phrasing of homebrew race trait for proficiency

I'm creating a homebrew race and I'm having difficulty getting the skill proficiency working correctly on a race trait

The trait phrasing "You are proficient in the Deception skill." works fine and when the character selects the race the correct proficiency is granted in the character sheet.

But, "You are proficient in the Insight and Deception skills." does not work and ends up placing a skill "Insight and Deception" on the character sheet.

How should I phrase it for both skills to be granted proficiency?

Races generally don’t have skills; those come from class and background. So I think you may be limited in the phrasing you can have for races, possibly just the one you have discovered. But try ‘you have proficiency in x and y’ or possibly ‘you gain proficiency in x and y’

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Originally Posted by pico

I'm creating a homebrew race and I'm having difficulty getting the skill proficiency working correctly on a race trait
The trait phrasing "You are proficient in the Deception skill." works fine and when the character selects the race the correct proficiency is granted in the character sheet.
But, "You are proficient in the Insight and Deception skills." does not work and ends up placing a skill "Insight and Deception" on the character sheet.
How should I phrase it for both skills to be granted proficiency?

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Add a comma before "and" should fix it.

Doing some testing with official races that get proficiencies:
The Vedalkin's (Ravnica) Tireless Precision does NOT WORK and it is worded "You are proficient in one of the following skills of your choice: Arcana, History, Investigation, Medicine, Performance, or Sleight of Hand."
The Minotaur (Ravnica) almost works, it at least generates the popup window but instead of choosing you have one option "Intimidation Persuasion" their Intimidating Presence is worded "You have proficiency in one of the following skills of your choice: Intimidation or Persuasion". This is the same issue you have. Notice the lack of comma.
The Centaur's (Ravnica) survivor trait does work and it is worded "you have proficiency in one of the following skills of your choice: Animal Handling, Medicine, Nature, and Survival."
The Kenku's Training (Volo) also works and it is worked "you are proficient in your choice of two of the following skills: Acrobatics, Deception, Stealth, and Sleight of Hand." Lizardfolk is the same. The orc uses "gains proficiency" but it works. All these have comma before "and".

Based on this, I think the vedalkin is broken because of "or" and yours is broken because of the comma same as the Minotaur.

Edit: if it still doesn't work, maybe copy the Kenku/Lizardfolk/Orc wording and give a choice of two out of three? Just guessing here.

When I posted above I was not at my computer so I wasn't able to check what I said. I have now been able to check and the best place I think to look at the wording is in the Unearthed Arcana module since there are many races in there that have skills and I think in all cases I managed to get the wording to enable the skills to automate.

So if you want two skills then as I noted above the wording is 'You have proficiency in the x and y skills'.

The wording does require precision and in GavinRuneblades examples above all of them can be made to work by slightly adjusting the wording. The Vedalkin is represented in Unearthed Arcana and it does work since I changed the wording to 'You are proficient in your choice of one of the following skills: x,y, and z'

The Minotaur can also work if the wording is changed to 'Intimidation, and Persuasion' instead of 'or'.

I've taken a note to review these when I get a chance and update them.

Thanks, that fixed the Class proficiency issue. Now I'm running into a similar issue in backgrounds which I would have thought was where these would work.

This works: Deception, plus your choice of one from among Investigation, Intimidation, and Persuasion (this syntax is from the SCAG Clan Crafter background)
This works: Choose two from among Deception, Insight, Persuasion, and Stealth

Does Not work: Deception, plus your choice of two from among Investigation, Intimidation, and Persuasion

Changing "and" to "or" makes no difference.

No, you can’t chain them like that. Backgrounds usually just give you two skills. The parser was specially updated fir SCAG because of the differences in wording employed. I think the parser is quite narrow for backgrounds. In any case the parser will stop after the first choice. Not sure if you might be able to split them and have two skill choices. Worth a try and all I can suggest. Other than not making things so complicated :)

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Originally Posted by pico

Thanks, that fixed the Class proficiency issue. Now I'm running into a similar issue in backgrounds which I would have thought was where these would work.

This works: Deception, plus your choice of one from among Investigation, Intimidation, and Persuasion (this syntax is from the SCAG Clan Crafter background)
This works: Choose two from among Deception, Insight, Persuasion, and Stealth

Does Not work: Deception, plus your choice of two from among Investigation, Intimidation, and Persuasion

Changing "and" to "or" makes no difference.

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What about "choose three from among deception, insight, persuasion, and stealth"? Is it going to break your background if people have a little more freedom? If yes (and I totally understand that it may be yes) then can you do the "choose two" as one background trait and get deception all by itself as a second trait?


I am just guessing, I don't know what is and is not possible.

Yeah, I can fudge things if absolutely necessary. I didn't write the home brew, just getting it working in FG, so I'm trying not to take too many liberties. In the end, I'm sure I'll have to change stuff and make a section of the reference manual to reflect them. But, I figured I'd attempt to do them as-written before giving up.

I really appreciate the feedback and assistance.