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

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

I think we've got hung up on my specific example of effortlessly robbing a town. The real point here is how RT affects the game through its potential abuse via any of the skills a given rogue might have proficiency and expertise in. Perception, Persuasion, Acrobatics, etc.

Yes, there are plenty of ways to deal with or discourage the rogue robbing a whole city blind. I'm prepared to deal with that. It was just one example.

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Reliable talent doesn't make the impossible possible. It's no more unbalancing than a lucky streak of 10+ dice rolls.

 

[Celebrim]

Don't. Reliable skills are nothing new and IMO are necessary for the game. 'Skill Monkey' classes need to be able to reliably propose actions, and it's good for the game because it means that they can now reliably perform stunts. In particular, you want to reach a point where any easy action with a skill doesn't require a roll, encouraging to the player to do it (because no risk) and avoiding slowing down the game with pointless dice rolling.

Unless you plan to implement a 'All spells fail on the roll of a 1 rule', don't nerf skills. Non-combat spells do not generally have a failure condition. Compare hiding with invisibility, climbing or jumping with flight, open lock with knock, searching with detecting/scry spells and so forth. Gimping a skill by making it permanently unreliable makes a non-spellcaster permanently less reliable and useful than a spellcaster's ability to alter the game universe and acquire narrative resources.

You can always have tasks that require nigh supernatural levels of skill that do have a chance of failure if you need to test the skill of a character.

Look at it this way, if a 12th level superhero (supervillain?) wants to break into the houses of ordinary mortals and steal thier stuff, he's going to succeed. The Joker, the Clown Prince of Crime, is not going to have a problem successfully breaking into a middle class home, terrorizing the inhabitants, and taking their stuff. It's an autosuccess for him provided he has not yet attracted the attention of The Batman. If your PC wants to go on a crime spree, then let him. There is no drama in that, but its not the fault of the rules. It's the fault of the player for setting his sights so small. Respond to that intelligently as a DM, with the overmatched peasants appealing to a temple or to a government for aid, and a team of Paladins and Inquisitors arriving to avenge the put upon peasants. That is where your drama comes from, not whether he can steal the candlesticks from some poor coppersmith, or loot the handful of silver that a fuller has hidden under his mattress.

Besides that, if you want to make your thief breaking into homes challenging, there are ways to do that that don't involve failing ordinary skill checks. If you want advice, fork to another thread with a title like, "How would peasants protect their homes from thieves?"

 

[Salamandyr]

What most others have said. Players play rogues to do the improbable with ease. They're supposed to auto succeed at most skill checks, just like the barbarian is supposed to auto succeed at most strength checks, and the wizards spells are supposed to work.

Upping the DC's to make it "more challenging" aren't making it more fun, they're taking away one of the fun aspects of the character.

 

[redrick]

If all Reliable Talent does is remove the need for rolling in situations with a more than 50% chance of success, you're just allowing the roll to be predictably confident. As fun as it is when a character says, "Picking a lock? No problem, I'm +8, I got this," and then rolls a 2, that's not a thing for high level Rogues. When they say, "I got this," they do.

And sure, technically, a 55% chance of success is a 45% chance of failure, but when players know they just need 10 or better to succeed, they feel good. Rolling less than 10 feels embarrassing, and we usually role-play it that way. So, mechanically speaking, does it make the rogue a lot more effective? Sure. But if the only way your Rogue can not succeed is to roll a 7 and look like a clown, that's not really challenging or spot-lighting the character.

The thing that makes Rogues unstoppable skill monkeys at high level isn't Reliable Talent, it's the fact that expertise gives them substantially higher bonuses than other characters. +13 means that you will usually succeed at things that are "nearly impossible."

And, importantly, as opposed to getting "auto-hit" for a fighter or something similar, there are generally way fewer skill checks in an encounter than attack rolls. A fighter can miss an attack, but they're making 3 attacks a round and most combats go more than 3 rounds.

 

[Charlaquin]

Ah, that was unclear from your formulation. However, to go along with that, the rogue cannot perform that way at 11th, which is tier 3. Then, suddenly, at 12th, they can.

Actually, Reliable Talent is the Rogue’s 11th level feature. 11th level is the start of 3rd tier, and every class gets a significant boost at 11th level. Full spellcasting classes can’t cast 6th level and above spells at 10th, and suddenly, at 11th, they can. Fighters can only attack twice per turn at 10th, and then, suddenly, at 11th, they can.

Again, you have a high failure rate in your game, statistically. Assuming a 50/50 shot is reliably passed is madness. You've set up your baseline for 'easy' as requiring additional resources to accomplish. Nothing wrong with having your games set at a higher difficulty setting, but you shouldn't fool yourself into believing that it's not.

I never said a 50/50 chance of success was easy. I said I expect players to be able to pass it. If I didn’t expect that, i’d find my players succeeding unexpectedly half the time, which is absurd. Note that expecting players to reliably be able to succeed at something is not the same as expecting them to be unable to fail at it. If that was my expectation, I wouldn’t even ask for a roll.

Quote me saying this, please.

You said it’s a bad feature. If you don’t think most DMs find it to cause problems, then by what metric do you evaluate it as a bad feature?

Um, no, because, by definition, half of those checks fail. What you're confusing for the difficulty of the class is how your players have adopted to your strange idea of probably by throwing more resources to increase their odds at success because you've set the bar for normal too high.

50% chance of success is not “my bar for normal”. The way DCs are designed to work in 5e, with its bounded accuracy, is that DCs are consistent regardless of PC skill. So a normal (or rather, medium) task is always DC15. I expect that, by 3rd tier, normal tasks no longer present a meaningful obstacle to PCs. Hard tasks may or may not, depending on the skills at each PC’s disposal, but I certainly don’t expect them to present a meaningful obstacle to the classes whose niche in the party is to be the best at skill checks. If it’s said character’s area of expertise, I don’t expect to be able to challenge them with anything less than a Very Hard task. This is appropriate given the tier of play and the Rogue’s role in the game. Given this baseline expectation, Reliable Talent doesn’t bump up the difficulty of tasks I can expect to challenge the rogue with, it only removes the chance of failure on tasks I already didn’t expect them to be challenged by.

And, with that said, do you not notice that difference between 'I need to use guidance and some bardic inspiration to make this 50/50 shot likely to succeed" and "i have reliable skill now so I don't need to use guidance and bardic inspiration on that check"?

Of course I recognize the difference. That difference is pretty much the point of the class freature in question. It saves the party from having to expend as many resources. That’s pretty much what all character progression in D&D boils down to - being able to take on more difficult challenges without expending as many resources.

Because it's a bad design feature -- it's sudden and radically redefines what challenges the rogue. This would be acceptable if all classes had such a break near the same level, but none of the other classes do. None of the other classes entirely remove a common obstacle via a class ability in this manner -- if I could challenge a fighter at 11th with a creature, then at 12th that creature is still a challenge, even if less of one. Reliable Talent pretty much removes a huge swath of previously effective challenges.

But there are plenty of creatures that challenged the fighter at 10th that no longer do at 11th, because his damage output just suddenly increased by about 33%. I would also argue that the “challenges” Reliable Talent removes aren’t really challenges. Even if you aren’t willing to grant that DC ~20 tasks don’t challenge 10th level rogues, they certainly aren’t challenged by anything DC ~15 or below, and the roll, if you even call for one, is largely a formality at that point. The feature is more about security against the odd crap roll on an otherwise unchallenging task than about allowing you to take on more challenging tasks.

And, even if you persist in your assumption that 50/50 is probably successful due to other resource expenditure (or retries), then it should still be apparent to you that the ability removes the need for the additional resources or retries, which alters how those challenges work in your game.

To clarify, I don’t allow retries. If there is nothing preventing the players from retrying, I just skip the roll and say that they are eventually successful. And that’s why this doesn’t seem like a problem to me, because the situations where an 11th+ level rogue is faced with a DC ~20 task and actually needs to bother rolling are already few and far between in my games.

Having a solution to this issue in my game doesn't remove the issue from the game, nor does it obviate the usefulness of clearly identifying the issue and discussing it so that others can evaluate it for themselves and adopt (or not) a solution for themselves. Again, the idea that a problem might be locally removed for you doesn't mean it's not worth discussing, if only to get a better grasp on how others play the game. You're limiting your ability to learn if you try to shut down discussion.

I’m not trying to shut down discussion. “This feature causes problems in my games, can folks advise me on how to deal with it?” is a valuable discussion to have. “This feature might cause problems for some DMs and here are some suggestions on how to deal with it if you need to” is a valuable discussion to have. “This feature is badly designed” is a raw complaint, and that is what I object to.

 

[Mistwell]

I think this is functioning normal, and you should allow it. It's supposed to auto-succeed like that. It's an important ability they get - like a second attack for a fighter or a high level spell for a wizard. If it's thwarting your DMing FU, ask yourself if the player is having fun. If they are, let it be.

 

[BookBarbarian]

Reliable talent doesn't make the impossible possible.

I agree. If it's impossible don't have the player roll.

 

[BookBarbarian]

A rouge still cant go undetected in plain sight in the middle of the day.

Rouge should be undetected. Just a slight coloring of the cheeks that should appear natural. All too often however it appears clownish.

 

[ad_hoc]

To clarify, I don’t allow retries. If there is nothing preventing the players from retrying, I just skip the roll and say that they are eventually successful. And that’s why this doesn’t seem like a problem to me, because the situations where an 11th+ level rogue is faced with a DC ~20 task and actually needs to bother rolling are already few and far between in my games.

Yes, as you should because this is how ability checks work in 5e.

~~~~~

While I really like the way checks are handled in 5e, it's not wrong to do it differently. If a person does it differently, for example by adopting 3.x style checks, then they shouldn't be shocked when some abilities come in conflict with the different way of doing things.

This is likely the heart of the matter. Checks should only be called when:

1) The outcome is in doubt
2) There is a consequence for failure
3) It is interesting

Reliable Talent makes #1 true for more things, all of which are mundane and mostly beneath a level 11 character anyway.

#2 and #3 mean that a lot of the places where there would be skill checks in 3.x there just aren't in 5e. Skill checks usually only come into play in tense and exciting scenes.

For example:

Climb a cliff - no check needed
Climb a cliff while under attack - make a strength (athletics) check

It's just not interesting to spend 20 minutes on highlighting how inept the party is at scaling cliffs when it has very little do with the story.

 

[cthulhu42]

Just because the character isn't expending a resource limited in per day uses doesn't mean no resource has been expended. The number of skills you can choose to have expertise apply to is a resource. Using ASIs to boost your skill-influencing stats is a resource.

The rogue in question appears to be using several resources:
*Assuming a 20 Dex, an ASI was probably used to get the stat that high.
*When the skill is one that has expertise, one of the expertise slots has been used up by the skill in question.
*And, as others have mentioned, Reliable Talent itself consumes the resource of the class feature that would be gained at that level.

I think you and I have very different definitions of what a resource is. ASI's are a bonus. Expertise is a bonus that one applies to skills. Reliable Talent is a class feature; an ability. A bonus. It costs you nothing.

What I'm talking about are hit points, spell slots, uses per day, etc.