D&D 5E Expertise for all Skills

[Mistwell]

What are you talking about?

I am not sure Someone else posted something remarkably similar to this, about a month and a half ago or so. Perhaps it was not you?

 

[Falling Icicle]

I am not sure Someone else posted something remarkably similar to this, about a month and a half ago or so. Perhaps it was not you?

I looked at the history of threads I've started, and didn't see any such topic. I've probably mentioned some of these things in other threads, though. *shrug*

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I agree with the sentiment, though I've never been entirely happy with expertise. I really liked some of the initial discussions where expertise doubled your proficiency bonus. Thus, the skills that are core to a class would grow faster than others instead of always being a flat +5 ahead.

I never liked the idea of the Rogue being defined as always being better at individual skills. I liked the Third Edition approach where the Rogue had a lot of skills. In this case, the class would have a lot of proficiencies and expertise. But neither would be exclusive to the Rogue.

 

[ccooke]

That's not a very good argument. Being skilled in one particular area that is very near and dear to what you do should be obvious. I wouldn't expect a cleric to know nothing about religion, that would just be weird.

Further, I don't think that even the rogue, who has more skills by default anyway(and always has) is designed to be a "skill class" in DDN.

You say you wouldn't expect a cleric to not know anything about religion... but Clerics only get to pick one skill from a set including religion. Sure, they might have chosen a background that includes religion, but there's no guarantee they have. It's completely valid to create a cleric that has no *special* training in religion.

The only standard background that contains Religion is "Priest". That background gives you the "Temple services" trait, which means you could call upon any temple to ask for help. This would give you access to temple libraries (which will contain a number of Tomes dealing with religion - so auto-success on any DC up to the value of the tome). You'd also be able to call upon and request help from the most experienced priests in the temples, who may know the answers you seek themselves.

The picture here is that *adventuring* clerics are not necessarily any more knowledgeable about religion than any other adventurers (they likely get a circumstance bonus about knowing things about their *own* deity, sure, but nothing special about comparative religion. If I were running this, I'd say that a cleric doesn't even need to roll to know doctrinal stuff about their own religion. Why would they?). Those who started out as priests can probably answer any basic to difficult question given a bit of time and the right location, because they've got a network of resources they can call on.

Rogues, on the other hand... get to pick four skills. None of which are Religion. So a level 1 rogue can *only* beat a level 1 cleric in Religion *if they started out as a priest*. Not only that, but Rogues get the Expertise class feature at level 1. That allows them to pick up to four of their tools and skill proficiencies to get a +5 bonus with. A rogue who wants to be better than a cleric at religion needs to pick the Priest background *and* spend a very limited class feature on it.

A cleric who wants to know about religion can pick it as a class skill. That's one resource, compared to the Rogue's two. Seems fair that the rogue should be better, having spent considerably more resources on *being* better.

The same goes for any other thing the rogue can be "Better" at - they only get "free" choice of four of Acrobatics, Athletics, Deception, Insight, Intimidation, Perception, Performance, Persuasion, Search, Sleight of Hand and Stealth. If they want to "beat" any other class at Arcana, Nature, or something else they will have to select the right background and then *not* select a traditional Rogue skill for Expertise. This seems balanced, to me.

 

[Kobold Stew]

I agree with the OP -- training in a skill accomplishes significantly less that raw ability. That's a choice they've made (in the latest packet), and it's a bad one. It undermines any value in having a skill system, and it disproportionately hurts players who are trying to create a concept (non-optimized) character.

I've made various suggestions on these boards about the skill system as it's developed. Taken together, it would give me the skill system that I'd like to see!:

1. Proficiency should grant a flat bonus. +2, +3, +5 I don't care, but something that meaningfully distinguishes trained from untrained from the start. The sliding bonus on top of that based on level matters much less, I feel (DCs are sliding anyways; what's important is to distinguish trained from untrained).

2. Selection. I really like skill selection coming from background rather than class. Certain skills should be available to certain classes (e.g. Arcana for mages), regardless of background. Currently, most classes grant one skill and backgrounds four. I'm fine if these numbers get played with a bit (3 from background, 1 from class), but that general balance feels right.
- For most classes, there are normally no other skills available: no "free" skills -- if a cleric wants to learn religion, and it doesn't come from her background, then she better take it as her class skill. This allows players to deviate from the norm, but ensures that all bases can be covered if the player wants.
- For most classes, additional skills can only come from Feats.

3. Skilled classes. Currently, three classes get "extra" skills and skill-related abilities -- rangers, bards, and rogues. I would make the following changes:
- Rangers should be the same as other classes;
- Bards should have "bardic knowledge" (currently guaranteeing a minimum roll on knowledge skills) -- I like that. But I would not grant Bards expertise (at level 3).
- Rogues currently have expertise (at level 1). I would instead grant them an extra background*, giving them (and them alone) proficiency in 3-4 extra skills (kicking in either at level 1 or at level 3, depending on other balancing factors). This was in the very first playtest packet, and it was dynamic in what it said about rogues.

* Possibly this extra background could be select from a shortlist: thug, guild thief, soldier…

4. (Tools. Implementing these would require changing tool proficiencies somewhat as well -- I won't spell out how here. Basically, I feel tools should not grant a bonus but should allow certain checks to be made for the trained that otherwise could not be made -- an on/off switch, not a dimmer.)

A flat proficiency bonus and an extra background for rogues are for me the key:

- It ensures that rogues have a niche that is not eroded by other classes (in contrast, a level 3 bard is better at skills than a level 3 Rogue).

- It lets Bards keep a unique ability that means they always have a wide range of information available to them.

- It also means that Rogues have the greatest variety of builds available to them, and alt-builds (not around DEX or CHA remain possible).

That's my pitch.

 

[HeroForge]

I agree with the sentiment, though I've never been entirely happy with expertise. I really liked some of the initial discussions where expertise doubled your proficiency bonus. Thus, the skills that are core to a class would grow faster than others instead of always being a flat +5 ahead.

I never liked the idea of the Rogue being defined as always being better at individual skills. I liked the Third Edition approach where the Rogue had a lot of skills. In this case, the class would have a lot of proficiencies and expertise. But neither would be exclusive to the Rogue.

Expertise doubling proficiency bonuses sounds like a lot of fun, but I wonder how the math works out. That seems like it might be just too big a jump.

Agreed that being a rogue shouldn't always be better at individual skills. I that that the jack of all trades master of some makes for the most flavor, especially when given the option to specialize at the cost of growth in other areas...

 

[Falling Icicle]

I never liked the idea of the Rogue being defined as always being better at individual skills. I liked the Third Edition approach where the Rogue had a lot of skills. In this case, the class would have a lot of proficiencies and expertise. But neither would be exclusive to the Rogue.

Yeah, I prefer for the rogue to just have the most skills, not to be better at any particular skill than other characters can be.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

Expertise doubling proficiency bonuses sounds like a lot of fun, but I wonder how the math works out. That seems like it might be just too big a jump.

Agreed that being a rogue shouldn't always be better at individual skills. I that that the jack of all trades master of some makes for the most flavor, especially when given the option to specialize at the cost of growth in other areas...

Compared to a flat +5, it's actually smaller jump until a character is very high level. The proficiency bonus ranges fro +1 to +6. With expertise, the range is +2 to +12.

 

[GMMichael]

While I like the general way they're doing skills in the last packet, the mere +1 bonus characters start with seems rather insignificant. Having a +3 instead of +2, or whatever, doesn't really matter much, and certainly doesn't do nearly enough to distinguish those who have training in a skill from those who don't. The cleric with an 18 Wis is still better than the 14 Wis Ranger at Survival. The 18 Str Fighter is still better at Athletics than the 14 Str rogue. This bothers me.

This could be a problem of underestimating the significance of an 18 ability score. If you have an 18, you really should be considered borderline super-human.

Of course, rogues can choose four skills to get "expertise", but that's what I thought I'd bring up here as a solution. In 4e, every skill got a +5 bonus just for being trained. Bonuses from leveling were on top of that. This is basically what expertise does for rogues. But why should rogues be the only ones that get this? I think they should give ALL skills that are trained a +5 expertise bonus, for every class. That would certainly help to distinguish those with training in a skill from those relying on nothing but natural talent! And it wouldn't be overpowered, either.

That +5 bonus can be significant in the right context. It can be broken in the wrong context.
So what's the context? It's directly determined by the difficulties/target numbers/difficulty classes. If an expert-level effort can be done with a +2 bonus, then +5 can make someone a master. If the expert-level effort occurs at a +10, or target number of 30, then +5 doesn't go quite so far.

If anything, it seems to me like most actions are way too difficult, even for characters who have the appropriate skill and a good ability score on top of it. Take, for example, a character with a 16 Dex and training in Acrobatics. That gives him a total of +4 on his Dexterity (acrobatics) checks. Even attempting a simple task, with DC 10, the character has a pretty big chance to fail (25%). A DC 15 action would be failed 50% of the time, and a DC 20 task 75% of them. A DC 25+ task is literally impossible. Keep in mind, the DCs go up to 35! Even a 20th level character with a 20 Dex would only have +11 on those checks, meaning DC 35 actions are completely impossible for such a character, and even actions with lower DCs have extremely high failure rates compared to what you'd expect an epic character with a maxed out ability score to be able to accomplish.

3.5 has the take-10 mechanic, which means as long as you don't have a penalty to your check, or you're not being harassed by hostile folk, you automatically get a 10 on your roll. That means even with a +0, you have no chance to fail - 0%. Reconsider a "simple task" now that goblins are swinging clubs at you. Is 50% failure reasonable? Is 25% failure reasonable, with a +4 bonus (with 16 Dex and training)?

Modos RPG, built on a similar percentile system, makes taking 10 even more fundamental (the take half rule). All difficulty classes are based on what an "average human" could do. The aforementioned DC 25 would be called an "impossible" effort (based on the Modos context), but "impossible" difficulties are determined by the GM, not the rulebook. Whether by inherent ability or training, a character with +5 total to his acrobatics skill could actually do the impossible, although only statistically - 1 out of 20 tries.

(If you fail 19 times at an impossible acrobatic task, you're likely to end up with a broken neck!)

 

[MJS]

I know some of you hate to hear this, but DM fiat is extremely important with amorphous skills, and how they apply to classes. That Ranger may not have to roll where another character does. And player description of what they are actually doing weighs heavily on a DC.