D&D 5E Proficiency vs. Ability vs. Expertise

[Esker]

Then my advice would be to:
1. stop slamming your head on the table

Oh, don't worry, I'm not literally slamming my head on the table. The hair I've pulled out, on the other hand...

2. stop reading the threads

What, and just leave other rogue players everywhere to fend for themselves against the onslaught? I mean, granted, they are pretty good at avoiding taking serious injuries from barrages of barbed house rules, but still.

3. play your game as you want

I mean... obviously everyone here is going to do that. I figure the point of a discussion about a proposed house rule is to get other people's perspectives and become better aware of the consequences.

Seriously, though, yeah, we have finesse only adds to attack rolls, we allow double-dashing, and we want to reign in expertise. Of course, this is all in the discussion stage so it all might be for naught...

You do the finesse thing too? Do you allow non-finesse weapons to add strength to the attack roll? If you do that but you don't give finesse weapons DEX to damage, then I ask: which of your pets or loved ones was assassinated by a rogue?

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah, I'm cognizant of all of this, which is why if I did this (which I don't know that I would, but I like it better than making expertise worse) I wouldn't want the other classes to have an unrestricted choice of skills. I'd want to consciously avoid the rogue list to the extent possible (except for bards): arcana/history/religion for wizards, religion/medicine for clerics and paladins, nature/survival/animal handling for rangers and druids, ... Admittedly the other classes are tougher: monks could probably get acrobatics and barbarians and fighters athletics even though those are on the rogue list, since they tend to be individual checks not group ones. But I don't know what to do with sorcerers and warlocks.

Except that [MENTION=2525]Mistwell[/MENTION] is wrong for a few reasons. First, as I pointed out upthread, there are about 15 commonly used skills, so it's highly unlikely that the rogue "will barely register as a blip." Second, The rogue will know what skills have been taken before he ever gets expertise.

Let's take a party of 4. The wizard takes arcana or history. The ranger decides on survival or nature. The cleric bucks the RP trend and goes with perception. The rogue at first level takes perception. We now have a situation where the rogue has doubled up with a party member, but that's okay. It's the bonus from Class Mastery and not Expertise. The rogue also decides on stealth and climbing as his two expertise skills. He's up by +2 on super charged skills. Now let's fast forward to level 6. At level 6 the rogue gets two more skills from Expertise and those two are selected after he knows what skills the 3 other members picked at level 1, so unless he deliberately chooses to double up, he's going have two more skills that no one else has, that are commonly used, and at which he excels.

There's no way that the rogue is going just barely register as a blip among the other party members unless the group is like 8-12 people and they all take different skills, and even then there are 15 commonly used skills, so the rogue at level 6 can just pick from the ones not taken by anyone. Besides, you will see a large number taking perception, so the rogue can avoid the obvious and lessen his chances of doubling up that way as well.

 

[Esker]

Except a level 9 rogue hopefully won't be anywhere near a CR 9 Cloud Giant (one of the best Passive Perceptions in the game, btw, so nice choice...), especially more than one!

But anyway, the average "monster" WIS is about 12 (slightly higher), so a +1 bonus. Many foes aren't proficient in Perception (the cloud giant is), so your typical passive perception is only 11. Even when the DM rolls a contested roll, the odds of that +1 beating that +12 is pretty darn small (about 11%). In other words, the rogue sneaks successfully on average about 90% of the time. THAT is a bit too high in our book.

I picked Cloud Giant more or less randomly from the first several alphabetical entries in a list of CR 9 monsters (since we're talking about a level 9 PC, an encounter against one is considered medium) with proficiency in Perception; outside restricting to perception proficiency it wasn't cherry-picked, I promise. My group recently infiltrated a fire giant lair at level 10, and my rogue did a lot of sneaking around, so that's what I had in mind. In any case, if a monster isn't even proficient in perception, then a stealth expert should certainly have a near-guarantee of not being heard by them, IMO (they still need to stay out of line of sight; a successful stealth check doesn't automatically mean you aren't noticed).

But let's dial back the monster's passive perception to 14, say (sticking with the giant theme, maybe they're Onis). Now the rogue with stealth +12 needs a natural 3 or better; so they have a 90% chance of success against passive perception. Still a meaningful failure chance given the stakes, in my opinion. Against one creature's active roll, it's down to about 80%. Against two creatures' active rolls it's down to 70%.

Do you really think that a level 9 character who chose to become an expert at stealth and finds a way in somewhere that keeps them out of sight should have a more than 1/5 chance of accidentally being heard by one guard keeping watch, or a 3/10 chance of being heard by two?

 

[Esker]

Except that @Mistwell is wrong for a few reasons. First, as I pointed out upthread, there are about 15 commonly used skills, so it's highly unlikely that the rogue "will barely register as a blip." Second, The rogue will know what skills have been taken before he ever gets expertise.

Let's take a party of 4. The wizard takes arcana or history. The ranger decides on survival or nature. The cleric bucks the RP trend and goes with perception. The rogue at first level takes perception. We now have a situation where the rogue has doubled up with a party member, but that's okay. It's the bonus from Class Mastery and not Expertise. The rogue also decides on stealth and climbing as his two expertise skills. He's up by +2 on super charged skills. Now let's fast forward to level 6. At level 6 the rogue gets two more skills from Expertise and those two are selected after he knows what skills the 3 other members picked at level 1, so unless he deliberately chooses to double up, he's going have two more skills that no one else has, that are commonly used, and at which he excels.

There's no way that the rogue is going just barely register as a blip among the other party members unless the group is like 8-12 people and they all take different skills, and even then there are 15 commonly used skills, so the rogue at level 6 can just pick from the ones not taken by anyone. Besides, you will see a large number taking perception, so the rogue can avoid the obvious and lessen his chances of doubling up that way as well.

The list of 15 skills are not all equally common, nor do all of them benefit equally from having expertise. Skills involved in contested checks: stealth, perception, insight, deception (possibly persuasion and intimidation, depending on how the DM handles those) as well as athletics and acrobatics, are probably the most valuable expertise picks of the skills that come up often (sleight of hand is contested too, but not that common a check IME). In your example only one other character went outside my suggested boundaries, but it's not hard to imagine in a party of five, all four non-rogues pick things from that list. In my regular game, I play a rogue in a party of six that also has a bard. It was tough to keep niches distinct in that group even without this rule. The bard has persuasion, deception, insight and perception; I have stealth, perception, arcana and investigation (I'm an arcane trickster). So we already doubled up on perception, and the bard also overlaps with the cleric who loves to make insight checks. If the sorcerer and the paladin had been able to take persuasion and deception between them, the cleric had taken insight, and the barbarian had taken stealth, all of which would have been likely choices for these characters, it would really have been difficult for us two skill monkeys to feel like we had ownership of our niches (face and scout, in our cases).

 

[Ovinomancer]

The wizard is a field tech. The rogue is a professor.

Alternatively, the wizard is a professor, the rogue is a field tech. I'm sure you can insist that a rogue must have advanced study in special universities that are exclusionary of all but rogues in your game, but this isn't a fiction the actual rules impose. The rogue needs no justification such as advanced study to access expertise -- D&D doesn't require fictional support of class features. Moreover, this implies that rogues are capable of advanced study that a wizard is not.

As I said, it's an odd interaction that doesn't become less odd by handwaving. You can, of course, ignore the oddity -- that's mostly been my chosen method -- but this doesn't cause it to not exist. The weirdness is still there.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Alternatively, the wizard is a professor, the rogue is a field tech. I'm sure you can insist that a rogue must have advanced study in special universities that are exclusionary of all but rogues in your game, but this isn't a fiction the actual rules impose. The rogue needs no justification such as advanced study to access expertise -- D&D doesn't require fictional support of class features. Moreover, this implies that rogues are capable of advanced study that a wizard is not.

As I said, it's an odd interaction that doesn't become less odd by handwaving. You can, of course, ignore the oddity -- that's mostly been my chosen method -- but this doesn't cause it to not exist. The weirdness is still there.

I believe that Mistwell meant that the wizard has training in the practical application of one of the subsections covered by Arcana, while the Rogue is a pure theoretician. All that time the wizard spend in exacting training to get the exact gestures and intonations of spells correct, the Rogue spent on pure research.
Hence the "Field tech" designation for the wizard: They can actually apply the knowledge that they have training in the engineering and the use of equipment (spells) and have a grounding in the other aspects of the Arcana skill.
And the "Professor" designation of the rogue denotes that while they have read more about the habits of Dragons or the theory of thaum particle slood dynamics, they don't know the engineering of or how to operate a piece of equipment (spell) that applies their knowledge of the "spells" fraction of the arcana skill.
A professor knows more about the behaviour of semiconductors at absolute zero, but a field tech can actually operate a compute to get it to do something.

If a wizard wants to spend the time/effort needed to both learn to cast a wide variety of spells and to learn much more about the other aspects of the arcana skill, then there are a couple of potential feats that could be allowed.

 

[Maxperson]

The list of 15 skills are not all equally common, nor do all of them benefit equally from having expertise. Skills involved in contested checks: stealth, perception, insight, deception (possibly persuasion and intimidation, depending on how the DM handles those) as well as athletics and acrobatics, are probably the most valuable expertise picks of the skills that come up often (sleight of hand is contested too, but not that common a check IME).

Not equally common, no. However, all 15 of those I listed are all still common. I also don't necessarily agree that the contested skills are the most valuable. Knowledge checks can be far more important than most perception, deception, intimidation, insight checks. What you learn about something can be critical to a game and static DCs can be quite high if the knowledge is obscure. It's six in one, half done in the other, in my opinion.

In your example only one other character went outside my suggested boundaries, but it's not hard to imagine in a party of five, all four non-rogues pick things from that list. In my regular game, I play a rogue in a party of six that also has a bard. It was tough to keep niches distinct in that group even without this rule. The bard has persuasion, deception, insight and perception; I have stealth, perception, arcana and investigation (I'm an arcane trickster). So we already doubled up on perception, and the bard also overlaps with the cleric who loves to make insight checks. If the sorcerer and the paladin had been able to take persuasion and deception between them, the cleric had taken insight, and the barbarian had taken stealth, all of which would have been likely choices for these characters, it would really have been difficult for us two skill monkeys to feel like we had ownership of our niches (face and scout, in our cases).

I was just going with the more iconic skills, not thinking oppose vs. unopposed. Even so, were I a rogue with 5 different skills that I could apply expertise to, I'd still be juiced even if all 4 other PCs took skills that doubled up with mine. They would be waiting for their ONE skill to come up to feel like a skill champion. Meanwhile, I'd be rolling every time and feeling like that the whole way. Having someone else in the party who can roll near my number doesn't in any way diminish my PC. And once I hit 11th level, they will be rolling lower than me most of the time anyway.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I believe that Mistwell meant that the wizard has training in the practical application of one of the subsections covered by Arcana, while the Rogue is a pure theoretician. All that time the wizard spend in exacting training to get the exact gestures and intonations of spells correct, the Rogue spent on pure research.
Hence the "Field tech" designation for the wizard: They can actually apply the knowledge that they have training in the engineering and the use of equipment (spells) and have a grounding in the other aspects of the Arcana skill.
And the "Professor" designation of the rogue denotes that while they have read more about the habits of Dragons or the theory of thaum particle slood dynamics, they don't know the engineering of or how to operate a piece of equipment (spell) that applies their knowledge of the "spells" fraction of the arcana skill.
A professor knows more about the behaviour of semiconductors at absolute zero, but a field tech can actually operate a compute to get it to do something.

If a wizard wants to spend the time/effort needed to both learn to cast a wide variety of spells and to learn much more about the other aspects of the arcana skill, then there are a couple of potential feats that could be allowed.

This is utterly unsupported by the rules, though. Arcana covers both knowledge and application. Further, you're ignoring that a wizard cannot be the professor on your example to justify how a specific rogue might be better than a given wizard. You can enact house rules to have the rogue's arcana function differently from the wizard's, but I'm not super interested in house rules -- they don't illuminate the design oddity at all.

I find the responses curious when I point out where 5e does odd things. They seem to follow a pattern of offering house rule solutions or explaining why I shouldn't care. I don't have a problem coming up with workarounds and haven't asked for solutions. And, I think that caring about how the game actually works and how it incetivizes play is very important for running a better game. If you don't know where the potholes are, you can't avoid them.

 

[Mistwell]

The list of 15 skills are not all equally common, nor do all of them benefit equally from having expertise.

Max would like you to believe the perception skill comes up as often as the medicine skill.

 

[Mistwell]

Alternatively, the wizard is a professor, the rogue is a field tech. I'm sure you can insist that a rogue must have advanced study in special universities that are exclusionary of all but rogues in your game, but this isn't a fiction the actual rules impose. The rogue needs no justification such as advanced study to access expertise -- D&D doesn't require fictional support of class features. Moreover, this implies that rogues are capable of advanced study that a wizard is not.

As I said, it's an odd interaction that doesn't become less odd by handwaving. You can, of course, ignore the oddity -- that's mostly been my chosen method -- but this doesn't cause it to not exist. The weirdness is still there.

Was the smile at the end of my sentence unclear in some way?

I mean, I do appreciate you backing me up on my Pedantry Award snark up-thread.

This is utterly unsupported by the rules, though.

Yeah, I was not being serious with my comment but you guys are taking it to the next level so I am cool watching that debate. I hadn't really considered what the ramifications of calling the rogue a professor might be, if I had been serious. Though come to think of it, all the real life professors I know are sneaky back stabbers