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

[Mistwell]

A fighter's attacks always have a chance to fail. High level spells require a spell slot.

So? Just because other classes get diminishing resources and this one isn't a diminishing resource doesn't make them not roughly equal anyway. There is a scale of abilities, from high level of applications with few resources to use them each day, to low application with infinite uses each day. The rogue ability has less application but infinite uses. The fighter gets to use the extra attack every combat encounter, for a potential of a huge amount of damage, but might miss. The spell slot also has the potential for a massive array of applications, but has few uses. This rogue ability is much more limited in situations it can apply to, but is much more reliable in those situations - it tends to just work, as opposed to being highly variable. Still, the comparison is apt - it's roughly the same amount of power in the game and shouldn't be looked on poorly because it's on the high reliability and low application end of the spectrum of abilities.

 

[Celebrim]

Earlier editions of the game, and many other RPG's somehow function without auto-succeed skills. And yes, I could go play those editions or other games, but I quite like 5E. I'm not here to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Well, the first edition of D&D with official skills per se was 3rd edition, and those auto succeed once you get skilled enough for a particular DC. As for those other games, they typically lack something D&D skills have which is 'degree of difficulty', and in particular a very granular degree of difficulty. Even so, many of them have potentially 99% chance of success or higher (GURPS, BRP/CoC, etc.). Those that do have a degree of difficulty, such as WEG D6 Star Wars (and related systems), do also have automatic successes (if you are trying to beat a 5 on a 5d6, you'll always succeed).

Furthermore, in every system that I'm aware of that doesn't have automatic success, they've had to patch the rules by explicitly stating that if the character has at least a certain amount of skill that you shouldn't even roll for ordinary tasks or that you shouldn't roll when the failure wouldn't be interesting.

So autosuccess skills are far from rare in in RPGs, and those that lack them typically have much more granularity to the fortune roll than D20 based systems which cannot get more granular than 5% chance. 5% is far too high to not have autosuccess in my opinion. There should be a point where something that is easy cannot be failed on. So you can either do that through the rules by setting the DC's such that failure isn't a possibility for a certain level of competence, or you can do that by fiat by just not rolling whenever the thing is so easy that you shouldn't be able to fail it. It's better to use the rules than use fiat.

...comparing a literary character to a D&D character is a false equivalency. The joker auto succeeds because he's written that way.

In some ways, but not in this way. Remember, RPGs are trying to simulate a literary experience of some sort. A Superhero RPG is trying to simulate being in a comic book. A fantasy RPG is trying to simulate an epic fantasy novel. PnP RPGs are 'write your own adventure' games, where the player is bringing to the table the expectations of drama.

A 5 second die roll takes too much time away from the game, but a full on side plot involving paladins and government that might take multiple full sessions to resolve is fine?

Absolutely. One is fun and dramatic and the other is not. One's idea of drama is "You can't pick the primitive skeleton key lock for some reason" or "Even though the wood is dry for some reason the 12th level ranger can't get a fire going tonight.", and the other involves rooftop chases through the fog and chimney smoke. One is you pedantically stopping the character from doing things because "reasons" and the other is a narrative that is in response to the player's agency and a logical consequence of his own actions that makes that character feel like he has control over his destiny and that of the game world.

As I said before, the rogue ripping off a whole town scenario is just an example. I wish we could get past it.

Then pick another example. They all work the same way. Drama isn't created by or dependent upon failing trivial tasks. Drama is created by doing things that are cool and failing at things that are epic. A 12th level character shouldn't expect to fail at the routine tasks that a 1st level character sometimes fails at, because by 12th level you've already done all that sort of thing and moved on.

 

[Mort]

Every new edition (and I've played the majority of them) require some shift in thinking to adjust to the new rule set. Reliable Talent, as someone pointed out, is a very sudden change to the way I've DMed this rogue. But I'll figure it out. I wasn't too keen on the fact that our barbarian basically can't be surprised either, but I've learned to deal with it.

How is reliable talent any different from 3.0 (3.5?) skill mastery (which the rogue could get as early as 10th level)? The "amazing at skills" shtick has been a rogue thing since at least 3rd edition (and really earlier).

Then pick another example. They all work the same way. Drama isn't created by or dependent upon failing trivial tasks. Drama is created by doing things that are cool and failing at things that are epic. A 12th level character shouldn't expect to fail at the routine tasks that a 1st level character sometimes fails at, because by 12th level you've already done all that sort of thing and moved on.

This is an excellent point. By 12th level, the stakes have changed for the rogue to the point that "can I get a mundane door open" isn't a challenge so much as a minor inconvenience. The rogue encountering these "challenges" is just a good way to show the player how far his character has come. It also helps highlight "real" challenges: The DC 30 lock on the door will show the rogue he's playing for bigger stakes now!

 

[Mort]

Let's get away from the thief robbing an entire town scenario and talk about traps for a minute.

I just looked over both Against the Giants (which I'm currently running my party through), and Tomb of Horrors, a dungeon known for it's fiendish traps. Just a cursory glance shows DC 20's across the board. In AtG there's a treasure room full of traps, so when they find that room, do I just say, "You find and disable all of the traps. No roll required!" and tell them what they've won? Does the rogue just waltz through ToH without a single chance of failure? That can't be right.

I feel like I must be missing something here. Both adventures are written with high level characters in mind, and the designers must have taken Reliable Talent into consideration, so I'm guessing the fault is mine for missing a key element.

I'll have to look at those adventures to answer the question specifically.

In a broad sense though, This means the party actually has a tangible and large benefit for having a rogue in it. As in, you can get by without one, but wow is it easier when you have a rogue in the party. This is as it should be when dealing with a trap heavy dungeon - especially when the traps are easy mundane ones.

 

[FieserMoep]

High level spells require a spell slot.

What do you guys actually think of class features that grant super useful spells for free, the whole day?
Do you remove those too?

Maybe DnD is simply not your system if it is such a big problem for you that high level characters get extremely potent by design. There are plenty of systems out there where even a high level equivalent is a tumbling fool that cant reliably do his job.

 

[Satyrn]

So, I after all this, I'm wondering if the OP has decided anything.

My suggestion would be to give it several more sessions to see how it plays out once the table is used to the feature.

 

[cthulhu42]

So, I after all this, I'm wondering if the OP has decided anything.

My suggestion would be to give it several more sessions to see how it plays out once the table is used to the feature.

That's exactly what I've decided to to.

Sent from my SGH-M919 using EN World mobile app

 

[cthulhu42]

As far as I am aware, the adventures are written without the assumption of any particular class being present. And the thing is, if you don't have a rogue on the scene, then DC 20 is about the limit of what any other class can hit a majority of the time. Given the emphasis on bounded accuracy in the core book, it seems more likely to me that the difficulties were set in consideration of a cleric or fighter that had the criminal background (with something like +9 on the check).

A quick Google search suggests that Tomb of Horrors is designed for levels 10-14, which means you would need either a level 11-12 rogue that specifically had expertise in thieves' tools, or a level 13-14 rogue with maximum Dexterity, in order to auto-bypass those traps. Any other class would have at least a 50% chance of failing on every trap, which may well result in a TPK if you had a whole room full of them.

I guess my question is, if you had a room with seven DC 20 traps in it (as an example), what do you think the odds should be that the party makes it through unscathed in the absolute best possible scenario? Follow-up question: How would you possibly represent that, in the face of the strong normalization factor inherent to making seven different checks?

It's true that the adventures were not written with specific classes in mind, although Tomb of Horrors seems like it would be a bear without a rogue (although I've never run it, but we've all heard the horror stories).

To answer your questions as best I can, to make it through those seven traps unscathed under the best possible conditions (which I will assume includes a single rogue with skills built to deal with traps), I'd be comfortable with 95% or higher.

I'm not sure I understand your follow up question as to how I would represent that, but I would be plenty happy to watch a rogue buzz through all those traps with a 95% chance of success.

It seems that many of the respondents here are insistent that I'm out to make sure that this rogue fails, and I'm just as insistent that that is just not the case. What I want is tension when faced with a skill check that could have dangerous consequences, even if it's just the tension of uncertainty; the possibility, even an extremely small one, of failure. As I said in an earlier reply, I think even the nat 1 failure rate for skills with which the rogue has Reliable Talent is too high at 5%. It is not that I want him to fail, but neither do I want challenges to become total non issues.

But, as someone pointed out, they've got mage hand and all sorts of other clever ways to mitigate traps, so maybe I'm over thinking it. The traps are just a small portion of an already combat heavy and fairly challenging adventure.

But I will ask you, a hypothetical. Say you're running a solo dungeon for a rogue with his trap skills geared up with Reliable Talent to the point where he automatically succeeds at DC 20 traps, which are the max DC's presented in the dungeon. How would you handle it? Would you adjust the DC's to present more of a challenge? Would you let him just sail through them all? Would you perhaps make time a factor, as others have suggested? Please understand that I'm not being factious in the least. I'm honestly interested to know. When talking about the "thief robbing a whole town" scenario many people suggested interesting potential side plots that could arise to complicate the thief's life. Would you try to do the same in a dungeon setting, and if so, how?

 

[cthulhu42]

Consider the following:

Let's assume there exists a character that always succeeds at all skill checks. Regardless of DC. No exceptions.

Is this character overpowered? Well, the point is that skills isn't everything in a game of Dungeons & Dragons.

This character could still lose a fight. He would still have to learn to cast spells.

The point is that, yes, the level 11 Rogue is - in practice - that character (since there are almost no skill checks in published modules with a DC higher than 23 or whatever number we arrived at earlier).

Every level 11 Rogue is that character. Yes really - I haven't checked but apart from a meeting with Demogorgon or Tiamat, I wouldn't be surprised if you never ever see a DC 25 printed anywhere in any of the official modules.

So what does that tell you?

It should tell you that you are looking at this from an angle that significantly deviates from not only the developers' but most gamers too (as evidenced by the replies you are getting in this thread).

Am I saying you're playing the game badwrongfun? No. I'm just saying make up a houserule and move on with your game

I can't argue with your logic. If the designers are only putting in DC20 traps in an adventure designed for 11th level and up PC's, then yes, they must be taking Reliable Talent into account. It still seems odd to me, but such is life.

I have no houserules just yet, so I think I'll wait awhile and see how things play out before I tinker. Obviously Reliable Talent doesn't break other people's games, so I'm sure it won't break mine.

 

[cthulhu42]

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