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

[5ekyu]

Yes, you missed something.

And helpful as always.

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[FieserMoep]

Outright ignoring locks and stuff for the Rogue to do is imho on the DM to be honest. Just because he is so good at it does not mean you can completely ignore it.
Just because your fighter can roughen up some tavern brawlers without even standing up, those do not stop to be around there from time to time.
Just because your entire party has darkvision, all the caves wont become well lit.

Do not think of it just as a challenge. Think of it as providing spotlight to the character. Because ultimately most people play DnD to portray a character, his growth and that he achieves stuff. Also by outright ignoring locks you take options away from the rogue. Maybe the party had a disagreement before and the rogue outright refuses to open up a lock until they have resolved it. Maybe the rogue wants to be the first to actually be able to open an otherwise locked chest to "slight of hands" something that is especially important to him due to a subplot or pure greed.

Providing a challenge is just as important as providing spotlight - while both ambitions can work together it is important to keep them separated and treat them as such. Just because your Rogue has become one of the better thieves, the world is not changing by removing all locks. Balancing the World retroactively to player abilities is effectively taking away ANY progression they had.

 

[5ekyu]

Agree with the above. Rather than fretting over the talent or culling opportunities for its use in play, i would be elevating it.

Possibly something as simple as explaining an increase for their downtime activity payoffs where reliable is used, cuz they can safely try more risky targets.

Or if they are inclined in this was, after most large crowds drop them an email or note with "interesting bauble you "found" in the crowd." Some of them being just lott but some being plot.

Key would be these would be additional benefits they can gain that spotlight the gains with no need for downsides.



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[Ovinomancer]

I dont think its just you. Its IMO an offshoot of a gamr play style that teaches the GM to focus on challenges - creating, presenting and structuring their game's elements as challenges.

Locks no longer appearing because they wont challenge is one symptom which may stem from that.

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Was the purpose of this post just to bring your bad assumption from the other thread and use it here to dismiss my post? I clearly refuted your assumption in the other thread, including the follow on statements of how my games played based on that false assumption. Statements that were wildly incorrect, as they continue to be incorrect, here. I understand you're trying to leverage GNS theory -- somewhat pejoratively, it appears -- but, as I said in the other thread, that label doesn't define my play at all. Your continued insistence that it does is really doing you no favors, nor is you dragging the topic into another thread.

Besides, at the time of my anecdote, my playstyle was much closer to how you've described yours, so it isn't even appropriate to the point. The changes I've made have, as I noted in the post you quote above, alleviated the issue to a fair degree.

If you're going to insist on continuing to use already refuted arguments in other threads, I don't see how any constructive discussion will occur.

 

[redrick]

Two, if your argument really boils down to 'if you play the way I do, it's not a problem,' then it isn't exactly universally applicable, yeah? I mean, I appreciate the input, and, as a point of fact, I've changed how a run a great deal from that game to how I'm running now, but that advice wouldn't have helped me then at all. Now? Well, I still think that an ability that requires changing how you present the game to provide trivially bypassed challenges to showcase the ability that trivially bypasses those challenges is bit weird, but, yeah, I provide more complex interactions now. Also, I'm trying out the advantage instead of a floor version in my current game (which is still many levels from 11th) because I find it achieves the same design goal but does it in a less disruptive and more helpful way. This way, it's helpful on very hard DCs as well as making very low DCs still a formality in the vast majority of cases. Given I rarely even ask for a check that would be a low DC, it'll have the same effect at low DCs as it does currently, but DCs 15-20 will still be relevant.

If you don't play the way I do, you are absolutely unquestionably doing it wrong!

Ha, nah, that's just me admitting that maybe I don't see the issue because of how we tend to play. The limitations of my perspective. I think there are a lot of abilities in D&D that can catch a DM off-guard and force them to reevaluate how they make adventures. I remember conversations about Aaracokras and how, suddenly, all of the "you need to cross the canyon" encounters become trivial. As I've said, Fireballs were a big one for me. Another ability that I remember getting cheesed at was Sharpshooter eliminating penalties for firing on enemies under cover. Of course, characters getting new abilities and walking all over encounters that would have once posed a difficulty is part of the point. That helps to showcase the new toys. But as a DM, I sometimes rely on some rather lazy tricks to keep things challenging and interesting, and then a character goes off and flips that off, and I have to up my game.

Anyway, I love these discussions about various class features, because I think, ultimately, the solution to those class features is often to expand your toolbox as a DM, and those solutions are applicable at all levels of play with all characters, and since I'm still learning tons about how to be a better DM, I learn a lot from participating.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Outright ignoring locks and stuff for the Rogue to do is imho on the DM to be honest. Just because he is so good at it does not mean you can completely ignore it.

A point I made myself.

Just because your fighter can roughen up some tavern brawlers without even standing up, those do not stop to be around there from time to time.

Do you spend gametime on it, though? Sure, they exist, but do you actually roll initiative and trade blows (well, not much trading of blows as much as one side receiving all the blows)? Or do you just narrate it and move on?

Just because your entire party has darkvision, all the caves wont become well lit.

Well, of course they don't, but how you go from there to here, I'm not really sure.

Do not think of it just as a challenge. Think of it as providing spotlight to the character. Because ultimately most people play DnD to portray a character, his growth and that he achieves stuff. Also by outright ignoring locks you take options away from the rogue. Maybe the party had a disagreement before and the rogue outright refuses to open up a lock until they have resolved it. Maybe the rogue wants to be the first to actually be able to open an otherwise locked chest to "slight of hands" something that is especially important to him due to a subplot or pure greed.

A point I made myself. Alongside finding it odd that extra effort need be made to continue to spotlight things so that an ability can be called out as special when it's that very ability that causes those things to be trivial. That's not weird for anyone else?

Providing a challenge is just as important as providing spotlight - while both ambitions can work together it is important to keep them separated and treat them as such. Just because your Rogue has become one of the better thieves, the world is not changing by removing all locks. Balancing the World retroactively to player abilities is effectively taking away ANY progression they had.

I don't balance my world to the players, but I'm also a human person with limited time that tends to use that time to provide spotlight within challenge. And, I have issues with 11th level making you automatically one of the better thieves in the world -- best in town, sure. Notable in a big city, certainly. Nearly unstoppable at getting into places and hiding? Eh, seems a big jump.

Again, the ability can be accommodated, but it requires the DM to pretty strongly shift what's a challenge to the character and also recall that they need to maintain the now trivial challenges to keep spotlight time up. If you're a new DM and this hits you for the first time, that's, like huge. Way bigger than a 6th level spell or an extra attack by the fighter. It's not an expected or easy adjustment when it hits you cold.

Now, I'm about 3 campaigns after the first time it hit me, and I'm haven't been a newbie DM for some time. It startled me, sure, but I adapted to it (with the above mentioned growing pains) well enough. None of that makes me think this is a well designed or implemented ability -- it's just one I can deal with well enough.

 

[Celebrim]

When a DM doesn't have a consistent picture of how his world works, then the temptation is always to scale the challenge entirely to the PC's. The result can be end up being punishing a PC for getting good at something, either by removing that challenge entirely or else by continually scaling the difficulty upward the more the player invests in being good at something.

Things like... the DC of a lock or trap being constantly increasing as the PC levels up bugs me. I'm similarly annoyed when the level of the guards in the dungeons increases according to the PC's combat ability. Things like Paizo adventure paths, though I admire much of the craftsmanship in them, annoy me with how much they seem to resemble 'zones' where everything in zone 3 could kick the butt of everything in zone 1.

If you don't like that the PC's leave certain challenges behind, just don't have them level up. Save all the hassle of making the numbers bigger if the difficulty is going to increase by the same amount.

 

[FieserMoep]

Anyway, I love these discussions about various class features, because I think, ultimately, the solution to those class features is often to expand your toolbox as a DM, and those solutions are applicable at all levels of play with all characters, and since I'm still learning tons about how to be a better DM, I learn a lot from participating.

That is pretty much the perfect answer to it. If such a feature that seems well accepted to this point and - to my knowledge - rarely brings up any problems, is such a hassle for "you", maybe it is the DM who still has to learn a bit.

 

[redrick]

That is pretty much the perfect answer to it. If such a feature that seems well accepted to this point and - to my knowledge - rarely brings up any problems, is such a hassle for "you", maybe it is the DM who still has to learn a bit.

Ha, well, I would say that we all have a bit to learn as DMs. I don't think I've ever played a game where the DM, no matter how good, didn't do something that I thought should have been done differently. So, I see it more as an invitation to growth than a condemnation of laziness.

 

[Ristamar]

For those that are not comfortable with Reliable Talent's floor of 10 as a minimum unmodified roll, I would suggest having the floor scale at a value of 1/2 character level. Then the floor will start at 5 when they acquire the ability at level 11 and peak at 10 when they hit level 20.