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

[PHATsakk43]

Two Characters of the same Class and Background can have different Skills: hence it is a system that allows them to be distinguished from each other in what they can do. Thst ia, a skill system.

The Skills are sufficiently developed for use in gameplay, in my experience, and provide plenty of agency through action declaration.

Kinda sorta not really.

You get a few “decision points” where you can apply proficiency to one or the other ability. That’s about the extent of customization of abilities. Even when a character doesn’t have proficiency, the ability still exists for everyone, the likelihood of success just is relatively low and flat over the character’s lifetime.

It’s not purchase system, which is one thing that would make it a “normal” skill system. There is no exclusivity inherent in the system, which would also be part of a “normal” skill system. The proficiency bonus applicable to a select set of ability based on class and whatnot is approaching a skill system—or more accurately replacing it with something simpler.

Which isn’t to say that the system in 5E is a bad one. It’s fine. Again, I think it took a lot of the fiddly parts of, especially 3E out of the game. Honestly, 5E is effectively the D20 equivalent of B/X with 3E being its super complicated, extra-crunchy sibling AD&D.

None of this is really applicable to the questions regarding bounded accuracy though. From a gameplay perspective, bounded accuracy is much more impactful in AC and “to hit” rolls along with HP bloat in upper tiers to accommodate AC caps. I guess it’s more obvious in skill challenges as they are very much front and center in 5E, but the bounded accuracy rubric is pretty well spread across the entire game.

It also seemed like, from reading the linked articles in this post, that there is some serious misunderstanding of what bounded accuracy is still, which I find rather odd given it’s a fairly simple concept. It has also been very explicitly stated by the design team.

 

[Parmandur]

You get a few “decision points” where you can apply proficiency to one or the other ability. That’s about the extent of customization of abilities. Even when a character doesn’t have proficiency, the ability still exists for everyone, the likelihood of success just is relatively low and flat over the character’s lifetime.

The limited number of decisuon points is what makes it an elegant system, not "not-a-system". Too many decision points are bad design.

Also, not everyone can do everything: gating access to checks by Proficiency is one of the simplest tricks in the book, and a great way to let character distinctions shine.

 

[Emerikol]

I strongly believe characters should be allowed to be highly competent in their fields of expertise, at least once they reach tier 2. I want players to look at a challenge that's in their character's wheelhouse and go "Don't worry, I got this." If you're a rogue with Thievery expertise and proficiency in Thief's Tools, there shouldn't be many locks that resist you. If you're a bard with expertise in Performance and proficiency in a number of musical instruments, you should be able to put on a really good show. A cleric with expertise in Religion should know obscure points of theology. In games where violence is a less common occurrence than in D&D, I could also see a dedicated fighter-type being able to take out pretty much anyone, but in D&D fighting is too much a part of the core loop for that to be reasonable.

"So how do you challenge PCs?" Well, for one thing you should realize that if you have an expert thief, locks shouldn't pose a challenge to them. Locks are a challenge to other people, but that player has made the choice to be awesome at opening locks, and they should be allowed to do that. Instead, you challenge them in other ways. Perhaps the lock isn't easily accessible, and the rogue has to either talk their way into the place where it is, or physically infiltrate the location. Or maybe the door is not just locked but also guarded physically, so the rogue or some other party member has to lure the guards away. Or maybe there are patrols, so you have a limited time to do whatever you were planning to do in the locked room.

I think there is a whole lot of good in this paragraph. No normal lock should prove a hindrance to a competent thief. So I am surely going to sprinkle in a lot of locks that the thief can just open easily. Still a chance though with me of critical failure. I might in super rare situations have a lock that is hard enough to challenge a great thief but that should be really rare and almost a capstone challenge in an adventure.

 

[ezo]

The Rogue is a two-bit fighter with mediocre DPS

As an aside I will tell you our Rogue routinely out DPS's our Fighter and Paladin (barring his nova rounds, of course, which are limited).

Isn't it? Have you ever seen a real world magician. It is no magic. But they do things that look like it.
Have you seen speed boulder olympics? It seems like spider climbing.

But they aren't magic.

Which is good.

If you don't mind one class having unlimited ability to autowin several things with a single feature, good for you. I don't mind the occassional use for autowins, but it gets ridiculous after a while I would imagine for many DMs. True, you can always just ramp up the DC so it isn't an autowin, but that hardly seems fair.

Yeah. And denying martials their magic is justaking them feel stupid for not being a mage. Especially when mages who have trivialized anything the rogue can do insist on long rests and are annoyed when they can't or the rogue does not want to sleep after every easy task...

Not a problem IME. If your games play like that, I blame the DM and the players. Wizards don't trivialize challenges nearly as much as Rogues can IME. And rests don't just come with the players want one, unless you are just a generous DM who gives them what they want?

Maybe. I would have no issues with that. If it was usable often enough.

It would be as usable as Reliable Talent already is. Frankly, in some ways early on it would be stronger since rogues with DEX 18 or 20 are fairly common IME in tiers 1 and 2 especially.

I think people simultaneously overvalue and undervalue "at-will" abilities.

It is a balancing act, to be certain. Another thing with Reliable Talent would be to have it only apply to things the Rogue has Expertise with, not just proficiency. I think that would also help as then a rogue would have a few areas of autosuccess in most cases, but not every skill in which they have proficiency.

Realistically, most tables don't have enough encounters for the "resource" portion of the game to have that much of an impact. A caster who used invisibility and knock to act as an ersatz rogue still has enough juice to impact a fight.

When it matters and Reliable Talent comes up "more than one would like" resources do factor into the equation IME.

Why have a Wizard do those things when the Rogue can do them well enough (even without Reliable Talent as it is) and the Wizard can be used for the more "magical" issues???

But, "at-will" abilities feel much more impactful because they act like toys the player can mess around with. "My stealth check is never lower than a 24" feels excellent after 10 levels of hoping not to roll a 1.

Really, it would feel trivial to me. The odds of rolling low enough for Rogues with Expertise in most situations are so small that when it actually happens it is a shock.

The issue though is that a lot of limited resources are only an illusion of limitations because many now regain a use on a short rest (or regain a use when initiative is rolled). If your campaign is not overly stingy with short rests, a fighter can shrug off damage infinitely (second wind recharges on a short rest) and a warlock can have infinite spell slots. Sure, those things are limited in combat, but Reliable Talent isn't broken in combat either (especially now that grapple is no longer based on athletics). The point is that limited use abilities don't actually limit characters much anymore, and you would have to kill short rests entirely to make them.

Short rests, in particular, are difficult for a lot of DM to manage effectively. The maximum 2 short rests per long rest helps. As does not worrying about things like this on non-adventure days. On adventure days, short rests should be hard to come by due to factors like safety, time constraints, enemy movement, etc.

Reliable Talent and Expertise are fine in concept, but can become excessive in execution IMO. Frankly as a DM, I get a bit tired of the Rogue who has Stealth so high 90% of the time he doesn't even worry about enemies ever knowing he was there. Most creatures have a passive perception score of 10-15, maybe a bit higher if they have keen senses, so by the time a Rogue has Reliable Talent, and routinely cannot get below 20+ on stealth, they might as well be invisible and silenced.

 

[James Gasik]

That was what broke the 3e skill system. Numberflation.

At the end of 3e revelation came to me that you should not use class skill cap as guideline, but instead use 10, 15, 20 and 25 and be happy with that.
If you consider cross class skill cap (3+level)/2 as standard bonus, you are in the range of +2 to +11. With ability scores ranging from -1 to +5 on average it plays quite nicely with those ranges.

And characters that have those skills as class skills will eventually get to the point where they won't fail at all at level 15+.

And then you could use take 10 if the stakes are low or take 20 if there is plenty time.

So I consider this a good progression for proficient and expert people.

In 5e, without any special ability we are at about half that number. Or better: we start with the same bonus and the progression is only 40% of what we got before. So special abilities need to cover for what I considered a good progression. This is where reliable talent kicks in.

A rogue at level 20 has a floor of 22, without considering their stat bonuses. So they need 16 in a relevant stat or some extra bonus to make 25 DCs reliably. A fighter that somehow gets expertise has floor of 14, but their average is 28 using with second wind. So without good stats they are even more likely to make 25 DC checks than the rogue.



They have super skills. Reliable talent allows them to do things most other people can't do reliably.
And given their high bonus, they eventually make DC25 or DC30 checks that allow them near impossoble results.

+17 is within the d20 range...

By itself +17 is in the d20 range. But it's not by itself. It's been previously gone over that additional bonuses are all over the place in 5e. Guidance d4s, Bardic Influence d6's, advantage is virtually +4.5, and that's not getting into luckstones, tomes, or that ioun stone of mastery.

Also, um, what level 20 Rogue doesn't have a 20 Dex or higher? You say the floor is 22, but isn't 27 more realistic?

Anyways. The fact of that matter is, +6 is a hefty bonus in 5e. Expertise, which is not Rogue-exclusive, basically means this:

Non-Expertise, max stat: +11. Can get DC 20 60% of the time, DC 25 35% of the time, and DC 30 10% of the time.*

Expertise, max stat: +17. Can get DC 20 90% of the time, DC 25 65% of the time, and DC 30 40% of the time.

Expertise, max stat: +17, with Reliable. Can get DC 20 100% of the time, DC 25 100% of the time, and DC 30 40% of the time.

*Numbers may not be accurate, math brain still not fully awake.

My issue with this is, if the game has DC 20 and up checks, Expertise is basically a must-have. I'm not including other forms of bonuses because whether or not they exist is equally up in the air based on party composition- even Help is not guaranteed since there are DM's who only allow proficient characters to take the Help action out there. And if you can afford a Feat to boost a skill check, you can have Expertise.

Reliable isn't really the problem here as much as Expertise is, but if your game has DC 25 checks, it's still equal to a +7 bonus, which again, is massive. It's not quite "have Rogue or go home" but it's close.

The game isn't supposed to be built so that any given class is a must-have. But if very difficult checks are in the game, you must have an Expertise user, an optimized party, or some means (probably magic) to circumvent the skill check.

Now the easy solution is not to have these kinds of skill checks if your party can't handle them. But that's basically giving the party a virtual Rogue lol!

And that's the crux of the issue for me. I can't punish a party for not playing a Rogue or not making sure they have Expertise for whatever kinds of super difficult checks may or may not exist in the game. But if the game never has super difficult checks, then you don't need Expertise!

The ability is basically warping the game around it's existence, creating two wildly different scenarios if it's in play or not!

 

[TwoSix]

Why have a Wizard do those things when the Rogue can do them well enough (even without Reliable Talent as it is) and the Wizard can be used for the more "magical" issues???

Because the core issue of class balance centers around this question. "The party needs X role filled. What class can best fulfill that role, as well as bring along other utility?"

And if the role is "Scout ahead, find and disarm traps, and open locks" the ONLY thing that would make consider a full rogue over a caster like wizard or bard is something on the level of Reliable Talent.

Rogues aren't useless or unplayable or anything like that. They can carry their weight. But other than the rogue imagery, they're mostly just OK even at the core rogue tasks.

 

[James Gasik]

Also. If the Rogue's raison d'etre is to be super good at skill checks, why doesn't the Fighter get to double their proficiency bonus with attack rolls? Seems to me that the same logic would apply.

But we know why it doesn't, because then people would look at any other class that isn't Fighter and say "welp, they obviously can't succeed in combat, look at this massive bonus they don't have!". And everyone who makes attack rolls would either be a Fighter or have a Fighter dip to whatever level is required to get that bonus!

Now obviously, there are vanishingly few enemies with AC's beyond 20, because there is no "expertise for attack" or even "reliable for attack" (my goodness, could you imagine the hair pulling if Fighters could never miss?!).

But if those things existed, would we have people saying "you can't take that away from Fighters, it's the only thing they got going for them in a world of magic!".

And would we have theory crafting to say that "by Tier 4, if you don't have Fighters in your party, you might as well stop playing, because once enemies start having AC of 25+, the chances of you hitting without constant and massive buffs becomes vanishingly small"?

Just a thought.

 

[Remathilis]

Reliable Talent and Expertise are fine in concept, but can become excessive in execution IMO. Frankly as a DM, I get a bit tired of the Rogue who has Stealth so high 90% of the time he doesn't even worry about enemies ever knowing he was there. Most creatures have a passive perception score of 10-15, maybe a bit higher if they have keen senses, so by the time a Rogue has Reliable Talent, and routinely cannot get below 20+ on stealth, they might as well be invisible and silenced.

Whereas I remember the days of AD&D where my Thief often failed his stealth rolls because AD&D did not actually want you to succeed. The percentages started too low and there were so many penalties that you could not even do your class function until you were at a level that magic had supplanted you anyway. I would rather a rogue be a little too good at their job than be a useless waste of rations for the majority of their career.

 

[TwoSix]

Reliable isn't really the problem here as much as Expertise is, but if your game has DC 25 checks, it's still equal to a +7 bonus, which again, is massive. It's not quite "have Rogue or go home" but it's close.

The game isn't supposed to be built so that any given class is a must-have. But if very difficult checks are in the game, you must have an Expertise user, an optimized party, or some means (probably magic) to circumvent the skill check.

Now the easy solution is not to have these kinds of skill checks if your party can't handle them. But that's basically giving the party a virtual Rogue lol!

And that's the crux of the issue for me. I can't punish a party for not playing a Rogue or not making sure they have Expertise for whatever kinds of super difficult checks may or may not exist in the game. But if the game never has super difficult checks, then you don't need Expertise!

The ability is basically warping the game around it's existence, creating two wildly different scenarios if it's in play or not!

But here's my pushback. Why CAN'T you have checks in the game that non-Expertise players just fail? Why is that bad?

There should NEVER be a skill check in the game that actively precludes the adventure from continuing. So you seed special rewards and optional paths behind very high checks, so that the character with Expertise feels the value.

 

[TwoSix]

Also. If the Rogue's raison d'etre is to be super good at skill checks, why doesn't the Fighter get to double their proficiency bonus with attack rolls? Seems to me that the same logic would apply.

But we know why it doesn't, because then people would look at any other class that isn't Fighter and say "welp, they obviously can't succeed in combat, look at this massive bonus they don't have!". And everyone who makes attack rolls would either be a Fighter or have a Fighter dip to whatever level is required to get that bonus!

Now obviously, there are vanishingly few enemies with AC's beyond 20, because there is no "expertise for attack" or even "reliable for attack" (my goodness, could you imagine the hair pulling if Fighters could never miss?!).

But if those things existed, would we have people saying "you can't take that away from Fighters, it's the only thing they got going for them in a world of magic!".

And would we have theory crafting to say that "by Tier 4, if you don't have Fighters in your party, you might as well stop playing, because once enemies start having AC of 25+, the chances of you hitting without constant and massive buffs becomes vanishingly small"?

Just a thought.

I, personally, would have no problem giving fighters a stacking bonus to attack per tier. The high-level fighter should be an engine of destruction that hardly ever misses.