D&D 5E Why don't everything scale by proficiency bonus?

Saelorn said:

That's a bad example, because nothing in your work or travels would have given you significant exposure to flute-playing.

Contrast that with a wizard who, whether trained or not, is going to spend a lot of time trying to perceive monsters that may or may not be there, and who is going to have repeated first-hand exposure to sword-play. Just as it would be silly for you to spontaneously develop musical ability for no reason, it would be equally silly for this wizard to learn nothing after they have been given so many opportunities.

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It's not really a bad example. In my world travels over the decades, I've been to a lot of concerts. From middle of nowhere Weird Al at a fairground concert, to 20,000 filled stadiums, to Rockfest, to 4 day long concerts in Amsterdam. A LOT of concerts. And you know what? I still don't have any clue how to play a guitar.

I wasn't into gardening 20 years ago and I'm not into gardening today. My skill bonus hasn't changed for that skill. Not true for my core proficiencies, however.

Sacrosanct said:

It's not really a bad example. In my world travels over the decades, I've been to a lot of concerts. From middle of nowhere Weird Al at a fairground concert, to 20,000 filled stadiums, to Rockfest, to 4 day long concerts in Amsterdam. A LOT of concerts. And you know what? I still don't have any clue how to play a guitar.

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How many of those concerts were life-or-death situations, though? How often were you required to play a guitar, regardless of your lack of training, with failure causing you to be ambushed by orcs?

Saelorn said:

How many of those concerts were life-or-death situations, though? How often were you required to play a guitar, regardless of your lack of training, with failure causing you to be ambushed by orcs?

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Doesn't matter. In a life or death situation I wouldn't suddenly learn how to play. Don't be silly. (also, that's shifting the goalposts from what the OP is describing. They didn't limit a prof bonus only in life and death situations, but all situations based solely on level)

Sacrosanct said:

Doesn't matter. In a life or death situation I wouldn't suddenly learn how to play. Don't be silly.

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Not if it was just one, no. I'm talking about a routine. Walk through this maze, and try to find the exit. If you fail to notice the signs which distinguish the real exit from the false ones, then you are physically beaten.

Participation is mandatory. Failure results in pain. Repeat a hundred times. It doesn't matter whether or not you had previously been trained on what to look for; you would eventually figure out what works.

Sacrosanct said:

(also, that's shifting the goalposts from what the OP is describing. They didn't limit a prof bonus only in life and death situations, but all situations based solely on level)

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Adventuring skills are all a matter of life or death. If you fail your Athletics check, then you fall and get hurt. If you fail to identify a particular rune, then you get blasted. The same is true of saving throws, even.

Things that aren't a matter of life or death, like crafting and profession skills, are beyond the scope of the game rules.

Saelorn said:

That's a bad example, because nothing in your work or travels would have given you significant exposure to flute-playing.

Contrast that with a wizard who, whether trained or not, is going to spend a lot of time trying to perceive monsters that may or may not be there, and who is going to have repeated first-hand exposure to sword-play. Just as it would be silly for you to spontaneously develop musical ability for no reason, it would be equally silly for this wizard to learn nothing after they have been given so many opportunities.

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But flutes are a tool and tools are something you can be proficient in.

And why can't a carpenter/mason also possibly play flute on the side?

And how do we know the carpenter/mason didn't face hardship in his journey?

He hacked his way through the rainforests of the amazon, just to fight off cannibalistic tribes on his way to his destination to learn the ultimate masonry skills.

He climbed the mountains of Tibet to learn from the best carpenters in their area, he had to endure cold and yeti alike.

Also, the title says "everything," not "somethings." Which would make more sense to me than everything.

Li Shenron said:

common complaint was that the character who never ever wielded X or used Y was getting better at it just by doing nothing, and better than a fully-dedicated character just a few levels lower.

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It's an ancient complaint. Your wizard throws darts at goblins, crawls through tunnels, solves a puzzle lock, collects a cache of GP - and he learns to cast a new spell! He's not any better at darts, or opening locks or anything he did do on the adventure.

Because XP are about as concrete as hps.

It's also a complaint that other systems answered long ago: the way characters in BRP advance their skills, for instance, totally intuitive, comparatively realistic.

Tony Vargas said:

It's an ancient complaint. Your wizard throws darts at goblins, crawls through tunnels, solves a puzzle lock, collects a cache of GP - and he learns to cast a new spell! He's not any better at darts, or opening locks or anything he did do on the adventure.

Because XP are about as concrete as hps.

It's also a complaint that other systems answered long ago: the way characters in BRP advance their skills, for instance, totally intuitive, comparatively realistic.

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The realistic-factor of it can be questioned ... failing is definitely a realistic way to learn and that wasn't part of the base rules.

The effect was however in practice most everybody got better at every single common adventurer skill (exceptions being weapons where maybe you didnt pull the silly weapon caddy trick or highly specific other things and those who wanted could do it for those) If they had been weapon groups instead of super specific weapons it would have made more sense. unless you had very narrow adventures. It also made it so you could catch up rather quickly with a skill since the less you knew the faster you learned.

Anyway there were plenty of criticisms back in the day including tada it had very little niche protection because of the accelerated advancement of those who are less trained. (it just seemed realistic at some level)

You could explicitly spend some cash and time on getting trained and skip from 5 to 10 percentiles up to 50? I think based on wealth alone...or was it 75?

So, I would be okay with the proficiency bonus going up by one at every level, actually ("bounded accuracy" was never anything I felt like I really needed but I won't deny that broadly speaking it seems to be working). But having characters well, be proficient in things that they aren't proficient in, for lack of a more precise wording, I'm not sure why anyone would want that. It would leave ability scores as the sole point of differentiation between characters of different classes.

Surely the level 20 wizard is a bit better with a longsword than the level 1 wizard,

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Why? This doesn't seem like a "surely" to me, it seems like a dubious proposition at best. The wizard has concentrated his training on, well, wizardry. Why would he waste any time learning how to swing a sword considering that he can reshape the very fabric of reality through will alone? I just don't see the basis for this assumption.

The level 1 fighter with 10 wisdom and no perception proficiency is typically as good as the level 20 fighter at that skill. Why? Does it really make sense for that to be the case?

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It almost sounds like you complaining about the presence of meaningful choices during a character's development. In between being Level 1 and being Level 20, that fighter has multiple ways to improve their perception bonus, including several ability score increases that could be applied to Wisdom, certain feats, and so on. When the fighter chooses to increase Strength by 2 so that he can swing his longsword better and do more damage with it, rather than increasing his Wisdom by 2 so he's more perceptive, that is one of several meaningful choices that a player makes for their character between Level 1 and Level 20.

It does make sense for me that a 20th level fighter that has not chosen to invest at all in their perception would be less perceptive than a 10th level fighter that had chosen to invest in being perceptive.

I can't really see any implementation of what you're asking for that wouldn't make all characters feel much too samey.

Garthanos said:

The effect was however in practice most everybody got better at every single common adventurer skill... unless you had very narrow adventures. It also made it so you could catch up rather quickly with a skill since the less you knew the faster you learned.

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Both true of the RQ/BPR skill system, yes.

And, 'realistically,' it does make sense that if you spend a lot of time adventuring, both doing all sorts of adventuring tasks, and watching them being done, and talking about it all round the campfire, that you'd pick up broad familiarity, as well as practice your specialty a fair bit.

It might be more fun and genre-faithful, if almost all of your competence advanced with level, but, as a Flaw you could have a blindspot where you're just always laughably bad.

You could explicitly spend some cash and time on getting trained and skip from 5 to 10 percentiles up to 50? I think based on wealth alone...or was it 75?

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I thought it was 25, but it's been a long time & a game I never got to play as much as I might've liked.