D&D 5E [Guidance] What, +1d4 to every check ever?

[Stalker0]

Well, no. A +6 would change the success rate from 1/8 to 3/8 - a tripling of success rates due to the bonus. Something that bumps almost half of your failures into successes is a major change.

Something that bumps one failure out of eight into a success isn't going to have a whole lot of impact on the game, especially when a single character is unlikely to make more than about 8 skill checks in a given session. A +2 attack does have a larger impact simply because the player makes so many more attack rolls than skill checks.

That's why I talk about tracking the impact. Because we don't really know how often a character is making a skill check in a given session and how often that that skill check succeeds because of a bonus d4. You'd need to track over several sessions, across a number of characters, but, I would hazard a guess that the impact of Guidance is far, far from game breaking.

I think this is where our disagreement stems. In my game I know for a fact that 8 skill checks is low. Most of my games have many more skill checks than attack rolls, unless it’s a combat heavy session

 

[jgsugden]

There is no spell that gets cast more often in my game than Guidance. Not even close. I bet a 3:1 ratio to the next most commonly casted spell is about right, heck maybe 4:1.

Really? My experience would be more like 150% compared to combat cantrips.

And just to note it, my PC cast Prestidigitation about 3000 times last session, in theory, to use it to clean up a bar that was being messed up by a Poltergeist (I bet a lot of PCs know which stock adventure we just started recently). 5 hours, 60 minutes per hour, 10 rounds per minute, 1 casting per round during that time as he walked around and cleaned up everything - over and over. That would be more times than Guidance could reasonably be cast in any campaign....

I'm curious how many opportunities people think there are in a typical game to make a Guidance impactful. It might be an interesting exercise to have people listen to a session of Critical Role and count the opportunities that one of the two clerics in the current campaign *could* have meaningfully cast Guidance. I'll randomly pick episde 39 of Season 2 (Temple of the False Serpent) in case any folks want to listen to it and count the opportunities. If I get the chance to do so, I'll list the spellcaster, the target, the impacted check/situation and the rough time within the podcast episode. My criteria will be that there was a spellcaster available, the roll could be anticipated reasonably, there was no reason not to cast the Guidance (otherwise occupied, trying to be stealthy), and a roll was actually made (I'll include passives should it come up, but that would be hard to anticipate).

 

[Hussar]

I think this is where our disagreement stems. In my game I know for a fact that 8 skill checks is low. Most of my games have many more skill checks than attack rolls, unless it’s a combat heavy session

Considering that in a given round of combat, you are likely having somewhere around 5 attack rolls per round (probably more), I find that very hard to believe. Two four round combats in a session (hardly a heavy combat session) would result in 40-60 attack rolls. I seriously doubt you have that many skill checks in a given session.

But, even if you did, how much of an impact is guidance actually having? Standard success rate is 60% in 5e. So, out of 20 skill checks, you would succeed 12 times and fail 8. With guidance, you succeed 13 and fail 7, since guidance only impacts 1 in 8 failures. I find it rather hard to believe that 1 more success would make that much of a difference in your game.

Remember, you can only cast guidance on a single skill check. It's not like bless where a single casting could easily result in 15-20 affected die rolls. Unless you're in a situation where each PC can make a check in sequence and the cleric can cast Guidance on each PC, most likely any given situation might only see a couple of rolls.

Like I said, I'm really having a hard time seeing how gaining 1 success in 20 checks is going to massively impact anyone's game.