No More Skills...

...at least, not in the core rules. The largest and arguably the most controversial change in the latest playtest packet is the removal of skills. Backgrounds no longer provide you with a selection of skills; now, as part of your background, you gain two fields of lore (cultural lore, religious lore, etc.), which use Intelligence as the relevant ability score for the check. When you make an Intelligence check that would fall under one of your fields of lore, you gain a whopping +10 to the roll. What happened to all of the non-knowledge skills like spot, listen, perform, and persuade? You can still attempt all of these actions, but they are now firmly rooted in ability checks (Wisdom for spot, Charisma for persuade, etc.) that may receive bonuses from character class features.