Show Notes
In this episode of the RPGBOT.podcast, we revisit DnD 5e’s Unearthed Arcana: Feats for Skills article. We discuss feats which we do and don’t like, specific problems with the feats, and how you could adjust the feats to make them work in your game.
Special thanks to @YaBoiMcBatman for this week’s question of the week.
Materials Referenced in this Episode
- DnD 5e – Oath of Conquest Paladin Handbook
- Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything (affiliate link)
- Unearthed Arcana: Feats for Skills
- Unearthed Arcana Books from Previous Editions (affiliate link)
Transcript
Randall 00:23
Welcome to the RPGBOT.Podcast. I’m Randall James, your amicable orator. And with me is Tyler. Hi, everybody. And Random.
Random 00:31
Good morning.
Randall 00:33
All right. Welcome to Episode Five, the sixth episode of the RPGBOT.podcast. Yeah, Tyler, what are we going to do this week?
Tyler 00:41
Well, I’m very excited. We are going to do a retrospective look at an unearthed arcana article. We’ve discussed this one on previous episodes, the Unearthed Arcana feats for skills. Now this one came out a few years ago. So it’s… it’s a little out of date. And it’ll be fun to talk about, like, what came out of this long term. And Random, you’ve used these before. Will you recap us on that?
Random 01:05
Yeah, sure. So I have read through these several times. I do like reading through the Unearthed Arcana, because it’s interesting to see what sorts of things Wizards of the Coast is thinking of incorporating into the game and take a look at the the beta versions, if you will. The character that I spent a lot of time on this Oath of Conquest Paladin that I’ve talked about in the past, used the Menacing feat in here as the way to generate repeatable fear. If you go and read the Oath of Conquest Paladin subclass Handbook, which is out on the work in progress site will soon be out on the other site, you can see what that character has evolved into as far as what I think is probably the best way to make that happen now that we have a better source of fear, or at least a more consistent source of fear. These feats, they’re from a time when the feat structure was really… if we’re going to have a hybrid feat where you get plus one to a stat, we’re going to tell you which stat you get it to as opposed to the more modern concepts like things that are in Tasha’s where it’s… okay, you get to choose from any of the mental stats for your caster feats, or that sort of thing. So I definitely think that they do show their age, but some of them are a lot of fun to work with.
Randall 02:17
I do… I want to actually, I want to take a step back for a second. So we’re talking about Unearthed Arcana. For folks who might not be familiar, like they’re familiar with base, you know, 5e, what… what is or are Unearthed Arcana.
Tyler 02:27
So Unearthed Arcana, it’s a series of play test documents that Wizards publishes, it’s usually a preview of some content that they’re working on. So they’re published as free PDFs. And we… cool things we’ve seen from Unearthed Arcana, like the Artificer got a few different iterations, there was a revised version of the Ranger long, long before Tasha’s was published. Psionics were attempted three or four times. More recently, we got some dragon-related content, which is now making its way into Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons. So this is how… this is how Wizards is doing playtest content for character options so that players can give them live feedback on like, what’s good, what’s bad, what what needs to change. And they’ve been doing this since pretty early in 5e, after the success of the D&D Next playtest. So these are all a lot of fun.
Randall 03:22
So it’s essentially beta testing for what will be when it’s in the game.
Random 03:26
Yeah. And one interesting thing about that is… so this name comes from previous editions. We’ve talked about this a bit in the past, and we got to see some of it this week at the Pax RPG, library, Alexandria… fit those words together in some combination, I don’t quite remember the name. But in 3.x, 3.0 specifically, and in even earlier editions, like second, there were actual printed books called Unearthed Arcana would give you a bunch of just… All right, here’s stuff that we didn’t incorporate into classes but is maybe a fun difference. So a popular choice from the 3.0 Unearthed Arcana was you could- instead of taking regular barbarian rage you could take whirling rage which let you trade your attack bonus from the rage for getting an extra attack instead and- you rather than getting like a plus two to will saves you got a plus to two reflex saves and no penalty to AC which was important. Seeing how they’ve taken that Unearthed Arcana namesake and translated into fifth edition where now it’s become this sort of playtest thing is really cool. And I’m glad that they’ve done this because having this instead of just like, here is your printed book of the things that we felt like doling out this edition is really nice.
Randall 04:46
And you can find this on the wizard… Wizards of the Coast website, right?
Tyler 04:49
Yeah, the new Unearthed Arcana PDFs are on the Wizards of the Coast website. For the unearthed Arcana books from previous editions, you can find them on DMsGuild.com, and we’ll have links to that in the show notes.
Randall 05:02
Yeah, I don’t understand why they didn’t just use the internet in the 90s. What were they doing? Awesome.
Tyler 05:07
download some PDFs over dialup.
Randall 05:09
Alright, so I think the big question the skill feats, Unearthed Arcana, is it gonna make it? How much of this is likely to survive?
Tyler 05:16
That’s a good question. So if you have read the PDF, there are some things in here that you’ll recognize. If you’ve read the skill expert feet out of Tasha’s, you’ll recognize a lot of this, it gets you a plus one to an ability score, expertise in a skill and some other cool benefit. The skill expert was basically made as a generic version of all of these feats. So these feats are definitely not going to see the light of day, but there might still be a place for them in your game ifyou want something special.
Randall 05:45
Okay, and so I’m… I’m a DM, and somebody approaches me and says, I want to bring some of these skill feats into the game. What are the things that you say there’s no way whatsoever? 100% that I’m not letting you bring this in? Because it’s just too OP? And what are some of the things that you think maybe didn’t go far enough?
Random 06:01
Some of these are really strong, you know, I talked about using the Menacing feat. And one of the things that is a little bit deceptive at first glance with the Menacing feat is… so it increases your charisma by one to maximum 20 you gain proficiency with intimidation or, if you’re already proficient, you gain expertise. And then, when you take an attack action, you can replace one attack with an attempt to demoralize somebody within 30 feet of you that can see and hear you. Make a charisma intimidation contested by the targets wisdom insight, if you check succeeds, the target is frightened of you until the end of your next turn. If your check fails, they can’t be frightened by you in this way for one hour. At first glance, that’s good. It’s- I wouldn’t call it incredibly broken, because the frightened condition by itself is just “they can’t walk closer to you and they have disadvantage on some things.” It is good, it is absolutely good. But if you think this through a little bit, the problem becomes: so it lasts until the end of your next turn, which is the way that a lot of the frightened condition mechanics work, which is good, however, what that means is next turn, they have to contest… if you- if you do it again, (because you want to keep this going) they have to contest with wisdom insight. But that’s an ability check, which means they’re making it a disadvantage because they failed the previous turn. So already, hardly anything is proficient in wisdom insight. So at most, they’re going to be rolling with a straight wisdom bonus, which doesn’t usually go higher than a two. Meanwhile, if you’ve built your character around this, you’re rolling at a minimum of like, probably a seven. And by the end of my character, I think my intimidate was up to 13, you’re rolling with an enormous bonus, they’re rolling straight. And as long as you make your first one succeed, they’re rolling with disadvantage, it’s basically never going to succeed for them, which compare that to the the, you know, Warlock form of dread that I talked about in the example character for the handbook is a, you know, that is a flat thing, it’s something that they’re much more likely to be able to succeed on. Now, with that said, the punishment is pretty strong, the punishment for failure is, they’re now immune to your entire schtick for an hour, which is, you know, if you have a combat lasting more than an hour, something has gone horribly wrong. So that one, and then the other one that I take a particular bone to pick with, apart from, well, whatever Tyler’s going to get to… So historian is a similar you get plus one to history- er you get plus one to intelligence, expertise on history, and when you take help actions, you can make a DC 15 history check. And if you succeed, they get to add a bonus equal to your proficiency. This is functionally just better… what’s the cantrip…? Guidance. This is functionally just better guidance on anything that’s not a spellcaster. But it stacks with guidance. If you are a artificer, this is a great feat for you to take, particularly if you have a homunculus because you can say “Ah, yes, I’m going to aid my homunculus as it performs the search action using perception. It already has double my proficiency bonus to perception. And I’m going to give it a d4 plus another version of my proficiency bonus. I see everything.” And the fact that you can just do that as often as you want is… Yikes that is very strong.
Randall 09:34
Okay, so let’s let’s stack all that together. I’ve got my proficiency bonus, times three. Alright, so what are we going to get to early levels that’s plus plus six immediately.
Random 09:45
Yep, plus six immediately plus your guidance roll which is an average of two and a half already, regardless of what you roll on the 20 your homunculus at second level because that’s when you can take a homunculus is getting plus eight and a half on perception, which is higher than anything else I’ve seen, can get at level two on any skill.
Randall 10:09
Okay, and then maybe the only catch is the fact that you have to make that dc 15 intelligence save in order to offer. So as a DM, are you going to make… You know, I want to see-
Blink Dog 10:18
Tyler’s dog yawns spectacularly
Randall 10:20
I’m recording this week with Charles Barkley.
Tyler 10:28
So I would throw this on mastermind rogue, they get the ability to take the- a- the help action as a bonus action in combat. So you can help an ally as a bonus action, which gives them an advantage or you can give them advantage on their next attack, plus your proficiency bonus. And you’re right, Randall, there’s that dc 15 intelligence check. But its intelligence history on a feat that gives you expertise in history, so, pretty easy check for that character. So looking at other feats that are in here that scare me, the diplomat feat, which is the the persuasion related feat, this one makes me nervous. There’s kind of this really bad trope about toxic players in the community where they think that persuasion is mind control. And if you roll high enough on persuasion check, you convince anyone to do anything. Diplomat almost makes that true, which scares me. So like you have you have your bard walk in with expertise in persuasion, they make a charisma persuasion check and they roll high enough (and all you have to do is talk to someone for a minute, which, if you think talking to someone for a minute is difficult, go back and count how long it took me to finish this thought)… So you spend a minute talking to someone, you make a charisma persuasion check in contested by wisdom, insight, if you succeed, they’re charmed by you until they move more than 60 feet away from you. Now the charmed condition is pretty brutal. The charmed creature acts- they interpret everything you say in the most positive manner possible, and you have an advantage on all charisma checks against them. So it’s not quite mind control. But between expertise in persuasion, and advantage on charisma checks, it might as well be. You can you can basically convince anyone to do anything, as long as they never go more than 60 feet from you.
Random 12:30
And one other thing that I wanted to touch on with that, again, that is- a lot of these feats, especially anything that is interpersonal, like, diplomacy, that is a contested check. So technically, sure, they’re going to get a wisdom insight. But just the same, like I talked about, the fact that they get something to try to resist is practically impossible considering what you’re going to be rolling for that sort of thing.
Randall 12:56
So charms, though term, the impact of charmed afterwards is that the person knows they were charmed, and is likely to have all the anger that comes with it correct?
Tyler 13:04
No
Randall 13:05
oh!
Tyler 13:05
That’s- that’s a specific effect- a specific effect of some spells. Like the spell friends is a good example. Because it makes the target charmed and then spell specifically says, but I can’t remember the exact wording off the top of my head. But it’s basically after the spell ends one round later. They hate you.
Randall 13:24
Yeah, that makes sense. Would- would that be a way to balance that, that if you were to use this some period of time later (and maybe you know, maybe you give it an amount of time, because after all, it is, you know, diplomatics)- that after that period of time, let’s say a day later, they realize that they have been got?
Tyler 13:44
That could be one way to fix it. Yeah. Basically adding some long term consequence. I could see that definitely, definitely being a good option. And that would, that would reduce the compulsion to use it on every NPC you meet. But like, if you’re going into a shop, and you’re like, “hey, I want to buy some gear from this guy. I’m going to use diplomat and take advantage of this guy. And then we’re going to skip town because we’re murder hobos.”
Randall 14:11
That actually, that makes sense to me, though, that feels like the perfect application area, because that that wouldn’t be game breaking, right? You’re not going to convince the BBEG’s steward to let you in the room or give you the key, and then never face the consequences of it after but you know, I got some cheap merch at a cool booth, that’s great, right? One of the things I’d say like if, you know, growing my own idea I just offered, I can imagine a DM that says, “depending on what you do with this skill, I’m gonna roll a dice and I’m gonna decide what the impact of it is later” or “I’m going to set essentially a DC on the wear off to see whether the person realizes.” So if what you do is you use it to get the last chicken parmesan in line at the banquet? I’m gonna say very few consequences perfectly fine. Vice versa again, like if you use it to “Hey, Why don’t you give me your locket or give me the key,” then okay, that’s gonna have a big impact potentially. And so I’m putting you at risk by doing that.
Random 15:07
And one interesting thing if we’re trying to incorporate these in for the ones that we’ve talked about so far (and, and also the empathic one, this is the one for insight)- It is interesting because it’s a little on the weak side as a combat mechanic, because it’s functionally just true strike which is already really bad. But in social situations, it can be really good, where you make a wisdom insight contested by the targets, charisma, deception, nothing is going to have a- (well I get not nothing, but again, there are very few things that you’re going to try and have a social interaction with that are going to be nearly as deceptive as you are insightful if you’re someone taking this feat) and if you succeed, you have advantage on attack rolls and ability checks against the target until the end of your next turn. Great. I think that a way to help make things like diplomat, empathic, menacing more playable is to take the route that… you know, I’ve sort of started talking about with the form of dread thing. Rather than having you roll, just have them roll against a DC because… and- and have that you know, you can have that be like eight plus proficiency plus a relevant ability mod. And that’s still strong right? That- that’s still as good as a spell save DC but it’s- it’s not double dipping on the fact that you already have expertise on that skill from the feat itself, which is a lot of what makes those so strong.
Tyler 16:43
Yeah, I agree the the math there… like the the DC is are just, due to the distribution of the math, going to put things heavily in the players favor to the point that rolling almost isn’t worth it.
Randall 16:56
Awesome. Awesome. So looking one jumps out at me in particular, and that is medic. I feel like we’ve spent some time talking about medicine checks. Have we done that?
Tyler 17:08
Not yet.
Randall 17:09
Has that all been offline? Hooooo okay. I am gonna say sarcastically that medicine is Tyler’s favorite skill.
Tyler 17:17
Oh, yeah. My favorite. WOTC has tried to make medicine impactful. At the same time they’ve shot themselves in the foot every time they’ve tried. So in the player’s Handbook, there’s a feat called healer, which seems kind of redundant with- so the unearthed Arcana skill feat is called medic. So there’s a feat called medic and a feat called healer. Good luck remembering which is which. Healer is the one that lets you in combat, spend an action to heal somebody for I want to say d8 plus proficiency bonus or something like that. Basically, it’s basically like, “Hey, I can’t cast spells but I need healing option. Medic.” The big benefit of the feat is during a short rest, you can make a wisdom medicine check and somebody gets to max out one hit die that they roll. That’s it.
Randall 18:06
Well, up to six willing creatures that each forego the roll and get the max value
Tyler 18:13
Beats and humanoids was intended for like “Oh yeah, you’ve got a party of humanoids. And maybe someone has an animal companion or you have a beastmaster Ranger or something.” They left out fey which means if you have a centaur or Satyr in your party, they don’t get to party.
Randall 18:29
Minor oversight.
Tyler 18:31
Yeah, minor oversight. Yeah. The benefit just isn’t good. Like it’s not a good Feat. I don’t know why you’d ever take this.
Randall 18:41
Alright. I suppose that is fair.
Random 18:44
When I was looking through these for that same character. You- if you go read it, you’ll understand why I would be very happily looking into “Oh man, let me get some expertise- expertise in athletics.” That feat is maybe the worst one here. The standard plus one strength expertise in athletics. And then the second or the third bullet is you count as if you were one size larger for the purpose of determining your carrying capacity. First off, I have had- so I have played a Goliath the character that I played that Oath of Conquest conquest was a Goliath. A) I already had that B) in 13 levels, it came up once, which is as I was trying to carry two of my friend’s corpses out of the dungeon after the load-bearing villain died. And that came up exactly once at level two, never again. And it doesn’t stack. If you already have that ability from being a Goliath or from being a centaur or there’s maybe one or two other places to get it, the wording on them is always “you count as if you are one size larger.” I already count as large. It doesn’t say that it stacks. So it just does nothing. And I mean even if you wanted to try and fix it by explicitly putting in oh yes- this- you know: “If you already have an ability that says you count as one size larger you instead count as two sizes larger?” I still don’t care. I mean sure at that point it would be fun to say all right yes I can walk around casually holding a half a ton and you know if you want to just palanquin the entire party by yourself I great i mean that’s that is interesting. But if you really wanted to fix that look at what all the rest of them do all of the rest of these try to do something with the skill so if that’s maybe… What’s one of the few mechanical things you do with the athletic skill on purpose? Shove. And so maybe you say “if you choose to take the shove action in combat, you may have the target if they’ve failed the contested role be pushed five feet and then become prone” giving the answer to what is usually an or so that or something where I think they didn’t try and give some of the other things that would make sense for athletics because there was already the feet that lets you jump from standing and jump higher or something like that. I don’t quite remember the name of that Feat because people don’t really jump all that often in D&D when you have things like spider climb and fly. But it’s there and if you wanted to try and give some benefit to that or maybe you know maybe this gives you like a five foot swim speed and a five foot climb speed because that’s things that athletics is also traditionally associated with and having a swim and climb speed does make your life a lot better and I- you know if it’s something small like five or 10 feet that’s gonna be good but not incr- you know broken oh my god everyone needs to take this. Makes sense. You’re talking about the carrying capacity… my mind immediately goes to like my- my gnome barbarian and finally letting… you know we can- we can pile the entire group on top of him and let him kind of do his stack of Centaurus thing
Tyler 22:00
I’d Enjoy that. Very tiny barbarian carrying the pa- the whole party.
Randall 22:04
Yeah, drag ’em. Yeah. “Come with me if you want to live” like something like this. Nice. Were there any others that just disappointed you? You wish…
Tyler 22:13
All the ones that give you spellcasting the Arcana, nature, and religion, feats all basically do the same thing. You get expertise because that’s, that’s the theme. And then you get a cantrip and a first level spell. It’s like detect magic for Arcana detect good and evil for religion, and then detect poison for nature. So you get to cast a first level divination spell and a mediocre cantrip. And survivalist arguably falls into this category. And it’s even worse, you don’t even get a cantrip. I would 100% of the time, just take magic initiate over any of those four feats.
Random 22:55
I mean, it’s interesting, because it’s like- they some of them, they managed to hit a really good balance. I really like perceptive, which is the one for perception, shock, surprise. The third bullet point “being in a lightly obscured area doesn’t impose disadvantage on your wisdom, perception checks if you can both see and hear.” One thing that people from 3.x, maybe don’t pay enough attention to if they don’t read carefully, is that when you have dark vision in fifth edition, dark vision gives you kind of not great context. And so you actually make any perception checks relying on sight, at disadvantage. If you’re the person who’s supposed to be scouting and you’re at disadvantage on it, that’s a problem. This is a really good way of fixing that and it feels right. It feels like “this is the power level that I want a feat to have.” They did manage to hit really good in a couple places. That is really good. I think that the stealthy is really good. It’s- It is really good with a caveat. It’s really good if your DM is enforcing the rules correctly as written in the book, because, you know, it talks about “if you are hidden, you can move up to 10 feet in the open without revealing yourself as long as you end in a position where you’re not visible.” And I’ve never actually had a DM enforce stealth in a way that that would matter. But again, that’s like… As written, that’s actually I get again, what feels like a good feat. So I appreciate that they tried and hit some of these and a lot of places. I think overall, there’s definitely some problems with these and really, skill expert is just a good replacement.
Randall 24:30
So, perceptive and stealthy both. I think what you call out is actually really interesting to me. If your DM isn’t enforcing those rules, if they’re not using the rules as written if you’re not taking that penalty. Why would you ever want your DM to see these and be reminded that like, “Oh, you know, like, I get these for free? I don’t need to take these feats”
Random 24:49
You’re not wrong.
Randall 24:50
Yeah.
Tyler 24:51
It’s those little rules minutia, which people frequently forget about that doesn’t always add a ton to the game. Like the- like the athletic- the athletics feat like Random called out. Almost nobody cares about carrying capacity. Almost nobody tracks it. I have been in parties where not a single person had a strength score of 10 or higher, and the second the DM said, “How are you carrying all of your gear,” I just said “mule.” And no one ever brought it up again. Because we bought a mule.
Randall 25:23
Bag- bag of holding.
Tyler 25:24
Bag of holding. There you go.
Randall 25:25
And we’re good to go.
Tyler 25:28
Yeah, the little rules edge cases like… I do think people should enforce the- the disadvantage on perception in areas of low light, because it it makes light actually matter. Otherwise, yeah, everyone’s just gonna have dark vision. We’re going to fight half blind in the darkness and everybody’s going to be okay with that. Which, you know, does adjust the balance of the game. And then yeah, stealth, you need to have cover to hide. Otherwise, you can just you can just do the World of Warcraft thing where you scrunch down, turn invisible.
Randall 26:02
Yeah, I feel like this is its own episode waiting to happen having a conversation about like, as a DM and as a player. How do you play and enjoy both lighting conditions, and the relationship between that an perceiving itself? Because it-
Tyler 26:16
Yeah
Randall 26:16
I feel like the few times that I have had a DM try to do it, it has felt clunky and not super enjoyable. But I bet there’s a right way somewhere.
Tyler 26:23
Yeah, we should do an episode on that. That would be fun.
Randall 26:25
I’ll write that down. Alright, so overall, are you going to bring these skill feats into your game? What? What do you you know, I’m a DM and I’m debating what are my decision points? That would say, “hey, team, why don’t- somebody why don’t you take a look at this” and include it or absolutely not keep this way?
Tyler 26:42
I think I would, I would discuss it on a like one by one basis. My- my assumption would be no. But if we wanted to try a specific feat, maybe we adjust it, so it’s not a problem and then say, hey, we’ll try this out. If this doesn’t work, we’ll just replace it with skill expert.
Random 27:02
And that’s one thing that I think we’re probably also going to do an episode about at some point is what do you need to do to take steps to say, mid campaign, “hey, this option that you have, is making the rest of the table not have fun because of how strong it is.” And also conversely, you know, I extend that to “Hey, you picked this option. It’s just bad, and there’s no real retraining mechanic for it. So what do we do do about that?” But as far as you know, these feats in particular, I definitely think that has a whole, blanket, I wouldn’t given that skill expert does exist now. When I took Menacing, it did not. Having a way to get expertise was really nice. Really, I think the conversation needs to be “Why do you want to take this feat? And is there maybe a way that we can get you something that feels as good as that in another context so that we don’t have to rely on these feats that are a little bit problematic.” And a lot of the the unearthed Arcana, I think I’m generally going to fall that way. Although with the more recent stuff, they’ve been doing a better job of figuring out and getting- getting us something that is closer to the final iteration that gets published. So that’s my thoughts.
Randall 28:29
Makes sense. To remind listeners, I know we said it earlier but let’s say one more time, what- what rulebook did skill expert come in?
Tyler 28:36
Tasha’s cauldron of everything.
Randall 28:37
All right, good, good, good. And we will have an affiliate link in the notes if it’s something- if you don’t know Tasha’s, Tasha’s is great overall. So if you’d like skill expert and other content and you want to support our podcast, definitely take a look at that. Do the clicking. Alright, I think Are we ready for the question of the week?
Tyler 28:52
Let’s do it.
Randall 28:53
Alright, I think we’re ready for question week. All right. So this week’s question of the week comes from [echoy accouncer voice] YaBoiMcBatman, on Twitter [/echoy announcer voice]. And the question is, “yeah, are there any skills that you would add?” That feels topical.
Tyler 29:05
I think I accidentally typed the yeah in the beginning of the text they’re trying to type out YaBoiMcBatman again because, boy, that is a great name.
Randall 29:14
Alright, fine. We’ll revise. The question was “are there any skills that you would add?” Is- YaBoiMcBatman can type straight
Random 29:19
So this is this is interesting. I- I don’t know that I would. And here’s my big thing about why: so this is a another aspect that I haven’t seen used much but when I have seen it used, boy has it felt great. In the core rules and the players handbook, Wizards of the Coast calls out what you have proficiency in is not charisma deception. What you have proficiency in is deception, and I talked about this a little bit in the investigation episode. You can absolutely have skill checks, be made using a stat that is not the standard stat for the skill use. An example that I like to give because, I mean, I have remembered this for like two years because it was just so freakin cool what had happened. As this Paladin, one of my party members was drunk, and I wanted to sober him up. So I said, “five points of Lay on Hands, I remove the poison to condition that is the alcohol.” But he didn’t want that. And so we said, “Alright, go ahead and roll-” my DM said “go ahead and roll religion charisma. There’s a DC. Character who is currently drunk, roll a wisdom save against that DC.” And so that whole concept of using alternate stats with the proficiencies that already exist on the skills, I think the skills themselves generally really cover everything. And where you can add interesting diversity to it is figuring out that sort of how can I take you know this thing that is maybe a little bit outside what I want to do, you know, the the example that I gave of using intelligence, and proficiency in performance to try and think about what note played out of a flute would break glass, that sort of thing, I think is going to give you the wiggle room that you need to just use the skills there are in many ways that need to get you out of the exactly proscribed cases.
Tyler 31:32
I agree with Random. We don’t need more skills. DMs generally just need to get better about using different ability scores with the skills that exist. They did a pretty good job covering, like everything that you’re expected to do in a D&D game with the skills that exist. Like you- if you were playing in a sci fi setting, you could add like a computer use skill, but there are no computers in D&D, so there’s no computer use skill. Personally, I actually think there are too many skills. There are some skills that you could combine like acrobatics and athletics, you could combine those and just call it athletics. Like how many times have you been in a situation that was like, “Okay, I’m going to do like a jump off of this wall or something. Do I use acrobatics or athletics?” And, like, either one is equally valid. Just make it one skill. And then yeah, again, different ability scores. So if you’re doing something nimble dexterity if you’re doing something brawny strength if you’re doing something that requires endurance constitution. Someday I’ll figure out how to do intelligence athletics, but boy, it hasn’t come to me yet.
Randall 32:41
Yeah. That as a player character as an individual in the world.
Tyler 32:47
Yeah, I mean, technically both. Intelligence athletics to play fantasy sports. How about that?
Randall 32:53
Perfect. No, that’s that. That’s not athletics, sir.
Tyler 32:58
That’s fair.
Randall 32:59
Yeah, I it’s an interesting question. And actually, YaBoiMcBatman, if you had something in particular, I would love to to read it in a tweet later. I… I agree with everyone else. DMs finding ways to leverage the other skills more often, I think is a big part of it. I have been- since I’ve read the question I’ve been racking my brain trying to think through like, “what is the thing that I want to do? That doesn’t fit an existing skill, and we’re really squeezing a square peg in a round hole?” And then I feel like there’s pretty good coverage for all the things that we tend to do. Yeah, cool question though. All right. I think we did it. I think we Yeah. Good coverage. Okay. Well, I’m Randall James. You can find me on Twitter @jackamateur. Instagram @jackamateur and at amateurjack.com
Tyler 33:53
I’m Tyler Kamstra. You can find me on RPGBOT.net. You can find us on Twitter @RPGBOTdotnet because RPGBOT was taken, facebook.com/RPGBOTdotnet, and patreon.com/RPGBOT.
Random 34:12
And I’m Random Powell. I don’t generally do much social media, so if you are looking in places where you play games, you may find me as Harlequin or Harlequint. But in general, you’re gonna find me here contributing to RPGBOT, both several articles and here on the podcast.
Randall 34:26
Awesome. Alright, thanks to producer Dan. All hail the leisure Illuminati! …… They didn’t hail 🙁
Tyler 34:33
Oh.
Randall 34:33
We’ll have to work on that.
Tyler 34:34
Hail?
Randall 34:38
We will workshop that okay. You’ll find affiliate links for sourcebooks linked in show notes. Following these links helps us make the show happen every week, so please do. You can find our podcast wherever fine podcasts are sold. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate, review, and subscribe. And also please, please share with your friends, especially folks who you know honestly could benefit from some of the content that we talk about. If your question should be the question of the week next week, please email podcast@RPGBOT.net or message on Twitter @RPGBOTdotnet. Thanks, folks.
Tyler 35:18
I think we need a better hail.
