D&D 5E Is Expertise too good?

[Yaarel]

Hm.

At the risk of creating a tangential topic, could you explain the functional difference between house rules for skills and improvisational skill stunts?

D&D 5e relies on the DM to adjudicate narrative scenarios. Improvisation is core. Maybe even the core of core, for 5e.

I treat many improvisations as skill stunts. Some plausible approach to the narrative challenge.

For example. A player had a spell that both forced a move and dealt damage. There was a situation where a crowd of innocents were being attacked magically. The player wanted to use the spell to force an innocent out of the way, without dealing damage.

This seemed plausible to me as a DM. So I allowed the player to make an arcana stunt to modify the spell to only move the target without dealing damage, thus save the innocent target.

This kind of stuff doesnt normally happen. But sometimes it does. And the DM needs to make sense of it, when the players surprise the DM.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I know a lot of this comes down to preference, but I often look at these sorts of examples and objections and think "Why don't I have these same issues?" For my part, I don't particularly care that the rogue is almost always successful when trying to sneak around, nor do I feel like being good at grappling "belongs" to some other class. And I certainly don't think that nothing can be hidden "ever," because you don't have a chance to notice things if you're not looking in the right place, per the rules, regardless of your expertise.

Is it just the exception to bounded accuracy that bugs you? Like an unbalanced equation or remainder of sorts, the thought of which keeps someone up at night? I'm just trying to see the source of this objection as it's not clear we're at the heart of it. The examples you provided fall really short of explaining it for me because, to me, those all seem like reasonable outcomes (save the last). Please take this as an effort to understand where this is coming from and not a criticism.

I hate expertise, but I don't have problems with it in game.

I hate it for many of the reasons listed -- it breaks bounded accuracy, it's weirdly locked into the rogue/bard classes, it allows for weird outcomes like super-wrestler rogues (or 1 level rogue multiclasses) or rogues being much better at things in other classes bailiwick, etc. I find it uninspired game design that actively fights the core conceits of bounded accuracy.

I don't have a problem with it in game because I can accept what it does and it doesn't change how I run games -- DCs are still set by goal and approach, so expertise doesn't really change how I present things. I'm a fan of the characters, so their successes are still fun. It is a bit annoying, sometimes, to set a DC and find out that mathematically it was an auto-success, but that's a niggling "then why did I bother" bit and not anything that keeps me up.

If I had my druthers, I'd swap Expertise for Reliable Talent and Reliable Talent for advantage. Make it more 'I'm good at this so I don't screw up the easy/medium stuff, but I still need to pay attention to the hard stuff" rather than the boring math inflation it currently is which does this, but also allows rogues to just be better at things than other classes can ever be.

 

[Ristamar]

D&D 5e relies on the DM adjudicate scenario. Improvisation is core. Maybe even the core of core, for 5e.

I treat many improvisations as skill stunts. Some plausible approach to the narrative challenge.

For example. A player had a spell that both forced a move and dealt damage. There was a situation where a crowd of innocents were being attacked magically. The player wanted to use the spell to force an innocent out of the way, without dealing damage.

This seemed plausible to me as a DM. So I allowed the player to make an arcana stunt to modify the spell to only move the target without dealing damage, thus save the innocent target.

This kind of stuff doesnt normally happen. But sometimes it does. And the DM needs to make sense of it, when the players surprise the DM.

So wouldn't consistent impromptu rulings regarding a specific form of skill stunt simply be equivocal to a house rule or possibly a rule from an unofficial source?

Semantics aside, your Arcana example would likely not be allowed in any of the games I've played. It comes dangerously close to stepping on the toes of one of the Evoker archetype abilities, IMO.

I do see where you are coming from given that style of play, however, and I can sympathize with your dislike of Expertise. If your players are able to replicate effects similar to the features in feats or class abilities with impromptu skill usage, the roll of bounded accuracy needs to be recognized and respected.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

This strikes me as cognitive dissonance. You want the “math to be consistent” then you consider moving the DC around based on a player’s approach, which strikes me as the opposite of consistency. You might just consider granting advantage if you really like their approach - which I suppose is like lowering the DC. However, it at least is a mechanic that is consistent with the RAW and not some math you have to noodle over on the fly.

RAW is that the player always describes their approach, before you even decide whether or not they should roll. If there's a hidden panel behind the throne, then "searching behind the throne for hidden panels" will have a much lower DC than "searching the room for hidden doors or traps or something"; and the balancing factor for that lower DC is that they won't possibly find anything that isn't hidden behind the throne.

 

[77IM]

Thanks for the response. Which rule are you referring to here just so I'm sure we're on the same page?

Expertise. Many people seem to like it because it allows automatic success. Yet the rule itself doesn't mention automatic success or state it as the purpose of the rule; it's just a natural consequence of how the math works out, as early as mid-levels.

A couple of follow up questions if I may to see if I'm looking at it from your perspective. Do you assign every task the players describe their characters as doing a DC and ability check?

No, lots of things are automatic, if the answer is obvious to me.

Also, lots of things are opposed rolls versus NPCs, with advantage/disadvantage on either side for circumstances.

I often use NPC stats to generate a DC. For example, Deception against someone is often against their passive Wisdom (Insight), with advantage/disadvantage for circumstances of the lie. Sometimes I'll bump the DC up or down 5 for advantage/disadvantage on the NPC's passive. I find a framework like this is much easier for me to use in setting a DC than just pulling something out of my butt. If I do just pull a DC out of my butt, it's usually 10 or 15, sometimes 20 for a thing where I feel like the PC should probably fail.

Also, do you believe it's more interesting for the PCs to fail than it is for them to succeed?

No, but I think for a check to be interesting, both options need to be on the table. Otherwise we should skip the check part.

Combine this with my previous answer: if something is automatic, I want to decide that, and the players usually go along. (Even if it's auto-fail, because I usually tell them beforehand. "You can ask the guard to step aside, but it won't work, because he'd be insane to do that.") If I start thinking about DCs, it's because the task isn't automatic, by definition.

So I don't like it when there's a modifier and a DC or opposed roll and then, because of Expertise, it becomes automatic after doing all that thought work -- it feels like Expertise is overriding DM authority.

I love "bounded accuracy" as both a player and a DM because it means that when there is a check, everybody has at least a small chance of success and at least a small chance of failure.

Do players ask to make ability checks or choose to make them on their own in your games?

I'm not quite sure what you're asking. Most of the times players ask to do stuff and if I don't have an obvious answer I ask them to make a check.



Here's another perspective, relating to the "DM authority" bit. I often view RPG play as a negotiation between the players and the DM. If the player says "I want to distract the chimera with a bit of food and then sneak past him!" it is almost always the case that the player WANTS to succeed, that is, they think they should succeed, or at least have a chance. Who am I to deny them that? I want to be a "Yes, but..." DM. So, I let the dice decide. I go to the dice when the players and DM don't agree that one outcome or the other "should" happen. The players get to influence the outcome in how they build their PCs, and by taking actions well-suited to their builds, and by spending Inspiration. I get to influence the outcome by picking the DC and advantage/disadvantage. Expertise makes my part of this process much harder because I can no longer set the DC without inadvertently allowing for auto-success or worse, auto-failure. In general I think the "auto" outcomes should arise naturally out of conversations with my players, or from discrete spell and ability affects that explicitly specify it.

 

[Yaarel]

I do see where you are coming from given that style of play, however, and I can sympathize with your dislike of Expertise. If your players are able to replicate effects similar to the features in feats or class abilities with impromptu skill usage, the roll of bounded accuracy needs to be recognized and respected.

Yeah, exactly.

To me improvisation, extending to narrative adjudication, theater of the mind, and ‘immersion’, are the only reason I play D&D as opposed to a video game.

I need a fair way adjudicate player ingenuity. That makes bounded accuracy important to me, as the math to guesstimate difficulty, when the ingenuity has dramatic impact on the narrative.

 

[Yaarel]

It feels like Expertise is overriding DM authority.

Well said.

 

[iserith]

I hate expertise, but I don't have problems with it in game.

I hate it for many of the reasons listed -- it breaks bounded accuracy, it's weirdly locked into the rogue/bard classes, it allows for weird outcomes like super-wrestler rogues (or 1 level rogue multiclasses) or rogues being much better at things in other classes bailiwick, etc. I find it uninspired game design that actively fights the core conceits of bounded accuracy.

I don't have a problem with it in game because I can accept what it does and it doesn't change how I run games -- DCs are still set by goal and approach, so expertise doesn't really change how I present things. I'm a fan of the characters, so their successes are still fun. It is a bit annoying, sometimes, to set a DC and find out that mathematically it was an auto-success, but that's a niggling "then why did I bother" bit and not anything that keeps me up.

If I had my druthers, I'd swap Expertise for Reliable Talent and Reliable Talent for advantage. Make it more 'I'm good at this so I don't screw up the easy/medium stuff, but I still need to pay attention to the hard stuff" rather than the boring math inflation it currently is which does this, but also allows rogues to just be better at things than other classes can ever be.

Interesting. I imagine in my case, because it doesn't create problems in the game, I don't have much of a care for how it affects bounded accuracy. I'm not much of a math guy. I don't care how elegant the formula is as long as it doesn't cause me any grief when I'm playing.

I define "auto-success" as an approach to a goal that has a certain outcome and therefore no roll. So that happens further upstream in the resolution process. In the case of someone that can tap the DC I call for due to Expertise (or any other reason), I guess I still think of that approach as having an uncertain outcome - I called for a check after all. The character then succeeds and it's essentially no different to me than if someone really did need to roll. Perhaps this mental parsing settles down any annoyance due to the niggling you mention.

 

[iserith]

Expertise. Many people seem to like it because it allows automatic success. Yet the rule itself doesn't mention automatic success or state it as the purpose of the rule; it's just a natural consequence of how the math works out, as early as mid-levels.

Combine this with my previous answer: if something is automatic, I want to decide that, and the players usually go along. (Even if it's auto-fail, because I usually tell them beforehand. "You can ask the guard to step aside, but it won't work, because he'd be insane to do that.") If I start thinking about DCs, it's because the task isn't automatic, by definition.

So I don't like it when there's a modifier and a DC or opposed roll and then, because of Expertise, it becomes automatic after doing all that thought work -- it feels like Expertise is overriding DM authority.

As I mention to Ovinomancer here, I wouldn't consider it an automatic success in the same way I would a task with a certain outcome. I would say the latter sits at the level of the fiction and that determination happens further upstream in the resolution process. The DM maintains his or her authority in that determination. I wouldn't consider an Expert "tapping" the DC any differently than someone rolling and meeting or exceeding the same DC. In fact, unless a player told me he or she taps the DC, I wouldn't even know it. I'm mostly oblivious to the players' character sheets anyway.

Does that make sense? I feel like I'm not articulating this very well. But I think it addresses at least that part of the objections that some have and I don't. I could probably write a play script to show it if you think it would help.

I'm not quite sure what you're asking. Most of the times players ask to do stuff and if I don't have an obvious answer I ask them to make a check.

I mean do your players say "I want to make an Insight check..." or just roll unprompted? It's more of a side question, trying to see how people who object to Expertise play the game and see if there's any similarities. I find a lot dissimilar outcomes in terms of play experience can come from how much blurring there is between the DM and players' roles.

Here's another perspective, relating to the "DM authority" bit. I often view RPG play as a negotiation between the players and the DM. If the player says "I want to distract the chimera with a bit of food and then sneak past him!" it is almost always the case that the player WANTS to succeed, that is, they think they should succeed, or at least have a chance. Who am I to deny them that? I want to be a "Yes, but..." DM. So, I let the dice decide. I go to the dice when the players and DM don't agree that one outcome or the other "should" happen. The players get to influence the outcome in how they build their PCs, and by taking actions well-suited to their builds, and by spending Inspiration. I get to influence the outcome by picking the DC and advantage/disadvantage. Expertise makes my part of this process much harder because I can no longer set the DC without inadvertently allowing for auto-success or worse, auto-failure. In general I think the "auto" outcomes should arise naturally out of conversations with my players, or from discrete spell and ability affects that explicitly specify it.

Of the three approaches described in the DMG (pages 236-237) - Rolling With It, Ignoring the Dice, or The Middle Path - which would you say best describes your game? I can spell them out briefly if you aren't familiar with this section.

You say "auto-failure" is worse. Can you explain how that might happen? I can see the "auto-success" bit but have gotten around that mentally. Not sure about "auto-failure."

 

[Yaarel]

I mean do your players say "I want to make an Insight check..." or just roll unprompted?

In my games, the players never say, ‘I want to make a insight check’.

They say something like, ‘Does the guard believe what we are saying?’ If the answer is nonobvious, I have them roll a skill check.

Players interact narratively.