D&D 5E (2024) Should Bounded Accuracy apply to skill checks? Thoughts on an old Alexandrian article

[Distracted DM]

Man, let's not even open that can of worms!

Oh boy.. I want to ask...

 

[PHATsakk43]

Man, let's not even open that can of worms!

Makes you miss the old, 1x an unencumbered character’s strength score or whatever it was.

 

[Guest 7037866]

Makes you miss the old, 1x an unencumbered character’s strength score or whatever it was.

No, it makes me miss simple guidelines for using skills in 5E.

 

[Pedantic]

The gameplay mechanism is in the game merely to BE a pacing mechanism. The gameplay mechanism isn't the action of the game unto itself. If it was, we wouldn't need to go through all the trouble and effort of creating descriptions and names for all of these numbers, the point of the game would simply be "I roll a die, I add some numbers to it... if my number is high than your number, then I win." That's like playing any dice game. We don't bother thinking up what the dice "represent" when playing craps or liar's dice... they are just dice and the point of those games are to just roll them and try and win.

But we don't do that in D&D, we give those dice and numbers a meaning. Something they represent. And the times of using those dice and numbers aren't based on the gameplay of "Okay, it's now my turn to roll" and just going back and forth between the players and DM in some sort of schedule... the gameplay mechanism is in service to something else... that being everyone's imagination of what their "characters" are "doing" within the "story".

We don't roll dice just for the sake of rolling dice because that's what "the game is"... we only roll dice when our collective imaginations have decided that our "story" needs a roll of the dice to generate a new story beat.

You're mixing up "resolution" and "gameplay" here. Gameplay is leveraging the stuff you have to get the thing you want. The gameplay in liar's dice, for example, is in gauging the likely distribution, considering the space lost by each raised bet, trying to raise your opponent to an untenable state and so on. It's not the actual act of saying "4 2s" and it's certainly not the bit where everyone shakes their cups, it's the choices players make around those things.

It's not about what the characters are doing, it's why the players selected a specific action. A very limited skill system can fail that process in two different ways:

1. Players cannot meaningfully declare actions that influence resolution at all. Whatever you do, you're rolling a check you have +2 to against a Hard DC.
   1. The lesser but still not great version of this is that players can only marginally influence their odds, say by describing a clever plan to get a medium DC, providing a solid +10% chance of success.
2. No action is better than any other action, so there is no player agency in action declaration. This is the skill challenge pacing problem, where you have unlimited agency in providing color to your actions, but no real agency to force the resolution you want, get your 3 successes before your 3 failures.
   1. The lesser version here is basically the same as above, providing +/-10% to success for either declaring easier actions, or persuading the GM to take your best skill, if there's sufficient skill variance.

I want skills to provide players with lines of play, sets of actions they put together to try and get the outcome they want, tactical responses to failure, and so on. It's simply not interesting to roll a 65% chance of success repeatedly, and while all the narrative discussion of how to make something out of failure on that roll are fine, I'd rather have players who are empowered to try not to fail.

 

[Pedantic]

Think of it as a choice. You don't write an adventure to make a locked door a roadblock, but instead, an opportunity. If they can open the locked door, they might get a better reward, or skip an encounter.

Or they could get the same by not being able to open the door.

I once ran an adventure where the PC's came across a long hallway with several pit traps. They weren't hard to notice, so the party Thief (it was that long ago) just started disabling the traps by using a piton to spike the traps shut.

The whole time they were in this dungeon, they kept coming upon signs that, long ago, another adventuring party had gone before them, and close to the end, they found the body of a deceased adventurer who had gotten trapped and ran out of food and water. Scratched on the wall with a dagger was their last testimony- something to effect of "damn him for falling into that trap with the key".

The party deliberated on this, and someone was like "hey, we didn't check those pit traps, did we?". I turned out in one of them was, in fact, the remains of a fallen adventurer, who had some decent loot on them, as well as a key that would have made the entire adventure quite a bit easier.

It was my first real introduction to the concept of "failing forward"- a party with a less capable Thief might have fallen into the trap and found the key. But because the party's Thief was more competent in their skills, they found and bypassed the trap and carried on, little knowing that they really wanted what was in the trap!

From the way people are saying Rogue's skill use should be treated in 5e, a "trapfinder" Rogue might be told "oh yes, you can easily find and disable all the traps in the hall without rolling because you can't possibly fail". They might elect to do so and completely miss out on the point of divergence in the adventure.

Whether this is good or bad depends on one's point of view. The adventure could play out very differently based on the precise makeup of the party, creating a different kind of story.

In 4e, some skill challenges weren't pass/fail, but like the above example, you might find something you otherwise wouldn't, like a treasure cache or a shortcut depending on the results. For years, I've structured my adventures this way, using skill checks as decision gates- the party will most likely see the adventure through either way, but the precise course taken can vary based on their ability to interact with the environment presented.

This applies to dungeons and trekking through the wilds- maybe you found a way to ford the river, or maybe you get washed down it and see a cave in the cliff wall that you might have missed, the glint of something shiny on the shore, or get fished out of the river downstream by a friendly ogre fisherman!

When I started DMing for 5e, however, I found myself a bit stymied. As a player, I'd noticed a lot of really high DC's for low-level adventures, like a DC 20 lock in the adaptation of Sunless Citadel (in Tales From The Yawning Portal). And I was like, now wait a minute- a tier 1 character usually starts with a 16 and has a +2 proficiency bonus. Shouldn't most checks be closer to DC 15?

Oh well, Rogues exist, they can get a +2 from expertise! Not a big deal, they're just a little bit better. So I started filing down DC's for checks.

Then suddenly I found myself face to face with the tier 2 Rogue with 18 Dex and a +6 bonus and I was like "huh, well now they're at +3 over other characters..."that seems really good for a game that has smaller numbers", I thought...and I realized that eventually, Rogues had become a, uh, "rogue factor" that I wasn't going to be able to account for. They would almost "turn off" skill checks entirely unless I raised the DC's- but if I do that, then skill checks are turned off for non-Rogues. Then as 5e kept going, more ways for other classes to jump on the Expertise train kept getting printed, and more ways to ensure success appeared- advantage became far easier to get, every Cleric turns into a guidance spammer, and even seemingly innocuous feats like Observant became issues when Crawford is like "oh well you see, your passive check is a floor for skill checks, you can't roll worse than that" (which is basically pseudo-Reliable).

It felt (to me) that the idea of regular ability checks and skill checks was being obsoleted- you now had to have all these other kinds of bonuses just to compete!

I started to have to make house rules for "degrees of success" instead of simple pass/fail, and I wondered why this was happening- what's the point of a skill system if you can just opt out of it?

Some have brought up "well, spells", because these kinds of effects also tend to trivialize skills. It's a fair point, but using magic to bypass a skill check has a different kind of opportunity cost. If I use knock to open a stuck door, I've used a spell slot I won't have for a future encounter. I also make a lot of noise, which has it's own concerns. If I instead have a Rogue just snicker at the DC, it raises the question of why even have locks or doors in the first place, lol!

I've argued elsewhere before that spells are a better basic interaction game than skills. Ideally, skills would just be a defaulting mechanism you'd call on when players aren't using class abilities to interact with the world, either because they don't see the situation as a meaningful problem, or they're out of resources.

You get caught up in what I've taken to calling the "mundanity trap" then though. PCs that are mundane are defined by using exclusively universally accessible systems, and D&D codifies specific techniques as spells* so you generally can't hand them out. I think the best solution is to hide the abilities you want those characters to have in the skill system, and then give them limited ability to modify their skill checks. Your rogue has 10 expertise points that all add +10 to a specific skill check, and would you look at that cool "hide in actual plain sight" use of stealth at DC 35?

*For good reason, spells are actually much easier to put arbitrary limitations on. If you're strong enough to bend a portcullis, you're strong enough to do a lot of other things too, but Warp Metal can do just the one.

 

[PHATsakk43]

I'll just say that my experience with the 5E skill system is that it's terrible. It's like a whole chapter of the book describing using and adjudicating skills was just left out of the game. When I think about a game like Blades in the Dark, I'm thinking of a game that handles skills, success but also failure in depth. If I remember correctly, the entire skill system was optional in the original 5E.

Basically 5E has no skill system. It’s just flavor attributes assigned to ability scores.

Which is fine, B/X has no skill system nor even the implied concept of one. B/X is thriving and well.

The problem is when you try to over define the 5E system into being an actual skill system. It is not.

A skill system has some level of player agency in the acquisition, the skills are specific and limited in scope, and there is some sort of economic value to skill purchase.

 

[Parmandur]

Basically 5E has no skill system. It’s just flavor attributes assigned to ability scores.

Which is fine, B/X has no skill system nor even the implied concept of one. B/X is thriving and well.

The problem is when you try to over define the 5E system into being an actual skill system. It is not.

A skill system has some level of player agency in the acquisition, the skills are specific and limited in scope, and there is some sort of economic value to skill purchase.

That seems to be a highly idiosyncratic definition of a "skill system", and not one very useful foe actual analysis.

A better definition of a "skill system", IMO, ia a system thet helps differentiate the results of an action declaration from two characters using two or more factors. So, "roll under attribute" is not a "skill system" because the results are only differentiated in one dimension, Attribute score. Whereas in 5Ez the combination of Attribute, Proficiency, Expertise and certain Class abilities provide nuance and multiple shades of distinction between different characters declaring the same action.

 

[Clint_L]

My problem is Reliable Talent was a tier 3 abillity, and now they want it to be tier 2. AKA power creep. But I know you, for instance, also appreciate the power creep in the 2024 monk. So, I don't expect you to see a problem.

Actually, I have repeatedly suggested that the 2024 monk is an improvement but now OP and could use a nerf. And in my first post on this thread I point out that I already nerf reliable talent.

I never do this. I take into account the world design. I don't care what the PC skill levels are. If they are someplace where a DC 25 lock makes sense according to the world narrative, etc. it is a DC 25 lock. If they are someplace where a DC 10 lock makes sense, that is what they will find there.

What is the fun of putting a DC 25 lock in a level 1 encounter or a DC 10 one in a level 10 encounter? What a waste of time!

Rarely IME is a locked door the sole obstacle, let alone a big one. If we agee a basic lock is DC 15 (?) then the expert rogue in tier 2 will likely have a +10 bonus if they focus on lock picking. That's an 80% chance of success on a single try. Since rolling under the DC doesn't mean "failure" necessarily in 5E, they can usually try again or even succeed at a cost if they miss by 1 or 2 on the roll. Even the non-expert rogue has about a 2 in 3 chance of getting past a "basic lock".

FWIW, what you can do inside a home is immaterial.

More likely, such a lock is guarded, or the PCs have to get through the door quickly (chasing someone fleeing or fleeing themselves) making the single round check part of the obstacle.

I know Rogues have Reliable Talent at 11th level in 2014, which is all I will play, because I don't want them having it at 7th level. Even knowing it, I don't "plan" for it. I plan according to the narrative of the game world, not the PCs in the adventure. I would design the same challenge whether the Rogue was in the party or not. Party composition is immaterial to adventure design.

IMO, if you are "designing to the PCs" that is poor design and DMing; but that is just my opinion.

Okay, well now them's fighting words!

I don't even know what "the narrative of the world" is for outside of the experience of the players. Are you just building a world narrative regardless of who the party is or what level they are? Is what they run into just random, so you start the campaign somewhere in your world narrative and they keep TPKing until they get lucky and start in a low level area? I don't believe that you aren't taking your party composition and level into account when planning sessions. That would be utterly pointless - you'd be doing a ton of work for games that are wipe-outs or walkovers. That truly sounds like bad design.

And what about character backstory and wants, needs, flaws? How do you generate interesting, character-driven stories without taking those into account? Do you ignore the work your players put into building their characters?

This is a storytelling game. I don't think incorporating basic storytelling principles (i.e. your character's ability, history and choices matter) is poor design and DMing, but maybe I misunderstand your point entirely.

I also note that every adventure ever published takes careful account of projected character levels when planning encounters and challenges.

 

[James Gasik]

I have a character with the Healer Feat in a game. They used to be an army Medic (though they are actually a Wizard) and I took proficiency in Medicine.

I've made all of one Medicine check in the time it took to reach level 9 (which I almost failed because Medicine is a Wisdom skill for reasons, lol) to identify what could have caused injuries to a corpse, to get a clue about an upcoming encounter.

The book only has one use for Medicine (DC 10 to stabilize) and I've never had to roll it to heal anybody as it's not a requirement for using what the other players call my "magic duct tape". The reason is, the book gives no examples for what Medicine does or how to use it, and so the player and the DM have to negotiate, using what little they know about real-world medicine, and what the medical knowledge of the sczhizo-tech pseudo-medieval setting would be like.

There's lots of skills that fall into this trap as well. And some that are suspiciously lacking- I still keep forgetting that Engineering isn't a thing, lol!

Now I griped about this for some time, but I've come around to understanding why this is the way that it is- each setting has to define what it's skills do.

The Arcana check made by a Magewright in the City of Sharn might grant very different knowledge than one made by a groundling Wizard who finds himself aboard a Spelljammer for the first time!

Or as in my Medicine example, hard-coding the effects of the skill makes assumptions about the level of medical knowledge a given campaign might have. It could be the difference between a discussion of an imbalance in one's humours, keeping a jar of leeches handy, making regular trips to the forest for healing herbs, being able to perform crude surgeries, up to knowing what bacteria are!

There are a host of illnesses we know about today that people in say, the 1400s (about the time the bastard sword was invented, according to Cadence).

A simple line like "DC 15: remove a disease effect" could have major implications for an individual D&D setting or adventure.

Now me personally, I'd rather have that information to be in the PHB, to use, modify, or discard as needed, but that would take up a lot of space, and maybe not every group would appreciate it. And I think not having these sorts of reference points makes it hard to adjudicate what the DC's for certain checks should be. Which makes it equally hard to say what the actual impact of Expertise is.

Is someone who can, at level 7, be unable to fail to make a DC 20 check in (insert skill here) a luminary in their field? Are they capable of going beyond the bounds of what is known and expand what is known in the campaign setting?

Take Acrobatics- what's the DC for Simone Biles to perform a double back salto tucked with a triple twist? 25? 30?

In 3e, because the DC's of many checks were known, some people attempted to reverse engineer stats for real-world luminaries, saying that no one on Earth is likely higher than level 5!

Which to them, justified level 6 and higher characters being able to do impossible feats (which led up to things like a DC 20 Acrobatics check to balance on a cloud). Of course, as the many "Martial v Magical" threads on this very board show, there are people who absolutely do and absolutely do not want this sort of thing in their D&D games!

So we have this muddy "system" of calling for checks if the outcome is in doubt, at an often arbitrary DC, and little way of knowing what the numbers mean, which makes discussing what the numbers should be, and whether or not they ought be more "bounded" kind of hard to determine.

I think of my AD&D DM, who loves ability checks and the rather slipshod Non-Weapon Proficiency system, who would ask for checks made at + or - x (I remember once he told me to make a check at 50% ability!) based on circumstances, and ascribes almost mythical qualities to the roll of a natural 1 on a check, lol. He would define how good someone is by how many slots they had devoted to a proficiency, and how good the result is by how low they rolled (strangely, the ability score itself, the prime mover of the check, was secondary- apparently he's a firm believe in experience trumping talent).

I wonder what he'd say if a character with the ability of a 7th level Rogue were to manifest in his campaign. "See, he effectively has 3 extra levels of proficiency and any roll above 10 would be a 10!"

What an ability or skill check is, in a given D&D game, and what it represents, can vary from table to table. As numbers inflate, those with lower numbers can be marginalized. 5e did away with "+2 masterwork tools" and "+5 competence bonus" items, but then gave an equal benefit to some characters and not others.

I think that's a problem, but maybe I just don't know how to 5e.

 

[Guest 7037866]

Actually, I have repeatedly suggested that the 2024 monk is an improvement but now OP and could use a nerf.

Good to know, I must have missed those comments but I'm glad you recognize it as such.

What is the fun of putting a DC 25 lock in a level 1 encounter or a DC 10 one in a level 10 encounter? What a waste of time!

If you think so. The DC 25 lock might be picked by a lucky rogue (perhaps with advantage via help, guidance or similar feature?) or it forces the PCs to find some other way to get passed the lock (door or whatever).

The DC 10 might come with the rogue or other skilled PC isn't there. Now the other PCs can try it, or again find another way.

Those locks appear wherever they are appropriate to appear in the world. Sometimes that might mean such a lock is not something the PCs can deal with at that time, other times the lock might be a hiccup, taking just a moment to bypass.

Okay, well now them's fighting words!

Bring it on!

I don't even know what "the narrative of the world" is for outside of the experience of the players. Are you just building a world narrative regardless of who the party is or what level they are? Is what they run into just random, so you start the campaign somewhere in your world narrative and they keep TPKing until they get lucky and start in a low level area? I don't believe that you aren't taking your party composition and level into account when planning sessions. That would be utterly pointless - you'd be doing a ton of work for games that are wipe-outs or walkovers. That truly sounds like bad design.

The narrative of the world is what is presented to the characters when they finally encounter it. The world moves on with or without the PCs, so to say. The world is dangerous in some places, less so in others. The players have to recognise if a challenge is beyond them or not. They might be able to handle it, or they might need help, or they might have to find more powerful heroes, or return to face the challenge with a McGuffin or something--if they can discover one!

Most encounters are tier 1 because the creatures most common to the game world are tier 1. Tier 1 creatures work effectively at all levels of the games. Tier 2 creatures are uncommon, tier 3 are rare, and tier 4 are very rare--thankfully! If the world had tier 4 creatures popping up commonly the game world would be ruined for most creatures as dragons and fiends run rampant.

Frankly, I NEVER take my party composition into account, nor their level. Some adventures end up being easy, certainly, and others are well out of the realm of the PCs to handle--so they don't as soon as the recognize that. If they insist on attempting it, they could likely die. As for the easy adventures, this is a good thing. Rests aren't needed, the story and adventure still unfolds and everyone has fun seeing their PCs as "powerful heroes" overcoming challenges easily instead of fighting tooth and nail, clawing and scraping endlessly against deadly and super-deadly encounters again and again...

For example, in my last session, the party (6th-level) ended up raiding a bandit hideout to recover the captain of their boat, kidnapped due to gambling debts owed the bandit leader--a cambion! Now, the bandits, ruffians, etc. in the lair were mostly CR 1/4 to CR 1, and often just two to four at a time. The only other "challenging" encounter was a troll used to guard the passage to the lower level of the lair. Nothing in the lair posed much of a real "challenge" to 6th level PCs, but by the end of the encounters, attrition was taking a toll. They relished in seeing their characters overcoming foes which levels ago were real threats. Considering the adventures they had just finished, which were harder, this was a welcome and refreshing change of pace.

Little do they know their next encounter is beyond deadly. I don't know how they will handle it, but it is what the world decided lies in their path. It might be a TPK, but they might surprise me, get lucky, or deal with the threat in some other manner. Direct confrontation will probably work out very badly for them...

As for the "amount of work" I've been DMing long enough that it isn't a big deal. Plus, by telling the players about the world, they decide what adventures they believe they can handle, and which ones to pass by. Once they set their feet to the road, THEN I flesh out the adventure according to the world design--not them.

And what about character backstory and wants, needs, flaws? How do you generate interesting, character-driven stories without taking those into account? Do you ignore the work your players put into building their characters?

That is entirely on the player, not me. If they have a goal for their PC, part of their backstory or interests (the "why are you adventuring?" question!), then they can have their characters act in such a way as to seek those things out. Such things are "out there", as they build part of the world through their character's creation and how they play them. So, not ignored, by any means... but this is for the player to initiate--not me as DM.

This is a storytelling game. I don't think incorporating basic storytelling principles (i.e. your character's ability, history and choices matter) is poor design and DMing, but maybe I misunderstand your point entirely.

Yes, it is a storytelling game, and what the players choose to have their PCs do, where they go, what adventures they seek and accept, etc. all directs that story as much as my "world building" does. The PCs might hear of raiding giants in the mountains, but at 1st level recognize that isn't something they can handle. A PC might seek revenge on his dead father's friend, who is believed to have killed the father, so the player can have the PC ask NPCs about this former "friend" until they are eventually found (determined by the rules for gathering information, etc.). When that happens? Who knows!? I don't design the adventure around it happening at this point or that point until the player instigates it, and by then... perhaps they are strong enough to defeat the villian and avenge their father, or maybe they aren't and might be defeated or even killed.

I also note that every adventure ever published takes careful account of projected character levels when planning encounters and challenges.

And IMO fail miserably at it most of the time. Party composition and features, particularly in d20 versions of D&D, are too varied IME to have this work out well. Rest mechanics and such interfere with should an encounter end up moderate or deadly or whatever.

It is like DMs putting magic items tailored to the PCs instead of just putting into the game what makes the most sense. I am not about to hand out a magic battleaxe for the Barbarian just because that is what the character uses. If you find a magic warhammer, use it; or quest to create your own magic battleaxe and sell the magic warhammer to help fund your quest, or give it to a local lord to curry favor, or whatever.

Ultimately, I don't just tell a story. I provide a world for them to create their own story. They can be heroes, but that depends on them--- characters are not "heroes by default" in my games. Like it or not, it works great IMO and IME.

EDIT: as this has little to do with the topic of the thread, if you wish to continue more of a discussion, I suggest either DM or a new thread.