D&D 5E Is Expertise too good?

[Blue]

If I can build a Rogue that's better at Survival than the Ranger or Druid every will be or a Rogue better in Arcana than a Wizard, something is seriously wrong.

Expertise allows me to do either (though probably not both at the same time). In my opinion it's a problematic ability.

Great, we have a hypothesis, let's test it.

Okay, so we're starting with a mundane character that is specifically putting part of their features into being educated and skills at arcane or survival. From an in-game narrative, let's call them the savant and the scout.

At 1st level, a wizard probably has a +3 Int and a +2 Proficiency, while the savant has +4 from proficiency. They aren't better unless they also have a 4+ INT modifier, which is possible but means that they are really focusing on being good at the skill, investing heavily in INT as well as a class feature to be good at Arcana.

At 5th proficiency goes up, but the wizard now has a +4 INT mod so the they both have gone up by +2 and it's the same status quo.

At 9th is the same deal - proficiency goes up but an ASI has already happened. Just to review, wizard is a +5 INT +4 proficiency = +9, while the savant is +8 expertise plus INT. So it really depends on how much the savant is investing in intelligence if it's lagging or not.

Mind you, the wizard has invested no class features into improving Arcana, so there is less opportunity cost for the wizard here already. They are improving their primary ability score which they would be doing anyway for spell attack and DC. The savant has invested a class feature, and needs to invest in a ability score that otherwise has no class synergies if they want to pull even, or invest heavily to pull ahead.

This holds true up through 12th. So, the character who has invested heavily can keep up with the generic wizard, in the +/-1 range for levels 1-12, which is where we see most actual play.

At 12th we have another ASI. If there was a feat this would be a chance for the wizard to invest, just like the savant has. Unfortunately the game is short on feats to improve Arcana, about the only one being Prodigy from XGtE, but that's racially limited. Too bad, we can't really evaluate wizard vs. savant with both of them investing in being good at arcana. Just see that the uninvested wizard and rogue who has spent to be good at it are in the same neighborhood

Now, only you can say if that is problematic at your table, I hope looking at it closer that they perceive window of superiority is less than expected at levels of actual play, and does come with a cost.

 

[Blue]

If you let advantage stack, 3d20 take the highest, like elven accuracy, it's fine.

Yes ... if we are using another house rule that addresses my problems, part of my problems are addressed for the first house rule. That doesn't change that I dislike it in normal play without the additional house rule of stacking advantage. Nor the fact it still eliminates the possibility of the expert rolling a higher max result then the person who is just trained.

 

[5ekyu]

I wish 5e made the skills (d20 v DC) use the exact same math as combat (d20 v AC).

If someone had ‘expertise’ in combat, it would be considered broken. It should likewise be considered broken in skills.

But see consider that combat has a fully robust system that combines multiple attributes, multiple decision points and trade offs, multiple ways to apply "wealth" in the form of gear and often a ton of checks to resolve a challenge.

It is not uncommon for many skill challenges to require at most a couple skills/attribute and only one roll or maybe a couple.

There us little in the way of a robust detailed breakdown for non-combat skills.

Of course, GMs can script larger skill sub-plots where one needs stealth to get this info on somebody and history checks to figure out eho it applues to and social skills to... Etc but its still a much different animal than the combat system.

So, you wont get "same math" until you get "same scale of sub-system" **and** same import to objectives *and* same frequency of need.

For all of 5e advances it still builds on a presumption of "combat primary" focus.

 

[77IM]

I hate Expertise with a burning passion. Simply put, it breaks bounded accuracy. Common problems with it that I've actually seen in game play:

• Stealth Expertise rapidly renders stealth an auto-success for the rogue, and chancy for everyone else. It doesn't help that MM monsters rarely have passive Perception much above 12 or so.
• Athletics Expertise can make rogues bizarrely good at grappling. Conversely, Acrobatics expertise makes them ungrapplable.
• Perception Expertise means nothing can be hidden, ever.

Are there was for the DM to work around these problems? Yes, but they take a bunch of extra work. That takes away time from everyone else at the table.

Expertise just warps the math in a bad way. Why have bounded accuracy and then bust it? I'll tell you why: because the skill system is pass/fail with no degrees of success or variations in success. In combat, everybody has roughly the same chance to hit, but they do different things when they hit. That doesn't happen with skill checks because there's such a diversity of skill checks that coming up with different success effects for different characters was too difficult of a design challenge -- and implementing it in play also sounds slower than pass/fail.

I don't have a solution to this problem. I just hate the solution 5E adopted. It's probably the number one thing I would change about 5E if I could change just one thing.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

Great, we have a hypothesis, let's test it.

Okay, so we're starting with a mundane character that is specifically putting part of their features into being educated and skills at arcane or survival. From an in-game narrative, let's call them the savant and the scout.

At 1st level, a wizard probably has a +3 Int and a +2 Proficiency, while the savant has +4 from proficiency. They aren't better unless they also have a 4+ INT modifier, which is possible but means that they are really focusing on being good at the skill, investing heavily in INT as well as a class feature to be good at Arcana.

At 5th proficiency goes up, but the wizard now has a +4 INT mod so the they both have gone up by +2 and it's the same status quo.

At 9th is the same deal - proficiency goes up but an ASI has already happened. Just to review, wizard is a +5 INT +4 proficiency = +9, while the savant is +8 expertise plus INT. So it really depends on how much the savant is investing in intelligence if it's lagging or not.

Mind you, the wizard has invested no class features into improving Arcana, so there is less opportunity cost for the wizard here already. They are improving their primary ability score which they would be doing anyway for spell attack and DC. The savant has invested a class feature, and needs to invest in a ability score that otherwise has no class synergies if they want to pull even, or invest heavily to pull ahead.

This holds true up through 12th. So, the character who has invested heavily can keep up with the generic wizard, in the +/-1 range for levels 1-12, which is where we see most actual play.

At 12th we have another ASI. If there was a feat this would be a chance for the wizard to invest, just like the savant has. Unfortunately the game is short on feats to improve Arcana, about the only one being Prodigy from XGtE, but that's racially limited. Too bad, we can't really evaluate wizard vs. savant with both of them investing in being good at arcana. Just see that the uninvested wizard and rogue who has spent to be good at it are in the same neighborhood

Now, only you can say if that is problematic at your table, I hope looking at it closer that they perceive window of superiority is less than expected at levels of actual play, and does come with a cost.

I don't know. My players usually have some crazy concepts. We had one guy who optimized for jumping and tried to solve all problems thought parkour. It was great.

What that means, however, is that just about every character at my table has one level of in the Rogue class for the soul purpose of picking up expertise. I would prefer not to use the optional multiclass rules at all, but doing so would severely nerf morethan half of the table's character concepts because they would no longer be able to access the Expertise feature.

One guy even came with a rogue whose soul purpose was to be better at Arcana, Nature, Survival, and History than the party wizard and druid. It was pretty funny, but ultimately showed us how unsatisfying the expertise feature is.

 

[Yaarel]

If you let advantage stack, 3d20 take the highest, like elven accuracy, it's fine.

Huh. Actually. Make expertise exactly like Elven Accuracy.

*IF* you have advantage, then you can reroll one of the d20s.

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

I hate Expertise with a burning passion. Simply put, it breaks bounded accuracy. Common problems with it that I've actually seen in game play:

• Stealth Expertise rapidly renders stealth an auto-success for the rogue, and chancy for everyone else. It doesn't help that MM monsters rarely have passive Perception much above 12 or so.
• Athletics Expertise can make rogues bizarrely good at grappling. Conversely, Acrobatics expertise makes them ungrapplable.
• Perception Expertise means nothing can be hidden, ever.

I feel like you're kinda looking at this the wrong way. The people who grab Expertise in those skills want to be really good at the skills they've invested in.

I do agree that Expertise being pretty much exclusive to the Rogue and Bard is weird, which is why I like the skill feats the had in Unearthed Arcana a while back because it allowed other characters to be good at things they wanted to be good at.

 

[Yaarel]

I hate Expertise with a burning passion. Simply put, it breaks bounded accuracy. Common problems with it that I've actually seen in game play:

• Stealth Expertise rapidly renders stealth an auto-success for the rogue, and chancy for everyone else. It doesn't help that MM monsters rarely have passive Perception much above 12 or so.
• Athletics Expertise can make rogues bizarrely good at grappling. Conversely, Acrobatics expertise makes them ungrapplable.
• Perception Expertise means nothing can be hidden, ever.

Are there was for the DM to work around these problems? Yes, but they take a bunch of extra work. That takes away time from everyone else at the table.

Expertise just warps the math in a bad way. Why have bounded accuracy and then bust it? I'll tell you why: because the skill system is pass/fail with no degrees of success or variations in success. In combat, everybody has roughly the same chance to hit, but they do different things when they hit. That doesn't happen with skill checks because there's such a diversity of skill checks that coming up with different success effects for different characters was too difficult of a design challenge -- and implementing it in play also sounds slower than pass/fail.

I don't have a solution to this problem. I just hate the solution 5E adopted. It's probably the number one thing I would change about 5E if I could change just one thing.

Exactly.

Expertise makes bad math that breaks bounded accuracy.

 

[77IM]

I feel like you're kinda looking at this the wrong way. The people who grab Expertise in those skills want to be really good at the skills they've invested in.

Great! They should have a way to do that, which doesn't break the basic math of the game.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

Great! They should have a way to do that, which doesn't break the basic math of the game.

Or force anyone who wants to be an "expert" in a certain skill to multiclass into Rogue or Bard.