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

Ovinomancer said:

I'd actually argue that by making certain approaches known automatic successes, it significantly reduces the enjoyment of devising a suitable approach. It trivializes the challenge by confirming the outcome without effort. As others have said, the best way to adjust adventure design to reliable talent isn't to continue to provide the same kinds of challenge, because reliable talent renders them moot, but to switch to new challenges that don't engage reliable talent or assume reliable talent to gain access to the new challenge. In effect, the advice is to stop using those kinds of challenges that reliable talent trivializes and instead use different challenges and turn reliable talent into a narration device.

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Have you found that players of Rogues complain about Reliable Talent taking the fun out of the game for them?

I disagree that the advice being given is to stop engaging Reliable Talent. Quite the opposite — continue giving Rogues the opportunities to use those skills, and where appropriate, succeed automatically. Just don't rely on those particular skill checks to provide uncertainty in your game. Which, if the Rogue already had a 55% chance of success, you shouldn't rely on anymore anyway.

Skill checks are the most open-ended way of interacting with the game world. That's the fun in playing a skill monkey — you get to come up with creative things to do, describe them, and then try and do them. By the time you are a high level Rogue, you can pull off some truly challenging things. By the time you are an 11th level Rogue, you can be depended on to pull off some of these things without risk of failure.

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And to further what [MENTION=6802765]Xetheral[/MENTION] was saying, the challenge is still to find an approach where the chance of success is as high as possible. Reliable Talent doesn't take that away. It simply takes away the chance at skunking on your roll once you find a good approach.

A starting Rogue has 6 skill proficiencies, plus Thieve's Tools. By 11th level, they have 4 expertise slots. Depending on what they choose to specialize in and how they used their ASIs, that could give them an expert bonus as high as +13 or as low as +7. (Expertise in Athletics for a Rogue who dumped Strength. I've done this.) For the (minimum — don't forget skill feats) 3 skills in which they do not have expertise, their bonus will range from +3 to +9. There are plenty of cases where Reliable Talent will not take hard skill checks off the table.

redrick said:

Have you found that players of Rogues complain about Reliable Talent taking the fun out of the game for them?

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Actually, yes, but my fault entirely. Since the rogue could bypass almost every lock he could reasonably encounter, I stopped including locks as a challenge element. A few levels later, a comment was made by the rogue player that he missed having locks to pick. I realized that I had neglected locks because they had become trivial, and so I wasn't even considering them anymore. I think this is a subtle negative to the fact the reliable talent trivializes many challenges, and people tend to stop thinking about including trivial things in adventure design. Or maybe just me.

I disagree that the advice being given is to stop engaging Reliable Talent. Quite the opposite — continue giving Rogues the opportunities to use those skills, and where appropriate, succeed automatically. Just don't rely on those particular skill checks to provide uncertainty in your game. Which, if the Rogue already had a 55% chance of success, you shouldn't rely on anymore anyway.

Skill checks are the most open-ended way of interacting with the game world. That's the fun in playing a skill monkey — you get to come up with creative things to do, describe them, and then try and do them. By the time you are a high level Rogue, you can pull off some truly challenging things. By the time you are an 11th level Rogue, you can be depended on to pull off some of these things without risk of failure.

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Again, there's the issue of not wanting to spend game time engaging in trivial things. Having to recall to put in non-challenges just to highlight the ability that removes those challenges to begin with seems, well, conflicting.

redrick said:

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And to further what [MENTION=6802765]Xetheral[/MENTION] was saying, the challenge is still to find an approach where the chance of success is as high as possible. Reliable Talent doesn't take that away. It simply takes away the chance at skunking on your roll once you find a good approach.

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If there's no need to find an approach because you know this one approach is guaranteed to succeed, every time, what's the challenge, again?

Ovinomancer said:

Actually, yes, but my fault entirely. Since the rogue could bypass almost every lock he could reasonably encounter, I stopped including locks as a challenge element. A few levels later, a comment was made by the rogue player that he missed having locks to pick. I realized that I had neglected locks because they had become trivial, and so I wasn't even considering them anymore. I think this is a subtle negative to the fact the reliable talent trivializes many challenges, and people tend to stop thinking about including trivial things in adventure design. Or maybe just me.

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Interesting, I don't know that I would miss locks. On the other hand, if I had spent 11 levels picking locks everywhere I went, and suddenly everybody seemed to be leaving all their front doors open — maybe that would bother me.

Again, there's the issue of not wanting to spend game time engaging in trivial things. Having to recall to put in non-challenges just to highlight the ability that removes those challenges to begin with seems, well, conflicting.

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Fair. I guess, for me, I don't see not having to roll for something as automatically meaning trivial. We frequently go for stretches without rolling for anything at the table, because the actions the characters are taking seem more or less guaranteed to succeed. That doesn't mean that the players aren't making decisions with consequences — it just means that there's no reason to call for a roll — yet. Also, just because the Rogue can automatically succeed doesn't mean everybody else can, so those situations could still arise in your adventures, because they could potentially pose risks to other characters.

That being said, Thieve's Tools, which seems to be the main thing being referenced here — disarming of traps and picking of locks — tend not to be major players in my adventures anyway. Sure, most doors are assumed to be locked, but there is more to disarming a trap than simply rolling on thieve's tools.

redrick said:

Interesting, I don't know that I would miss locks. On the other hand, if I had spent 11 levels picking locks everywhere I went, and suddenly everybody seemed to be leaving all their front doors open — maybe that would bother me.



Fair. I guess, for me, I don't see not having to roll for something as automatically meaning trivial. We frequently go for stretches without rolling for anything at the table, because the actions the characters are taking seem more or less guaranteed to succeed. That doesn't mean that the players aren't making decisions with consequences — it just means that there's no reason to call for a roll — yet. Also, just because the Rogue can automatically succeed doesn't mean everybody else can, so those situations could still arise in your adventures, because they could potentially pose risks to other characters.

That being said, Thieve's Tools, which seems to be the main thing being referenced here — disarming of traps and picking of locks — tend not to be major players in my adventures anyway. Sure, most doors are assumed to be locked, but there is more to disarming a trap than simply rolling on thieve's tools.

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Well, one, locks weren't everywhere and then nowhere, they were occasional and a challenge and then they disappeared. It was a few levels before it was really noticed.

Two, if your argument really boils down to 'if you play the way I do, it's not a problem,' then it isn't exactly universally applicable, yeah? I mean, I appreciate the input, and, as a point of fact, I've changed how a run a great deal from that game to how I'm running now, but that advice wouldn't have helped me then at all. Now? Well, I still think that an ability that requires changing how you present the game to provide trivially bypassed challenges to showcase the ability that trivially bypasses those challenges is bit weird, but, yeah, I provide more complex interactions now. Also, I'm trying out the advantage instead of a floor version in my current game (which is still many levels from 11th) because I find it achieves the same design goal but does it in a less disruptive and more helpful way. This way, it's helpful on very hard DCs as well as making very low DCs still a formality in the vast majority of cases. Given I rarely even ask for a check that would be a low DC, it'll have the same effect at low DCs as it does currently, but DCs 15-20 will still be relevant.

Mort said:

That would be kicking the rogue while he's down! The time that the ability would be at it's most beneficial and useful - houseruling that it doesn't apply. And frankly, that's exactly what this ability is supposed to guard against - maybe another class is under stress and would muck it up - but the rogue - he's got this.



As you say, this would make the ability just about useless.

5e doesn't (as far as I'm aware) explicitly state tiers of play (like 4e does) BUT they are certainly still there. 11th level seems to represent that tier changer for most classes. Many classes get some beefy "you're no longer a mere peon" abilities at 11th:
Fighters get a 3rd attack, Paladins get an extra 1d8 to each attack, Barbarians get relentless rage (the "I'm not dropping" ability), mages and clerics get 6th level spells, etc.

Reliable talent is the rogue's tier changing ability.

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I agree. Would not myself use either. But do realize as little as a help action can cancal out advantage and keep reliable in the first case, so it should be a rare set of circumstances that the rogue gets stung by that one.

But i agree, neither is needed and i think both would hurt the game.

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Stalker0 said:

I feel that at this point every reasonable argument FOR and AGAINST have been made.

So OP what's your decision....keeping it or not?

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My decision was to leave it alone for several sessions and see how things played out. We've only played one session since then and it was pretty combat heavy, although the rogue did have to face two or three skill checks. The DCs were 20 or below, so he auto succeeded. I'm going to probably not make any final decisions until after the group is finished with this particular story arc (I'm running them through Against the Giants as part of a larger plot line and they're just finishing up the first level, so still a way to go).

I did start the session with a group discussion about Reliable Talent to get their input. I layed out all of the pros and cons collected in this thread and let them give me some of their own. I told the rogue player it was something I'd be keeping an eye on and he was fine with that.

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Last time i checked a fireball cast thru 9th slot does not leave a doubt about the commoner's survival.

Or did i miss something?

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5ekyu said:

Last time i checked a fireball cast thru 9th slot does not leave a doubt about the commoner's survival.

Or did i miss something?

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Yes, you missed something.

Ovinomancer said:

Actually, yes, but my fault entirely. Since the rogue could bypass almost every lock he could reasonably encounter, I stopped including locks as a challenge element. A few levels later, a comment was made by the rogue player that he missed having locks to pick. I realized that I had neglected locks because they had become trivial, and so I wasn't even considering them anymore. I think this is a subtle negative to the fact the reliable talent trivializes many challenges, and people tend to stop thinking about including trivial things in adventure design. Or maybe just me.



Again, there's the issue of not wanting to spend game time engaging in trivial things. Having to recall to put in non-challenges just to highlight the ability that removes those challenges to begin with seems, well, conflicting.

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I dont think its just you. Its IMO an offshoot of a gamr play style that teaches the GM to focus on challenges - creating, presenting and structuring their game's elements as challenges.

Locks no longer appearing because they wont challenge is one symptom which may stem from that.

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