D&D 5E Reliable Talent. What the what?

I think the two of you are having two completely different conversations.

[MENTION=762]Mort[/MENTION]:The dungeon should have the same defenses and threats no matter who enters it, a 1st level fighting and a 20th level fight.

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]: 1st and 20th level character don't go in the same dungeons.

Mort said:

Maybe not from a narrative /story perspective, but from a game perspective that is exactly what it means. If a character needs a 8-11 to succeed at most tasks at level one and the same 8-11 to succeed at most tasks at level 20, then mechanically how much have things actually changed?

Many adventure paths are designed exactly like this, with the PCs on a DC treadmill - and it annoys me to no end. A level 20 PC should not be as challenged by most tasks as a level 1 PC. Most tasks should succeed in a much lower roll, or be auto successes. It makes the rolls where the PC has to roll average or high actually meaningful (not every lock a high level pc faces should be a specially designed multiphasic adamantium lock).

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I don’t think these two positions actually oppose each other.

As characters become more powerful, they do become less and less challenged by most tasks. As well, tasks that had previously been beyond their capabilities become as challenging for them as more common tasks used to be. A Rogue reaches the point where easy, normal, and even hard tasks are trivial for them. But very hard and nearly impossible tasks become plausible for them to succeed at; they eventually pose about the same amount of challenge as moderate and hard tasks did in their early adventuring days.

Now, the smart thing to do at that point might be to retire. And in fact, that’s what plenty of PCs do. Most campaigns end by somewhere around 11th level. But for those who want to continue playing with those characters, it becomes necessary to change the scale of the challenges they face. Games need challenge and stories need conflict, and you won’t get those things from locks you literally can’t fail to pick. So you change the scale of the conflict. These characters aren’t just delving into old ruins looking for treasure or protecting caravans from orc raiders any more. Now they’re traveling the planes and confronting Demi-Gods. I don’t really expect a lot of iron padlocks in Sigil.

Granted, this does mean that from a pure numbers perspective, the players are on a treadmill. But it does not mean that in the world the characters inhabit, increased competence attracts increased challenge. It just means th player-characters are the rare sort who constantly seek greater challenge. Where others would rest, satisfied in having attained such skill that nothing in the world challenges them, these heroes refuse to settle for being the best in the world. They seek out new worlds to best, with greater challenges. They have the makings of new Gods.

Sorry, that got a bit overly prose-y by the end there. Point is, as long as the scaling difficulty makes sense in-universe, the treadmill becomes easier to stomach. And for those who can’t stand a treadmill even when it’s necessary in order to maintain conflict within the story, there’s no need to keep playing into the highest tiers. I stopped following the Dragon Ball franchise after the Buu saga of Z because the escalation became too much for me to take seriously. Lots of folks quit on it long before that. Lots of folks still love it and stick with the series to this day. We all have different thresholds for story escalation, but escalation is a necessary evil if you want to continue a story past the point where it’s characters have surpassed everything that used to challenge them.

Charlaquin said:

As characters become more powerful, they do become less and less challenged by most tasks. As well, tasks that had previously been beyond their capabilities become as challenging for them as more common tasks used to be. A Rogue reaches the point where easy, normal, and even hard tasks are trivial for them. But very hard and nearly impossible tasks become plausible for them to succeed at; they eventually pose about the same amount of challenge as moderate and hard tasks did in their early adventuring days.

Now, the smart thing to do at that point might be to retire. And in fact, that’s what plenty of PCs do. Most campaigns end by somewhere around 11th level. But for those who want to continue playing with those characters, it becomes necessary to change the scale of the challenges they face.

<snip>

Where others would rest, satisfied in having attained such skill that nothing in the world challenges them, these heroes refuse to settle for being the best in the world. They seek out new worlds to best, with greater challenges.

<snip>

as long as the scaling difficulty makes sense in-universe, the treadmill becomes easier to stomach. And for those who can’t stand a treadmill even when it’s necessary in order to maintain conflict within the story, there’s no need to keep playing into the highest tiers.

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As well as PCs who "seek out new worlds to best", there is also the situation where some or other part of the world or the "multiverse" seeks out the PCs.

But one way or another, if the game is going to keep going then the players need to be challenged in some fashion.

5ekyu said:

Just curious but did you also balk when the 3rd level mages got open lock that auto succeeded or fly spells which made climb really easy or the cantrip that stabilizes automatically or invisibility or tue sight or any number of the other class abikities and spells which made some formerly roll based challenges auto- pass?

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All but the cantrip you mention are quite limited by spell slots, and few have combat uses, which spellcasters like to save their slots for.

So in truth this is an invalid comparison.

Personally I think Expertise should give a flat +2, and should be available in far more limited ways to other classes.

Caliburn101 said:

All but the cantrip you mention are quite limited by spell slots, and few have combat uses, which spellcasters like to save their slots for.

So in truth this is an invalid comparison.

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I dont think so, as the discussion back and forth back then bore out a variety of opinions.

They key point of the comparison was that several other classes of similar levels also have as much or more "vs the mundane" breaking abilities and that by 11th level the game has either evolved to the point where chalkenge that matters is much much more than what a non-magical small town can handle.

As for the "want to hold spell slots" most characters i know use spells and other abilities to achieve their goal and assuming an 11th level mage out to spend a night cs a small town is not going to party with some 2nd or 3rd level slots to get it is not reasonable.

The difference between unlimited and expendable is not a distinction that matters much if both have enough to get the job done.

A fighter can also swing his sword an unlimited number of times compared to spell use but i have not seen folks arguing we cant compare them or apples and oranges or whatever dismissal phrase one wants to use when it comes to a concept of effectiveness vs challenge.

But some might disagree.

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Saeviomagy said:

Yeah, but then you're left wondering why you bothered sneaking past a monster that isn't actually a threat to you, or why the bad guys bother using weak monsters as watchdogs when they can't see or hear for doughnuts.

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At least in theory, an encounter against a weak enemy should still eat some resources, and you should avoid that if possible. But you're right, the weakest monsters with the worst perception scores should not be used as front guards. You would want monsters that are both perceptive enough to spot intruders, and strong enough to stop them. An eyeball monster with ridiculous perception and no hit points would make for a bad guard, unless it has a radio to call for backup.

Saeviomagy said:

Sure, if you want to go to that sort of length. That's a whole other level of complexity though, both in writing the system and then running the game.
Just unhooking monster skills from combat ability, and letting individuals focus on different skills is sufficient to get variation, while avoiding scenarios where the fireball that barely touches the guy who boosted combat stats obliterates the rest of the party, punishing them for being good at social skills.

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I'm trying not to read too much into this, but you keep specifying monsters should having their skills divorced from their combat ability, and that's going to be a non-starter for a lot of folks. Monsters and PCs need to use rules that are similar enough such that players feel like they're being treated fairly. If a CR 2 monster can have +25 to Perception, but a level 2 PC can't get more than +7, then that feels arbitrary and pointless. You saw a lot of that with 4E, where players would become frustrated because the world didn't make sense, and the explanation for every discrepancy was just that monsters used different rules.

pemerton said:

As well as PCs who "seek out new worlds to best", there is also the situation where some or other part of the world or the "multiverse" seeks out the PCs.

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Yes, and I pointed this out as an exception. If the Big Bad is aware of the party, and specifically setting out opposition to stop them, then it can make sense for them to send out ever-stronger minions until one finally succeeds.

Saelorn said:

you keep specifying monsters should having their skills divorced from their combat ability, and that's going to be a non-starter for a lot of folks. Monsters and PCs need to use rules that are similar enough such that players feel like they're being treated fairly. If a CR 2 monster can have +25 to Perception, but a level 2 PC can't get more than +7, then that feels arbitrary and pointless. You saw a lot of that with 4E

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I think by "a lot of folks" you mean something more like "you and your friends".

I know a creature which is very weak in combat but has better perception than most humans: my pet cat. That doesn't make the world "arbitrary and pointless".

And 4e didn't have much of this at all. 4e pegs skill bonuses to level + stat, and stats are themselves pegged to level, so in fact there are no low-level creaturesin 4e with super-high skill bonuses.

pemerton said:

This seems a very shallow conception of what it means to engage the fiction of the game.

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In the same way that saying a hit on the attack roll necessitates physical contact within the narrative, I'm sure. Just because you could manipulate the facts in order to support some outrageous deviation, that doesn't mean you should, or that you're even playing the same sort of game after you do so. If you don't "engage the fiction" through role-playing, then you aren't playing a role-playing game, and any arguments you make from that deviant context is irrelevant.

pemerton said:

I will illustrate with examples from my two 4e campaigns.

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Probably not the best example, given the reputation of that edition. Fourth Edition marks the point where players have become so paranoid about terrible DMs manipulating things behind-the-scenes in order to make their choices irrelevant, that the designers gave up on the idea of a logical or consistent world entirely, in the name of making the numbers so transparent that players would be able to call the DM out if they tried to cheat.

pemerton said:

And as far as the integrity of GMs is concerned, they're pretty resilient. I'm not going to corrupt them, I don't think.

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You have said nothing which has not been said before, so that places a limit on the amount of damage you can do. All GMs who manipulate facts behind-the-scenes believe that they're making the game better, unless they're of the old-school variety who simply believe it's their right to mess with the players. Either way, when players realize what's going on, it makes them distrust that GM; and if it keeps happening, across different games and GMs, then they learn to distrust all GMs by default; and then they quit the hobby entirely, because they've been burned by so many GMs (well-intentioned or otherwise) that it's not worth the effort to even find a game.