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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 8847801" data-attributes="member: 6877472">The game probably should have a rule that says something like "if bonus is X and DC is Y, the check succeeds".  This would speed up play immensely.  People can and do perform many things daily that would require a skill check, but they become so routine that the chance of failure drops to fractions of a percent.I mean, let's look at driving a car.  When you first start to drive, the combination of remembering which pedal to press, being alert of the road ahead, drivers around you, possible road hazards, using turn signals, watching your speed and gas gauge, staying in the center of your lane, all while zipping around at speeds Olympic sprinters can only dream of while merely going around the block in a residential neighborhood, is insane to contemplate- yet many people manage to do this routinely.In fact, for most of us, these actions are so automatic, that we can do it and even carry on a conversation with passengers in the car!But in D&D, every time you get in a car there's at least a flat 5% chance that you fail, no matter who you are.  And what form does that failure make?  Was it a failure to make a turn signal, or to come to a complete stop?  Did you veer slightly from the center of your lane, or any number of minor mishaps that don't necessarily mean disaster?Judging from my personal experience alone, the D&D model would probably be that there's a 5% chance that every time you get behind the wheel you'll have an accident that risks life and limb, lol.Simply put, tasks that are performed often get easier over time.  5e's timeline for this is glacial.  The idea that you have to wait 4 levels (as a first level character) to get 5% better at your proficient skills is insane.Ordinary people most likely would not hit this milestone in their lifetime!  I mean, think about what this would mean if the game world actually ran on these rules!  If most people have ability scores of around 10 (and a 12 somewhere, taking racial modifiers into account), and proficiency only grants a +2 for their lifetime, then even a check with a target number of 5 has a failure rate of 15% (10% if your best ability score comes into play)!That seems like a huge margin for error, especially given that most jobs require more than one kind of ability check to perform, and worse, there's no chance of most people ever getting better at their jobs than they started off with!Now sure, obviously, D&D is not meant to simulate reality.  But at the same time, insisting on huge margins for failure for PC's, when we have to assume this doesn't hold true for NPC's (or the world would quickly come to a crashing halt) really detracts from the "role-playing" side of the role-playing game.</blockquote>

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