D&D General Fantasy Heartbreaker: 2d6vs d20

[UngeheuerLich]

After the skill disaster of 3E, this was the desired result. The 4E training worked fairly well, except for the treadmill of doom (and skill challenges), which is why they brought it over to 5E. Moving to another dice system for skill throws off the math, putting things back into the 3E skills disaster.

As for auto successes, too many DMs forget the basic rules in the beginning of the PHB. You only need to roll if the outcome is in question. A high Str character should be able to smash a bottle on a table without a check, for example. A high Int character should be able to recall basic lore, while a high Cha character should be able to get the local gossip with ease. The DMG has a suggestion on it, but the simple concept of auto success (or failure) is much easier.

A great example of using rolls instead of logic can be found The Gamers 2. The bard goes to grab a book off an altar during combat. The DM says he succeeds, but the player demands to roll for it. When he unsurprisingly rolls a 1, the DM declares he dies (again).

I think there is a middleground. Maybe trained should start at +4 for skills. Or more classes should get expertise in their field of speciality (mages might get expertise in arcana).

Actually skills in 3.x were no total disaster, as long as you took cross class a the base for your decisions. This is more or less in line with 5e (+2 at the beginning is the same, +1 every other level is a bit more generous).
Where it really fell flat was that skills were used as prerequisites for a lot of things and there were so many to increase skill modifiers.
If you go back to 3.0 however you have some more sane numbers and only the rogue really got many skill points. All other classes were starved.
I think with better advertisement (cross class skill = skills, class skills = expert skills) and only allowing a certain portion of your skill points to increase expert skills above the cross class treshold you were fine. Actually this is very similar to how 5e works.

And I tested this. At the end of 3.5 this was how I ran it. I only used DCs between 5 and 25 usually 10 to 20 and suddenly my players were happy.
What I also used was the default rule: you always use take 20 if you are not under preasure. Even a lock can be picked with d20.

 

[Scott Christian]

It is a sum of numbers for level accuracy, not one trait.
By 5th level, most characters have +6 or +7 to hit. How is this not enough gravity for a d20 roll? Could you explain?
PS - I get that you are talking about only BA, but do not understand how something can be singled out as a flaw when it interacts with advantage, magic item bonuses, attribute bonuses, inspiration, etc.