💃5e - Skills💃

While abilities provide broad descriptions of a character’s capabilities, a skill represents their training in a particular task such as Acrobatics or Deception. A character who has training in a skill is said to be proficient in it. Most skill proficiencies are acquired by adventurers during character creation from their choice of culture, background, and class.

Using Skills

When a character attempts an ability check, the Game Master may decide that a specific skill is relevant to the check. If a character is proficient in that skill, they may add their proficiency bonus to their ability check. For instance, if a character is attempting to fool a palace guard, the Game Master might call for a Charisma check using the Deception skill. For this ability check, a character proficient in the Deception skill may add their proficiency bonus to their ability check. A character not proficient in Deception simply makes a Charisma check.

Any skill can be used with any ability check, although some pairings are more common than others. For instance, the Deception skill is commonly used with Charisma ability checks, although a character who is attempting to encode a written message might instead make an Intelligence check using the Deception skill.

Sometimes the Game Master will ask for an ability check using a certain skill: for instance, “Make a Charisma (Deception) check.” Other times, a Game Master may ask for an ability check, and a player might ask whether one of their skills applies to the check. The Game Master is the sole arbiter of which skill, if any, applies to an ability check. The rules sometimes refer to a check with a skill but no ability specified —for example, “Your character has advantage on Deception checks.” This refers to all ability checks using the Deception skill regardless of which ability score is used.

Skill Specialties

In addition to having proficiency in a skill, a character may be an expert at a narrow area of specialization within that skill. For instance, a character proficient in the Deception skill may be particularly adept in communicating through written code.

A character gains two skill specialties at 1st level (plus bonus knowledge), and gains an additional specialty whenever their proficiency bonus increases (at levels 5th, 9th, 13th, and 17th level). A character may choose any specialty in a skill in which they are proficient. A character may not gain the same skill specialty twice.

When a character makes an ability check to which their skill specialty applies, they gain an expertise die for that ability check. The Game Master determines whether the skill specialty applies.

While the list of skills below is fairly comprehensive, the Game Master may expand the list of skill specialties to meet the needs of the campaign world. Each of its cultures, historical eras, important organizations, and other unique details might furnish a specialty.

See 🛠️Tools for more information.

Expertise or Modifiers?

Some class features or traits grant you an expertise die for an attack roll or saving throw, or in a specific skill or tool proficiency. When you make a d20 roll with which you have gained an expertise die, roll 1d4 and add the number rolled to the result of your check.

You can never roll more than one expertise die on the same roll. If another class feature or situation grants an expertise die of any size that applies to the same roll, you don’t gain another die; instead, the size of the largest expertise die increases by one step for that check, from 1d4 to 1d6, or 1d6 to 1d8. For example, if you have gained two expertise dice, a 1d6 and 1d6, you now have a 1d8 expertise die.

If you have a 1d8 expertise die on a check, further expertise dice have no effect. If you have advantage or disadvantage at the same time as an expertise die, only the d20 is rolled twice, not the expertise die.

When the player knows about the factors which affect their action, these usually take the form of expertise dice or —less commonly—advantage or disadvantage. Expertise dice represent training and other details, and the character taking the action is fully aware of these effects.

Sometimes the Game Master knows about things which affect the difficulty of a task which the player is not aware of. In these situations the Game Master secretly applies modifiers to the DC of the ability check.

List of Skills

Characters can gain proficiency in the following skills. Each skill description includes examples of uses with several ability scores. The Game Master determines which ability score is called for in a given situation.

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