The Medicine skill looks like a pointless waste of proficiency when you've looked at the super cheap healer's kit item and the Healer feat. I can't imagine this got all the way through testing without someone pointing it out. What am I missing?
The Nature and Survival skill descriptions are so close to each other it feels like it's going to be a little silly deciding which one to use sometimes. Did they really need to be two different things?
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;786733The Medicine skill looks like a pointless waste of proficiency when you've looked at the super cheap healer's kit item and the Healer feat. I can't imagine this got all the way through testing without someone pointing it out. What am I missing?
The Nature and Survival skill descriptions are so close to each other it feels like it's going to be a little silly deciding which one to use sometimes. Did they really need to be two different things?
The skill list was one of the areas that changed pretty much in every iteration of the play test, as they struggled to find something that offered broad consensus.
I think, from looking at the various discussions that have took pace we can derive two things.
- Most people take skills as part of a character concept and do not seem to particularly care if they are useful.
- Most people think there should be a distinction between Academic and Practical wood lore.
Another ambiguity that pops up is frequently is about what happens when someone is proficient both with a skill and a relevant tool.
Example: Perform with an Instrument.
Since Proficiency Bonuses don't stack, do we just give them Advantage when that happens? What do others do?
What's the use of any of them? You can emulate skills through abilities tied in with background. That's pretty much what you have to do if you play 5E at it's most basic level. Use your stats, add the proficiency rating based on the class saves. Basically, you're using your saving throw as a skill, if you do it that way. I assume, though, that some folks might use skills to emulate 4E skill challenges, so something like Medicine could be used, among other things, to investigate a murder via examination of the body.
It could be argued that the game could be played without any Skills at all. The characters would just get a proficiency bonus when their Background and/or Class (maybe even Race) might be relevant.
Tools are something you couldn't do otherwise without it. Like, it's hard to perform a quality guitar or drum solo by jazz scat alone, Bobby McFerrin acknowledged. Also hard to carry the load of a caravan... without a caravan.
When they overlap, they don't stack. The advantage of Tools is that, barring some specialized uses that say otherwise, they don't need tool proficiency to use at all. They just gain proficiency bonus if you have that Tool Proficiency.
Further, you can use a Tool outside of any specific "Ability (Skill)" check; so instead of Flute CHA (Perform), you may INT (Investigate) to figure out a glass' resonance, then STR (CON?) check to shatter it with a piercing blast. Or CHA (Perform) your Vehicle, Land to figure out the best way to advertise/entertain with it. Tool Proficiency is merely a secondary way to gain PB on creative usage of skills or tools.
As to Medicine, it's already been useful in my game. But that's because I'm already incorporating ideas within the grey areas of RAW for poison & disease, such as: application/vector, onset time, duration, complications, etc. Medicine is not all about Death Saves, though the value of a Healer's Kit raises quite fast in ignoring stabilization saves and straight to auto-success.
You're going to have to scribble up the text for Healing Feat for the rest of us to share your righteous indignation.
QuoteHealer
You are an able physician, allowing you to mend wounds quickly and get your allies back in the fight. You gain the following benefits:
- When you use a healer's kit to stabilize a dying creature, that creature also regains 1 hit point.
- As an action, you can spend one use of a healer's kit to tend to a creature and restore 1d6 + 4 hit points to it, plus additional hit points equal to the creature's maximum number of Hit Dice. The creature can't regain hit points from this feat again until it finishes a short or long rest.
It is pretty good, but then it is a Feat so it pretty much has to be better than a skill by design.
From following the various playtests, current releases, articles, and podcast, etc. I feel they added the skills for the same reasons I added abilities to the Majestic Wilderlands. To allow characters to be better at certain things outside of combat than other characters. Along with the idea that any character can attempt anything just some are better.
I devised my list of abilities to cover a variety of actitivies that come up in the lives of an adventurer with a heavy influence from the Rogue classes I created for the supplement; Burglar, Thug, Mountebank, Claw of Kalis, and Merchant Adventurer. I designed Rogue classes to be better at out of combat activities than other classes. Some do have combat aspects like the Thug and the Claw of Kalis but for the most part the my Rogue classes shine as part of the life of the campaign setting rather than to beat things up and take their stuff.
Because of my focus on adventuring, I threw all the abilities associated with knowledge and skilled trades into Knowledge skill and a Profession. With the idea you create a sub type to associate with it For example Knowledge Religion, Profession Blacksmith. I kept it relatively abstract to keep it gamable.
D&D 5e skills, in my eyes, are setup in exactly the same way. The designer looked at various non-combat activities and categorized them into skills. It is an relatively abstract system compared to GURPS, Runequest and other skill based RPGs. But like my ability system is not limited to just specific tasks. If you have Medicine then you are better at anything that would be logically covered by that skill in the setting.
As for the issue of Healing Kits. They allow for an automatic stabilization of a character as an action. They are also a limited resource with ten uses. What a healer's kit doesn't allow is the character to diagnose a disease or anything else that a referee may decide that a medicine check would be needed for.
As I see it, skills are useful for broader 'bags' of stuff you might do that doesn't fit within a tool.
Medicine helps cure people, but it also helps people understand problems. Like, 'How was this person murdered?' or possibly 'how long has this person been dead (Medicine or Nature).'
I consider medicine a knowledge skill, just like arcana, religion, nature and history.
These skills encapsulate the possibly wide theoretical scope behind the practical skills (arcane spellcasting, divine spellcasting, survival and druidic spellcasting for the first three). In the case of medicine, the healers kit, poisoners kit, herbalist kit and healing spells are the practical use.
But without the medicine skill, you won't know whether that coff is just a cold or warrants expending valuable healing magic. You can't tell if you are dealing with a poison, a disease or a curse (in the last case you would need arcana too). When you come across a dead warrior, don't know that the arrow wound is too shallow to kill a tough half-orc like him and that the corpse has the telltale signs of a special poison.
I think a lot of these overlapping skills become a lot more useful when you use multiple skill checks to solve a situation.
Let us say the major of Importantville is found dead with no sign of foul play and the PCs investigate.
You could could just roll investigation to find all clues. I'd allow investigation to find out that important documents are missing, perception to find the tiny puncture wound in the victims neck, medicine to determine how that tiny wound actually killed him, history to determine what secret society kills this way and nature to find out where in the area the used poison could be produced. One character is unlikely to have all these skills, so multiple PCs can contribute.
If they found the documents are missing, they can investigate the mine they referenced. If the history check succeeded, they can investigate the old headquarters of the secret society, if the nature check succeeded they can go to the site the poison was most likely crafted.
Basically it is the difference between Holmes and Watson. Both have medicine and Holmes is smarter, so you want Holmes to find out what killed your friend. But Watson has the practical skills Holmes doesn't have. You would want Watson to patch up your bullet wound.
You want the character with survival go out and find food and shelter. But he might get advantage when he listens to the guy with nature as skill telling him where he is most likely to find it.
As for performance. There are amazing musicians that have no stage presence. They might play the most beautiful song you will ever hear, but they never get anyone to listen in the first place. Then there are people who can't do or know shit, but they talk, saying nothing at all, and everyone listens.
That is what performance is all about, stage presence and showmanship. When your bard plays that all important gig, you don't want it to hinge on a single proficiency. Have him roll performance every so often to get his audience to actually listen.
And showmanship can come up all kinds of situations not involving music. The rogue uses it at the poker table, so his opponents are distracted from the game. The paladin wants to hold an inspiring speech, better have performance (then persuasion). Bunch of angry ogres with a crude sense of humor? Performance to tell silly jokes gets you out of a sticky situation.
Those are all very good explanations, but I'm still unsure what to tell my players when they wish to make a skill check with a specific tool for the job, and they're proficient with both (ex: Perform proficiency stacked with Lute proficiency).
In the spirit of the rules-light nature of the game, I am not in favor of "stacking" bonuses (not that you can, anyway). But I'm curious as to how other people handle this.
Quote from: estar;786766As for the issue of Healing Kits. They allow for an automatic stabilization of a character as an action. They are also a limited resource with ten uses. What a healer's kit doesn't allow is the character to diagnose a disease or anything else that a referee may decide that a medicine check would be needed for.
Exactly. Having proficiency in a Healer's Kit is like knowing first aid, having proficiency in Medicine is like being a Doctor, having the Healer feat is like knowing field surgery, basically.
Quote from: Necrozius;786784Those are all very good explanations, but I'm still unsure what to tell my players when they wish to make a skill check with a specific tool for the job, and they're proficient with both (ex: Perform proficiency stacked with Lute proficiency).
In the spirit of the rules-light nature of the game, I am not in favor of "stacking" bonuses (not that you can, anyway). But I'm curious as to how other people handle this.
Use the one that you feel makes the most sense in that circumstance. In the example you've given, if they're trying to be entertaining, or distracting, or otherwise hold the audience's attention, then it's performance. If they're trying to play beautifully, but not so focused on having a lot of presence, it's the tool. Think of one as (when applied to music) being a rock star, and the other as being a chamber musician. If they have both, perhaps the
way in which they're pulling focus is by doing tricky and impressive things like playing a blistering solo.
Stacking bonuses do not apply in 5e.
Quote from: Necrozius;786736Another ambiguity that pops up is frequently is about what happens when someone is proficient both with a skill and a relevant tool.
Example: Perform with an Instrument.
Since Proficiency Bonuses don't stack, do we just give them Advantage when that happens? What do others do?
Actually, the ambiguity is pretty rare. Most tool proficiencies cover things that differ from any skill. The Perform and Musical Instrument is about the only occurrence I have seen. As such, I think it's clear that Perform is not meant to cover the technical use of musical instruments or creation of songs. It deals with appealing to an audience. There is still some cross over no doubt, but I think that helps.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;786733The Medicine skill looks like a pointless waste of proficiency when you've looked at the super cheap healer's kit item and the Healer feat. I can't imagine this got all the way through testing without someone pointing it out. What am I missing?
The Nature and Survival skill descriptions are so close to each other it feels like it's going to be a little silly deciding which one to use sometimes. Did they really need to be two different things?
Medicine covers more than just healing HP, but knowledge of medical conditions, related biology and anatomy. I am pretty sure that is why they moved from Heal in 4e to Medicine. I can think of a number of D&D adventures where that has been useful.
Nature and Survival has been a issue people have tackled previously. However, most people seem to understand that they are distinct from real life examples. Knowing how to survive is a practical skill focussed on a goal. As such, there is a lot of knowledge of covered by Nature that doesn't come under it. Likewise, knowing about nature in general is different to knowing how to apply that in the field for the purpose of survival. I am sure people can think of lots of examples of people who know one but not the other, as well as both, explaining the skill split.
Okay, cool beans. Thanks folks, that works for me.
And yes, I've gotta stop reading TBP. That site fills my head with too many unnecessary complications about 5e.
Yeah. Threads can often be misleading when the poster combines a little knowledge and blind conviction in being right.
That and, frankly, a lot of people on TBP are literally insane.
I mean, heavily medicated crazy people.
Which is fine in small doses, but it can really unground you.