Without the Dungeon Master's Guide, this does feel like a vain effort, but it might be a worthy thought experiment. I hope it is!
In another time and place, I'd take the time to comb through the Player's Handbook to examine every single class- or race-specific option. For now, I'm just going to use the experiences of my players in the Lost Mine of Phandelver Starter Set.
The big categories of non-combat experiences in Dungeons and Dragons take the form of NPC encounters (as opposed to "monster encounters"), exploration/interaction, and downtime.
NPC encounters are those kinds of event which usually involve roleplaying: diplomacy, bluffing/deceit, persuasion, and occasionally awkward or unusual communication. Exploration and interaction are (in brief) all the things a Bard might do in a dungeon besides fight: skill checks of many kinds, for a variety of reasons; among them would be looking for traps/loot/enemies, tracking down clues and putting them together to form conclusions, moving around a space in any way other than walking across a dry flat surface, pickpocketing, sneaking, recalling knowledge, bandaging wounds, controlling animals, perceiving something hidden (in another person), surviving in a difficult environment, or (of course) participating in a performance. Downtime activities are nothing new to D&D, but they are somewhat new to the players' side of the screen. They include all of the activities a character might participate in "off-stage" or between the stages of a campaign. (Use your imagination: hobbies, research, relationships, construction, travel, etc.!)
NPC encounters and exploration/interaction are both handled (in rules-terms) through the skills mechanic. I could probably do an entire post just on how the skills have evolved over time, but I'm going to look at them through my own lens and (where appropriate) relate them back to 3e--the skill beast.
1) NPC encounters have been reduced to Deceive or Persuade. You want to convince that ogre that you're really a dragon in disguise? Be my guest: deceive him. You want to convince him that he should part with his sack of loot in exchange for what you believe is a fair (if low) price? Be my guest: persuade him. In 3e, the skills of Bluff and Diplomacy often served the same functions, but I like the elegance of the 5e system. Where Bluff was generally for short, simple deceptions, you also had Disguise for more elaborate ones, and Diplomacy itself could be used to lie in certain situations. Basically, Diplomacy was a morally ambiguous skill: both thieves and judges would need to take a few ranks in it to be savvy in their respective dealings with the law. In 5e, this is much clearer: acting in good faith? Use Persuade. Purposefully deceiving someone? Deceive is for you. Simple, clean, and uncluttered by a multitude of "sub-skills." (As a side note, Insight and Intimidation function much the same as they have in previous editions.)
2) Exploration and interaction skills compose the entire rest of the set. In general, 5e follows the same idea of "skill condensing" that 4e did. A few key notes:
Athletics and Acrobatics form a binary relationship. Does your task require strength, power, or strength-conditioning? It's an Athletics check: swimming, climbing, breaking, etc. Does your task require dexterity, agility, or balance-conditioning? It's an Acrobatics check: balancing, dodging, and maneuvering are all Acrobatics. Whatever physical ordeal your character faces, it should be a binary choice of skill.
Another interesting feature of 5e is the change from Spot, Listen, and Search to Perception and Investigation. At first blush, it looked as though Spot/Listen formed a perfect analogue with Perception, while Investigation would be the counterpart to Search. This is not the case. Perception is used for Spot(ting) and Listen(ing), but it is also used for Search(ing). Investigation is an entirely new idea: the designers wanted a metric for problem-solving (with clues), for putting clues together to form a conclusion, or to recognize the clues that are in plain sight. I like this dynamic because it creates a situation where a character who is tremendously good at seeing the strange symbols on the walls will not always be the same character who makes sense of them.
3) Finally, the "new guy" in the Player's Handbook: Downtime. In a section titled "Between Adventures" there are several suggestions for how a character might spend his/her downtime. Some options are fluffy rather than stat-oriented, but all of them have a real effect: your character has a place to go when he/she is not adventuring, and is able to continue to develop as a sentient being while not crawling around in dungeons: crafting, working, healing, researching, and learning are all presented as reasonable and valuable options.
I must admit, I cannot remember the last time that I have given characters "downtime." Usually, characters were rushed from one last-minute-save-the-world-scenario to another, with the one notable exception of going to large cities to shop for new toys. I rather look forward to giving characters downtime in the future, although I don't know if these rules were in place when the current campaign path was being drafted; it seems unlikely given the subject matter that there will be an ample amount of downtime in Tyranny of Dragons. One thing downtime would allow is a place for characters to invest their hard-won gold since they won't be buying up magic items with it.
Final verdict on the new take on skills is that it seems to combine the best of both worlds. Characters still have a variety of useful skills, and they routinely (but not often) get better at them via their proficiency bonuses. Skills are mostly intuitive and every character is proficient in a variety of them; bounded accuracy ensures that even the least perceptive character should still feel useful making Perception checks to search a room or look for danger. Characters have options to participate in the world right from the get go that don't always have to involve adventuring, and their options that do involve adventuring don't always have to involve combat.
It's a well-rounded system. I look forward to seeing how it plays out as characters reach higher and higher tiers of play.
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