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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 6616202" data-attributes="member: 6677017">Yes, it feels off to me to from a thematically conceptual level, too. But you literally forget about it once you start playing and eventually start realizing that the universal proficiency bonus is such a good thing overall.I liken it to the cyclical initiative introduced by 3e. Those who weren't around then may not realize that initiative in most RPGs before 3e came out was a multi-stage animal consisting of stating your intent in some sort of order, making rolls and applying a variety of modifiers in probably a different order, and risking completely losing your action that turn if things went wrong (or breaking verisimilitude by allowing you to change your action to something else entirely if and only if you couldn't complete your original action...yeah, that's believable). Quite frankly it was a mess--but we liked it! Or rather, we didn't know of any other way of doing it.Then 3e came along and said, "Hey, forget that. Let's just roll initiative once, apply a static modifier to it, and then just everyone goes around the table in order and does whatever they want to at the time."The gut reaction that I (and I'm sure I wasn't the only one) had was that it just felt off. It just wasn't as realistic. A faster character ought to be able to anticipate a slower character's actions and compensate, or make more weapon attacks, or...or...or...But...once I actually started playing it, it didn't take long for me to realize it was one of the best things 3e did. The ease that it added to combat was well worth the minor adjustments to my understanding of what initiative and combat rounds entail. And most games since then (even ones that aren't d20) have followed suit, because it's just a better way of doing it.Now, I can't say whether a universal proficiency bonus is a better way of doing D&D, but I can say I had exactly the same experience as with the 3e initiative revolution. It felt off at first, but once I started playing the game the benefits so far outweighed the problems that I pretty much forgot about the issues. After playing for months, I probably have thought about it maybe twice at the most.So what you may want to ask yourself on that particular issue is how you felt about the 3e initiative change. If it faded out of relevance to you like it did to me, then this will too. If you still don't like 3e initiative, this may be worth taking into consideration. Hope that helps!</blockquote>

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