Players Options: New Skills & Feats System (5e)
Skills¸ or non-weapon proficiencies as they were called in the 2nd edition AD&D¸ are a big part of what PCs can do to varying degree of well. Before you were severely limited by these to the degree that you could do what you were not proficient into¸ and the amount of proficiencies slots were somewhat limited to give a good feel of real-life skills. For example¸ a character could not swim unless he had the Swimming proficiency¸ instead of been able to try to swim but if he took the Swimming proficiency he was a trained swimmer that was proficient at what he did. Now with 5th edition¸ we have at last a more real representation were all can try to do what they want by making a skill check¸ but no one has area that they master. We have broad check like Survival¸ Deception¸ Athletic and so on¸ but these don't show or allow mastery of a specific skill or discipline. Everyone can try to forge a sword¸ but it will be near impossible for someone untrained in it to come up with an half-way battle decent one. For this¸ we have the various artisans tool that you can become proficient into¸ but they're no satisfying way to learn these in my view. They allow everyone to do anything on a roll of 20 which is absurd. Also¸ they are mostly limited to crafting skills and don't include things like: Lip Reading¸ Astrology¸ Heraldry¸ Hunting or simply Reading & Writing. That is why I think non-weapons proficiencies (we will refer as Proficiencies) are still relevant for 5th edition. Also¸ the proficiencies used to be separated into weapon and non-weapon related proficiencies¸ but as AD&D evolved into 2.5 and then 3.0¸ the line became blurred. Now in D&D 5th¸ Feats can mean both a Crossbow Expert¸ Actor or languages learning with Linguist. We will concern only with what used to be non-weapon proficiencies¸ knowing that some high level ones used to be fighting skill related. These will be classified in new Feats instead of in skills. I will first explain a system of how to use them in correlation with what already exist in 5th edition. Secondly¸ I will explain how these are acquired. Third¸ I will list all proficiencies per classifications. Lastly¸ I will list new high level Feats that used to be high level proficiencies.