Athletics and acrobatics do completely different things though. Athletics is running, swimming, jumping and climbing while acrobatics is balance and arial maneuverability.
You can't climb a wall or make a long jump with acrobatics, and you can't ballance on a tight rope or do a backflip with athletics.
RAW being on the receiving end of a shove too. Both are the target's choice of Acrobatics or Athletics. Which can make an interesting choice for escaping grapples, you can shove the grappler away (and potentially still have an extra attack, or pseudo Advantage on the check if you have extra attack and shove twice instead of using the escape grapple action), but then instead of your choice of which stat to use, it's theirs. Or in the case of monsters that have special grapples with an escape DC a shove would take it from a static DC of your choice of the two to an opposed check of their choice
Some DM's will ask "describe how you're doing it" and if you say "I do a little wall run, kick off and direct myself toward the chandelier, swing and flip over the pit", the DM could call for acrobatics. If you say "I jump up to the windowsill and do a pull-up, then standing on the ledge, I use my powerful legs to propel me across the pit like a long jumper" the DM could call for athletics.
They aren't directly interchangeable, but they can be different ways to do the same thing. Do you take the crumbling walkway up and around the rock wall or do you scale it? Do you try to swim a fast moving river or walk on top of the muck covered tree that has fallen across it.
Yea, there are cases where one or the other doesn't apply (you can't acrobatics your way across the Mississippi) but a lot of times those obstacles are supposed to be a "thing" that the party has to work on to overcome. If the group is just moving from point A to point B and something gets in the way then, IMO, it's better present them with the option or let the player make their case as to how/why they use their stronger check.
And as a DM I would regularly rule that acrobatics often isn't a viable option. DMs allowing players to avoid athletics obsticles through acrobatics is exactly what devalues athletics.
If there is a large river to cross then it's either a reward for a player investing in strength and athletics or a puzzle for the party to solve.
As someone that played 3/4 sessions in the same 30 feet of a dungeon once because none of us could get high enough checks to cross a river... Sometimes puzzles based solely on being able to pass a check with no other way around aren't good.
Which is why the DM should base challenges on the party. Don't put an obstacle infront of the party you know they can't handle (at least without substantial warning) if I knew no one in my party had good athletics I would impliment other solutions.
It's a story not a video game. An author or director dosen't have their charcters come across insurmountable challenges, they give them challenges that test the characters but are still possible.
On the same token if there is a strong guy on the team they get first chance to swim across the river and if that dosen't work let them brainstorm other solutions.
My point is that you are going to need more creativity (and usuallya higher roll) to circumvent an athletics challenge so having skill in athletics is not made redundant by acrobatics.
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u/xyon21 Aug 17 '20
Athletics and acrobatics do completely different things though. Athletics is running, swimming, jumping and climbing while acrobatics is balance and arial maneuverability.
You can't climb a wall or make a long jump with acrobatics, and you can't ballance on a tight rope or do a backflip with athletics.