D&D 5E Changing Expertise and Ability Check Resolution - House Rule

[Yaarel]

Notice the skill feats in the Players Handbook.

Actor ≈ Expertise in Performance or Bluff
Athlete ≈ Expertise in Athletics or Acrobatics
Dungeon Delver ≈ Expertise in Traps, using Sleight of Hand or Perception
Keen Mind ≈ Expertise in Survival
Linguist ≈ Expertise in History
Ritual Caster ≈ Expertise in Arcana



Skilled (3 New Skill or Tool Proficiencies) ≈ Expertise in Knowledge (?)

 

[jodyjohnson]

I wasn't thinking about players adjusting stats. It just the scenario where I have a 13 in one stat and 14 in another. The 14, instead of being +1 over 13 is suddenly +6 over it.

Meanwhile, a 16 is only +1 over 14.

It just feels wonky to me that there's one point where the ability score check modifier has such a giant leap.

I'm going to use Int as an example.

Between 2 and 3 Int a character gains the ability to speak (Feeblemind or animal to human range intelligence)

It is pretty common for characters with a certain Int to not be able to read - then 1 point higher they can read. Maybe Grog going from Int 6 to Int 7.

Going from 1 in a stat to zero usually indicates going from somewhat functional to non-functional.

So there are other examples where there is a jump in ability from a single stat point.

But backing up, one of the original thoughts was that some DMs were already changing the DC based on some traits or ability and my thought was to nail it down mechanically so a player would know when I make the decision on changing the DC. Since +2 ability bonus is the same as Proficiency at 1st it seemed a natural point to say - if you have a +2 you have natural ability that would provide the same quantum leap in ability that proficiency would.

To reiterate I'm operating more under the middle path when results on both ends are fiat and the dice are only rolled when the result is in doubt. If one preferred the 'dice decide' route then it doesn't really apply because one might want the linear scale rather than having the big jump between +1 or lower and +2 or higher or prof.

For knowing when to change the DC for the minority number of static DC checks, the player says their bonus when they declare actions. If it is +1 or lower I know that it doesn't change but if it is +2 or higher it would require a 14+ stat or proficiency (not precisely - from 1st to 4th level a character could take a prof with a -1 stat but does that really happen?).

Again, the -5 to DC only applies to static checks and not opposed checks, or degree of success checks. The majority of these are Lore checks. Most of the other checks for stats are opposed checks or determine degrees of success.

To simplify:
Expertise: you can apply your proficiency bonus in place of your stat bonus (effectively double prof instead of stat+prof).
On ability checks with a Static DC, the DM has the discretion to raise the DC if your bonus is only +1 or lower to represent lack of ability or proficiency. (I agree that maybe reversing it would be more intuitive but maybe that tends too much toward punishing low stats instead of rewarding higher stats).

 

[clearstream]

To address a similar list of problems, we went far simpler for our home games; anyone can expertise. If you put proficiency in a skill twice, it becomes expertise. In example, Fighter can simply pick Athletics twice if they care about their shoving (like the shield master feat). Bard and Rogue then simply get yet more skill 'points' at their expertise levels. That's the long and short of it; fixed a whole lot of dipping needs, let characters specialize at the loss of broad depth of knowledge, and the number sizes were never an issue for us.

So Rogue gets replicated by taking Criminal or Spy (or if you really like to devalue class jewels, Urban Bounty Hunter) and then effective Expertise in Deception, Stealth and Thieves' Tools?

I don't understand why so many seem to care so little from the simple idea that - the skill classes (Rogue and Bard, and maybe Ranger) are best at skills. Just as other classes get to be best with weapons, and best with spells.

 

[Xaelvaen]

So Rogue gets replicated by taking Criminal or Spy (or if you really like to devalue class jewels, Urban Bounty Hunter) and then effective Expertise in Deception, Stealth and Thieves' Tools?

I don't understand why so many seem to care so little from the simple idea that - the skill classes (Rogue and Bard, and maybe Ranger) are best at skills. Just as other classes get to be best with weapons, and best with spells.

No game system is perfect for every situation in its release and the rule we've always used to determine what system we plays is: "Okay, in which system do I need to do the least amount of work to make it play the way my group functions?" There were many elements of 3.5/PF we enjoyed, and still do. In example, Rogues and Bards there simply got -more- skills, not a mystical better maximum result at performing them. (Skill Rank caps were identical for everyone, sans feats, and we -never- played with the half cross-class rules). This is simply an approach we wished to carry over to 5E. We've also been playing together since the early 90s, so we are a bit on the grognard end with one another, when it comes to how we like our DnD to feel. This is easily created, with little work, by using the 5E Core Engine and a couple of tweaks.

I have a player who almost exclusively plays Bards and Rogues. She actually prefers that they aren't the 'end all to end all' at power bonus at skills; she's perfectly content to have a huge breadth of skill training at her fingertips to compensate (just like 3.5). For me, it's about doing every effort possible to eliminate the class-bound stereotypes while still preserving mechanical balance, thus the basis of all the homebrew rules we employ.

I'll end by saying, of course I understand homebrew is individual for all players and DMs. My rules work for my table, and thankfully for my sanity, my players are the only people I have to worry about pleasing with them. I merely share so that others will have access to ideas that would work for them, that perhaps they've not yet thought out.

 

[DEFCON 1]

If the rules of Expertise are not solving an issue one might have with the ability check rules, there's actually another way to go about it that might produce something more in line with what a person might want...

Roll 2d10 instead of 1d20 for ability checks.

Here's the thing: A randomness swing of 20 points (due to using a d20) means that any static bonus number has a much smaller impact on the checks. A fully proficiency character with an ability aligned to a skill (IE an ability modifier of +3 and proficiency bonus of +2 for a total of +5) will still result in that fully skilled person FAILING a standard Easy DC 10 check one-quarter of the time. Likewise, someone who has no ability and no proficiency in an activity can still succeed in a Hard DC 20 check every 20 rolls. With the amount of ability checks players can make in a typical 3 hour game session... that is a very large number of times that supposedly-skilled characters botch seemingly easy checks, or completely unskilled PCs succeeding on things they really have no right to or even worse doing better at things than their trained brethren do. All these things will happen so often and we'll become so inured to it that during gameplay there will be little times where it could feel like someone who SHOULD be really good at something actually is on a consistent basis.

That's why Expertise ends up meaning so much... because we need all these extra static bonus points to help mitigate the huge differential that comes from the d20. The larger the random die roll, the larger the static bonus has to be to make the static bonus feel at the table like it actually is accomplishing something. Yes, numbers-wise any static bonus is accomplishing what it needs to... but perception-wise, the players oftentimes won't feel it. You as a player will have an extremely difficult time noticing over the coarse of a game session that you succeeded on rolls 70% of the time rather than 55%. But you definitely WILL perceive, notice, and *remember* the two times that you, the big, strong, athletic warrior PC got shoved to the ground by the weakling teammate just because the d20 causes such a wide swing in the numbers.

Thus... the 2d10.

If you use 2d10 for ability checks... just under half (44%) of the rolls fall within the 9-12 range. Which now means that highly-skilled PC with the +5 bonus will get you to those DC 15 checks 64% of the time, whereas the untrained PC with a +0 will only reach it 21%. Whereas with a d20 it was 55% versus 25%. So those with static bonuses have better chances to succeed, and those without them get worse (as it probably should be.) It also thus makes a Hard check (DC 20) truly difficult for many PCs (especially ones who aren't adding proficiency bonuses). It's taking a an untrained character from a 1-in-20 chance to make this really hard check to a 1-in-100. And while that seems like it's too big of a swing... if you remember, at a lot of tables we're going to see so many ability checks from everybody (especially with tables of larger numbers of players) during a course of a session that a standard 1-in-20 chance could actually occur one, two, THREE times during that session. The "impossible" event could actually occur fairly regularly.

I will be honest here... I've never actually played or run a game with 2d10 rather than 1d20 for ability checks. But I'm fairly certain my next campaign *will* be doing this, for just this reason. To reduce the need for higher static bonuses (or giving out more Expertise) in order to make the trained individuals actually feel like there is a noticeable difference between them and their untrained friends. And shortening the width of the random roll will aid in that.