How do skills work? Or...?

[Yora]

I've done a calculation of how much a Rogue actually is better at his skills than other characters with the same Dexterity score.

And when compared to a character without Skill Mastery and specialization in the Skill, the rogue will have a +68% greater chance to suceed.
In addition, the risk of failing the check by 10 or more is practically nonexistant as it requires a DC greater than what the rogue could possibly reach and outside the capability of any PC.

Even with just their ability modifiers and the +3 bonus from specialization, rogues have a significant advantage over other classes, even in skills that don't use thief tools.

 

[jadrax]

There is a bit on skills in today's 'Rule of Three'.

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Rule-of-Three: 05/29/2012)

 

[slobster]

I've done a calculation of how much a Rogue actually is better at his skills than other characters with the same Dexterity score.

And when compared to a character without Skill Mastery and specialization in the Skill, the rogue will have a +68% greater chance to suceed.
In addition, the risk of failing the check by 10 or more is practically nonexistant as it requires a DC greater than what the rogue could possibly reach and outside the capability of any PC.

Kind of sort of not really. Let's compare two characters with the same total skill modifier of, let's say, +6, one with mastery and one without.

A DC 15 check is impossible to fail for the mastery character. For the other one, he must roll a 9 or better, meaning his success rate is 60%. Clearly the character with mastery has a significant advantage here!

What about a DC 20 check? The character without mastery has to roll a 14 or better, a 35% success rate. The character with mastery has to roll . . . a 14 or better. Mastery doesn't help here, because the necessary die roll is above 10. So his success rate is also 35%! No advantage here.

Low DC tasks will be dominated by characters with mastery, but more difficult ones don't take mastery into account at all.