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

5ekyu said:

As i have said, i would not alter this ability for my games.

But if it is needed or preferred to change it so there is a chance, i would suggest.

"Reliable talent does not apply when the check is at disadvantage."

That allows for unfavorable circumstance to create the chance of failure and the master of skills only is safe under "normal" or "favorable" conditions.

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That would be kicking the rogue while he's down! The time that the ability would be at it's most beneficial and useful - houseruling that it doesn't apply. And frankly, that's exactly what this ability is supposed to guard against - maybe another class is under stress and would muck it up - but the rogue - he's got this.

5ekyu said:

Or if you want even more...

"Reliable talent ONLY applies on checks rolled with Advantage" but to me this makes it fairly weak, very weak.

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As you say, this would make the ability just about useless.

5e doesn't (as far as I'm aware) explicitly state tiers of play (like 4e does) BUT they are certainly still there. 11th level seems to represent that tier changer for most classes. Many classes get some beefy "you're no longer a mere peon" abilities at 11th:
Fighters get a 3rd attack, Paladins get an extra 1d8 to each attack, Barbarians get relentless rage (the "I'm not dropping" ability), mages and clerics get 6th level spells, etc.

Reliable talent is the rogue's tier changing ability.

FieserMoep said:

They prove a general statement to be wrong. A paladin even supports his group.
I'd also argue that you do not have to sacrifice much in your build to get decent saves.
There are only 3 important saves to have, getting resilient for another one is rather easy and for plenty of builds even intended. Having two out of Con/Dex/Wis grants you a decent coverage.

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Or play a gnome for the advantage on most Int, Wis and Cha saves. Then play a fighter for the Str and Con prof. Fill in the Dex gap with Rsesilient. And your gnome will be a saving throw god!

(So long as you remember that gnome cunning when rolling against domination round after round after round.)

(after round after round )

Mort said:

5e doesn't (as far as I'm aware) explicitly state tiers of play (like 4e does) BUT they are certainly still there. 11th level seems to represent that tier changer for most classes. Many classes get some beefy "you're no longer a mere peon" abilities at 11th:
Fighters get a 3rd attack, Paladins get an extra 1d8 to each attack, Barbarians get relentless rage (the "I'm not dropping" ability), mages and clerics get 6th level spells, etc.

Reliable talent is the rogue's tier changing ability.

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PHB pg. 15 - Tiers of Play

ad_hoc said:

PHB pg. 15 - Tiers of Play

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Well there you go. 11-16 is third tier, where characters "are special even among adventures."

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5ekyu said:

As i have said, i would not alter this ability for my games.

But if it is needed or preferred to change it so there is a chance, i would suggest.

"Reliable talent does not apply when the check is at disadvantage."

That allows for unfavorable circumstance to create the chance of failure and the master of skills only is safe under "normal" or "favorable" conditions.

Or if you want even more...

"Reliable talent ONLY applies on checks rolled with Advantage" but to me this makes it fairly weak, very weak.

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Or, how about, certain types of challenges just become a non-issue after a certain level, and the DM has the creativity to find other ways to challenge the party other than 'forcing the character who relies on skills to be unreliable'?

Or do we really have to have one of the world's most powerful Rogues get caught picking a mundane pocket every once in a while to make things 'fun'?

I think tier jumps have a way of calling the DM out on somewhat lazy adventure design. I remember in my first 5E campaign when my Sorcerer picked up Fireball. Up until that point, I did a lot of mook mobs. "Oh fine, you can take 4 goblins, but what about 10 goblins?" It worked. And then we hit 5th level and a fireball could take out 40 mounted orcs. I was forced to be a little smarter about how I did my encounter design. In the meantime, the Sorcerer got to win a lot of combats.

Skill checks that succeed on a roll of 10 or better are not challenging the Rogue. They are keeping the Rogue busy, and possibly keeping them on their toes, but, at the end of the night, if all your Rogue did was pop off a few DC20 locks with a roll of 8, they are not going to be telling stories about that at your next session, not after the first few sessions where they brag about how their 10th level character has +12 on Thieve's Tools. (Which is less about your adventure design and more about their awesome character design anyway.)

You just have to be more creative. Don't jack all your DCs up to 25 and above — that's treadmill nonsense. Make sure you are asking for more than skill checks. Don't let your players just "Roll perception on it. Ok, roll thieve's tools on it. Ok, roll sleight of hand on it." Skill checks are all about doing interesting things — the Rogue just gets to succeed at the interesting things they come up with. Make sure you are presenting opportunities to use more than the same 4 skills in your adventure. Present the player characters with challenges that require cooperation, or would allow the Rogue an opportunity to auto-succeed with Reliable Talent, but put themselves in particular danger to get in the right position to do so, etc.

"It's a DC 20 lock. Yeah, I got it. But you'll need to climb up a steep cliff face to get to it. Yeah, I got it. But you'll need to be balancing on a fingerwidth ledge while you do it. Yep, I got it. But you'll be standing over a pit of lava and the crushing heat makes you feel faint — give me a constitution save! Umm... 11, +6, does a 17 do it? You took expertise in Thieve's Tools, Athletics, Acrobatics, and you took the Resilient feat in Constitution saving throws? Yep. You were made to unlock this safe."

schnee said:

Or, how about, certain types of challenges just become a non-issue after a certain level, and the DM has the creativity to find other ways to challenge the party other than 'forcing the character who relies on skills to be unreliable'?

Or do we really have to have one of the world's most powerful Rogues get caught picking a mundane pocket every once in a while to make things 'fun'?

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Well, the best archer in the world misses the easiest target with frightening regularity. The best wizard in the world can employ his most powerful magicks and fail to affect a commoner. This is what a game based on bounded accuracy means.

Reliable talent, however, trashes bounded accuracy. It throws it out. It disowns it. And this isn't bad, per se, but it does cause a sudden paradigm shift of one of the core conceits of 5e. Hence the rather uniform nature of the complaints about it.

I'd greatly prefer if reliable talent granted advantage rather than setting an arbitrary floor. It keeps better with bounded accuracy and still solidly accomplishes the design goal.

Ovinomancer said:

Well, the best archer in the world misses the easiest target with frightening regularity. The best wizard in the world can employ his most powerful magicks and fail to affect a commoner. This is what a game based on bounded accuracy means.

Reliable talent, however, trashes bounded accuracy. It throws it out. It disowns it. And this isn't bad, per se, but it does cause a sudden paradigm shift of one of the core conceits of 5e. Hence the rather uniform nature of the complaints about it.

I'd greatly prefer if reliable talent granted advantage rather than setting an arbitrary floor. It keeps better with bounded accuracy and still solidly accomplishes the design goal.

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Your definition of Bounded Accuracy — "every task can be failed" — seems very narrow. Bounded Accuracy is a somewhat vaguely stated design philosophy, and I don't know exactly what each developer has in mind when they say it, but for myself, I prefer it not to be, "everybody looks like a chump now and then." That's a side effect of any system where you roll for things. And don't get me wrong, I love looking like a chump in D&D, and I love it when the players look like chumps. But it's not the end goal of the game. Looking like a chump just helps to underscore the awesome. And, in the case of a level 11 Rogue, they don't look like chumps on skill checks. Of course, once you get out of the "more likely to succeed than fail" checks (requiring an 11 or higher, eg 50% chance of success), the Rogue is just as likely to fail with Reliable Talent as without it. They can't accomplish things that were impossible before.

You keep comparing to Wizard saves and Fighter attacks, but, again, another "core conceit" of 5e is asymmetrical balance. The mechanics of the Wizard are not the same as the mechanics of the Fighter are not the same as the Mechanics of the Rogue. Weapon attacks aren't the same as skill checks. They do different things and come up way more often. Spell saves aren't the same as skill checks — spells generally have a greater impact than a skill check, especially for an 11th level Wizard. Cast a fireball into the town square. Does it matter if all the townspeople make their DC 16 save? Swing a great-sword at a townsperson with +8 or +9 to hit (and at 11th level, many many Fighters will be carrying magic weapons with more bonuses than that.) You have a 10% chance of missing, but, don't worry, you get 3 attacks in a turn, and if you don't hit this turn, that townsperson will be lucky to take 4 hp off you before your next turn comes around.

cthulhu42 said:

Resource expenditure is resource expenditure. I'm not asking them to equal out. It just seems like any given ability ought to either have a cost that limits its use, or a chance (even a very small one) to fail.

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The cost of getting Reliable Talent is being a 12th level rogue. (I think [MENTION=82779]MechaPilot[/MENTION] made a similar point upthread.)

cthulhu42 said:

They're not fighting dragons every day. There is down time. It's not that he needs to break into houses, it's that he WILL. And that's totally ok. There just needs to be some small element of danger. Otherwise it's just me handing him a list of loot.

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Many abilities in D&D have no chance of failure - a lot of spellcasting being the main example.

The idea that a 12th level rogue who can auto-pick pockets or open locks is going to break a game that survived a mage with access to Knock, TK, Dimension Door, Fly, Invisibility, etc doesn't seem very plausible to me, but maybe there is something distinctive about your game that I'm not aware of.

cthulhu42 said:

A fighter's attacks always have a chance to fail.

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A combat is resolved through multiple checks. Any one of those checks may fail, but the odds of a fighter missing (say) 9 attacks in a row, assuming (not unreasonably) a 70% chance to hit, is 0.3^9 = approx 0.00002, or about one-five hundreth of 1%. In practical terms that's close enough to no chance of missing over the course of a combat.

Conversely, 5e adopts the traditional D&D paradigm of having non-combat, non-casting checks be resolved by a single roll. So whereas combat establishes a minumum chance of success by allowing multiple rolls, Reliable Talent establishes a minimum chance of success by setting a minimum on the die.

FieserMoep said:

Skill checks are by far the most mundane yet also the WEAKEST way to interact with the DnD world outside of just narrative interaction.

<snip>

Skill checks are grounded in the mundane

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I often see this stated, but I'm not sure why it has to be true. What happened to the 3E idea of "balancing on a cloud", or the 4e martial utility effects like Hide in Plain Sight?

Ovinomancer said:

Well, the best archer in the world misses the easiest target with frightening regularity. The best wizard in the world can employ his most powerful magicks and fail to affect a commoner. This is what a game based on bounded accuracy means.

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That has nothing to do with bounded accuracy but 1 and 20 being criticals.
The best archer in the world may have rolled an 18 for his dex, meaning (Ranger or Fighter in this case) he only needs his first ASI (LvL4) to always hit a commoner unless he failed critically.
As for the best Wizard, he will be impossible to resists for a commoner for the best Wizard in the World certainly gets something like the Robe. Given there is no critical for Saves the Commoner has NO chance to ever succeed.

As you see: There is plenty of precedence where bounded accuracy is worth nothing for it is completely ignored as being relevant for trash encounters.