D&D 5E Is expertise badly designed?

[Beleriphon]

Hmmmm. Maybe we should make a new thread on building a better stealth system.

Maybe, but my main issues is that a Rogue with Expertise in Stealth has invested heavily in being stealthy. They should be stealthy in the vast majority of situations and environments, the player clearly decided that's what they want their character to be able to do. Plus, it's being super sneaky is very much in the rogue's wheelhouse.

If the DM really feels that the situations is so abnormal that the rogue shouldn't be "better" than the ranger or whatever then apply Disadvantage.

I was getting bogged down in the minutiae of how being stealthy could work, rather than reinforcing my point that it doesn't matter. D&D isn't granular enough to particularly care about the difference in material or environment most of the time. If a player is investing their character resources into being stealthy, that tells me they want the character to be stealthy, and the game is working as intended.

 

[Esker]

What do you think about my approach to make skills and training more granular? It's a few posts further back.

Do you mean this one? (For future reference, if requesting a response to a particular comment, it's helpful to link to it so the person you want to respond doesn't have to hunt; especially in a very active thread like this one)

So the idea is essentially just that expertise grants advantage, but then you also introduce an "unskilled" tier at which you have perma-disadvantage?

How would proficiency selection work in this system? Would you still pick skills to be proficient or expert in in the same way as RAW, but also get a certain number of picks to be "novice" in, with the rest being "unskilled"?

 

[Anoth]

Do you mean this one? (For future reference, if requesting a response to a particular comment, it's helpful to link to it so the person you want to respond doesn't have to hunt; especially in a very active thread like this one)

So the idea is essentially just that expertise grants advantage, but then you also introduce an "unskilled" tier at which you have perma-disadvantage?

How would proficiency selection work in this system? Would you still pick skills to be proficient or expert in in the same way as RAW, but also get a certain number of picks to be "novice" in, with the rest being "unskilled"?

My only problem with your system that is pretty good is that advantage is pretty easy to get already on a skill check.

 

[Esker]

Which struck me as an odd way of looking at it, but, whatever,

I think it was a really useful contribution in that it highlighted the aspects of the luck mechanic that actually matter: that is to say, the probabilities of success. The normalish curve you get by plotting probabilities of each individual roll doesn't really tell you much in itself, since you're never aiming for an exact roll, just to exceed a threshold.

And I thought it was helpful to note that you can't just switch to 3d6 and leave your DCs alone, because you're completely changing what DC 15 means, for example. It's like going from the U.S. to Australia and getting $15. You can have $15 in either place, but the number 15 only means something in a particular context.

For example, if we want to define a "fairly difficult" task for an average PC without training (figure a +1 ability mod as average) as something for which they have about a one in three chance (35%) of doing successfully, then when using 1d20 rolls, that makes the DC 15. If we want to define a 1/3 success task for the same character in a 3d6 system, then we need to set the DC around 13.

And then we can ask "what do we think being trained should do on a task that an untrained person can do with 35% success?" and ask the same question for other levels of difficulty, and for being an expert vs being trained.

The answer that RAW gives to all of those questions is, "it should increase the chance of success about 10%, increasing to 15%, then 20%, and eventually up to 30%". And this answer is the same regardless of the starting difficulty, obviously with the caveat that the chances can't go below 0 or above 100%.

The answer that you are implicitly giving if you switch to a 3d6 resolution mechanic and don't adjust bonuses or DCs is that the average untrained PC should succeed 1/3 as often at so-called "moderately difficult" tasks, and fail 1/3 as often on their "fairly easy" (DC 8 with a +1) counterparts, that on "fairly difficult" tasks, proficiency should raise your success rate by about 21% initially, and eventually about 67%, whereas expertise should initially further raise it an additional 25%, and eventually an additional 58%. On the other hand, for "fairly easy" tasks, proficiency should initially raise your success rate about 12%, and allow you to auto-succeed by level 17, whereas expertise should allow you to auto-succeed from level 1.

I think there are some nice aspects to that, but it's useful to realize that it's not all that different from making the proficiency bonus start at +4 and scale to +12 and adjusting everything else accordingly (most of the differences amount to less than a +/-1 on a d20 in either direction depending on the DC and starting bonus).

 

[Esker]

My only problem with your system that is pretty good is that advantage is pretty easy to get already on a skill check.

Is this meant as a reply to me, or to @miggyG777?

 

[Tony Vargas]

I think it was a really useful contribution in that it highlighted the aspects of the luck mechanic that actually matter: that is to say, the probabilities of success. The normalish curve you get by plotting probabilities of each individual roll doesn't really tell you much in itself, since you're never aiming for an exact roll, just to exceed a threshold.

Doesn't really matter if you're considering an exact roll, roll-under or match-or-beat, with a curve, where you are on the curve changes the value of that next +1, on a d20, it doesn't - until you fall off it, entirely.

And I thought it was helpful to note that you can't just switch to 3d6 and leave your DCs alone, because you're completely changing what DC 15 means.

You're not changing what it means, you're just changing the difference in probability between two characters with different bonuses succeeding, which is, of course, the point.

 

[Anoth]

Is this meant as a reply to me, or to @miggyG777?

To the system you linked to. Not for me but overall I think it is pretty good.

 

[Esker]

Doesn't really matter if you're considering an exact roll, roll-under or match-or-beat, with a curve, where you are on the curve changes the value of that next +1, on a d20, it doesn't - until you fall off it, entirely.

Right. But with 3d6 part of the reason the value of the +1 varies more is that it's functionally more like a +2, due to the fact that the rolls are not only bell-shaped, they're also more compressed.

You're not changing what it means, you're just changing the difference in probability between two characters with different bonuses succeeding, which is, of course, the point.

You are changing what it means. The number 15 doesn't mean anything in a vacuum; it only means something insofar as it translates to a certain probability of success. If you hold the bonus constant (at +1, say, which was my example), DC 15 is 35% success (roll a 14 or better) on a d20 roll, but only 16% success on a 3d6 roll. In what sense does that mean the same thing?

Now I guess you could reframe and say, "What I mean by 'moderately difficult' isn't how likely a reference character is to succeed, but rather what bonus a character needs to have a 50/50 shot." In that case, DC 15 translates to needing a +4 to have a 50/50 shot in both systems. But (I would argue) that's thinking about it backwards, because +4 doesn't mean anything in a vacuum either; it only means something insofar as the effect it has on the chance to succeed. And in a d20 system, +4 vs +0 is a 20% increase across the board, whereas in a 3d6 system, a +4 is, apart from a couple of very easy or very hard tasks, worth between 25% and as much as 56%. So in what sense is it reasonable to say that characters with +4s in both systems have the same level of skill? Except in that they both succeed at DC 15 checks half the time, but that's circular reasoning.

 

[miggyG777]

Do you mean this one? (For future reference, if requesting a response to a particular comment, it's helpful to link to it so the person you want to respond doesn't have to hunt; especially in a very active thread like this one)

So the idea is essentially just that expertise grants advantage, but then you also introduce an "unskilled" tier at which you have perma-disadvantage?

How would proficiency selection work in this system? Would you still pick skills to be proficient or expert in in the same way as RAW, but also get a certain number of picks to be "novice" in, with the rest being "unskilled"?

Untrained is the baseline.
Novice is gained through downtime training, usage of the skill.
Proficiency is gained like RAW.
Expert is gained by putting an extra proficiency point into a proficient skill.

 

[tetrasodium]

In fairness, the stealth rules for hiding don't apply if if I see somebody duck behind a trash can. Presumably the were never hidden, or failed their Dexterity (Stealth) check and didn't hide before I saw them. I'd also suggest that if I were following somebody with the intent to be hidden, particularly at night, avoiding making my own noises would be worth doing. Those noises could be not brushing against things to ensure rats don't scurry out, or scare the flock of pigeons off a statue.

During the day in Times Square, sure that broken glass isn't to make any difference, but I still want to stay behind people and out of sight otherwise I'm going to get made. I'd also want to use my Dexterity (Stealth) to slip between the throngs of people so I don't get some German tourist yelling at me that I just spilled their Venti Mocha Latte on their new chinos.

Think about the way a perp gets tailed in a police procedural. The cops are following until the suspect notices the cop following them, then they switch out. The cop following still does their best to stay behind things and be unobtrusive, until they fail then they fall back and use Deception to make it seem like they're just some person out for the day. When the suspect bolts that Deception has failed because they realize something is up.

If we're concerned about urban versus natural environments lets look at it this way: the rogue can still sneak up on a Daask group doing a dirty deal in a back alley in the Cogs This presumably involves hiding above, under on top things to remain unseen, as well as not knocking things over to prevent giving away their position. And I think the same principles apply to allow a character in the Eldeen Reaches while stalking an owl bear.



Deception or Intimidation seem like good places to start for proficiency applications if you're working on distractions.

If the druid wants to be stealthy they roll a Dexterity check, and apply an appropriate proficiency. They may or may not have a Stealth proficiency. Never mind that bagging a deer or whatever for food is covered by the Survival proficiency, not the Stealth proficiency.

Moving through a crowd unnoticed can be used with that, but again its about hiding behind and around things and people. Moving through a crowded market still requires the character to hide their presence in some way, either behind people or things. I think Assassin's Creed 2 did a reasonable job of showing how this can be done, particularly when blending in with a group.

You still aren't getting it. You are thinking there are only two people in an urban environment and ignoring all of the other people who will react to the bizarre actions of someone trying to move stealthily using the same skills they use for moving stealthily in a forest/cave/etc. It's impossible to be unseen in a crowd because you are in a crowd, it's a different skillset to move about in the crowd without disrupting it or loiter in plain sight in a way that nobody cares enough to think twice about. If you start moving around central part/time square/etc on a busy day like you would trying to stealthily get the drop on the other team in a paintball match forest... people are going to stare, point, & react in ways that are not natural for the crowd in those places.. in short you have effectively stealthily put up a bright neon sign because you applied the wrong skill... That stealth is still great for sneaking through a warehouse after hours, sneaking onto a docked airship, so on & so forth.

@Anoth All of this is still related to expertise stealth because stealth is badly overly inclusive & as a result expertise stealth invalidates all other approaches.