My Take on 5E Non-combat Skills

I want to encourage my players to try things they're unsure of, and then problem solve from the outcome to try something new, and then deal with that resultant outcome etc.. This simply doesn't happen when players think of their 4 proficient skills as a gospel or a permission slip to try things. I've seen a group sit around and discuss who has the highest possible roll for something before attempting it, and often deciding on actions based purely on whether their character sheet said they could. To mitigate this kind of mental min/maxing, I think I have come up with a skill system for 5E that will be interesting, engaging, and rewarding to players. 

So there's 2 parts to skill usage outside of combat, for me. 

Firstly - A player decides on a course of action for their player and describes what they want to attempt. 

At this point, I'm not concerned with "well what skill do I use." I'm just worried about getting a clear and canon action from the character, "I want to roll stealth." is meaningless to me, "I'd like to crawl under a bush closer to this guy so I can listen in on him." is exactly what I want to hear, even if they mean the same thing. 

At this point I go one of three routes, Yes, No, or Maybe...

Yes - I want players to feel comfortable with skills their character has picked up through questing, especially since I plan to reward my players with skills as often as I do magic,  So whenever a player brings up a reason they think they can "just do" something. Usually this is something as simple as "I say "______" to the guy."  or as complex as "So knowing what I do about the banners of the land from the six months we spent with Sir Galahad being trained as swordsmen, what kind of reputation do these guys have?" Anything that is simpler, faster, and more rewarding to simply "Say Yes." will be handled in this way, 

Small aside --- A lot of times this is how I will want to handle enemy HP, minions having "1 hp" boils down to answering every "I hit him!" with "Yep, he died." and then describing the heinous end this poor mook has just met at the hands of a raging barbarians great axe. I think a lot of times this creates a much quicker pace to the action of the game and allows for scarier minions as well as making bigger / level appropriate creatures feel somehow larger, as sudddenly "I hit it!" is answered with a casual "Yes you did, anything else?" and the character suddenly realizes this isn't another minion.  

No - While I want players to be able to explore their options this also means giving them realistic and consistent consequences, as well as sufficient warning of these consequences. If you try to leap the 30' wide bottomless pit as a dwarf who can't even run 25' in a round, let alone clear a 30' gap in half plate + gear, my answer is going to be "Bjorn the Bright knows he couldn't clear half that gap, let alone the whole thing, try something else." If Bob insists that Bjorn tries to clear it anyway because there's no other way then one of two things has happened.

Thing 1 --- I've put Bob in some kind of stupid ass situation where he has no clear options, this means I have failed and should realign Bob with a helping hand moving forward, that doesn't mean "Bjorn clears the Gap," but it might very well mean "Bjorn the Bright, who graduated top of his class at cleric school has a pretty good memory and he remembers that there is a 35' long plank back down the hallway, but he'll have to deal with some kind of obstacles to get to it."  Hopefully this gives Bjorn some means of moving forward. 

Thing 2 --- Bob is trying to insist on attempting things his character simply cannot do, the consequences of his insistence will then play out honestly. Bjorn will leap less than half the pit, his heart will sink as he feels himself rapidly losing forward momentum, then he plunges down... and down... tears your character in half and down... 

Maybe - This is pretty much the only time I actually care about rolling dice, because really, this is the only reason we have dice in an RPG, but maybe kind of covers a few different areas, in my mind.

Combat is a series of maybes... "Do I hit him?" maybe.. roll for it. "Okay I hit him! Does he die?" maybe... roll about it. "CR-CR-CR-CRITCAL!!!" oh dang. He dead as fuck my dude. A kobold and a dragon fight are the same questions but with longer maybe loops between beginning and conclusion.

It also kinda fits into the area of like "I give a speech to rally a few of the local villagers to take up arms, do any of them join us?" Well... the initial answer is going to be one maybe, "Maybe, roll to see how good of a speech you give," 

--- CAVEAT --- I don't actually give a shit what the dice say if the player themselves gives me a bad ass rallying speech for the villagers, if a player can explain why someone would come to a conclusion, or gives me a very convincing lie about something. Basically any reason I have to instantly turn a Maybe, into a Yes. You get the idea. 

Maybe also covers things like "I rolled a 19 performance, so how many villagers join us as militia?"
For these kinds of things, I think I prefer to work in % and D4s, so if I was super prepared and knew there were... 200 fighting fit villagers and you rolled a 19 I might roll a % and fiddle with it until I found a comfortable number.. *Rolls 29* Alright so.. 50 people, give or take, step forward, including 6 women, and a pair of young twin boys who couldn't be older than 11, the villagers have no real weapons, and they're poorly trained, the demons will be here the moment the suns purifying rays pass beyond the horizon, now what do you do? 

If I'm not super prepared, and this is some random Bullywug, shantytown in the middle of nowhere I might decide on a number of D4 based on roughly the total population, for a small village with say < 100 people I'd probably roll 2d4, maybe more if the village had some kind of warrior tradition, probably 1d4-1 for bullywugs. 

Secondly - The system I want to use to resolve maybe actions, "Proficiency Dice"

So this is where I want to get mechanics specific, or more accurately, I want to bash the 5E skill mechanics off with a large rock, and then frankenstein graft my own deeply flawed version of skills into the 5E system. So in place of "Proficiency" in 5E I think I want to use a "Proficiency Dice Pool" 

"Proficiency" in the context of this new skill system, is just saying the same as saying "It doesn't cost me anything to add my proficiency die to this specific thing." or, more accurately

"If you can convince me there's a reason your character SHOULD be good at this action, you can add 1 free proficiency die"

Whether its remembering banners, hitting someone with his great axe, or leaping across that 30' wide pit, if you can explain why your character should be good at this, I'll give you the die. "So knowing what I do about the banners of the land from the six months we spent with Sir Galahad being trained as swordsmen, what kind of reputation do these guys have?" Great question, roll a quick Wisdom check to see how much you remember about that, "K, I'm gonna spend a die to add a d4 to that, does that training with Galahad give me proficiency?" Yeah, so you don't have to subtract the die. (I kind of think it's important to declare die usage first, and then haggle about whether your proficient, just to sort of... mitigate the "I am proficient at stealth, so I should stealth." thought process)

If you can't convince me that you SHOULD be good at that, but you know you NEED to be, then you spend the die. Even the knight in full platemail can be sneaky sometimes, the difference is that sneaking is harder for the knight full plate, it requires way more effort, (spending dice) where as the halfling rogue is reliably sneaky (doesn't cost to spend 1 die) and can push himself to be even sneakier if he needs (spending dice on top of free one).

So the way it would work, when it all comes together is at 1st level you would start with a "proficiency pool" of 2d4, anytime you would roll a D20 to resolve some kind of "Maybe" you can spend a proficiency die from your pool to add that die to the D20 roll. You could technically spend all your dice on a single roll, if you wanted to. At each of the levels 5/10/13/17 you are given the choice of increasing the die size of your entire pool by one step, (D4>D6>D8>D10>D12) or Increasing the size of your pool by one die, (2d4, 3d4, etc) 

4 Skills as Loot Ideas--- 

You spend 3 months with the elvish mystics, learning the arts of herbology and healing plants. You also learn a small bit about elvish customs 

---You can get your free die on any roll you can reasonably claim you learned about. 

You spend a year, apprenticed to Bjorn the Bright, one of the best dwarven armorers around. Most of your time is spent destroying your own "Subpar" work, but you also learn a number of things about armoring, and smithing. 

---You can get your free die on any roll you can reasonably claim you learned about. 

---Dice Spent to Sunder someones armor are rolled as a die higher

You spend 2 long months practicing and sparring your ass off, trying to master the polearm techniques of the Lizardfolk. You are dismayed to find that many of their techniques make use of the polearms reach to bully smaller creatures. 

---You can get your free die on any roll you can reasonably claim you learned about. (If already proficient roll at 1 die higher) 

--- Whenever you set a polearm to recieve a charge from a small sized creature you may do an additional D6 of damage

You spend several weeks as a drow slave, during which time you were probably poisoned a half dozen times and learned a thing or two about drow

---You can get your free die on any roll you can reasonably claim you learned about. 

---Dice Spent to Resist Poisons are rolled as a die higher

****I HAVE NO IDEA IF I WANT TO USE THESE DICE IN COMBAT YET**** 

Bloody Badlands

The Bloody Badlands

There's always a badlands, some kind of desert, and this one is no different. It's vast, it's dry and, for the most part it's pretty empty. Nomadic bands of gnoll druids rove about slaying creatures, intelligent or not, to feed the hungry desert, goblins, as always, have found their own near suicidal means of existing in the desert. Darkly oppressive things lie at the top of this desperate and razor wired food chain. 

Giant Succulents 

Dotting the desert every hundred or so yards are massive succulents with fleshy water storing pods easily the size of a halfling. Some are passive, relying on their massive reserves of water to see them through dry spells between druidic visits or the infrequent drenching.

Many have evolved more active means of acquiring water.

Crawling Doom

The cactus commonly reffered to as "Crawling doom" typically preys on unobservant goblins and the occasional bird. It has a movement speed of 15'/round and will attempt to Engulf any creature it can reach. (DC 14 Dex or 8d4 piercing/round, anyone attempting to pull free a trapped ally makes a STR check and takes 4d4 piercing unless they're smart enough to not fucking stick their god damn arm into a writhing mound of cactus) when it remains still the only chance you have of distinguishing Crawling Doom from a normal cactus is probably going to be a goblin corpse tangled in the center.

Dart Fruit

The Dart Fruit is a (relatively) small cactus, it only grows to about 3 feet across and 4 tall, but it's dark purple quills can grow as long as 6 inches. The dart fruit gets it's name from it's ability to hurl these quills up to 60' Dart fruit quills are a slow and painful way to die, each quill is sticky with a long lasting and powerful anti-coagulating poison. (Range 30'/60', plant fires 1d4 quills, at +4 to hit, dealing 2d4 piercing damage, DC 16 Con Save (once) or take additional 2d4 piercing for 1 hour or until you regain 1HP or are bandaged in some way, as bleed damage. Bleed damage incurred this way stacks.) Dart fruit is easy to spot and avoid, if you know what you're looking for, but the fruit which grows atop this cactus is a near miraculous cure all. Anyone with advanced enough herbological or alchemical knowledge could use Dart Fruit to cure plagues or do all kinds of weird maguffiny shit. 

Too bad the fruit is rendered useless if the cactus takes any damage before the fruit is harvested.

Gnolls

Can't have a desert without Gnolls! As I mentioned before, I don't believe in racial alignments and the same (this time) is true of the humble desert gnoll. In the Bloody Badlands, gnolls serve as nomadic druid clans. These druids tend their desert plants with blood and bone meal, but how they acquire these resources varies clan to clan. Some tribes prefer to war with desert goblins or occasionally fight the warlords of the steppe, using the fallen from both sides of these battles as ample offering to the desert food chain, others, near the edges of the vast expanse, prefer ambushing the few trade caravans and wayward travelers that pass through the deserts outer edges. Deeper, in the heart of the desert, powerful gnoll archdruids will often barter in slaves blood (usually goblin slaves but they really don't see much of a difference between human or dwarven blood and goblin blood, elven and gnomish blood however is especially valuable for it's latent magical properties.) Usually the slaves are alive during this bartering process, but that's not inherently important since the currency is more about their blood as a resource than them as slave labor. Few but far between you will find druid enclaves who prefer taking down great beasts and unintelligent wildlife, though their traditionalist cousins would mock them as "civilized." This won't seem important until later, but Gnoll druids will always know if a cloud of Floating Mage Death is nearby and will factor this into tactical decisions at all stages of combat. They prefer not to fight when this threat is nearby. 

Goblins

As always, goblins manage to exist here through semi-suicidal and incredibly stupid lifestyle adaptations, keep in mind that goblins, as a race, are basically chaotic stupid. They average about 6 year lifespans, and female goblins breed INCREDIBLY fast (Matrons have gestation periods of 20-30 days and will birth up to 9 goblins at a time, and can be impregnated again minutes after giving birth. Yea. Goblins are gross.) so they can, as a species, afford to take more risks, more often, than most species around. This leads to things like Goblin rough riders (Goblins who "ride" giant geckos in what can only be called half deadly drag race, half rodeo style bull riding) in the desert. They've also developed an ingenious tactic of running directly perpendicular to Dart Fruit Cactus while just inside their range in order to harvest Dart fruit spines. Usually only one or two goblins die during such events, and if a Matron was paying enough attention to send a shamanic healer then it's basically just free stuff. Goblins of course weaponize these spines as blowdarts that they use in their typical hit and run tactics, making them especially deadly (stacking bleed damage hitting you from stealth is not a fun way to die) Rumors say some goblins have even "Tamed" a Crawling Doom mount. But people say a lot of shit about goblins.

Goblin shamans can probably figure out how to cure like strokes and heart attacks and shit using anti-coagulants.

The Floating Death 

The floating death are the pinnacle of evolution in the desert, they come in two varieties, Floating Mage Death, and Floating Red Death. Both strains are nearly the same, they're large semi-intelligent carnivorous plants with lighter than air bladder which allow them to float. When they're flowering the floating death can form beautiful red or blue "fields" in the sky. Whether they're flowering or not, floating death hunt by floating through the air at heights as high as 200 feet up. The main difference between the two types lay in how they find and consume their food. 

Floating Red Death can detect blood at up to 150' away, and will shower down like needles from the sky, their hollow stems stabbing down at anything within reach, hoping to drain victims to death via dehydration and rapid blood loss. If Red Death is above a battlefield (DC 10 to spot, only if asked) they will rain down on any creature which ends its turn "bloodied" in an AoE with a radius of 1d4 * 5', each creature in the radius that isn't wearing the equivalent of full plate is punctured by 2d4 plants, each one dealing a d4-1 Con damage per turn as they suck the life out of them. Dex save DC 16 for half the number of plants to deal with. Removing a plant requires a bonus action, removing any additional beyond the first requires a full round action and only removes a total of 1d4 plants) 

Floating Mage Death has a limited form of Detect Magic running at all times, and can detect spell casting up to 60 feet away. Floating mage death is much more single target oriented and will pierce any spell caster they detect for 3d4 plants, Dex save for half. But each plant will instead deal 1d4-1 damage to the casters casting stat as his or her magical essence is drained. If a plant rolls a 4 on die, it will also consume a random spell slot as though you cast the spell that was in it. 

Bullywugs, Professional Fly Farmers.

This is one of those rambling posts. I'm gotta talk about Bullywugs.

I don't have a defined "Primary Campaign Universe" like most DMs do, but it sounds fun so I think I'm gonna start working on something like that but I'm not even gonna pretend to name it yet because that's not how my brain works. So for now, let's call these kind of posts "Canon" posts. 

Bullywugs

Bullywugs aren't evil, I don't think I believe in racial evils. (Goblins might be chaotic af but they're just as likely to be chaotic good robinhood types as they are chaotic evil dungeon dwellers) But if I did believe in racial alignments I think Bullywugs would end up being neutral good. They aren't ambitious or greedy, they have a deep sense of community and they aren't especially xenophobic. They are however, very simple minded. Most bullywugs (8 in 10) don't even have the intelligence to learn a second language. Bullywugs aren't especially large, infact I'd be willing to argue they're about the same size as a halfling. But what they lack in quick wit or stature they make up for in spades as garbage connoisseurs and fly farmers. 

Bullywugs are professional composters (and remember, before the industrial revolution cities produced very little garbage which wasn't compostable) they buy trash from large cities, and then raise flies like cattle in the garbage. They harvest their cattle in mosquito nets, many of which can hold swarms reaching as high as 500 heads of high quality flies. The results for the compost are rapid turn around times and yield for fertilizer, which comes at a high premium when sold back to farming villages. Many Bullywug villages rely on specific breeds and strains of flies, and large scale farmers often pride themselves on having diverse and hearty swarms.

The bullywugs natural predator is primarily the swamp harpy. Swamp harpies are malicious ambush predators who volley bullywugs from range and then swoop in to drag away the dead and dying for an easy meal. Bullywugs aren't very good with violence, and even the few spear wielding warriors that exist in any given tribe have a tendency to look away when jabbing (flat 10% miss rate on any successful hit vs AC) 

Many tribes have tamed giant toads as mounts and harpy deterrent. These toads are at the very upper edge of large sized. Capable of jumping up to 30 feet straight up, the toads tongue can then reach an additional 20 feet. This creates a 50' threat range from which a toad can leap up, snatch a harpy from the air and gobble her up whole. Giant toads are not to be fucked with lightly.

Bullywug adventurers are usually sorcerers, and as far as I care, npc hirelings are probably mediocre sorcerors of the Undying Light. Bullywugs make great healer support and their amphibious nature make them excellent scouts, purchasing (or stealing) a trained battle toad would also be a huge boon. Bullywugs trade mostly in trash however, and are in fact connoisseurs of trash, they'll exchange gold for things they want, but they've no need for gold when it comes to something as valuable as a battletoad. Bullywug hirelings never make loyalty or desertion type checks unless asked to commit heinous acts. 

Video Games, The Uncanny Valley, and Player Investment.

I have taken a lot of deep breaths, an eclipse totality is coming, and I think I'm ready to try and run a fun campaign that focuses on enjoying the people around me. I'm swaying around a bunch on like... where I wanna go and what I want to do, but I think it's better to dive in and carve it out as I go, focusing on not taking it seriously and having fun.