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<blockquote data-quote="Justice and Rule" data-source="post: 8417428" data-attributes="member: 6778210">I really disagree with this idea of skill leveling. As DCs go higher and levels go up, at-level challenges should be more challenging because they are creating more specialized, more ridiculous circumstances, thus requiring more specialization. What you get for putting in the minimal effort into Stealth at 20th level with a Dex +4 bonus is a half-half shot at a DC 36, which falls short of the DC40 recommend for 20th level. But you know what makes up that gap? Following the Expert with your 20th level Legendary Stealth thief.To me, I see skill checks in a more naturalistic fashion: at early levels you'll see many more at-level checks because you're low-level and there are just many more low-level checks to make. But as time goes on, at-level challenges drop off exponentially, becoming rarer and suitably more hard as circumstances become crazier but harder to get consistently. Thus the specialists become important, but being merely Trained in Stealth is still useful since you're still getting a +26 at 20th level, allowing you to bypass 90% of the most commons Stealth checks.For example, you need to infiltrate a castle. Simply sneaking all the way into the inner keep is going to be too difficult for the Trained Stealth Fighter... but it turns out that people don't guard 40 ft sheer walls like they do places that you can just walk through, so it's a much easier Stealth check to make it to the wall where he can then use his Legendary Athletics to scale it. Similarly the Legendary Deception Bard can bluff and disguise his way through a good portion of the castle, getting deep enough in that security ends up dropping off (because no one could ever get this deep anyways!) and he can get by Untrained in Stealth.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Justice and Rule, post: 8417428, member: 6778210"] I really disagree with this idea of skill leveling. As DCs go higher and levels go up, at-level challenges should be more challenging because they are creating more specialized, more ridiculous circumstances, thus requiring more specialization. What you get for putting in the minimal effort into Stealth at 20th level with a Dex +4 bonus is a half-half shot at a DC 36, which falls short of the DC40 recommend for 20th level. But you know what makes up that gap? Following the Expert with your 20th level Legendary Stealth thief. To me, I see skill checks in a more naturalistic fashion: at early levels you'll see many more at-level checks because you're low-level and there are just many more low-level checks to make. But as time goes on, at-level challenges drop off exponentially, becoming rarer and suitably more hard as circumstances become crazier but harder to get consistently. Thus the specialists become important, but being merely Trained in Stealth is still useful since you're still getting a +26 at 20th level, allowing you to bypass 90% of the most commons Stealth checks. For example, you need to infiltrate a castle. Simply sneaking all the way into the inner keep is going to be too difficult for the Trained Stealth Fighter... but it turns out that people don't guard 40 ft sheer walls like they do places that you can just walk through, so it's a much easier Stealth check to make it to the wall where he can then use his Legendary Athletics to scale it. Similarly the Legendary Deception Bard can bluff and disguise his way through a good portion of the castle, getting deep enough in that security ends up dropping off (because no one could ever get this deep anyways!) and he can get by Untrained in Stealth. [/QUOTE]

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