D&D 5E Status of skills/tools and expected changes

[Mistwell]

I think narrative stuff like that needs to stay in the storygame module their writing, and not in the core game.

 

[GnomeWorks]

... the DM can ... put a third door and make you roll the dice. Take20 takes the third option away, or force the DM to have a battle or a storm around to justify the call for a check.

The DM shouldn't be deciding whether or not players roll the dice, anyway.

The DM should be determining what challenges and obstacles are present in the world, assigning them sensible mechanics that are sensible in terms of the world in which they are placed, then simply present them as such to the players.

the DM's pre-made decision of your success/failure is not less arbitrary as the dice. (In fact, sometimes I think IMHO that Gygax's love for randomness also had something to do with lessening the DM's responsibility for player's success or failure)

In the game I'm running right now, I could hardly tell you what level most of the PCs are, much less what their individual skill bonuses or various abilities are. As a DM, knowing that is not my responsibility - that's the player's job.

My job is to make the setting internally consistent, and to describe the world as they interact with it. If they decide to try to do something beyond them, that's not on me - that's on them. Things that are significantly more dangerous or difficult typically have signs indicating such, so they're unlikely to blunder into something they can't handle... but even if they do, this is not my fault nor my problem.

If I know that the party's Rogue is always going to open every lock with DC up to 20 and never going to open any lock with DC of 21 or more, why am I even putting those locked door in the adventure? I might as well put only open doors and walls.

Because the world exists beyond the PCs' sight-lines.

I know this is not very relevant for Take20 since normally you just can't retry interaction skills, it's just an example about skills where description matters a lot.

Relying upon the player's ability to explain the character's actions is a slippery slope that leads to treating characters as pawns and making mechanics obsolete in favor of who can fast-talk the DM the best. If the weakest person in the group can play a Str 18 fighter and cleave goblins in half, then the shy introvert should be able to play the Cha 18 faceman and convince people of anything, regardless of his/her ability - or lack thereof - to roleplay in the traditional sense.

In the context of a game system in which the world's most proficient warrior will fail to hit a stationary outhouse from the inside 5% to the time...

Yes. Say it with me: "the d20 is a horrible die, and I don't want to play games that use it anymore."

This discussion, while grounded in D&D, is not exclusively the purview of D&D. The notion of being able to "take 10" or "take 20," in whatever form, in various games is interesting, and this discussion speaks to those concepts even while grounded in the lingua franca that is D&D.

 

[Lanefan]

Take-20 is a horrible rule. Much better would have been Take-18, where you spend the time to give it your best shot but leave out the luck/good day/random factor. Better yet would have been to leave it as a roll, and allow for the likelihood of failure even when the odds are in your favour to succeed. (remember, folks: adventuring is supposed to be difficult!)

For (I forget who) far above who was complaining about the roll to do X-action being your only chance - to me the assumption is that the one roll represents the BEST of the various attempts you're making at the time, whatever the circumstance. There's a stream of thought going around that seems to have it as one attempt = one roll. Wrong. One roll = *all* the attempts you're making at that time, until you either give up or somehow change the conditions.

Lan-"sometimes it's just easier to beat the door down with an axe"-efan

 

[PinkRose]

I disagree with everyone that disagrees with me.
I did not give picking a lock as an example.
You can't take 20 on climbing a mountain, but you can take 20 on baking a cake.
It removes the randmoness for those checks, yes. It doesn't remove randomness from the game because you don't use it for every check.
You can't use it for an opposed roll. You don't Take 20 to hide. You don't take 20 for passive perception.
Taking 20 stops the player from taking the time in-game to roll 20 times. It doesn't do anything else besides that.

 

[Li Shenron]

It seems like the interesting thing about some tasks is not the binary pass/fail but instead the pass without a hitch or pass with some complications. This is very much a modern game design feel. Is the story more interesting if a lock picking attempt fails? No, but it is more interesting if the character breaks the lock, jams it, breaks the door jam, takes a really long time, needs to research the manufacturer, makes a lot of noise, etc.

So, not really interesting that the trained lock picker opens it or not. The interesting part is any troubles added onto the task.

Definitely! That's for me one more reason to actually roll the dice, and use the difference for adding complications. The playtest rule already have "hazards" for some skills if you fail by more than 5, you could do the same for successes by more than 5 (although maybe I'd prefer 10). Perhaps the best feature of the d20 is the room it gives for this in both directions (if someone really wanted to use many degrees of success/failure), although in general I think d20 is too swingy for skills.

I disagree with everyone that disagrees with me.
I did not give picking a lock as an example.
You can't take 20 on climbing a mountain, but you can take 20 on baking a cake.
It removes the randmoness for those checks, yes. It doesn't remove randomness from the game because you don't use it for every check.
You can't use it for an opposed roll. You don't Take 20 to hide. You don't take 20 for passive perception.
Taking 20 stops the player from taking the time in-game to roll 20 times. It doesn't do anything else besides that.

As I said, Take20 is such a wonderful rule because so many times you can't use it

For me, rules like "only one attempt" or "critical failure on a low roll" are better because they achieve the same benefit (stopping player from rolling 20 times) without turning a whole character skill into autosuccess/autofailure.

 

[Li Shenron]

(leaving the Take20 discussion behind and going back to the skills list)

It's possible that the skills list is not finalized yet, although it does feel to me like most likely they'll change the list of tools rather than the list of skills.

Now I'm just comparing the old 3e skills list with the new 5e skills list, and check for things that are possibly missing...

Alchemy, maybe there should be a tool(s) for this? Alternatively, see Profession below

Appraise feels like something it's possible to train at, but instead of a skill it could be also a background's trait (e.g. Merchant background, which we don't have yet)

Architecture & Engineering, although this was technically a knowledge skill, see Profession below

Concentration might never come up as checks in 5e

Decipher script... not sure if this could be "trainable" enough to be a skill rather than a mere Int check

Escape artist, doesn't feel quite right for either athletics or acrobatic... it's close enough but not quite

Forgery might be lumped under deception, however it's definitely not a Cha check so it will be a case of applying the skill bonus to a different ability score check

Gather information currently missing, but recently it was said that search will be renamed investigate, and that sounds a very good place for gathering info too

Geography & Local... have no idea! If all lumped under nature, it might make it too powerful and encompassing. There's however a large variety about how these are treated by different DMs, so I'm not sure there's a good one-size-fits-all solution.

Profession, in a sense there is no need for this since backgrounds pretty much cover professions

Use magic device was originally not a normal skill but very much a Rogue and Bard class feature, no need to worry about this in the context of skills IMO

Use rope is possibly too narrow to make it a skill of its own, but yet I cannot find a good skill to lump this one with. OTOH we might just say it's hardly possible to train very far into using ropes.

Thoughts?

 

[Plaguescarred]

I disagree with everyone that disagrees with me.
I did not give picking a lock as an example.
You can't take 20 on climbing a mountain, but you can take 20 on baking a cake.
It removes the randmoness for those checks, yes. It doesn't remove randomness from the game because you don't use it for every check.
You can't use it for an opposed roll. You don't Take 20 to hide. You don't take 20 for passive perception.
Taking 20 stops the player from taking the time in-game to roll 20 times. It doesn't do anything else besides that.

I agree with you and that last line sums it up well and is worth repeating;


''Taking 20 stops the player from taking the time in-game to roll 20 times. It doesn't do anything else besides that.''

 

[Lanefan]

I agree with you and that last line sums it up well and is worth repeating;


''Taking 20 stops the player from taking the time in-game to roll 20 times. It doesn't do anything else besides that.''

Except you don't roll 20 times! You roll once, representing the best you're gonna do no matter how many times you attempt whatever it is you're attempting under those conditions (whatever they may be). Change the conditions somehow, and you get another roll. Assuming a DC 15 or system equivalent for the thing being attempted, the discussion at the table should go something like:

Player: "I try to <choose one: pick the lock, climb the wall, decipher the code, etc.>."
DM: "OK, you take a while and give it your best shot - roll your skill check."
Player: (rolls die) "7, plus 4, that's 11."
DM: "Sorry, no go. What do you do next?"
Player: "I try again."
DM: "What are you doing differently this time?"
Player: "Nothing, I'm just trying again."
DM: "Then you're failing again as you're still bound by the 11 you rolled earlier. That's the best you're going to do unless you do something differently."

See? One roll. Not twenty.

Lan-"my skills go to 11"-efan

 

[GnomeWorks]

DM: "What are you doing differently this time?"
Player: "Nothing, I'm just trying again."

That feels like its heading towards mother may I pretty quickly.

Admittedly, though, I see the argument. Unless conditions change, one roll is all you get... but I can't shake the feeling that a character should be able to keep trying at a thing that doesn't have circumstances for failure, if they have sufficient time to do so, until they get their absolute best result. It is "just a matter of time" for them to get that 20 on the die.

 

[Plaguescarred]

Player: "I try again."
DM: "What are you doing differently this time?"
Player: "Nothing, I'm just trying again."
DM: "Then you're failing again as you're still bound by the 11 you rolled earlier."

There's nothing like using previous rolls for future checks in the rules. In D&D Next some task may be tried once before doing something different and some others may be tried repeatedly doing the same thing, as per the rules i quoted in post #35. And if such a possibly achieveable task can be repeated 20 times without any time constraint, then you can just assumes it automatically succeeds.