D&D 5E Blast From the Past - Earliest D&DN Panels

[Jeff Albertson]

I think Monte Cook did at least 3 legends and lores where he highlighted this mechanic where if the ability score was above the DC, you just succeeded.

Yeah, Monte mentioned "Expert" doors.

 

[jodyjohnson]

I think Monte Cook did at least 3 legends and lores where he highlighted this mechanic where if the ability score was above the DC, you just succeeded. And some stuff like that did linger on in the early play-test.

But Monte left and I think they learned that people actually like to roll dice.

IMO this got rolled into the "rolling the dice" advice for the DM where the options are don't make the roll (autofail or autosucceed) or make the roll if the results are in question or randomness is desired.

Much of the time if a character has a good stat and is proficient I just let them succeed whereas many times for the bad stat/not trained combo I may just have them fail because I'm not into a lot of "maybe I'll get lucky" dice rolling.