I was making a human (variant) character, and I didn't knew what skill proficiency I could give them. I was wondering if I could give them proficiency in initiative.
Since the Jack Of All Trades bard feature allows them to add half of their proficiency bonus to initiative, could a variant human take proficiency in initiative?
Best Answer
You cannot do this. Initiative is not a skill; Jack of All Trades just applies to all ability checks.
The section on "Skills" lists out all the skills:
Note that nowhere in this list is "initiative" listed as a skill. Instead, the "Initiative" section states:
Rolling for initiative is a raw Dexterity check, with no associated skill. The Bard's Jack of All Trades feature states:
This feature applies to any and all ability checks, not just ones that are associated with skills, which is why it can benefit initiative rolls despite them not being a "skill check".
This means that you could not select initiative as one of your proficiencies because initiative is not itself a skill.