D&D 5E Rogue - Skill Mastery Bonus

[Connorsrpg]

I have just reread Skill Mastery and am confused. Its says when determining skill bonus rogues use their ability modifier or +3, whichever is higher.

I simply thought this was a typo/hangover still there from the first playtest and ignored it as all PCs now ADD their ability bonus and the +3 from BGs.

Am I right?....OR, does it refer:

A) To you ability score bonus, so if it is not +3 already it becomes +3. So along with BG +3, your skill would be +6.
OR
B) To the bonus from BG. So if your ability score is higher than +3 you use it TWICE? So you would simply have +8 (for 18-19 DEX) or +10 (with 20 DEX).

Neither of these sound right to me? Especially combined with the take 10! (Which we have replaced with Advantage and I am not that worried about as it seems to be on the way out soon).

I sure hope they clear the wording of this up. How have others interpreted this?

 

[Rydac]

We interpreted as "A" and yes combined with the skill mastery 10 minimum
was very boring....I'm also happy to hear that version of mastery is on the way out.

 

[DEFCON 1]

We interpreted it as your ability modifier or a +3 (whichever is higher), plus +3 for being trained in the skill. So for all the rogues, their modifier for everything they are trained it was at a minimum +6 (upwards to +7 or +8 if the ability score mod was +4 or +5). Combine this with Skill Mastery, the rogues could never roll less than a 16 on any check for any of the six skills they were trained in.

Needless to say... we were not happy with this iteration. The fact that for six different skills a 1st level rogue could never fail at anything up to Hard checks we felt was quite ridiculous and made things stunningly anti-climactic.