D&D 5E What if Expertise were a simple +2?

[5ekyu]

Any half way competent DM knows this is a feature not a bug. So the issues that arise are not failures of the system. I know there’s a certain subset of DMs that don’t think they should be responsible for their games.

Edit: the real failure here is the idea that a DM must ‘work around’ their players strengths. Those strengths are something to work with.

Writer alpha "hey guys, one of our stars has super-strong super-finessed really versatile prehensile hair. How do we "work around" that?"
Writer beta "lets shave her bald in the opening episode!"
Writer gamma "That sounds so cool! yup!!! Man, thats gonna really put this show and her character over."

What could go wrong?



Apologies to those who have tried to black out those memories. But those who do not know the history of tragic mistakes are doomed to see them rebooted as rom-coms starring Kevin James.

 

[Krachek]

I would let a choice.
+2 in two trained skills or training in 2 new skills.

 

[GreyLord]

I admit, I do find that a bit surprising. Sure, the narrative doesn't change if we were reading the book or watching the movie, but we are playing a game. It may take more skill to build a character, but if I don't get to use their special abilities they were built with... what's the point?



I agree with this to a degree, but what is the man with a minimum of 23 to do in a world where 99% of the things he encounters are DC 15 and 20? Let's take that expertise out for a moment. Your minimum is now 19, you still will breeze through the majority of locks and traps in the world. So... why invest in it? Why care about expertise? Unless you are encounter something of mythic levels reliable talent plus proficiency is more than enough. And then you can let the cleric or bard whose character concept is buffing to shine as well if you encounter something truly challenging.

Your choice has made no impact unless I try to challenge you, but to challenge you I need challenges beyond the scope a level 11 character is supposed to operate at. Heck, even by level 18, when you should be operating on the most mythic of scales, the bonus is +17 with a minimum of 27 (+18 of if you can break the 20 cap), throw some guidance, enhance ability and a bardic inspiration on the pile and I have to seriously ask "What is the DC of the lock on the Gates to Hell" because you'll average a 39 on that roll.

Picking the lock on some cosmic prison meant to hold gods is cool, but you're average is nearly ten points higher than the highest DC brought up in game. That means you have almost a 50/50 shot. Oh, unless you happen to be level 20, then just guarantee a minimum result of 39, average of 45 or 50. Where is the tension? Where is the excitement?

If you can't fail, what's the point of even having the obstacle exist in the first place?

It's called becoming a Lock smith.

It would be pretty terrible if anytime you lose your key and call the locksmith that you have a 25-50% chance of never being able to get in your car ever again.

You call the Locksmith because you know they probably can pick the locks and make a key well enough to have a nigh 100% success rate.

Against a safe, even some of the more secure ones, give the locksmith enough time and if they are good, they'll have a nigh 100% success rate.

THAT's because they are trained in it and are proficient at what they do.

If you want to add challenge, have the players ROLE PLAY the situation rather than ROLL PLAY it out. You'll find that for many, the ROLE PLAY is actually far more fun than the ROLL PLAY.

I suppose it depends on what type of players you have, a min/max player will want to roll, but many will prefer to role instead, and part of that role is being effective in what they are proficient at...

Just like the rules of the game say they should be.

 

[GreyLord]

But there is a difference between a fighter with proficiency and a Rogue or Bard with expertise, Jack of All Trades or Reliable talent. A big difference.

And they also don't have spells, so when the discussion turns to "Being able to get a +15 on a skill can't break the game because spells can rewrite reality" you have to wonder where that leaves fighter and barbarians whose max possible bonus is +11 (and generally that is athletics since they are str builds) and have no spells.

Well, the Barbarian actually has a +13 max at level 20.

If you are at level 20 and use epic boons with the alternate rule, the bonus for Fighters and Barbarians actually goes up to +16 without any other magic item.

You use a legendary Ioun stone and a +3 weapon to hit and you can get up to +20 to hit.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Consider the following case... An area might be rather rich in game making foraging even easy DC 10. But for areas around waterways where the game is still just as or more plentiful (would be DC 5) but certain aquatic threats attack humanoids. There the DC could be set at 15 or even 20 because the GM determines its the threat (setback) that is being rolled against.

That's definitely something to think about. I think there are games out there which work on that premise, like... I wanna say Genesys?... but I've never read anything about D&D working in that way.

It's possible that they included the option somewhere, and I just ignored it as being too complicated. Kind of like that "using skills with different attributes" option.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

That's the problem!
Most DCs should be from 10-15, due to most characters not having expertise, and being in the 1-8 level range.
DC 20 should be rare, dc 25 exceptionally rare, and dc 30 the stuff of legends.

But thanks to expertise, all these other bonuses (there are way too many bonuses now), and the sacred cow of niche protection: The "hard" Dc is considered "normal" now.

I'm not sure whether expertise and bonuses are the culprit, here, so much as Bounded Accuracy. Due to Bounded Accuracy, hard checks are supposed to be attainable by any random chump walking down the street, and that doesn't leave a lot of room for specialists to specialize before they fall off the end of the table.

In my own variant ruleset, I've baked expertise into the initial proficiency, and raised DCs across the board. Basically, an average fighter will start at +11 for skills that they have, and DCs go from 20 to 30 instead of 10 to 20; the absolute maximum for a specialist is +20 on the check, with reliable talent giving them a minimum of 7 on the die roll. The trade-off is that nobody can really attempt anything harder than an easy check, unless they're trained in it.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Any half way competent DM knows this is a feature not a bug. So the issues that arise are not failures of the system. I know there’s a certain subset of DMs that don’t think they should be responsible for their games.

Edit: the real failure here is the idea that a DM must ‘work around’ their players strengths. Those strengths are something to work with.

Right, so if you don't think it's a feature, you're an incompetent DM? Sure, mate.

Look, I have no problem running it as is -- I've got three campaigns under my belt that haven't touched expertise and run into the middle teens. I can ignore the problem just fine, but I don't pat myself on the back and assume I have mad DMing skills because I can ignore the problem. Expertise as a mechanic just sucks. It's a purely numerical boost in a system that otherwise works to reduce purely mechanics adds. By itself, it's only annoying -- it rapidly renders challenged trivial. Whatever, that's easy to pivot on and switch what's challenging as it happens. It's unfortunate that it does it in fits and spurts (+2 at a time), but, again, you can work with that. When it's also paired with all the other skill boosting mechanics, though -- it just becomes number porn.

Frankly, understanding expertise and how it impacts the game requires grasping the incentives the system has. Expertise, because it's so much better than just about anything else, creates an incentive to get it as earlier and often as possible because most people run games where skills are binary. You have to do a lot of work as a DM to run a fail-forward style that the players have enough faith in that they aren't stacking expertise on top of bardic inspiration on top of guidance. The incentive is to eliminate any chance of failure, and expertise is the best method of doing so available. When you stack that on top of reliable skill (another bad mechanic in execution), you end up with an incentive for the player to best the game by rendering entire challenge areas obsolete. Can the DM overcome this by introducing new challenge areas and abandoning old positions? Absolutely, but that's creating a workaround for a bad mechanics -- you're replacing skill at knowing when the system breaks and going to something else for a good system. This is the hallmark of a stealthy bad mechanic.

Expertise should reduce the risk of failing at easy or moderate challenges, not make difficult challenges trivial. It should have been advantage, not the class-disconnected double proficiency. This would have achieved the design goal easily, and not allow tier III and IV characters to make the DC system obsolete for a swath of very useful skills (the unbalanced nature of skill usefulness is a different topic, and one I don't think can be solved without a completely different game, which there already are many of, so why bother). Reliable talent can stay the same under this and provide even better protection against flubs at moderate to difficult tasks (it autos easy, which is absolutely great!).

The incentives that expertise causes (especially on top of reliable talent) are exactly what's already been said by the other -mancer (represent!) -- it discourages these things from even being challenges. The DM gets nothing from doing work to add such challenges if they're trivially dealt with at the table, and the player gets scant spotlight time for saying 'yup, auto-did that again.' Again, this is further exasperated by a binary pass/fail skill paradigm (which is pretty common and is what shows up in official adventure material). This pushes players to engage in build choices that remove the chances of failure in mechanical ways while also reducing the impact (and therefore usage) by DMs of those elements. It's a double-edged sword with many confounders, but, ultimately, the mechanic is at fault. Use of expertise on top of reliable talent will absolutely result in fewer of those elements being put into adventures because it becomes boring to just do the mental masturbation of saying 'there's an X, you bypass it, don't roll'. Denying this because you can do this workaround and instead focus on other things doesn't mean it's not an actual issue.

 

[Yunru]

*Gently nudges the Barbarians "Minimum roll of 24" under the table*

Nothing to see here.

 

[squibbles]

Expertise should reduce the risk of failing at easy or moderate challenges, not make difficult challenges trivial. It should have been advantage, not the class-disconnected double proficiency. This would have achieved the design goal easily, and not allow tier III and IV characters to make the DC system obsolete for a swath of very useful skills

Reliable talent can stay the same under this and provide even better protection against flubs at moderate to difficult tasks (it autos easy, which is absolutely great!).

This seems like a pretty simple and system consistent solution; for those reasons I like it better than Expertise being +2.

I may have missed discussion of this idea from one of the earlier posts in the thread, but do any of you see any obviously bad consequences of making this rule change in a game?

 

[5ekyu]

This seems like a pretty simple and system consistent solution; for those reasons I like it better than Expertise being +2.

I may have missed discussion of this idea from one of the earlier posts in the thread, but do any of you see any obviously bad consequences of making this rule change in a game?

The catch is that in essence this nsrrows the reach of expertise even more because it would be useless or very ill advised to take it with any skill one could reasonably expect assistance on - ie advantage to be available by common means.

So, con man who works with partner - dont expertise deception. Much of the time you can have help. Anything eligable for working together goes to the bottom of the expertise pile in very short order.

After 3rd level EA lets you give advantage on skill checks pretty freely. Which means again we have a rogue ability just basically trumped all over by a low level spell on a lot of spell lists.

To some that might be rhe goal but to me, nah.