You Don’t Have To Leave Wolfy Behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' Your Companions Level Up With You!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Esker" data-source="post: 7646786" data-attributes="member: 6966824">Are you saying you don't dig the suggestions? That's fine, obviously, but I'm curious what it is you don't like. In the case of arcana, if you limit rogues' expertise picks to their class skills, with exceptions for particular subclasses, then the unnaturalness of the rogue being the best at the thing in question goes away, IMO.Replacing the d20 with 2d10, etc. is a tougher pill to swallow, admittedly, since the d20 is so core to the game. But just recognize that a lot of the pathologies with the way skill checks end up working RAW are a direct consequence of using a luck die that gives equal probabilities to extremes as it does to moderate values: regular proficiency feels a bit lackluster, because a +3 only increases checks vs fixed DC by 15% across the board (instead of increasing checks "at your skill level" by a bunch, but having little effect on checks well above or below that, as the 2d10 would do), and gives non-proficient characters unreasonably high chances to prevail  in contested checks vs proficient characters. And because the effect of bonuses is pretty small, a class feature like expertise that is entirely about skill checks has to grant pretty big bonuses to feel like it's a worthy prize for picking a class, or for leveling up to 6th. I'm playing a rogue that just got to 6th, and with expertise as written, and even though I like being a skill monkey, it feels like a slightly underwhelming level-up: the paladin is getting a crazy aura, the fighter gets an ASI or feat, the cleric gets a neat subclass thing and doubles their Channel Divinity uses, the lore bard gets to pick a couple of tasty treats from other classes' spell lists, etc. Meanwhile I get to be a little better at things that don't come up that often. And that's after a solid but still comparatively underwhelming level-up at 5th. Uncanny Dodge and one more d6 sneak attack is great, but it's not as fun as getting extra attack or 3rd level spells. If I were playing at a table that had nerfed expertise and not given something comparable back, I'd be questioning my class choice; probably multiclassing out, tbh.</blockquote>

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