I was toying with a build and I realized that between the background and two classes it had Proficiency with a grand total of 4 Skills. Now with bonuses the rest of the Skills weren't terrible but nothing to write home about either. In the game I'm currently playing in, as well as the one I'm running, having a few Skills to help with Investigation, History etc has turned out to be very useful. The build that I was playing with (Cleric/Barbarian) would be fine at their 4 Skills and close to useless at most other things and this bothered me.
How import do YOU think Skills are and how much effort do you put into either having them for your characters or needing them in your games?
In my opinion, skills are one of the cornerstones of the game. A lot of what you’re character does will require some type of skill check.
A good DM is going to take the party’s skills collectively and individually into account when designing encounters. This includes setting things up so that varied skills are useful and avoiding practices like falling back on Perception as a default check. If someone is proficient in Medicine, they should get a chance to use that at some point.
The same can be said for some of the tool, instrument, and gaming sets proficiencies. We have someone proficient in card games, so I set up a gambling encounter and they got the chance to use that. Same for land vehicles, disguise kit, and even the Dwarven racial for history checks involving stone cutting.
A person without proficiency in a certain skill isn’t useless, the just may not be the most useful person in that specific instance. You can generally still roll and if you have a modifier that is high, you still get a bump.
This is by design - you can’t be good at everything and you can’t always be the one to shine, but you should get a chance to on occasion. Proficiency in four things is pretty standard, you’ll be fine.
I think it depends on the skill and the campaign you are playing. Some will require more skills, other less. I've been in games where we only used spot/listen and games where I used all the skills.
It... depends? I think that most games should run someone with a Arcane, Perception, Survival, Stealth, thief tools, Athletics, if only to cover scouting and dealing with traps. Front line characters should have Athletics or Acrobatics to deal with grappling at least. I've never seen a need for more social skills beyond Insight and Persuasion.
In a game I'm playing in, the DM will list multiple skills for the same check. That way if you choose persuasion, intimate, or deception might still have a useful skill but you did it in a different way. So determining a creature's weakness might be nature, arcane, or investigation. Some things are single use skills like climbing a rope.
In the campaign I'm playing in right now, our DM makes us roll skill checks for basically everything. It actually gets a little tedious, but it does make skills pretty important. The OP is asking a slightly different question, I think, which is "how important are proficiencies," since every character can attempt any action. You're not choosing which skills you have, you're choosing which ones you're better than expected with.
At level one, being proficient in a skill gives you a +2 bonus to your roll. Ignoring attribute bonuses, on a DC 10 roll being proficient means you succeed 60% of the time instead of 50%, a 20% improvement. DC 15, you succeed 35% instead of 25% of the time, an improvement of 40%! So being proficient in a skill where you have no attribute bonus or a negative one is really useful. If you already get a +2 from a high attribute, it ends up being a 60%->70% (only 16% better) and 35%->45% (only 28% better). It also generally holds that the harder the skill check, the more useful the bonus.
So in pure mechanical terms, you're better off being proficient in things for which you have no natural aptitude. Counter-intuitively, the worse you are to begin with at something, the more sense it makes to be proficient in it. This assumes you're trying to maximize the total chance of success across all skills, though, which you may not be. It may be more important to minimize failure in one particular skill than maximize everything.
I play a rogue and skills are very important if you want to truly play to your character's strengths. Often, the next action or decision I make is usually in line with my skill sets so that I will have the greatest chance of success. An example is deciding to use one of my expertise bonuses on Thieves' Tools because I wan't to be proactively checking doors and trying to break into them whenever possible. You never know what would behind a door/lock that you normally wouldn't access to otherwise. From what I've seen so far, often the rooms or lock boxes with something great inside usually have a very high DC so having +11 to my tools can really help.
We've been through may areas already and our DM usually rolls for the loot that will be rewarded or potentially found. There has been times he told us that there was loot in an area but we just didn't find it and now it's gone forever.
I also intend to start RP'ing a little more in towns and scouting around for places to break into > search > and leave without leaving any trace. Eventually I hope to stumble across something interesting.
I tend to use acrobatics quite often if the players want to jump over banisters to take shortcuts down stairs or across short gaps. It is always fun when someone fails (which is quite common when everyone wants to follow the leader). The consequences for failure are generally falling prone. Perception and investigation are very common but I try to scatter obstacles in every session that require a skill check for the less common skills. It is unusual for a fail to be a dead end and I try to have several ways to get around the same obstacle.
I am a strong believer in the “you make your choices and pay the consequences” of character generation. I always use point buy and if you dump a stat to max another you are going to suffer the consequences. And no you can’t use str for intimidation or acrobatics instead of athletics. If you wanted to be better at something you should have given it more points.
Take this with a grain of salt as I'm fairly new to the whole DM thing, but I feel like there's a big distinction between skills being important and having skills being important.
The first is definitely important, there's a lot of things that are going to happen that a skilled person would be able to apply his knowledge and training toward. But that doesn't meant that it's important to have skills. For one thing, in 5e there's no such thing really. If you don't have that skill, you're not proficient with actions that depend upon it but you do have your natural talents to rely upon. You might not be skilled at stealth, but your natural dexterity may carry you through. You might not have studied history specifically well enough to be proficient, but your intellect can fill in the blanks around what you do know. And there should never really be a "one way only" roadblock in front of the players; the DM should be open to them making attempts in a different manner than expected.
But even with all that, having a lack of skill coverage shouldn't be an inherently bad thing. If failing a skill check weakens the enjoyment of the game, I rather feel that the DM is the one to blame, and this is the expectation I set for myself. There's a number of ways you can do that, and many systems these days have a "fail forward" mechanic, but even with a failed skill check being just a failure, it should still be fun.
The only real failure in D&D is failing to have a good time.
In the games I DM, skill challenges come up only slightly less often than combat, and skills are still used well outside of both (social situations, traps, puzzles). If the pillars of the game are combat, social, and exploration -- well, skills are going to appear in all of those sections. Even in combat... The enemy hides, is your passive perception enough to find them? You have to cross a spindly rope bridge, but can you roll acrobatics to balance well? How about climbing that wall to get to that halfling who keeps ducking behind cover on that plateau (better have athletics!)
Only having 4 skills is not a bad thing, though. Unless you're a Rogue/Bard you shouldn't be expecting much more than 5... But I would make sure those are skills you can truly be helpful with. By that I mean, if you have an 8 Wisdom and get proficiency in Perception just so you up the chances of someone seeing something, you would be far less useful than putting proficiency in Athletics when you've got a 16 Strength.
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I was toying with a build and I realized that between the background and two classes it had Proficiency with a grand total of 4 Skills. Now with bonuses the rest of the Skills weren't terrible but nothing to write home about either. In the game I'm currently playing in, as well as the one I'm running, having a few Skills to help with Investigation, History etc has turned out to be very useful. The build that I was playing with (Cleric/Barbarian) would be fine at their 4 Skills and close to useless at most other things and this bothered me.
How import do YOU think Skills are and how much effort do you put into either having them for your characters or needing them in your games?
In my opinion, skills are one of the cornerstones of the game. A lot of what you’re character does will require some type of skill check.
A good DM is going to take the party’s skills collectively and individually into account when designing encounters. This includes setting things up so that varied skills are useful and avoiding practices like falling back on Perception as a default check. If someone is proficient in Medicine, they should get a chance to use that at some point.
The same can be said for some of the tool, instrument, and gaming sets proficiencies. We have someone proficient in card games, so I set up a gambling encounter and they got the chance to use that. Same for land vehicles, disguise kit, and even the Dwarven racial for history checks involving stone cutting.
A person without proficiency in a certain skill isn’t useless, the just may not be the most useful person in that specific instance. You can generally still roll and if you have a modifier that is high, you still get a bump.
This is by design - you can’t be good at everything and you can’t always be the one to shine, but you should get a chance to on occasion. Proficiency in four things is pretty standard, you’ll be fine.
I think it depends on the skill and the campaign you are playing. Some will require more skills, other less. I've been in games where we only used spot/listen and games where I used all the skills.
It... depends? I think that most games should run someone with a Arcane, Perception, Survival, Stealth, thief tools, Athletics, if only to cover scouting and dealing with traps. Front line characters should have Athletics or Acrobatics to deal with grappling at least. I've never seen a need for more social skills beyond Insight and Persuasion.
In a game I'm playing in, the DM will list multiple skills for the same check. That way if you choose persuasion, intimate, or deception might still have a useful skill but you did it in a different way. So determining a creature's weakness might be nature, arcane, or investigation. Some things are single use skills like climbing a rope.
In the campaign I'm playing in right now, our DM makes us roll skill checks for basically everything. It actually gets a little tedious, but it does make skills pretty important. The OP is asking a slightly different question, I think, which is "how important are proficiencies," since every character can attempt any action. You're not choosing which skills you have, you're choosing which ones you're better than expected with.
At level one, being proficient in a skill gives you a +2 bonus to your roll. Ignoring attribute bonuses, on a DC 10 roll being proficient means you succeed 60% of the time instead of 50%, a 20% improvement. DC 15, you succeed 35% instead of 25% of the time, an improvement of 40%! So being proficient in a skill where you have no attribute bonus or a negative one is really useful. If you already get a +2 from a high attribute, it ends up being a 60%->70% (only 16% better) and 35%->45% (only 28% better). It also generally holds that the harder the skill check, the more useful the bonus.
So in pure mechanical terms, you're better off being proficient in things for which you have no natural aptitude. Counter-intuitively, the worse you are to begin with at something, the more sense it makes to be proficient in it. This assumes you're trying to maximize the total chance of success across all skills, though, which you may not be. It may be more important to minimize failure in one particular skill than maximize everything.
I'm guessing your expertise is in disguise kit.
I play a rogue and skills are very important if you want to truly play to your character's strengths. Often, the next action or decision I make is usually in line with my skill sets so that I will have the greatest chance of success. An example is deciding to use one of my expertise bonuses on Thieves' Tools because I wan't to be proactively checking doors and trying to break into them whenever possible. You never know what would behind a door/lock that you normally wouldn't access to otherwise. From what I've seen so far, often the rooms or lock boxes with something great inside usually have a very high DC so having +11 to my tools can really help.
We've been through may areas already and our DM usually rolls for the loot that will be rewarded or potentially found. There has been times he told us that there was loot in an area but we just didn't find it and now it's gone forever.
I also intend to start RP'ing a little more in towns and scouting around for places to break into > search > and leave without leaving any trace. Eventually I hope to stumble across something interesting.
I tend to use acrobatics quite often if the players want to jump over banisters to take shortcuts down stairs or across short gaps. It is always fun when someone fails (which is quite common when everyone wants to follow the leader). The consequences for failure are generally falling prone. Perception and investigation are very common but I try to scatter obstacles in every session that require a skill check for the less common skills. It is unusual for a fail to be a dead end and I try to have several ways to get around the same obstacle.
I am a strong believer in the “you make your choices and pay the consequences” of character generation. I always use point buy and if you dump a stat to max another you are going to suffer the consequences. And no you can’t use str for intimidation or acrobatics instead of athletics. If you wanted to be better at something you should have given it more points.
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ModeratorTake this with a grain of salt as I'm fairly new to the whole DM thing, but I feel like there's a big distinction between skills being important and having skills being important.
The first is definitely important, there's a lot of things that are going to happen that a skilled person would be able to apply his knowledge and training toward. But that doesn't meant that it's important to have skills. For one thing, in 5e there's no such thing really. If you don't have that skill, you're not proficient with actions that depend upon it but you do have your natural talents to rely upon. You might not be skilled at stealth, but your natural dexterity may carry you through. You might not have studied history specifically well enough to be proficient, but your intellect can fill in the blanks around what you do know. And there should never really be a "one way only" roadblock in front of the players; the DM should be open to them making attempts in a different manner than expected.
But even with all that, having a lack of skill coverage shouldn't be an inherently bad thing. If failing a skill check weakens the enjoyment of the game, I rather feel that the DM is the one to blame, and this is the expectation I set for myself. There's a number of ways you can do that, and many systems these days have a "fail forward" mechanic, but even with a failed skill check being just a failure, it should still be fun.
The only real failure in D&D is failing to have a good time.
In the games I DM, skill challenges come up only slightly less often than combat, and skills are still used well outside of both (social situations, traps, puzzles). If the pillars of the game are combat, social, and exploration -- well, skills are going to appear in all of those sections. Even in combat... The enemy hides, is your passive perception enough to find them? You have to cross a spindly rope bridge, but can you roll acrobatics to balance well? How about climbing that wall to get to that halfling who keeps ducking behind cover on that plateau (better have athletics!)
Only having 4 skills is not a bad thing, though. Unless you're a Rogue/Bard you shouldn't be expecting much more than 5... But I would make sure those are skills you can truly be helpful with. By that I mean, if you have an 8 Wisdom and get proficiency in Perception just so you up the chances of someone seeing something, you would be far less useful than putting proficiency in Athletics when you've got a 16 Strength.