D&D (2024) Rogue's Been in an Awkward Place, And This Survey Might Be Our Last Chance to Let WotC Know.

[Maxperson]

100% Disagree with Strength-only, and with considering the system as one of "skill checks." Remember that the system is based on Ability checks. Not skill checks.

Even if Acrobatics were removed, the DM should not be asking for an Athletics check, and then roll a Strength check no matter what.

The DM would be more accurate to say "Make a Strength (Athletics) check, or a Dexterity (Athletics) check, or a Constitution (Athletics) check, based on the primary physical effort made to succeed. For example:

• Lifting or holding open a gate; or jumping a chasm that is just outside your normal limit; with a Strength (Athletics) check.
• Balancing while racing across an icy surface or rocking ship deck with a Dexterity (Athletics) check.
• Swimming or running for longer periods of time with a Constitution (Athletics) check.

As I said in the other post, I completely agree with you, but that's not the default position for 5e. By default you only call for athletics(str) checks, since it's a strength skill. Skills using alternate attributes is explicitly an optional rule that DMs have to choose.

Since the default is strength no matter what, it's hard to argue that the DM should not be doing that. The PHB rules tell DMs to do just that.

 

[Maxperson]

Not when it asks martial characters to invest points in all three of them for marginal benefit.

There's really no such thing as marginal in 5e's bounded system. You can make 90% of the DCs with no bonus at all.

A CR 10 creature, the Aboleth has DCs of 14. 14! With no bonus whatsoever you will make that 30% of the time. With only +3 it will be nearly half.

People are misled by prior D&D systems into thinking that they need huge bonuses for things in 5e. They don't.

The marginal benefit here is not being stopped cold by an incline, even if you are great at Dexterity.

Why would you be stopped cold by an incline? Why would you even need to roll to go up an incline?

Putting points in Constitution to gain hit points and Concentration saves? Fair enough.
Putting points in Strength to grapple and improve Strength saves? Fair enough.
Putting points in Dexterity to gain AC and Dexterity saves? Also fair enough.

But being asked to put points in Strength just to move vertically? Or in Dexterity just to balance on tightropes? Nah, get outta here. That would be outrageously expensive. And useless - any gamer worth his salt would simply turn to alternative solutions (read magic).

Read magic doesn't exist in 5e.

But seriously, see my first response. You don't need to invest much of anything at all. Simply being proficient and having no bonus will get you through the vast majority of situations. You don't even roll in 5e unless the outcome is not only in doubt, but there are meaningful consequences for failure. There would be no roll most of the time to go up an incline.

 

[CapnZapp]

People are misled by prior D&D systems into thinking that they need huge bonuses for things in 5e. They don't.

Except when they do. You're making it look like numbers aren't important in 5E.

@Maxperson , please don't respond to one of my assertions by saying something like "people don't know what they're talking about".

It makes you come across a disingenuous and evasive. If you want to claim I don't know what I'm talking about, at least say that.

 

[Maxperson]

Except when they do. You're making it look like numbers aren't important in 5E.

I've shown repeatedly in other threads how +1, +2 and even +3 difference in bonuses between PCs are not even noticeable in 5e. Bounded accuracy, which did not exist in other editions, makes bonuses mean far less in 5e.

@Maxperson , please don't respond to one of my assertions by saying something like "people don't know what they're talking about".

It makes you come across a disingenuous and evasive. If you want to claim I don't know what I'm talking about, at least say that.

While I was quoting you, it is something that I have noticed in general about people who play 5e. It wasn't specifically you. Nor was it "disingenuous" or "evasive." I mean, I don't understand how it COULD be considered evasive in any way when there was literally nothing to evade. I can at least understand how you might could misperceive it as "disingenuous" as it disagreed with you and sometimes people are set in their opinions to the point where disagreement can be misperceived as disingenuous, but evasive? No.

 

[CapnZapp]

I've shown repeatedly in other threads how +1, +2 and even +3 difference in bonuses between PCs are not even noticeable in 5e.

No you have not. Please don't project your personal experience onto the player base in general.

A 3 point difference means a 15 percentage point difference in making a roll or not. Perhaps you can't notice the difference, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.

And "bounded accuracy" doesn't mean numbers have lost meaning either. It means that numbers don't increase with level (as much), and it can mean some rolls get easier as you level up.

And sure, the difference in having to roll at least a 5 and succeeding even on a 2 is a 3 point difference, but a 95% success rate is only 19 percent bigger than a 80% success rate.

But when you're asked to make more difficult rolls (DC 20 and above) - saving throws in particular - you will still sorely miss that 3 point bump. If you're asked to make a DC 21 saving throw and you have a +2 modifier, you need to roll 19 on the die; a 10% chance. If you somehow got a +3 bonus suddenly you have a 25% chance.

That's an increase of 150%.

Some DMs like it when even specialized characters get challenged, and offer skill check DCs even higher than that. Your DM might never challenge your characters this way, but don't assume that experience is shared by everyone.

Especially don't point toward one particular table in the DMG and declare everyone is either using it or playing the game wrong, and thus, you can suddenly make sweeping generalizations about how the game "is" played.

 

[Mistwell]

I agree with Max at least in part. People focus on the bonuses because it's the tangible math we get and concrete measurable elements are what discussions are built around in many fanbases from sports, video games, to this hobby. The bigger picture of what those bonuses really mean for success or failure is often not the focus. Does it really matter if a bonus or penalty is really only about whether an extra round of combat is taking place or not when the combat was going to be won either way? Does it really matter if a bonus or penalty has, ultimately, the only meaningful ramification to the game results being an extra short rest?

I am not saying player decisions are meaningless to the game results. But I am saying the small bonuses and penalties of the nature we're talking about are not that meaningful in the grand scheme of things and those player decisions.

 

[Mistwell]

No you have not. Please don't project your personal experience onto the player base in general.

A 3 point difference means a 15 percentage point difference in making a roll or not.

No, it doesn't. That math assumes 15% of rolls are exactly 3 points off from success. It makes a difference only in the rolls which would have failed by that much. It's meaningless to the others. The game isn't balanced so exactly that you can measure it as 15% more of the difficulty challenges are met because it's 15% of a d20 roll.

Now if this were a game which rewarded exceeding a goal proportional to the amount you succeed, and punished a roll which failed a goal proportional to the amount it failed to reach that goal, then you'd have a better point. And there are games out there like that. But this isn't one of those.

 

[Maxperson]

No you have not. Please don't project your personal experience onto the player base in general.

A 3 point difference means a 15 percentage point difference in making a roll or not. Perhaps you can't notice the difference, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.

Most games never make it to 10th level. The vast majority actually. Prior to that you get one, maybe two attacks a round in combat, and combat is the place where you notice the bonuses the best.

15% means 3 extra hits every 20 swings, and with one attack it will take you 4-5 fights to reach 20 swings. That's less than 1 extra hit per fight. With the randomness of the d20 roll, it's not possible to notice if your hitting well is due to random luck, or that less than 1 extra hit per fight. You just can't know. Add to that 5e's balance around bags of hit points and that extra hit doesn't do much of anything even when it happens.

And that's at +3!!! +1 and +2 are even less noticeable.

If we are talking ability checks and not combat, the very few extra successes are spread out over a much longer period of time and are even less noticeable.

And "bounded accuracy" doesn't mean numbers have lost meaning either. It means that numbers don't increase with level (as much), and it can mean some rolls get easier as you level up.

I didn't say lost meaning. I said means far less, and that's factually true. In a bounded system where you don't need to keep scraping up higher and higher bonuses like in prior editions, bonuses mean far less. Not only do you not fall behind if you don't get them, you don't even need them to do very well. I already showed a CR 10 creature with DCs of 14.

And sure, the difference in having to roll at least a 5 and succeeding even on a 2 is a 3 point difference, but a 95% success rate is only 19 percent bigger than a 80% success rate.

But when you're asked to make more difficult rolls (DC 20 and above) - saving throws in particular - you will still sorely miss that 3 point bump. If you're asked to make a DC 21 saving throw and you have a +2 modifier, you need to roll 19 on the die; a 10% chance. If you somehow got a +3 bonus suddenly you have a 25% chance.

By the time you are making those DCs saves, there are other things in play to help you make saves. And that's for the 3% of campaigns that reach level 15+ Others aren't seeing save DCs of 20+ unless the DM is not using the 5e DC system as written and intended.

Some DMs like it when even specialized characters get challenged, and offer skill check DCs even higher than that. Your DM might never challenge your characters this way, but don't assume that experience is shared by everyone.

Then the DM is misusing the DC system to do that. The overwhelming majority of DCs in the bounded 5e system, if DCs are assigned as the game intends, will be 10-15. If the DM is artificially inflating the DCs past what is appropriate just so that he can challenge the expertise rogue or bard with a high stat bonus, then the resulting problems with the other PCs are the DM's fault, not that of the 5e system.

If going by 5e RAW, bonuses don't matter much. If the DM is creating a problem where bonuses start to matter more like you suggest above, that's on the DM. I'm still not wrong with my general claim about bonuses not mattering much in 5e. I'm not talking about games with DM created problems. I'm talking about the game as written.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Most games never make it to 10th level. The vast majority actually. Prior to that you get one, maybe two attacks a round in combat, and combat is the place where you notice the bonuses the best.

15% means 3 extra hits every 20 swings, and with one attack it will take you 4-5 fights to reach 20 swings. That's less than 1 extra hit per fight. With the randomness of the d20 roll, it's not possible to notice if your hitting well is due to random luck, or that less than 1 extra hit per fight. You just can't know. Add to that 5e's balance around bags of hit points and that extra hit doesn't do much of anything even when it happens.

And that's at +3!!! +1 and +2 are even less noticeable.

If we are talking ability checks and not combat, the very few extra successes are spread out over a much longer period of time and are even less noticeable.

I didn't say lost meaning. I said means far less, and that's factually true. In a bounded system where you don't need to keep scraping up higher and higher bonuses like in prior editions, bonuses mean far less. Not only do you not fall behind if you don't get them, you don't even need them to do very well. I already showed a CR 10 creature with DCs of 14.

By the time you are making those DCs saves, there are other things in play to help you make saves. And that's for the 3% of campaigns that reach level 15+ Others aren't seeing save DCs of 20+ unless the DM is not using the 5e DC system as written and intended.

Then the DM is misusing the DC system to do that. The overwhelming majority of DCs in a the bounded 5e system, if DCs are assigned as the game intends, will be 10-15. If the DM is artificially inflating the DCs past what is appropriate just so that he can challenge the expertise rogue or bard with a high stat bonus, then the resulting problems with the other PCs are the DM's fault, not that of the 5e system.

If going by 5e RAW, bonuses don't matter much. If the DM is creating a problem where bonuses start to matter more like you suggest above, that's on the DM. I'm still not wrong with my general claim about bonuses not mattering much in 5e. I'm not talking about games with DM created problems. I'm talking about the game as written.

I think many people don't have a good grasp of probabilities and their implications. They only look at averages and not on standard deviations. They don't know the difference between a single random event and an expectation value.

I still disagree that some bonuses don't have a noticable effect. Saing throw bonuses and DCs can have a big impact, even if the bonus is small. A fireball might hit 10 minions. A wizard trying to keep a concentration spell going might get hit quite a few times. To get out of a disabling effect you roll several roles.

Yes, the difference between luck and your bonus having an effect might not be all that obvious, but it can very well be the diffence between a character getting to higher level or the grave.

But then, it still won't take all the fun out of a character.

 

[Maxperson]

I think many people don't have a good grasp of probabilities and their implications. They only look at averages and not on standard deviations. They don't know the difference between a single random event and an expectation value.

I still disagree that some bonuses don't have a noticable effect. Saing throw bonuses and DCs can have a big impact, even if the bonus is small. A fireball might hit 10 minions. A wizard trying to keep a concentration spell going might get hit quite a few times. To get out of a disabling effect you roll several roles.

Yes, the difference between luck and your bonus having an effect might not be all that obvious, but it can very well be the diffence between a character getting to higher level or the grave.

But then, it still won't take all the fun out of a character.

Once in a while the bonus makes a marked difference, but those times are pretty rare in my experience, and often rely on the DM saying something like, "Wow! You needed to roll that 17 to stay alive!" thereby letting the player know that without every bonus he had, the PC would be dead.

That said, 5e is a very forgiving system where you are rarely even in a situation where one roll will determine life or death, and usually saves occur every round until successful. Most spells and abilities are impediments intended to be in effect for at most a round or two, and the rest deal damage and are simply resource drains(HP and healing slots/items).

I've also noticed people like to use, "Well that extra +2 means 20,000(made up number) more damage over 20 levels!" which ignores that 98% of games don't go 20 levels, and that the 20,000 hit points is spread out over 10,000 monsters. A billion dollars is a massive amount of money, but spread that over the population of the U.S. and it's a paltry threeish dollars each. That small amount of extra damage per creature doesn't mean much on its own, but means even less in 5e where much of the game balance is expressed as monsters being bags of hit points. 5e monsters have more hit points than they did in prior editions, reducing the meaning of that bonus damage even further.