#Player's Guide - Skill Proficiencies from Subclasses

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

stable pier
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Book: Player’s Guide and any book with subclasses
Page: See below.
Question: What should we do if a level increase grants a subclass feature that gives the character a skill proficiency that they are already proficient in? Does the guidance from page 118 apply to subclasses or only to class, lineage, and heritage during initial character creation?

The Player’s Guide tells us how to handle duplicate proficiencies from the combination of class, lineage, and heritage during the initial character creation process from:
Player’s Guide – Pg. 118 - SKILL PROFICIENCIES
Each background gives you proficiency in two skills. If your character would already gain the same skill proficiency from their class, lineage, or heritage features, you can choose a different skill proficiency instead.

However, the Player’s Guide does not seem to address how to handle duplicate proficiencies from a subclass during character level up (at least not explicitly).

I’m hoping you can provide some clarity for what should be done if a character gains a proficiency through a subclass at 3rd, 5th, 11th, or 15th level that would duplicate a proficiency they already have. I see two options:

  1. Page 118’s entry above applies because a subclass is part of a class and therefore any subclass features that provide skill proficiencies already obtained would allow the player to choose a different skill proficiency of their choice instead.

OR

  1. The portion of the subclass feature granting the skill proficiency that would be doubled up is useless unless it is framed specifically to grant a different benefit. See my comment further down for a breakdown of the three ways features seem to phrased across ToV supplemental books. I am doubtful that this option is the correct one because part of the design principles behind ToV included making sure that every level up was meaningful and that there weren’t any “dead” levels.
maiden blaze
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I believe that there are already incidents where the subclass features say "You gain X skill, if you already have it, you may choose another skill instead."

rocky shuttle
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But does the fact that some features state that is how to handle it mean that it is specific to those features, and not a universal rule?

stable pier
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Basically, subclasses seem to fall into three general camps when granting skill proficiencies:

  1. "You gain proficiency in the [INSERT SKILL] skill. If you are already proficient, double your PB instead for [INSERT SKILL] checks."
  2. "You gain proficiency in the [INSERT SKILL] skill if you don’t already have it."
  3. "You gain proficiency in # of the following skills of your choice: [INSERT SKILL(s)]." OR "You gain proficiency in the [INSERT SKILL] skill."

It would be good to have some consensus on what is the intent behind the choices of framing them differently. One thing I've noticed is that it usually is consistent across the book or class which one of the three is being applied. So, it makes me wonder if it is actually an emergent design/editing issue, for example most of the subclasses that grant a skill proficiency in The Old Margreve seem to fall into Option 3 where they grant proficiency in a skill and don't really say what to do if you already have it. Whereas from Player's Guide to Book of Blades, the Barbarian usually falls into Option 1. Whereas Campaign Builders seem to mostly use Option 2, but that may be a carryover from being primarily written for 5e2014.

My question above is really about option 2 & 3.

maiden blaze
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I was pointing it out incase that feature needs to be ettrata'd

odd elm
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First off, if an entry states what to do if it would grant a skill proficiency and you already have that proficiency, follow those rules.

For the rest, it's going to be up to the GM to decide how they want to handle it. If you are the GM, we generally suggest to allow the player to pick a different skill.

And last, we are making a concentrated effort to phase out subclass features that just give you more proficiencies. So hopefully, this specific issue will get less common as time goes on and folks get more familiar with modern design trends.

maiden blaze
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I do like moving away from that, and it's something that KP has done more than WtoC and other 3rd parties. BOB being the exception

odd elm
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Yeah. It's one of those low hanging fruit kind of things, but we like to see more interesting options going forward.