D&D 5E Quick Question on AC and Proficiency bonus

[Ruin Explorer]

I’m not sure what task you’re saying is being resolved by the History or Arcana roll where this would be a problem.

Re the "rule" about risk, I think its fair to say probably less than 5% of published 5E adventures (including AL, WotC and third-party/DMs Guild) actually follow that, but YMMV!

Re task we're usually talking a roll to know something about a place, person or object. I do agree that it is an open question as to whether such rolls should exist, and I minimise them in my game with a "passive Arcana"-type approach. Yet most DMs do use them, as do a lot of adventures, and many are one-off rolls. In previous editions everyone rolled and often a dubious character knew something (fortunately in 4E the entire party was full of magical weirdos so it worked OK there). In 5E typically "Working Together" is used and one PC rolls with Advantage and the best possible check bonus which minimises this, so that's great.

But it can still happen. And that's where good RPers come in, because they can make up reasons why their PC knew that.

So the actual situation where it makes everyone feel a bit weird/uncomfortable is rare in 5E. That's really all I'm saying. It's an inevitable consequence of using a d20 with low-ish modifiers, but I'd prefer to stick with that than use 3d6 for this and a d20 for combat or something.

 

[Charlaquin]

Re the "rule" about risk, I think its fair to say probably less than 5% of published 5E adventures (including AL, WotC and third-party/DMs Guild) actually follow that, but YMMV!

Yeah, most published adventures don’t follow it, which is part of the reason I never run published adventures as-written any more. I tend to use them as toolboxes when building more customized adventures.

Re task we're usually talking a roll to know something about a place, person or object. I do agree that it is an open question as to whether such rolls should exist, and I minimise them in my game with a "passive Arcana"-type approach. Yet most DMs do use them, as do a lot of adventures, and many are one-off rolls. In previous editions everyone rolled and often a dubious character knew something (fortunately in 4E the entire party was full of magical weirdos so it worked OK there). In 5E typically "Working Together" is used and one PC rolls with Advantage and the best possible check bonus which minimises this, so that's great.

Yeah, maybe this is a thing for other DMs. I don’t resolve lore recollection that way. It just doesn’t function well within 5e’s system, in my opinion.

But it can still happen. And that's where good RPers come in, because they can make up reasons why their PC knew that.

So the actual situation where it makes everyone feel a bit weird/uncomfortable is rare in 5E. That's really all I'm saying. It's an inevitable consequence of using a d20 with low-ish modifiers, but I'd prefer to stick with that than use 3d6 for this and a d20 for combat or something.

I gotcha

 

[the Jester]

The problem with 4E wasn't the scaling level bonus. It was the requirement that you only fight similar-level enemies.

...which came directly from the scaling level bonus. If you're six levels higher than your foes, they need something like a 16 or 18 to hit you in 4e, while you need something on the order of a 4 or 5 to hit them. They're nearly meaningless. 4e tried to alleviate this problem with minions, but it never even came close to supporting seriously mixed-level play or play with foes significantly above or below the party's level.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Ok, I see what you mean. Looking back, I think I misinterpreted your comment at first. Yes, naturally the number you need to roll on the die to achieve success on tasks of a given difficulty will change over time, such that the number you needed to roll to hit a goblin in leather armor and a shield at 1st level may be the same number you need to roll to hit a fire giant in plate at 9th level.

Yep. "Treadmill" just says that challenges modeled on the d20 are relative. For any given bonus you may ascend to, there's a correspondingly higher DC that's the same challenge (chance of success/failure) as when you started. It's really more about the consistency of scaling than the magnitude.

But in a bounded accuracy system it’s not a treadmill because you might still be fighting goblins in leather with shields at 9th level, you’ll just be fighting more of them. And you will hit them more easily, so your growth is more visible.

Well, fighting, in the broadest sense - erasing with AE spells if they actually get to be annoying or mass in really large numbers, for instance. Which gets into the more rapid scaling we do see under BA: hp/damage. It's not just that you hit the goblin more often (and attack two per round instead of one), it's that, when you do hit, they die; it's not just that goblins fail their DEX save vs your AE spell more often, it's that the half damage kills them, anyway (and the higher level spell likely has a larger area, too).

 

[Tony Vargas]

...which came directly from the scaling level bonus. If you're six levels higher than your foes, they need something like a 16 or 18 to hit you in 4e, while you need something on the order of a 4 or 5 to hit them. They're nearly meaningless. 4e tried to alleviate this problem with minions, but it never even came close to supporting seriously mixed-level play or play with foes significantly above or below the party's level.

A minion could be considered equivalent to a standard creature about 8 levels below the level of the party it's an at-level threat for - as in, it'd've had the same experience value, could even have been literally the same individual - while an elite was the equivalent of a 4-level higher creature, and a Solo a further 5 levels beyond that.
So, while a nominal +/-4 levels was about as far as you'd want to have gone for playability, a level-4 minion was equivalent to a standard creature 12 levels below the party's level, while a level+4 solo was equivalent to one 13 levels higher. That's quite a range of foes available at any given point in the character's career.

The part of that which was too different for a lot of long-time D&Ders to grok was that the level of a monster was not an absolute measure of it's power, but, together with secondary role, a relative measure of challenge to a PC party. In 4e, the focus of the game was the PCs. That was a subtle but very significant shift, and too many people either didn't get it, or hated the very idea.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

...which came directly from the scaling level bonus. If you're six levels higher than your foes, they need something like a 16 or 18 to hit you in 4e, while you need something on the order of a 4 or 5 to hit them. They're nearly meaningless.

...which came directly from the healing rules. If you're expected to go into every combat with full health, then every combat carries the burden of dealing enough damage to potentially TPK, and an enemy with 25% accuracy would be a waste of time.

Contrast this with earlier editions, where goblins that only hit on an 18 are still meaningful, because any damage they do will carry over to the next day (and possibly the rest of the week). If they needed an 18 to hit you, and you needed a 4 to hit them, then that represented an acceptable risk that you could sustain throughout an entire dungeon. If an enemy could hit you as often as you hit it, then it would be suicide to engage them.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

There are times you don't roll the dice, and if you think it's always mandatory to roll a DC13 check when the player has +11 (or +12, even), well, that puts out in a pretty weird land, I'd suggest.

Why would you assign a DC of 13 to a task, if you thought someone with a bonus of +11 should have no chance of failure? Such an adjudication would be fundamentally inconsistent.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Unless you replace all rolls with "pure DM fiat", it is still "a game" (arguably even if you did, but that's another thread).

Arguably, 5e does run on "pure DM fiat," and is still a game.
OK, not really, but it leaves the door wide open to the DM who wishes to.

There are times you don't roll the dice, and if you think it's always mandatory to roll a DC13 check when the player has +11 (or +12, even), well, that puts out in a pretty weird land, I'd suggest ... and it's not RAW/RAI.

Interestingly, one part of that which isn't RaW(not really meaningful in 5e) or RAI(fairly meaningful) or Rulings-not-Rules(5e all the way), is the characterization of something as a "DC 13 check" /before/ the DM decides whether a roll is required. In the 5e "play-loop," explained quite early on, DCs are set after the DM has determined that uncertainty exists in the action. So there's no such thing as "not rolling a DC 13 check," there's just narrating success when the DM determines there's no uncertainty, only if the DM decides to call for a check, may it become a DC 13 check (iff the DM assigns that number).