Dungeons & Delvers 2nd Edition: Skills

In Dungeons & Delvers, skills currently function similarly to 3rd Edition (and up): you roll a d20, add modifiers, and try to meet-or-beat a DC.

The difference is that PCs "only" gain a single Skill Point each level (though some classes like rogues gain a Bonus Skill here and there), it can be added to any skill you wish, and the Proficiency modifier caps at +5. Ability scores also cap at +5, so the highest modifier a PC could hope to have without accounting for racial modifiers, items, and other effects is +10. 

Simple and straightforward, but a downside is that a PC can technically learn and improve skills that he never or rarely uses. I didn't like this, but that's how it works in a lot of games, and there's really no way to abuse this sort of system to any sort of huge advantage; in all our games and playtesting, players tended to focus on skills that they were using and/or made sense, anyway, so I just accepted it.

Something else I disliked was that a player can focus on a single skill and effectively "master" it by 5th-level. I considered putting in skills caps so that it would take even longer to max out a Proficiency bonus: levels 2-4 would cap at +2, levels 5-9 would cap at +3, levels 10-14 would cap at +4, and once you hit 15th-level you could finally max it out at +5.

This solved one issue but presented another, where for several levels a character would improve in all manner of areas, multiple times even, except for that specific skill. I can't remember if I pitched this during playtesting, but the players didn't like the idea so I abandoned it.

While thinking of ways to possibly unnecessarily change the skill system that is at least working well enough, at one point I thought about giving out a variable number of Skill Points each level (as in 3rd Edition), but that would just mean that a character could max out multiple skills early on, which makes even less sense than a PC becoming the best at a skill after only a handful of levels.

This then got me thinking about more complex mechanics, such as noting how many times a skill was attempted and using that to determine if you could improve the skill, or if some period of training was necessary. But that sounded like a bunch of tedious bookkeeping, and that's before I thought about effectively giving each skill a kind of XP track that filled up as you used it, with more points gained the more you exceeded the DC you were aiming for.

I've since arrived at a solution that's far simpler and fixes some of the issues that I am having.

For starters, each class has one or more Class Skills. Each time the character gains a level, these skills automatically improve by 1, as if a Skill Point had been spent on each of them. For example, wizards get Arcane Lore and Research, and can pick one other Lore skill to be a Class Skill. If multiclassing rules are on the table, then the Class Skills of whatever class you level up are improved.

Every class gains 1 Skill Point, though as before some classes gain a Bonus Skill Class Feature, and so can spend more. Each skill can only be improved once at each level, however, and you cannot spend these points to improve Class Skills (since, again, they are considered to have been improved using a Skill Point).

Skills are grouped into categories: Adventuring, Lore, Social, and Crafting. Adventuring skills cover what is assumed to be standard adventuring activities, such as climbing, handling animals, cooking, foraging for food, mending clothing and gear, searching for danger, etc. These can normally be improved automatically at a level up.

Everything else requires a time of training, instruction, and/or study (depends on the category): a number of weeks equal to the skill's Proficiency bonus. Various factors can reduce this time--racial and/or class features, Talents, special tools, trainers, facilities, etc--though in-game activities might have the GM reduce or even waive this requirement entirely (such as if a skill is used to great effect multiple times over the course of a level).

Still not completely realistic, but it at least makes more sense without overcomplicating things. Plus, where before you primarily had crafters having to spend a lot of time practicing their incredibly valuable trade to improve it (especially alchemists), this will ideally have most if not every character also engaging in some form of downtime activity in order to improve a skill, or learn a new one.

Though, is it worth the time and effort? After all, out of all the categories which take time to improve, Craft skills are by far the most useful. This is because, unlike Dungeons & Dragons, in Dungeons & Delvers you can make some really powerful items with craft skills: masterwork weapons and armor are far more useful, as are alchemical items (especially once you get your Craft rank up).

So in the end, depending on feedback, it might end up being only Craft skills that demand downtime.

In any case, since characters will now have automatically improving skills and the Proficiency bonus is no longer capped at +5, we're also overhauling the skill list and skill perks. This also means that many Talents that modify skills will see changes: a +1 was invaluable when you could only get your Proficiency bonus up to +5, now it would just be a drop in the modifier bucket.