Skills Kill the Game

Where 5E completely loses me is in the lack of structure and a gameplay loop. You can see the character-first focus of the game, and then there is nothing else to it, except combat. The entire game exists for a weak narrative structure to be thrown over combat encounters, which is exactly what a D&D 4E adventure did.

Exploration is non-existent, and there isn't even a defined structure for the activity. The overland travel procedure is gone. The skill system does too much work, which is a sign of a designer who wants to lazily overload the game's "system mechanics" onto a skill system and call it a day.

You saw this design from D&D 3 and on, the skill-heavy theory of game design, where a massive skill system replaces the need for any other part of the game to have procedure and flow. You will see entire subsystems hidden in a skill description, such as jumping or climbing. While they reduced the number of skills in D&D 4 and 5, they did not reduce the importance.

You will often hear a player blurt out "I roll perception!" before it is even called for, some habit they developed, trained by the skill system, to roll that skill every time they enter a room.

It is really dumb.

What are you looking for again? What are you even doing? They treat the skills like a phone, holding it to their eyes so they don't have to think, consider the environment, or be careful. Nope. The skill somehow magically does all that. The skill system in 5E is an easy mode for auto-play.

Even the act of "failing" just means the next person in the party does it to ensure success. You can't get away with a failure state since the failed skill check waterfalls all the way through the party as "everyone tries it" since "they magically know the other person failed."

Back in the day, we called that metagaming, the taboo practice of acting on information your character does not know.

How do you know the other person failed a perception check? Ideally, this is a secret roll, but if the player rolls the die and rolls low, everyone else will jump in to ensure a roll above a 15. "I look too!"

In BX, it is player skill.

I search behind the curtains, using my spear or 10' pole.

No roll needed, you see the yellow mold on there without triggering it, and the secret door it clings to.

We burn it with our torches and cover our mouths, with everyone backing off as it burns. We go through the area with our mouths still covered.

That will force a wandering monster check due to the smoke, but it is dead and defeated. You are not affected. It also takes a turn for all of it to happen. Please mark your time tracker and check off your torch life by a turn.

There was no dice rolling in that entire sequence of events.

Sure, in BX, you can have profession or background skills, but those are just character flavor, with no "skill levels" or "mastery level," and they just are there if you want to use them. My dwarf is a blacksmith, so naturally, he knows how to do that, plus repair metal weapons and armor, and it is what it is. If there were a 14th-level character, he would naturally be crafting very fine and powerful weapons, but that is again a matter of a referee ruling and the player's course of action, materials, and facilities you have access to.

Could my dwarf craft a +1 warhammer?

What materials do you have? What type of forge do you have access to? Do you need a special runecrafting book? Do you need a mage to cast a ritual to enchant it, or bring it to a good dragon to bless the weapon? If the quest is epic or legendary enough, this may even rise to a +2 with a special property. No skill roll is needed. The dragon doesn't need to roll anything, either, when you get there, so get that out of your head.

This all happens within the context of the game and player action, adjudicated by the referee's common sense.

It just happens.

Why?

Just 'cause. That is how the fantasy novels did things. Read a few more of them to know.

We are not forcing the game through a 5E Play-Doh extruder press and a tiny hole that controls all action, and requiring the use of the dice for every action.

Where BX has elegance in design that comes from maturity in game design, 5E treats every problem as a nail and whacks it with a hammer. Modern game design replaces the need to use your brain with rolling the dice.

"I roll perception!"

You successfully see your character roll a d20. Everyone else does, too.

Now tell me what your character is looking at in the room, and what they are doing in the environment.

And put the dice down.