An in depth look into the disparity of the use, efficiency, and effectiveness of the skills in Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition
Hello esteemed adventurers, dungeon keepers, and villains alike, and welcome back to Kobold Stew, aka my musings on Dungeons and Dragons things. I was planning on having this done sooner, but the Spyro Reignited Trilogy dropped and has been eating a lot of my free time. I wish I can blame something other than my own entertainment for the delayed release.
Before beginning today, I just want to state that I love Dungeons and Dragons, and 5E is perhaps my favorite edition. As we get to know things we love more and more, we tend to recognize its flaws, and in doing so, I hope to try and correct them,
With that out of the way, today, we are going to talk about skills. Skills are a cool part of the game that add depth and rolling to parts of the game that aren't about killing stuff, but if you're here, you probably already know a thing or two about skills.
When making a new character, there comes the part where you have to pick skills. You might have one or so given to you by your race, and your background supplies you with two. You're given a list, and told to pick, more often than not, two more skills from a list supplied by your class. Think about what skills you often take for your characters. Most the time, when given the choice, you're grabbing things like Persuasion, Stealth, Athletics, Acrobatics, Perception, and maybe a few others. What do you often not grab right away? Medicine, Arcana, probably Intimidation. Why is this?
It occurs because some skills just seem to be more useful than others creating what I call the skill gap. But what is causing this skill gap to occur? What is causing some skills to be more useful than others? I have a theory as to what is causing this skill gap to perpetuate and causing certain skills to be worth taking over others.
1) The absolute, all or nothing investment that skills require in 5E
2) The situational nature of skills and the disparity of occurrences of these skills
and 3) Skills being overshadowed and having their toes stepped on by other skills,
All-In: Absolute Investment
In older editions of Dungeons and Dragons (I'm thinking along the lines of 3E), you would get so many skill points at level ,1 and at subsequent level ups, you were granted an amount of skill points to invest into various skills. There were more skills to deal with at the time, but if you had invested points into a skill that was not as effective, you could at least invest those points into another skill and try and balance out in the end. Your investment into skills therefore was not all-in, but rather a partial buy in.
I appreciate the simpler approach to skills in 5E; I really do. They filed down the amount of skills and got rid of a lot of the math involved in determining the modifier for skill checks. Rather your character either has proficiency in a skill, or they don't. And if they do, they add their proficiency bonus along with the appropriate ability score modifier to the roll they are performing for a skill check.
You choose what skills your character is proficient in at level 1, and those are the skills you are stuck with unless you get a class feature, multiclassing, or a feat allows you to take more skills. As mentioned at first, you get two skills from your background and then to choose at least two skills from your class. On average, most characters are going to be get four or five skills to be proficient in at first level, but you are stuck with these skills all the way to level 20 or until your character bites the dust. Your investment into a skill is either all-in or nothing.
With this all-in investment into a skill, players who want to have their characters feel effective and feel like a hero are going to naturally pick skills come up more often and are more useful than other skills. This all-in investment would not be an issue though if we weren't for the situational disparity of skills and the overshadowing of skills.
We Got a Situation Here: Situational Disparity
By their very nature, skills and accompanying skill checks are situational. Their use only comes up when put into the applicable situation. Stealth comes up for sneaky, clandestine things. Performance when giving, well, a performance. Convincing that guard to let you pass? Maybe persuasion, maybe intimidation. It makes sense, and the skill system is built around this philosophy; Skills can be applied to certain situations that call for checks. Makes sense to me and most other people. But, there is one issue with the situational nature of skills...
Some skills and their application come up more often than others. For example, stealth is a skill that can and is used in many different situations. It may be used to help get by the down guard, in a political situation, to circumvent combat, during combat, and any other time you might want to try being sneaky. Meanwhile, a skill like medicine really only comes up when you want to determine what illness someone contracted, play coroner and determine a cause of death, or to maybe stabilize someone below zero hit points. The uses for stealth come up much more often than those for a skill like medicine that I refer to stealth as one of the "king skills" in 5E, and one that is more often than not picked due to its utility over other skills.
Outside of narrative/RP reasons, why should someone pass up a skill that gets used often, like persuasion, over something that does not come up as much, like arcana. If they want to have an effective character, they are going to take stealth nine times out of ten. The issue is that, yes skills have a situational nature, but some skills have more applications in the game, and the situations that they can be used in come up more often in game play. The person who gets to use their skills more than the other just because of this situational disparity can cause frustration to the person who didn't take stealth, persuasion, or athletics for a narrative reason, but they aren't seeing a situation arise for them to use their skills.
But there is one final part that is causing the skill gap and may be just a tad more frustrating than your skills not coming up as often. Having something step on your toes.
Stomping on Toes: Overshadowing of Skills
It's frustrating to have your toes stepped on... both physically and metaphorically speaking. In the context of the game, your toes get stepped on when other PCs are able to do what your character does, thus causing your character to get glossed over a little by the other characters using features, skills, spells, and abilities to fulfill the same task or role as your character. At first, you may not be too bothered by it, but as the game goes on and more sessions come to pass, you may find yourself feeling frustrated or a bit bummed about your character as other characters are fulfilling the function that you want your character to.
The cause of this is overlap. Two or more things are fulfilling the same purpose and one of those things may just be better than the other(s). For example, Persuasion and Intimidation fulfill a similar function; providing a diplomatic/conversation solution to an issue. They both are based in Charisma, but when presented with a choice most parties will opt for the Persuasion over Intimidation since the worst that happens with Persuasion is a 'no' from an NPC while Intimidation's failures may garner a refusal to cooperate from an NPC to an attack.
Another example is medicine. Not only do a lot of races resist poison, most healing and curing can be done with a spell. No need to identify a disease if someone can just cure it with the snap of a finger. Most ailments have an answer in magic, and it really gives medicine a short end of a long stick that it could be used in. Another example I would provide would be Arcana. Used to determine magic things, it often gets overshadowed by a simple Detect Magic spell or Identify in many of it's applicable uses.
Due to this overshadowing, players may find these skills unused, or better yet, these skills will often be last picks like me for kickball teams in gym class. Worse, this overshadowing can lead to players feeling frustrated because their character isn't being effective or they are not able to realize just what they had in mind for their character in game. This can lead to results such as not reaching full Character Realization (a term I am coining and will write about) to frustration. The worst result is this frustration leading to tension with other characters.
Bringing It All Together
If you are looking at a character and they have skills like Medicine, Intimidation, Animal Handling, Arcana, or Performance, chances are they were given to the character by a racial feature or a background. The other reason may be for absolute flavor, a lack of other options, or filling in a gap. Animal Handling is super situational and those situations may not often come up in game. Intimidation will get outranked by Persuasion in a debate of which is the better one to use in most social encounters. Medicine gets the short end of both sticks and doesn't come up often and is easily overshadowed by magic.
Who is to blame? You may be wondering who exactly is at fault. Is it Wizard's of the Coast and the people who developed 5th Edition for making this skill system? Perhaps it is DMs' round the world fault. Heck, it may be the damn players trying to take all the glory for themselves! The honest answer to this question is that everyone is to blame a little bit while it is also no ones' fault.
That doesn't help much... So what is the solution? Well, I am glad you asked.
The Solution
I wasn't going to point out this issue without presenting some sort of solution. I'm not some sort of monster, unless you ask my players, then I just might be. Just don't ask them. Anyway, now that we have addressed the problems and basis of the issue we can try to tackle them! Unfortunately, it is difficult to try and solve the issue of the all in investment of skills without revamping a large portion of skills besides perhaps allowing a character to change to a skill that would be available through paying for training and training during downtime.
When looking at the situational nature of skills, the fix is simple enough in theory. Have more situations where the skill can be used. Easy enough I suppose, but there is a little more. For skill checks where you might call for one skill, perhaps allow players use the skill they are proficient in. For example, a DM might call for a history check to determine what language a text is written in if a player does not speak the language, but perhaps a case can be made for an Arcana check as well due to the fact that Arcana often revolves around magic, and I can imagine many a magic scrolls and tomes being written all sorts of languages from Elven to Draconic to Infernal to Sylan.
This will not only bring more applicable situations for a skill under its fold, but also will allow for variety in how you present information. Perhaps the History check can glean a more general information of the text such as names, locations, and events while the Arcana check can pick out certain words or phrases.
Another way is to give some more mechanical benefits to using some skills, which also helps to offset being overshadowed by other skills as well. For example, something I may start allowing users of Medicine may be able to during a short rest perform a medicine check DC 12 to bandage a character's wounds and apply poultices to try and heal a characters wounds. A successful check may allow the character to apply one free hit dice of healing to the character they are bandaging. Limit it to one use per short or long rest, and I'd say it's not unbalanced. It gives a lesser taken skill to be used and it helps it over come overshadowing.
And overshadowing is the next issue. Besides using the above method, you have to be pretty vigilant as a DM to see if a player is feeling overshadowed by another's skills, spells, or feats. The classic example I bring up is Persuasion vs. Intimidation as you saw in the bit about overshadowing. Both are used to achieve a similar end but take different approaches. Most people opt for Persuasion in most situations, but it is important to remember, as one of the best DMs I have ever played under once said, "Having a high charisma doesn't mean you have to be a nice."
In this specific example, what we can do is either not allow Persuasion to be used in situations where you have already made an enemy of a creature/npc. Also, I would argue that certain people and characters would react differently to either skill. The orc clan may be more inclined to hear someone out if they grunt and shove rather than get all flowery with their language. That or I would change the outcomes of either skill successes. We already have discussed how a lot of how the outcomes are differing for Intimidation and Persuasion, so let's talk about differing outcomes. Persuasion will require a compromise, so a character may not be able to get everything they want, where as Intimidation is coercion, and a character can get more out of it, so it is a risk vs. reward type deal.
This is of course just an example of an overshadowing, so try different things for other skills you may be experiencing issues for, and you can apply a similar approach to this. I honestly could write individual posts for each skill and their applications (I just might, don't tempt me!), but I think you are starting to get the idea.
One Last Thought
We have covered a lot of what someone as a DM can do to alleviate the Skill Gap, but the Skill Gap isn't just DM's faults. It is also the system's yes, but also players can take some steps to help alleviate some of the Skill Gap to help make for happy players all around!
Firstly, a piece of advice often given in general, but it is applicable here as well. Be aware of how much 'spotlight' your character is taking. Take into account the party composition of classes as well as what other players are trying to do with their characters. I get it; we often want our characters to succeed at what they're good at and want to be *play* the game, but so do the other players. Once in awhile, take a step back and let the someone else try what the would like to do.
Besides communicating in game, one way to prevent stepping on toes is to discuss what characters everyone will be making before the game. Talk about what skills you will be taking and what everyone's characters will be good at. There may be some overlap, which the aforementioned advice will alleviate, but this will ensure that everyone is fulfilling certain niches in the group and will also help make things jive along.
Finally, make sure to talk to the DM before the game and as a group to have a good session 0 to determine what type of game you will be participating in so you can deck out your character appropriately. Seriously, session 0 is the best thing and can help prevent a lot of problems before they happen!
In Closing
The skill system in 5E is by no means perfect, but it is pretty good in my opinion. With a little vigilance, creativity, and determination, you can solve the problem of the Skill Gap in your games. You may use some the ideas here, or you may have your own ideas. Give them a shot! If they work, I would love to hear about it. I would also like to hear your thoughts on this. What skills do you feel get the shaft? Let me know!
Anyway, thanks for reading! If you enjoyed yourself, and you haven't been here, consider a follow/subscribing to get updates when I post blog posts as well as just hanging out on the Tweeter. To my loyal readers, you're why I do this!
Until next time,
Happy Gaming!
Mr. Puddins