When Kelly and Monty disagree, I almost always agree with Kelly, and this is no exception. You can intimidate someone without threatening them. You can be intimidated by someone who has not even looked at you or spoken to you, and it can be for reasons other than fear of harm. You can be intimidating because you are very beautiful or very intelligent or many other things.

The way I've always differentiated between Nature and Survival: Nature is knowing which berries are edible, Survival is being able to find them.

I think Monty forgot to consider that intimidation could also be using one's social status to coerce one into doing something. It isn't all physical harm with the intimidation skill

"I'd like to make this jump Acrobatically." "Great. How many flips would you like to do before falling 6 feet short of the ledge?"

Intimidation is way more than making a threat.

On the topic of cross score skills, people tend to forget that they're completely official and can be used. Knot tying is specifically called out as: Intelligence-sleight of hand

I would argue Athletics is an A. It is used for Grapples/Shoves, making it basically mandatory for any strength-based character.

I've always treated History checks as memory. If a player asks if their character would know something, I think about it and make a judgement on how difficult the check might be, and then ask them to roll History. Usually it's folklore, history, legends, or current events. Then again I value the Intelligence skills in my games a little more than others would.

Strength-based intimidation is clearly a better way for big scary guys. Kelly is right on this one

In my games the performance skill is actually quite useful. I don't limit it to playing an instrument, but include "acting" as well. So if you want pass as someone else, performance check, if you want to pretend to be sick/injured/poisoned, pretend to fall, etc. It does step on the toes of decpetion, but I try to think of the difference between "acting" and "lying". I feel it balances out nicely.

All the Eloquence homies know Persuasion and Deception are top tier

"Nobody is ever going to die because their character isn't proficient in acrobatics." Doreen from Fantasy High would like a word with you.

And about arcana in Xanathar there's the rules that a character with proficiency can make scrools and is pretty usefull

I use the History skill to let players know facts about the world in general, not just past history. So if a rogue wants to check what he knows about the local crime syndicate, i let him roll History, but if the paladin wants to do the same, he will either get higher DC, Disadvantage, both, or i might even outright refuse and tell him there is no reasonable way for him to have this information. It becomes the catch-all knowledge roll, and i adjust it on the fly to make sense in-character. It really is a lot simpler to handle than people might think.

Intimidation works great if you think about it from a charisma POV. Imagine "oh dear, the guards would not be happy to know about you trying to mislead us. Don't worry about it though, friend. Just take us where we want, and we'll forget all about this."

Moral of the story: every table is different and every DM is gonna favor different checks and use them in slightly different ways.

I disagree with your use of intimidation. You can be intimidated without the threat of violence. Someone can be intimidated by someone even if that someone has done nothing. Someone can be seduced by intimidation. I'm currently in a campaign about an arcane plague and I have used the medicine skill multiple times a session. But I do agree for most campaigns it seems mostly useless unless you home brew or use a third party version of the healer's kit.

You forgot the most important part about Athletics, it's the skill you need to be able to grapple enemies effectively.

While it may be niche, I tend to use Intimidation as a replacement for Persuasion when dealing with savage or strong races, such as orcs, goblins, dwarves, goliaths, etc. The rationale being that such races are more easily persuaded by strong words than flowery ones. I still use Intimidation for veiled threats as Kelly mentioned, but Persuasion takes its place for these same races. In essence, someone Persuading an orc uses word games to confuse them and get the information they want, which infuriates the orc once he realizes what just happened.

Intimidation is just a more, aggressive, form of persuasion. But like persuasion it can take many forms, it might be a threat of violence, whether that's raw muscle, a dagger against their throat, or plain old using magic to turn them inside out, but the threat could be more social, using Blackmail to coerce someone is threatening their social status and may affect their livelihood. Sometimes Intimidation can be very subtle.

In my table we play with a variant skill system, containing only five "skills": Lore, Survival, Perception, Stealth, and Manipulation/Influence. Other roles just use the regular abilities (Strength, Dexterity...) each character is proficient in one "skill" which we call their "Specialty". So far been great. All the skills see pretty equal use, and are very straight forward.

As a player I love using insight not as a "lie detector", but something more of a "reading body language". Like if we encounter a group of travellers, I'm asking questions like "Are they eyeing our purses?" "Do they keep their hands close to their weapons?", just less of an "do they lie" and more of a "what might be their next physical move". As a GM I describe it in a fairly similar way, let's say someone's insighting a tavern keeper and I would say "They seem to be looking at you with no outright hostility, but you notice their eyes wander off to the axe hanging on the wall about five feet away from them. If you cross the line, they seem to be ready to grab it"

At our table, we've had Medicine crop up a fair few times in 5e* (possibly because our main 5e DM is an actual doctor), but in fairness, it's usually a "you don't have any potions on you, and the magical healer is out of spell slots". Not always- there was a police procedural they ran where it was used for autopsies, and a few where it was part of the process for crafting/fitting a prosthesis (usually magical), and on one memorable occasion when the pregnant NPC we were escorting went into labour. It's also one of those ones where we might roll Medicine to make sure that bones are aligned properly prior to casting a healing spell (I've played with DMs who take the view that magic is great for speeding up healing, but a bone out of place might well 'heal' twisted, and need a Restoration spell to fix the ensuing constant 'low-grade' pain and lack of mobility). Probably still not enough to move it into S or A tiers, but I'd still argue it should be a high C/low B, if only because it gives a backstop for near the ends of dungeons, when your magical resources are low and you've used your potions. Religion, I definitely think you've done dirty. Or at least, you've responded to how many tables have done it dirty. Put it this way, if the gods are real, and do take an active hand in your world (and between curses, empowering clerics/paladins, granting boons, despatching celestials as messengers, etc. it's a fair bet they are still taking a hand), someone living in that world is going to want to stay in the gods' good books (or at least, off their sh!t list). Religion isn't just remembering the stories, or the tenets of faith, it's the skill you'd use to try and please the gods. It's not just a knowledge skill, it's a social skill, especially since the majority of D&D settings have entire pantheons of gods getting up to shenanigans of their own that you're going to want to keep straight. You don't want to find out that you've accidentally pissed off a deity by entering their temple wearing a symbol of a rival deity, or you've called on a god of the harvest to bless your voyage because you got them mixed up with a god of the sea. Again, this isn't going to be a universal experience, but Religion checks have come up pretty often in our campaigns. Usually in the context of coming across holy sites while adventuring and making sure we don't annoy the deity they are sacred to (hilariously, most of the party have been from other continents, with different pantheons, so our DC for the check has been higher than those characters that are locals, and thus familiar- and it's almost always been the local that failed the check. Our Egyptian-themed ranger has been cursed by Anubis and Bastet for misbehaving in shrines on 5 separate occasions so far, while my western-greek-themed warlock has avoided all of the potential faux pas). *The skill gets more use in the other games systems we're currently playing, but those are somewhat besides the point.

Honestly, the skill system of 5e really rises or falls on the DM's ability to determine how skills should be used and in what contexts. I've used history as a memory check, and in that sense, it's actually pretty useful. Kelly's idea of intimidation is unnecessarily limited. You can be intimidated by someone's very presence when they walk into a room, without them ever threatening physical violence towards you. Intimidation can involve blackmail and other forms of social intrigue. Animal handling can be used to train animals to obey non-verbal commands (think wild-shaped Moon druid using 3 consecutive bear grunts to instruct his wolf companion to attack). Pretty much every skill in 5e has its place and niche areas of usefulness.

I find that DMs often incorrectly use acrobatics and athletics interchangeably. Athletics is running, jumping, throwing, pretty much anything that happens during a football game. Acrobatics is body control and balance. Jumping distance and height is 100% athletics. Whether or not you make the jump is athletics. Whether not you are able to do so gracefully and avoid a trap on the other side of the gap is acrobatics. DMs often just let people use acrobatics when athletics should apply because DEX is a more common stat people put points in, and they want to throw their players a bone.

Intimidation for me doesn’t just encapsulate threat but also just the application of a commanding presence. Most good parents know you don’t need to hit your kid get them to toe the line. And a veiled threat is still a threat, if the mob implies that you shouldn’t do something they aren’t trying to persuade you not to do it, it’s a command with less culpability, a wielding of presence instead of words for intimidation. When the teacher gives the student the death stare and they shut up, no words spoken between the two, no threat of iss, nothing… that’s still a successful intimidation check imo

I think you guys miss something really important with Intimidation: that long-term effect can be a boon. A skill like Deception might need to be reused on the same person every time you wanna sneak a lie past them. But if you make an NPC comply out of fear for their life, then come back a week later and ask for the same thing? That first Intimidation check probably still applies. And, of course, as others said, there are many more ways to be intimidating than "do this or I'll kill you". One of my favorite from a player of mine recently was telling an NPC, "Yeah, we're the ones who killed your mom for being evil. Now please stop upsetting us."

Str based intimidation counterargument for Monty: It still seems worth it to comply with the big scary person even if you don't believe that they won't hurt you. Unless you've got a viable course of resistance or escape, the miniscule chance that complying will keep you safe is better than nothing.

I'm calling it right now that Perception, Persuasion and Stealth are the S tiers.

11:32 I should note, that another boon to Arcana is being able to write a Spell Scroll of your own spell that you can then hand to the party wizard. This is very useful in optimized tables.

The discussion on History in terms of how reliable it is made me think of advice I give as a Lawyer, which is, 1. "There's always a gap between what actually happened and what you can prove," and 2. "I always assume my client is telling the truth as they know/believe it, but I rarely, if ever, have a case get better once I've heard from the other side," and 3. My old prosecutor boss used to say, "Cases are not like fine wine, they don't get better with age." That being said, they didn't even touch on the fact that the PHB suggests using the skill as magic item identification.

medicine is literally one of the only skills that does have a specific use in combat: stabilizing downed teammates

I usually completely agree with the Dudes on most things, however, I've found myself, especially in regards to deception, persuasion, intimidation, and performance, completely disagreeing with their explanations for each skill. For me, Persuasion is the ability to convince someone that the topic or action you want them to do is right or correct. Deception is the ability to convince someone of a falsehood. Intimidation is the ability through fear to push someone to do something you want them to. Performance is much more complicated. Example, someone could be a master at the piano but have stage fright and be unable to perform in front of others. The tool skill is the playing the piano. The performance is the ability to use that tool to evoke a specific response. So, an acting performance is literally convincing someone that you are someone who you aren't. The difference I see between deception and performance is that when you're deceiving someone you're specifically trying to convince someone of a particular falsehood, and performance is trying to convince someone that you're the earl of buckingham when you're not. Now there's nothing to say that you can't use either skill for the same ends, its just how you go about it that determines the skill.

A note regarding Perception, even if it wasn't overused, it would still be S-tier if the DM runs the Surprise rules as written, because Surprise is not supposed to be pass/fail for the entire party, but one where some combatants can be surprised while others notice the ambush just in time to avoid surprise, but not soon enough to warn everyone else.

Ultimately, the most important skills are the ones your DM ranks the highest.

My method of making Sleight of Hand better is decoupling it from Stealth. If you're trying to hide your whole body and not be seen at all, roll Stealth. If you're visible but trying to do something secretively, roll Sleight of Hand.

Intimidation is also Presence, invoking fear and sometimes with no words. Just a change of grip on your sword or a lean forward etc

You don't need to believe someone will let you live to be intimidated. Anyone holds a pistol in my face, i'll be intimidated regardless of how much i think compliance will help & even if i thought i wasn't gonna make it, i'd still do what i was told in the hopes i'd be ok. Intimidation : frighten or overawe (someone), especially in order to make them do what one wants. You can succeed an intimidation & not get valuable information ( that's where something like insight is combo'd with it. ) but they have still been intimidated. Most common use : "I make myself look scary, to try & make the X run away/yield/panic"

As a DM, I actually always try to make skill do something if somebody takes them and tend to really spread skill checks, utilising all of them. I write different quests where different types of skills might do the trick and can't be substituted with another skill or a spell. Also, in my games Insight is one of the most important skills. It lets you understand the emotional state of a person, or what kind of personality they have and how to approach them, and my games are usually pretty psychological so it's important to make the right decisions.

I mostly agree with the rankings. Intimidation is one I would bump up to B because I never regret having it and I frequently regret not having it. Religion I would bump down to D as it so rarely comes up.

For intimidation, watch The Blacklist. Raymond Reddington as a character is a masterclass on the skill. He comes into a room and talks about tea. All the while, his opponent is about to have a massive coronary as they realize they are dealing with the "Concierge of Crime." He's also convincing that he will deliver on their ability to get out of the bad position he's putting them in.

For me intimidation is the Princess Bride "Fezzik, tear his arms off" "Oh you mean this key." they're using Fezzik's brawn to intimidate, but Inigo is making the threat

I don't really think Intimidation is that one-dimensional, it's more that I find that people are willing to bring up deception and persuasion more, often in its place. I actually think a fair few skills has this issue that it's just kind of handwaved not having to use it, like with animal handling, and that's the only reason it's lower use. Sometimes that's just our fault as gamers in the system, I think. I agree about History in that it's almost too broad and simply hard to always follow or make use of though.

For Intimidation, it's actually more variable, imho. Threat of torture is just basic. Blackmail is more interesting, as well as actual sanctions. "If you don't bow to your new king, you'll starve - we hold the grain produce and your sea-trade routes," - is clearly a direct threat. "If we don't get promised reward, everyone will know not to deal with you, and your reputation will be ruined so much no gold will ever repair it." Not every player is capable of dishing it out efficiently, as not many people are good at this in life 😂

May I share a thought, I think intimidation has more application then just, “believing you won’t die if you do as they say.” If you’ve ever gone to a biker bar or a metal concert. You’ll look at a guy and be like “ I don’t want to mess with him”. Or been around a decorated soldier with experience, I think of Jocko Willink, looks imposing / intimidating and demands your respect. A check could be, do you look tough, do you look distinguished / impressive enough to pass as the noble or soldier or bodyguard you say you are. Another example I think of is Grog from CR. At times he’s a goof, and every way Travis acts or present his character (either from what he says or describes what his character is wearing) in key points comes off not intimidating. But other times he’s acting rough, tough or mean. And either says or does things that are imposing. So I think of intimidation as more then just the verbal threat of harm, but the passive threat via looks, or the idea that some deserves honor or respect. The persons looks or knowledge of the persons accomplishments or what the person says, make you go “woe, I’d get schooled by them if I tried to best them.” Which that could have applications to more then just fighting or threat to bodily harm. It could go into things like a player is about to play a card or dice game, participate in a race, or hit a target with an arrow that’s difficult to hit (like Robin hood does or like the girl from the Disney movie Brave). Just food for thought to inspire creative uses of intimidation in DnD 5e.

Also, don't forget that proficiency in arcana allows you to make spell scrolls!

I think with the intimidation skill they are missing that intimidation is not always on purpose. You could have a player use and intimidation check if they say some thing that made intimidate someone it doesn’t just have to be threat

Strength based intimidation makes just as much sense as Charisma based. If you were on a walk and saw a cute dog you wanted to pet. Then the dog shows its teeth and growls, and it intimidates you causing you to fear it and run away. It didnt have to demand anything to change the way you wanted to react. Intimidating is about changing the way someone would act. Not necessarily about getting them to do a specific thing you want.

Oh yay! Something to watch while I catch up on work!

I treat history as a “Do I know the historical situation surrounding the local humans and the goblins” “I didn’t think it would be important to write this down before, but my character might remember” Or a “I forgot to buy X back in town, and it’s not something that we absolutely would have bought, can I retcon having bought it”

I disagree with your take on Intimidation. I AGREE that it's a C, but there are plenty of examples of intimidation in fiction that are not direct threats. The classic example would be from The Godfather part 2 when Michael is talking to Fredo about his betrayal and getting him to tell him about what he did. He didn't say "Tell me what you know or I'll kill you" But he was absolutely scary as hell BECAUSE you knew, and he knew, and Fredo knew that Michael had his life in his hands and that he was living on borrowed time. Not a single overt threat was made, but he was getting what he wanted, not be deceiving, not by persuading, but by being scary and making everyone near him do what he wanted BECAUSE they knew that being on his bad side is a REALLY bad move.

41:42 and Monty succeeds his Persuasion roll.

Dang, I was really surprised to see Medicine ranked so low on this list, but I guess it's really just a different strokes kinda thing; I called for some really pivotal medicine checks all the time in the last campaign I ran. It was definitely S-tier in our campaign. Healing, surgery, resetting bones, determining Time of Death, careful disection... there's a lot that falls under it. But I guess if it's an animal, I could just have them roll one of those all-too-common Animal Handling checks, instead.

In short the skill system of 5e is broken: Skills aren't equal, yet the system treats them as such.

25:43 “Do what I say… or… Im gonna… cut you with an ax?” He said, in the least intimidating possible way. Exact demonstration as to why Charisma is a key part of Intimidation.

There is plenty of examples of characters who are not physically imposing but are incredibly intimidating in movies and tv series alone. Like take Hans Landa from Inglorious Basterds for example, he is a small scrawny guy who never even raises his voice, and he is absolutely terrifying.

"Maybe this is a neurodivergent thing that we think deception is the most useful because we have to deceive everybody to think we're normal people" I feel so attacked but also so understood at the same time.

To supplement Monty's discussion of why pure physicality does not entail intimidation, Jayne from Firefly would be a great example. "Jayne, you only have to SCARE him." "Pain is scary!"

That banter over the 10 second rule was a wonderful example of how y’all are so great. I don’t even play D&D, but love watching you 2.

I do think you underrated athletics. It isn’t just for escaping grapples, but initiating them. There are builds that are incredibly useful/strong that are built around that skill.

I'd argue Arcana as S due to proficiency allowing spellcasters to craft scrolls. Being able to use your downtime to essentially make additional uses of spells like Revivify, Feather Fall, and Freedom of Movement, spells that are not usually going to come up a lot but you definitely want to have in your back pocket in case the need arises, is extremely valuable.

Wow. Very interesting. In our home games, History and Medicine are way up the list and Arcana and Insight are much lower. Maybe our other DM and I are just running the stuff very much differently... Was kinda suprised about this tier-list!

Intimidating Prowess was a 1st ed Pathfinder Feat that allowed you to add your Str bonus to Intimidate checks. So there is D&D precedent for throwing your muscle around to get your way.

An anecdote about intimidation: I was playing an Aasimar trying to get information from a young peasant at a church. He was clearly being evasive and I wanted to intimidate him so I unfurled my wings, raised off the ground and said, "Do not lie to me child!" My DM said, "I'm not going to even make you roll for it, this kid is terrified." So I've found that intimidation is more of a player skill and less of a character skill.

To make acrobatics more useful, i like to allow falling characters to make an acrobatics check with a DC equal to the number of feet they fell, with a success still taking fall damage, but not being knocked prone.

I would put athletics into A tier since it can be a considerable element to strength based martials. Maintaining a grapple is one of the few ways martials can force an opponent to focus on them, and can also combo with frighten effects to lock an enemy down if you shove them prone. It’s a skill that can benefit considerably from expertise, imo.

Great topic guys!!! Thank you so much for the awesome content.

I think this is a great video, love to hear your takes on the skills. How I normally run my skills is similar to the “shoot arrows at your monks” mindset. Depending on which skills my PCs are proficient in, I will try and set up things so that they can use their skills and feel comfortable in them instead of everyone using the same ones time and time again. I just had a bard, trying to sneak past a dragon, behead a kobold (lol) and wear his armor and head as a disguise and made it as a performance check - this could’ve easily been deception but it seemed more like “acting” to me

Tool proficiencies are the ones that are seldom used outside of thieves' tools or tinker's tools, or whatever the artificer is using. I mean, we even have groups with non-rogues taking thieves tools. When do leatherworking tools come to use in the middle of a dungeon or while traveling?

Form of Dread had the right of it when they said "5E has six skills: Grapple(Athletics), Escape Grapple(Acrobatics), Benefit From Pass without trace(Stealth), Make Scrolls(Arcana), Don’t Be Surprised(Perception) and DM Fiat(The others)". Yes, a good DM can and should make every skill useful enough to be worth picking up, but by RAW only five have any real mechanical effect of guaranteed value, and everything else is a matter of "mother may I"ing or otherwise convincing the DM into doing what you want until you hit their limit and they make you roll. It's not even that every skill needs to have defined mechanical effects. The freedom of a more freeform skill system has real advantages and appeal. But the fact that 5e is so inconsistent and half-baked in its skill design is a very real problem and incentivises degenerate behaviours like the aforementioned "mother may I-ing" precisely because there is no standardized expectation for how the game treats skills. My issues with 5e and the weird expectations it places on DMs aside, what this really means is that only Athletics, Acrobatics, Arcana, Stealth, and Perception are by definition of the rubric in use capable of being A or S tier (and indeed they all are, with Arcana and Acrobatics being A and Athletics, Perception, and Stealth being S (though as optimization level and the proportion of the party who is spellcasters increases, Arcana becomes S, and similarly as summoned minions become more prevalent Athletics drops to A)). The others are B tier at the absolute best, with their actual tiers in practice being rather campaign-dependent (with Deception and Persuasion by far being the strongest B tier candidates).

I love the discussions that these kinds of videos have. I could listen to a whole video of examples of how different skills are used.

Great video. I've heard some of your advice on how to run certain skills before but this is a good compilation of that information.

Perception - I Feel a Draft. Investigation - Finding where the draft is coming from (Secret Door)

My only issue is intimidation, i would rank that at least B or low A. And the reason why is some people are just not nice people and they just hate you purely for "because i can". There's also people who won't budge because either they are super loyal and will follow their orders no matter what or sometimes people are super scared of something else and no matter how much you reassure them they can't get over that fear. Think the carrot and the stick, the carrot is saying what you needs to say either by lying or convincing peacefully to do X thing. Intimidation is the stick where all else fails, do X or Y will happen, guard move out of the way or my group and I will make you move. Scared citizen, i know the baron ordered you to be quite about X thing but if you don't tell me what i need to know i will feed you to my bear right this second. Warlord of raiding tribe, the king who sent us doesn't wish blood, but if you don't stop your raids he will bring his army down upon you. Sometimes intimidation is the only way forward in certain situations. O also sometimes people of power or strength hate silver tongue individuals and respect those who have the guts to make demands to you of all people. Sometimes that will earn people their respect by showing you are no push over and will fight for what you want and they can relate to that.

I think that one of my biggest gripes with the skill system aside from acrobatics/athletics is the splitting of nature based skills into animal handling, nature, and survival, when most relrvant concepts will want all three but the limited scope of each ends up creating weird deficiencies where you cant take them all.

I really like the way these vids help us get to know you guys and the way you see the world and your views and experiences. It really goes to show how games can have deep meaning and learning value and it reminds us that the people you play games with are the most important parts of games and learning experiences in general.

An alternate way to use history checks is if your player forgot to take notes of something they did and want the DM to be nice enough to remind them lol

What? Acrobatics is objectively worse than Athletics. You can't build a Character around Acrobatics. You can build an amazing Character around Athletics. Grapple, Push and pull builds are super strong.

I Think Arcana is easily an S Pick for every Full Caster just because so they can make spell scrolls... E.g.: the wizard/pact of chain warlock giving everyone a find familiar spell scroll..... Or the other way around: every other spellcaster giving the wizard permanent acces to the best non-wizard spells (esp. cleric spells)

My DM always makes us explain our line of reasoning on why we would be rolling an insight check. Something like "This kid has changed his story multiple times and is acting very shifty, so I'm watching him closely to try and figure out exactly what he's lying about to catch him in a lie." Or "This guy's personality has changed multiple times right in front of us, is this guy possessed?" I haven't played Pathfinder 2e but I really do like how in Pathfinder 1e there's ways in combat to use skills like intimidation. Cornugon Smash is one that comes to mind. When you do damage with a power attack you get to make a free intimidate check against them to slap them with the Shaken condition, which gives them a -2 on attack rolls, weapon damage rolls, saving throws, ability checks and skill checks. Or dreadful carnage which does the same thing to every enemy within 30 feet whenever you reduce something to 0 hit points. And of course there's Intimidating Prowess which lets you add your Strength score to Intimidate checks. Point is, it is very possible to make a system that lets you use skills in tangible ways in and out of combat and 5e should have implemented that.

In favor of history, I have been at SO many tables where if you’re trying to recall something as your character, such as the name of noble you met 30 sessions ago, the DM calls for a history check and if you fail you just don’t remember. History has basically functioned as an alternative to taking notes for those players that refuse to take them, and while I don’t think that’s the purpose of the History skill, it’s how I’ve seen it be implemented several times.

Top 10 skills in DnD: 10. It 9. Depends 8. On 7. How 6. Your 5. DM 4. Plays 3. The 2. Game 1. Perception

I really like the idea about locking the bonds, fears, traits etc behind insight DCs

At 26:50 ish, when talking about intimidation and actually holding up the 'bargain' if they comply- if you were planning on still killing them if they didn't push the button then that sounds like deception. Definitely with Kelly on that one.

Your dim view of Intimidation comes from your very narrow idea of what intimidation means. “You’ll never work in this town again” is intimidation. You can indirectly intimidate somebody ; the Chinese call it “borrowing the tiger’s terror”. Your notion that people assume a person with a high STR score “will beat them up anyway” is silly.

On the topic of adding flaws, ideals, and bonds to creature stat blocks, Storm King's Thunder did that with most of its humanoid NPCs. An example being Zi Liang on page 251, and to quote directly; Roleplaying Information. Zi Liang is a devout worshiper of Chauntea, the Earth Mother. She has considerably less faith in Goldenfields' defenders, so she patrols the temple-farm during her off-duty hours. Ideal: "If we faithfully tend to our gardens and our fields, Chauntea will smile upon us." Bond: "Goldenfields is the breadbasket of the North. People depend on its safety and prosperity, and I'll do what must be done to protect it." Flaw: "I don't trust authority. I do what my heart says is right."

In the game I run intimidation can be used in place of persuasion if the team can give me a good reason. It has occasionally been the threat of physical violence, but more often just being mysterious, or casually bringing up that they're friends with the mayor, or pulling rank by knowing info about the city guard leadership, or leveraging your cult leader status have all been reasons I've allowed players to use intimidation instead of persuasion. Just different dm styles, but I think worth considering.

I like the idea of Intimidation being used as a pseudo - Authority Check. A way to exert your presense. Make others accept your presense or words because they don't dare question. Not necessarily scare them, but to accept their position in the hierarchy, beneath you. You aren't trying to persuade them, you are making them avoid questioning.

The "passive" skills you mention at the end make me think the 3.5e checks for will, reflexes and such. I liked that system.

I freaking love this video. I've wanted this for years!

The other thing with Acrobatics is that in a lot of situations where you think it would come into play, they're resolved through Dexterity saving throws instead.

Are "Skills" really necessary? Can all the skill rolls be replaced with ability rolls and dc manipulation? All of the knowledge skills blend together like a Venn diagram and that's over half the skills. 3 of the 4 charisma skills are nearly interchangeable and performance of an instrument should be dexterity anyway. It doesn't matter how charismatic someone is, if they suck at playing the triangle they're out of the band. That's 14 out of 18 skills. Ability checks already exist and are different from ability saves. "I want to get past that guard." "How?" "I want to list all the reasons this is a dead-end job so they quit and walk away." "Okay, Intelligence roll." "No wait, I want to have a flex off with them until they are humiliated and leave." "Riiiight, Strength or Charisma roll. Your choice." TL:DR - Any roll that can be contested gets it's own modifier. That leaves Athletics and Stealth (sometimes). Anything else is an ability roll.

I once took Medicine proficiency because I was the only healer, and I was also the tank, and support. In Curse of Strahd. I took it so I could use first aid and potions cleverly so I could top off our party without utilizing spell slots so we could keep going without using my spell slots, especially early on. It did come up a few times, when combined with magical healing, it got us up to full when we otherwise would not have been. So, in a survival based campaign or a combat heavy campaign, you can be like, "Okay, first aid. Do this, heal up, and top off with magic, I don't need to waste six spell slots and two potions to get everyone to full, I can use four and still have two spell slots and the potions left!"

Love it! Intimidation I find to be a great skill in hierarchies, evil campaigns, and heists. It would be fun to think about these skills and checks from the perspective of the monsters

"You should do what I want or I'll speak to your manager" -> Charisma (Intimidation)

This gives insight into who you both are as GMs. Many GMs would rate these skills differently. Bullies intimidate. I met many such people in my life, who get what that want.

I think it would be really cool to hear you guys talk about revising the skill system that save the problems you brought up.

Really been on a kick with these guys lately. Great content

What they are taking about re: acrobatics and circus acts or parkour: then ask for a strength(acrobatics) check. That flexibility is built into the rules. So a rogue with a 10 strength but expertise in acrobatics would still rock those checks, but not quite as well as dexterity (acrobatics)

Animal Handling is how you pet the cats, dogs, baby dragons, owlbear cubs, etc. That's an S-tier skill.