D&D 5E Bounded accurancy and skills

[Parmandur]

Tactical use of advantage/disadvantage based on common sense. A 16 Str Fighter trained in Athletics doing a 5 DC check? Yeah, advantage. Untrained 8 str Halfling doing the same thing? Hmmmm, disadvantage. Changes the math without fiddly numbers.

 

[Korgul79]

Good answer. Your reward is a solution to your problem:

Adv/Dis to a 3d6 roll is exactly the same as with the standard roll: you roll a -d20- and take the higher/lower result.

Excellent idea.

 

[Elric]

Skill bonuses need to scale faster for trained characters to feel substantially better. One simple solution on the PC end is to double ability and proficiency bonuses to skill checks. Then the DCs need to be raised somewhat (but not as much as the increase on bonuses of skilled characters).

 

[SilverfireSage]

I agree with Peptic.

The mechanics are there for use when you want to make something difficult. I was reading Climb for example, there is no chance for failure for Climb or Swim unless you make a chance for failure. You should only choose to require skill checks if you feel they are needed. If a Halfling tries to outmuscle a bigger guy, you can simply say it can't be done or apply disadvantage on his roll due to size differences or whatever you feel is appropriate. Failure and success are only important if you make them important. Otherwise it is assumed that things happen as you envision they can happen. Thus guys walking down the street aren't going to be better at something than your wizard unless you want to make your own Good Will Hunting fantasy story and plan to have Street Joe play a prominent role in your story.

Just as an example, our players are coming from Pathfinder. They are used to making knowledge checks concerning creatures. One of the players wanted to make a check. The DM said, "You know nothing about this creature. There is no check to be made." That was the end of it. You gain knowledge about creatures as you fight them. If the DM wants to work in rumors or possible myths about a creature the party heard, he can do so. If the party wants to know what a creature can do, they ask around and record the information. Skills in 5E are there to serve the story, not as set in stone ways to define expertise in a particular area. That is better handled by background.

Does your DM have you start your characters the moment they're born? Because that's incredibly harsh and goes against what the knowledge skills are really about, i.e. something your character might know but not the player.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Tactical use of advantage/disadvantage based on common sense. A 16 Str Fighter trained in Athletics doing a 5 DC check? Yeah, advantage. Untrained 8 str Halfling doing the same thing? Hmmmm, disadvantage. Changes the math without fiddly numbers.

That doesn't seem right to me. The strong+strained character already succeeds 100% of the time before the roll, and even the weak+untrained character should succeed on this check more often than not.

You have a low number and are likely to fail -> imposes disadvantage -> you have an even lower number and are even more likely to fail.
you have a high number and are likely to succeed -> grants advantage -> you have an even higher number and are even more likely to succeed.

It's just circular reasoning. Even if you increase the DC of the check to 10, such that the former character should succeed more than 50% and the latter character should fail more than 50%, that's really just exaggerating the differences because you feel like it. The whole point of Bounded Accuracy is that, when you do need to roll for it, the outcome really could go either way - the strong character should only out-wrestle the weak character about 75% of the time (rather than the 95% from earlier editions).

 

[GrahamWills]

This is a fairly disappointing consensus.

It basically makes an extra step before rolling dice: Evaluating whether the skill system is vaguely useful, and if not, then not rolling dice. And you should only roll if the result is close to 50-50.

So, why bother with rolling for skills ever? Why not just go with "make a judgement as a GM as to who will win. If you are unsure, flip a coin; with advantage flip two coins and look for any head. For disadvantage flip two coins and require two heads".

It's a nice system, indeed, but it seems that if a very vanilla skill check cannot actually use the rules as written, there is a problem.

 

[pepticburrito]

Does your DM have you start your characters the moment they're born? Because that's incredibly harsh and goes against what the knowledge skills are really about, i.e. something your character might know but not the player.

Which Int check would one roll to know something about an aberrant? Looking over Int checks in the PHB shows no way to recall monster lore. It doesn't go against what Knowledge checks are about, it goes against the mentality found in 3.5/4e/Pathfinder that the player has access to GM level tools.

It is entirely likely that a character would have never even heard of a majority of the monsters in the monster manual. The only "common" ones would be the monstrous humanoids that form tribes that constantly attack people.

 

[SilverfireSage]

Which Int check would one roll to know something about an aberrant? Looking over Int checks in the PHB shows no way to recall monster lore. It doesn't go against what Knowledge checks are about, it goes against the mentality found in 3.5/4e/Pathfinder that the player has access to GM level tools.

It is entirely likely that a character would have never even heard of a majority of the monsters in the monster manual. The only "common" ones would be the monstrous humanoids that form tribes that constantly attack people.

I would allow a basic intelligence check, and then let the players try to convince me that the history of the area might give them a better idea, or arcana might give them insight into this weird skeleton thing. I realize that it's not RAW, but I don't know what those characters have gone through in their lives and training. Typically most of the characters are in their upper 20's and have had ample time to hear rumors in taverns, explore the local area, read ancient tomes, etc. and I'm not going to codify everything that happened within each of those experiences. "I'm a sage who's life study is to find out about all the rare monsters of the world! I've been studying for years in the local library and am finally ready to go out and see them for myself!" "Yeah well, you actually don't know anything about monsters because it's not in the RAW, so sorry about that."

 

[Nebulous]

I rather like bounded accuracy when it comes to combat. But I'm finding I don't like it with skills.

At 1st level a fighter with a 16 strength and training in athletics will only "out muscle" a halfling with an 8 strength and no training about 75% of the time. Same thing with any other skill check (the random guy on the street makes a DC 15 check a 25% of the time, while a trained priest with an int of 12 is only 40% of the time).

This just rubs me the wrong way.

Does it bother anyone else?

Any suggestions on how to solve it? I'm thinking of just giving those trained another +3 bonus or some such. But that doesn't seem great either.

One way to do it is like this: you have to have a minimum Strength to succeed at certain tasks. The 16 strength fighter automatically picks up the barrel. The halfling with the 8 strength can't even get his arms around it.

As a DM, set in your mind the DC (which is the attribute score), and gauge whether it is an auto-success or auto-failure. If there is a POTENTIAL for success, the narrow window of wobble-room, then you roll for it. Otherwise, leave the dice out.

 

[Nebulous]

This is a fairly disappointing consensus.

It basically makes an extra step before rolling dice: Evaluating whether the skill system is vaguely useful, and if not, then not rolling dice. And you should only roll if the result is close to 50-50.

So, why bother with rolling for skills ever? Why not just go with "make a judgement as a GM as to who will win. If you are unsure, flip a coin; with advantage flip two coins and look for any head. For disadvantage flip two coins and require two heads".

It's a nice system, indeed, but it seems that if a very vanilla skill check cannot actually use the rules as written, there is a problem.

It's a standard flaw with the game that has always been there. A fighter rolling a 1 to bash on a door, vs. a weakling mage rolling a 20 to bash open a door...this roll should never happen. One can do it, one cannot do it, but assigning a random chance of success or failure can give screwy results.