why one might use Charisma for a cooking check, but that is definitely the wrong one to use.
Thoughtful plating is entirely secondary to understanding the interactions of flavors, textures, temperature, and the kitchen science. It needs to be an intelligence check like most Crafting checks, because using a tablespoon of salt when you need a teaspoon can completely destroy a dish.
If you are going to be preparing food for royalty, you should roll Craft: Cooking (Intelligence) and Performance: Cooking (Charisma) separately.
Two chances to screw it up. or, do something like Perform: Cooking (Intelligence/Charisma) with advantage, if you are are proficient in both performance and cooking. Depending on what you are preparing, and whether your performance is hinging on the quality or the presentation of the dish.
Can someone explain to me what there is to loathe here ?
I think you're just taking Yurei1453 too literally; I doubt they actually loathe the character sheet, it's just one of those things that annoy people, myself included.
Personally I can't even begin to count the number of times I've said to a DM "could I use… <insert ability name here>" and been met with a chorus from fellow players of "wait… we can do that?". It's not a rule that a lot of new players or DMs are always aware of, and even DMs that have played with groups for a while may not be aware of it if it's never come up before. Even if a DM does know it's a rule, often it takes a player to ask before they can confirm, and if the players don't know…
I've also seen quite a few discussions in Homebrew and elsewhere on these forums where a DM or player comes in saying "would X be a suitable house rule?" only to have someone reply "why don't just use a different ability for that skill check?" only to find the OP was unaware that that was an option. I've also seen this a lot of when it comes to using tools and suddenly players and DMs have no idea what they're supposed to roll, because they're not used to the idea that you can just pick based on the circumstances (though this is actually a case where some guidance would be useful, as even Xanathar's Guide to Everything doesn't help all that much). There are again loads of topics on here alone where people understandably ask those kinds of questions.
I'd definitely blame the character sheet in part for that, and also the lack of emphasis on the rule itself; it's a single paragraph that's easily missed. When it comes to the physical sheet having pre-calculated skill bonuses is a blessing and a curse, as you'll always get at least one player who didn't realise they needed to recalculate them, usually someone who wasn't at the session when everybody's proficiency went up and you reminded them… getting people used the idea of just adding an ability modifier and proficiency to their roll would IMO be better, and if you leave whitespace on the sheet then players can always pre-calculate if they feel they need to. It's just that when you do a sheet a particular way you encourage a particular set of behaviours, and really those should be what a player can do, rather than what they should do.
Anyway, this is all a bit off topic really as the topic's entire premise was switching an ability score.
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There's a legitimate argument that almost any form of 'training' that isn't a strongly physical skill, a'la tumbling, athleticism, dancing, or the like, should be Intelligence-based as the entire purpose of "training", in the case of things like cooking, carpentry, musical instruments, and many other such things is to acquire, retain, and learn to effectively utilize information, which is a function of intelligence. This is reflected in other systems, but for 5e it would be boring, especially as 5e has a strong bias against Intelligence in the first place.
Nevertheless. The OP has a good argument for why Wisdom (Stealth) should be a valid roll in certain situations, just as many have valid arguments as to why Dexterity (Stealth) is just as valid. The fact that this argument exists - "which should be the Official Score for Stealth?" - is a sign that the skill system has failed to make it clear that you don't need an official score. Rereading the rule in question (PHB Chapter 7, Skills, "Variant: Skills with Different Abilities."), it's not even called out as an 'optional' rule, but rather as a thing a DM is just kinda allowed to do.
The official character sheet doesn't reflect this, though. And however much folks argue otherwise, the way information is recorded and presented on your sheet matters. That document is where your character lives. The information on it defines who your character is, what they can do, and how they function. That document, in a very real sense, is the character. If that document steers DM and players alike towards a single, predetermined method of doing something, then of course other methods of doing the thing are going to be rare and weird for most people. The question to ask, in light of topics such as "Stealth should be Wisdom-based and not Dexterity", is whether it should be rare and weird.
Also: I know people hate Dexterity because it's an omnicompetent Super Stat that does everything you could ever want it to, but can we admit just this once that Wisdom is almost as bad? Wisdom may not help your AC or your Initiative (often), but Perception is hands-down the most important skill in the game and a low Wisdom score means you're basically a free zombie for anything with a mind control spell. Wisdom is the most critical saving throw in the game by a fairly wide margin, Perception is both inextricably bound to Wisdom and overwhelmingly more important than any other skill, and everything people normally associate with Intelligence, I've seen many a player try to finagle into Wisdom instead. if Dex wasn't tied to armor class, I legit think people would be more loathe to drop Wisdom than they would Dex, and in many cases a heavy armor Strength-based class does drop Dex first.
Poor, poor Intelligence...
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Yeah, front-line clerics are likely to be wearing a lot of jingly armor.
Switching to wisdom might not make druids, rangers, or monks better or worse, but it has the potential to make rogues worse. I'd probably put wisdom as my second dump stat, because I like to have Int for checking for traps and Cha for deception.
The Angry GM once said something that a lot of DMs miss, and which people should deeply consider before making blanket statements such as "[X] skill isn't [Y] stat, it's [Z] stat."
His answer to the question "Which ability score is this?" for a roll that could conceivably fall under two or more attributes is as follows: "Which attribute is the one likely to cause the action to fail if the character is deficient?"
His example was jumping across a gap. That's a Strength (Athletics) check no matter how much the player argues that they should be able to clear it with Dexterity (Acrobatics) instead, because no amount of physical coordination or agility means a damn thing to that jump if you don't have the ability to generate the raw muscle power needed to clear the gap. If the player wants to use Acrobatics instead, they're going to have to figure out a way to get over that gap that relies on agility and coordination, not main strength.
That's the proper way to do it, and it's why I've grown to honestly loathe the fact that skill proficiencies are so tightly, inextricably bound to specific attributes. Yes yes, the DMG says "you can optionally call for a skill check with a different ability bonus!"...but then you have to recalculate the modifier for the check, since it's hard-coded into the very DNA of a character sheet that every single skill is tied to one UND PRECISELY VUN attribute, and should never be used with a different attribute unless something bizarre happens. No player is really prepared to do that, and many players actively resist the DM "screwing up" their skills that way. It's a big part of why the 5e skill system just sucks infinite rocks.
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To be fair, D&D Beyond's character sheet makes it not too much of a hassle to roll with a different ability and not have to recalculate things yourself. The Avrae Discord bot makes it even easier. And I don't play with strangers, so I acknowledge that my sample is self-selecting, but my players pretty universally love how I divorce proficiencies from abilities.
Her generalizations of player sentiment aside, Yurei was pretty clear that she's talking about the "DNA of the character sheet." The sheet lists each skill with a default ability, and it auto-calculates the total based on that. Like I said, changing it isn't too much of a hassle, it's two or three clicks, but Yurei is right that the sheet absolutely treats this as a weird optional rule that most people will ignore. I've had players try to take the auto-calculated character sheet value and then add onto that total their bonus for the ability I actually called for, leading them to report, for example, a perception bonus of proficiency + int + wis. The sheet does not do us DMs any favors here.
Buddy, if you’re going to playact astonishment while simultaneously misrepresenting what other people are saying, I hate to say it, but I’m speechless too.
I think what is being said and what is being misunderstood is that the character sheet encourages you to let it do the math, so your proficiencies listed on the sheet are already calculated proficiency + ability bonus. There isn't an stat swap option in the character sheet, so it puts an inconvenient math burden on players not accustomed to it. It would be cool if the character sheet had some sort of dynamic cascade where the DM could choose one or more stats a proficiency could combine so you're sheet would have something like "stealthINT and stealthWIS" to accommodate a RAW I'm not sure is optional, an allowance, or explicit within PC or DMs right to insist on the alternative in game.
That said, the WIS as discussed herein is more an athletic or kinetic judgment call, why not free up athletic to CHR to see if you're character will make that leap of faith across a chasm (since some of those jumps are physically possible, it's the head game that leads to falters). Some games may allow to play around with it, but again no task on a d20 text is IRL bound to an ability score so the game goes with a broad consideration. People think stealth, they think catlike, so DEX. Games are welcome to bargain for different considerations with their DMs, and I for one would be cool on a case by case basis; but at the end of the day this topic is trying to attack common game sense, and while some aspects of the argument are true, I don't see it overwhelming the present consensus.
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Sigh.
I didn't need to not be banned today anyways.
Lyxen, what I am saying - which I am certain I have explained to you specifically before - is that the D&D 5e Default Character Sheet predisposes players towards a certain mode of thinking. Nobody ever really rolls an ability check - they roll a skill check, which can cause problems of its own. And when any given typical DM calls for such, they say something to the effect of "roll Stealth for me", which disposes the player towards rolling a d20 and adding the "Stealth" modifier on their character sheet, which defaults to Dexterity plus proficiency level with Stealth.
Can a DM say "roll a Wisdom Stealth check for me" and explain to the player how to do so? Of course. However, it adds extra steps to the process that do not need to be there and requires players to actively un-learn what the Standard Default 5e sheet teaches them, which is that any given skill is tied to exactly one ability. As Saga succinctly summarized, the character sheet treats "alternative" skill checks as an optional rule nobody is likely to use.
A DM can say "Stealth is Wisdom-based in this game" and a player can edit their DDB sheet accordingly. A DM that would like to dissociate skill training and ability scores, however, needs to teach her players to ignore the skills section of their character sheets entirely, instead combining ability score modifier and proficiency bonus on the fly. Is that hard to do? No. Is that the way the 5e sheet teaches and predisposes people to play? Also no. And that second part is the problem.
I invite people to check out a modified character sheet created by a woman named Alyssa Barnes, here: https://theangrygm.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Character_Sheet_Dnd_5e-No-Skills.pdf
Note that the "Skills" section of the character sheet no longer exists. Instead, 'Skills' was replaced with a large box for one's Proficiency bonus and a list of empty lines one could write their proficiencies into. Rather than listing 18 skills and their default numbers, you simply write down what you're proficient in. It's beautiful. It allows the DM to effortlessly call for any ability+skill combination they like, it eliminates the strong bias towards "skills" over any other form of proficiency (i.e. tools), and also allows the DM invent or modify new skill or tool proficiencies as they require without any trouble whatsoever. It's such a dramatic improvement over the default sheet that I'm legitimately sad there's absolutely no way in hell DDB could never adopt it as an alternative option. And yes, yes yes, I know that you can add new skills to a DDB sheet, change the modifier for a skill on the DDB sheet, or just roll a d20 and do the math yourself.
But man...wouldn't it be great if the character sheet reflected the way the DM wanted to run the game?
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I agree with Yurei1453, the default 5e (physical) character sheet isn't ideal for skills, though I'd stop short of saying that "5e sucks infinite rocks" 😝
My personal preference for a physical sheet is a big empty lined box, like the one Yurei1453 linked to, as it lets me fill it out how I want. What I prefer to do is to try and leave space between skills, so I can squeeze "alternate" or "preferred" versions in between.
For example, on a brawny martial character I might take Intimidation as a proficiency, but with low Charisma it's not going to be much use, however, my group commonly allows Strength (Charisma) instead, so I'd add that as an extra line and use that as my default unless the situation doesn't support it. For example, if we're in a diplomatic setting and I'm trying to intimidate on the basis of the size of an enemy army, then it would have to be the default Charisma (Intimidation), but when trying to loom over someone menacingly I'd absolutely argue for Strength (Intimidation) instead.
Of course on D&D Beyond switching skills isn't that hard; on my brawny martial characters what I do is just set Strength as the ability score, then add Charisma (Intimidation) at the bottom for when I need to go back to the default, so I always have both on hand at all times. Of course the D&D Beyond sheet has its own issues doing it that way, as there's not a lot of free space for more skill entries, and I often like to put tools in there too. I'm hoping we might get proper (tabbed) tools support in the skills box someday to help with that.
Again, I'm not suggesting that the change from Dexterity (Stealth) to Wisdom (Stealth) should be made, I just don't see why anyone would want to switch Dexterity for Wisdom, as the classes that could benefit almost always won't. It doesn't make particular thematic sense, and it doesn't seem like there's really any mechanical benefit either.
There is an argument to be made that Rogues should have more abilities that specifically push them towards another ability score, as currently you can go all in on Dexterity with little penalty, even as an Arcane Trickster, but changing stealth would be the wrong way to do it. They could probably do with more Intelligence checks, e.g- on lockpicking?
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You can know when and where to step, but can you execute it?
I don't think Yurei1453 is specifically criticising D&D Beyond, they're criticising the default 5e character sheet, i.e- this one, which encourages players to pre-calculate all their skills for specific abilities. As a character sheet it's… fine, but if you're a player without your own handbook, and you just show up and play from one of these sheets, you might never realise you could argue a different ability score for any of these checks.
D&D Beyond does follow that style, which unfortunately results in it being a bit crushed and inflexible in some ways (as I've noted above), but it does at least make switching ability a lot easier if you regularly do it.
I think it's a perfectly reasonable point to make; though Yurei1453 maybe could leave some hyperbole for the rest of us 😂
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
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I actually think rogue is one of the more balanced classes, and it's already really hard to pick your second-best stat. Of course Dex is first, but most classes have a clear first choice. Cha and Int are already really good second choices. If only for role-playing, it's fun to play a smooth-talking rogue like Lando Calrissian or Robin Hood. But specifically Deception is good for any basic rogue. Fail your stealth check and get caught? Make up a good alibi. Int is good for checking for the traps you're going to disarm with your Dex and your Thieves' Tools, but also makes sense for investigation if you're going to play a noir private detective type character.
An interesting adjunct to this discussion is the way tools are presented in 5e. With the exception of Thieves' Tools, which are basically handled identically to a 'normal' skill, tool proficiencies are left floating. No guidance is given on which attribute a player should use for a given tool kit, or which functions a tool kit governs. Usually this means both players and DMs ignore tool kits altogether, especially as most of the checks a player tends to care about are 'In the Moment', single-action checks usually best governed by a skill...but it also means tool proficiencies kinda work the way all skill proficiencies should. They're simply written on the sheet, and when the player describes an action they're taking with their tools, it's up to the DM to decide how that action works.
A good example that many players and DMs both run across is cook's utensils. Every table has their armchair gourmand (hell, my table has an actual professional chef at it, you better believe we have rules about cook's utensils), and they all want to cook tasty meals for their group. How do you do that?
Are you improvising a meal on the spot from whatever ingredients are ready to hand? That tends to be a Wisdom check, leaning on Wisdom's putative role as the 'Sensory' attribute in 5e and the cook's ability to feel his way through meal preparation via taste and scent with unfamiliar ingredients.
Are you executing a recipe you've learned by rote and prepared many times? That's either a Dexterity check, if the dish is particularly finicky or if it's being cooked under pressure/on the clock, or an Intelligence check if the meal is particularly complex and demanding to get right.
Is it an ordinary meal, and somebody just wants to roll to see how tasty it ends up being? Then just roll raw proficiency, modeling the character relying solely on their experience and basically cooking on autopilot.
That's a great example of how all skills should honestly work. Let the circumstances of the check dictate which attribute governs a given roll, rather than trying to force all rolls for a given skill to conform to a single attribute regardless of how unfitting that attribute may be for a specific roll.
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I do cooking as a Performance check. Most of those things you mention - the ability to either improvise creatively or execute technically - are things that are improved with the practice of any skill. A trained carpenter will be good at both following a blueprint and designing custom cabinets.
Playing a musical instrument also requires dexterity, but by default it's ruled as a charisma check. Because it's about picking up on what they audience likes and doing more of that. Musicians likewise have the same experiences as you're describing for chefs. Sometimes they're playing sheet music, sometimes they're improvising.
Now if you're proficient in chef's tools, I won't use Performance, because proficiencies don't stack. But I would still use charisma.
So, again, you're responding to a statement that wasn't actually said. Yurei is not saying anyone is forced to roll anything. She's saying the rules force (without loss of generality) all stealth rolls to be dexterity rolls. Because the rules do do that.
Is there an optional rule that fixes this deficiency? Yes. But don't pretend that "optional rule" carries the same weight with the vast majority of players as a core rule does. With the exception of feats, almost no optional rule has official support on this website. A lot of players (and DMs!) will not even know this optional rule exists, because the character sheet assumes it doesn't.
Attacking the character of a poster based on a failure to pay attention to what they're actually saying is really frustrating to see!
That is how it works in 5e. Your only complaint is that it's not stated in bold up front, and many DMs don't make use of this option. That's not really your concern, though. If you're DMing, you can use the rules that allow you to mix any stat modifier and any proficiency. If you're playing, you can politely request that your DM read up on that section of the rules and consider your requests to apply a base stat you think is more appropriate.
As a culinary enthusiast, I appreciate why one might use Charisma for a cooking check, but that is definitely the wrong one to use.
Thoughtful plating is entirely secondary to understanding the interactions of flavors, textures, temperature, and the kitchen science. It needs to be an intelligence check like most Crafting checks, because using a tablespoon of salt when you need a teaspoon can completely destroy a dish.
If you are going to be preparing food for royalty, you should roll Craft: Cooking (Intelligence) and Performance: Cooking (Charisma) separately.
Two chances to screw it up. or, do something like Perform: Cooking (Intelligence/Charisma) with advantage, if you are are proficient in both performance and cooking. Depending on what you are preparing, and whether your performance is hinging on the quality or the presentation of the dish.
I think you're just taking Yurei1453 too literally; I doubt they actually loathe the character sheet, it's just one of those things that annoy people, myself included.
Personally I can't even begin to count the number of times I've said to a DM "could I use… <insert ability name here>" and been met with a chorus from fellow players of "wait… we can do that?". It's not a rule that a lot of new players or DMs are always aware of, and even DMs that have played with groups for a while may not be aware of it if it's never come up before. Even if a DM does know it's a rule, often it takes a player to ask before they can confirm, and if the players don't know…
I've also seen quite a few discussions in Homebrew and elsewhere on these forums where a DM or player comes in saying "would X be a suitable house rule?" only to have someone reply "why don't just use a different ability for that skill check?" only to find the OP was unaware that that was an option. I've also seen this a lot of when it comes to using tools and suddenly players and DMs have no idea what they're supposed to roll, because they're not used to the idea that you can just pick based on the circumstances (though this is actually a case where some guidance would be useful, as even Xanathar's Guide to Everything doesn't help all that much). There are again loads of topics on here alone where people understandably ask those kinds of questions.
I'd definitely blame the character sheet in part for that, and also the lack of emphasis on the rule itself; it's a single paragraph that's easily missed. When it comes to the physical sheet having pre-calculated skill bonuses is a blessing and a curse, as you'll always get at least one player who didn't realise they needed to recalculate them, usually someone who wasn't at the session when everybody's proficiency went up and you reminded them… getting people used the idea of just adding an ability modifier and proficiency to their roll would IMO be better, and if you leave whitespace on the sheet then players can always pre-calculate if they feel they need to. It's just that when you do a sheet a particular way you encourage a particular set of behaviours, and really those should be what a player can do, rather than what they should do.
Anyway, this is all a bit off topic really as the topic's entire premise was switching an ability score.
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As a musician, I always feel the need to point out the same thing about musical instruments XD
Performance: Music (Charisma): Axis of Awesome -Four Chord Song
Performance: Music (Intelligence): Street Electric Violinist
Performance: Music (Constitution): Buddy Rich Drum Solo
There's a legitimate argument that almost any form of 'training' that isn't a strongly physical skill, a'la tumbling, athleticism, dancing, or the like, should be Intelligence-based as the entire purpose of "training", in the case of things like cooking, carpentry, musical instruments, and many other such things is to acquire, retain, and learn to effectively utilize information, which is a function of intelligence. This is reflected in other systems, but for 5e it would be boring, especially as 5e has a strong bias against Intelligence in the first place.
Nevertheless. The OP has a good argument for why Wisdom (Stealth) should be a valid roll in certain situations, just as many have valid arguments as to why Dexterity (Stealth) is just as valid. The fact that this argument exists - "which should be the Official Score for Stealth?" - is a sign that the skill system has failed to make it clear that you don't need an official score. Rereading the rule in question (PHB Chapter 7, Skills, "Variant: Skills with Different Abilities."), it's not even called out as an 'optional' rule, but rather as a thing a DM is just kinda allowed to do.
The official character sheet doesn't reflect this, though. And however much folks argue otherwise, the way information is recorded and presented on your sheet matters. That document is where your character lives. The information on it defines who your character is, what they can do, and how they function. That document, in a very real sense, is the character. If that document steers DM and players alike towards a single, predetermined method of doing something, then of course other methods of doing the thing are going to be rare and weird for most people. The question to ask, in light of topics such as "Stealth should be Wisdom-based and not Dexterity", is whether it should be rare and weird.
Also: I know people hate Dexterity because it's an omnicompetent Super Stat that does everything you could ever want it to, but can we admit just this once that Wisdom is almost as bad? Wisdom may not help your AC or your Initiative (often), but Perception is hands-down the most important skill in the game and a low Wisdom score means you're basically a free zombie for anything with a mind control spell. Wisdom is the most critical saving throw in the game by a fairly wide margin, Perception is both inextricably bound to Wisdom and overwhelmingly more important than any other skill, and everything people normally associate with Intelligence, I've seen many a player try to finagle into Wisdom instead. if Dex wasn't tied to armor class, I legit think people would be more loathe to drop Wisdom than they would Dex, and in many cases a heavy armor Strength-based class does drop Dex first.
Poor, poor Intelligence...
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