A perennial conversation within the D&D community is on the necessity and worth of various Skill Systems (apart from the PC's skills at melee combat and spellcasting). I think this quote from Dragonsfoot (third post down) is mandatory reading for anyone who has an opinion on the matter:
I am firmly in the camp that D&D does not need a skill system. As mentioned before, the DM can adjudicate a fair outcome for any action the PC takes even if it is not specifically covered under the class skills. The tools are already there, (attribute checks, saving throws, "to hit" rolls, common sense, etc...) and because there are infinite possibilities for players to try different things under a variety of circumstances, you will need to use those tools in many cases regardless of the presence of a skill system. Any class/skill system only gets you so far. They simplify the common mechanics, acting as a baseline for resolving many of the actions that are likely to take place in the game. They are are not designed to be an all encompassing umbrella for every single possible action a player takes, nor should they be. The game will often step outside the box of class or skills and there the DM is free to use creativity to resolve the action in a fair and fun manner. What skill should there be for kicking a table on its side for cover in a barroom brawl? or swinging down from the balcony on a tapestry into a knotted melee below? or rigging some pans on a wire to a door as an alarm against entry? or snatching a pack from a rushing river before it is swept away over a waterfall?
Emphasis added.
Anyone who wants to design a Skill System for D&D must first ask themselves: what in-game world-vs.-PC interractions am I trying to describe? What sub-game is this rule designed for? Is it supposed to function at the role play level? Within the combat engine? Am I introducing a new sub-game? Will everyone be able to participate in this game as fully as they do in role playing and combat? Etc.
D&D is a free form game where the player characters can go anywhere and do anything, to the limits of their resources and abilities. There is no possible way you can develop a simple, short and easy to implement skill system that can address all possible scenarios (which is why univeral mechanics are stupid). Or did you think saving vs. paralysis is really that similar to managing a banana plantation? The best system I have seen for addressing "everything else" is AD&D 2E's Non-Weapon Proficiency system (a.k.a., Secondary Skills in rule sets written by E. Gary Gygax), but precisely because it's really just a soft gloss on "other stuff PCs know" that is heavily dependent on DM adjudication. It's no combat engine.
However, that being said, while the AD&D 3.x Skill System was a step down from Non-Weapon Proficiencies in design quality (it was a gory mess bleeding across multiple sub-games), the AD&D 4E system was an improvement from there (even if it was a huge change in direction from the OD&D through AD&D 2E era). The designers of 4E realized that dungeon, wilderness and urban adventuring could be rule-mediated sub-games apart from roleplaying. The Skills thus defined how players interacted with these scenarios, and most of the bases were covered. This was the logic of the Thief Skills and the Ranger's tracking ability generalized to all classes.
But even 4E does not have a single "skill system" which mediates all player interraction with the world. Fighters and Barbarians can "open locks" with their war hammer, and a Wizard with a Knock spell. Further there are skills quite outside the skill system, such as the Wizard's ability to scribe scrolls (a rule descended all the way from Holmes Basic D&D). And there are many more, in the sense that the characters have a "skill" that allows them to accomplish an in-game effect.
D&D doesn't, and never had, a skill system. It has many, and as long as D&D is a roleplaying game, where players can attempt any action within their resources and abilties, that will always be the case.
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