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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 7246886" data-attributes="member: 7006">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.</blockquote>

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