2. Yes again. Although stealth has been my scapegoat in all this, as I said the same problem can exist with any of the skills. I have no issue with a rogue being as good as others, I just fail to see why they should have to potential to be better aside from a purely "let's give them something" idea.
This is important I think. - Is it a case of "Since skills are a purely mundane, nonmagical expression of a character's abilities, there shouldn't be any reason why one class should be better at them than another"?
Why do you think the skill monkey class should not be better at skills than other classes? - That would help understand the best angle for houserules for you.
That's exactly it. There is no reason why rogues or bards should have the potential to be better at skills than the other classes. There is also no justification for them to be "skill monkeys". To me, it is a lazy way to make them stand out in an unreasonable way. Both these classes are already the only ones who begin with more than two skills for their class. As it is, with a flat expertise bonus (say +2) they still have the potential to be better, but not a full +6 better as in RAW.
Now, when I say "skill monkey" I am fine with making them better in other ways. Like a REALLY neat feature for a Bard would be something where they can swap out a skill at every level like swapping out a known spell. Tired of knowing Medicine and interested in History? Swap them out. Given the nature of bardic knowledge, etc. that (or something akin to it) makes some sense IMO.
Avoids:
Yeah, the all are good things to avoid. I don't want to detract from rogues/bards as skill monkeys, but would rather find some other way to represent the idea than just boosting their numbers.
How do you feel about Garthanos' suggestion that expertise gives a special ability based on the skill rather than a numbers boost?
So a Rogue who wanted to have expertise in Stealth might pick the ability to move faster without taking a penalty to stealth checks, or to not be tracked, or to move into cover as part of the hiding action or similar rather than getting a bonus to their rolls.
Sure, making the skills they are good at useful in other ways is great. Something that would make sense for a rogue/bard but not other classes. The difficult thing is just about anything I've thought of along these lines makes just as much sense of other classes, too.
Overall, consider the attack roll, ACs (IIRC), and bounded accuracy:
At Tier 1, the average opponent AC is 13 or so. Most characters will have a +4 or +5 to their attack roll, so need a 8 or 9.
At Tier 2, average opponent AC jumps to 15ish. Fine, most characters have gained a +2 or +3 to their attack roll, so still need about 8 or 9, give or take a point.
At Tier 3, AC rises to about 18, but characters keep pace via proficiency increase and ASI typically. They might need a bit more than 8 or 9, but only a point maybe in most cases.
At Tier 4, AC average is close to 21. Assuming max ability, characters are looking at +11. So, 9 or likely a 10. Not far from the 8 or 9 they needed back at level 1.
Now, look at DCs for checks. The max (in theory) is supposed to be 30 as I understand it. Which works fine and in a similar fashion to the attack roll versus ACs. At high levels, PCs have about a 50/50 chance or better to accomplish a Hard (DC 20) task. Personally, I am fine with that. I don't want Hard to become "Mundane". But...
You throw expertise as number boost and now a Hard task becomes easy. Giving bards and rogues a boost equal to proficiency at lower levels is nice and not overwhelming, but as levels increase and the skill jumps two points each time instead of one, it becomes more of an issue.
Anyway, it has been a long day at work and I need food. More to come later.
