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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9504393" data-attributes="member: 6877472">The issue I had with this is that in order to make skill checks interesting, you need to make them challenging to some degree.  This isn't "ho ho ho, you failed the check, the adventure is over" thinking- failure can be interesting in it's own right, if characters are allowed to try again after dealing with a setback, or "failing forward".It's more that, let's say we have two characters.  One is an archer Fighter who favors Dexterity and has a Street Urchin background.  The other is a Rogue who took expertise in Thieves' Tools.Right off the bat, all things being equal, the Rogue has a +2 bonus over the Fighter.  At this point, it's no big deal, because you would expect a Rogue to be better at picking locks than a Fighter.By level 11, however, the Rogue now has a +4 bonus over the Fighter, and (assuming Dex 20), simply cannot roll worse than a 23.  If the DM selects skill check DC's that the Fighter can reliably hit (say, DC 19-24), then the Rogue almost always succeeds at these tests, making the Fighter redundant save for those times the Rogue isn't able to make the check for some reason, and almost taking failure off the table, making these sorts of skill checks uninteresting and maybe even pointless!If the DM instead raises the bar so that the Rogue occasionally fails, now we're talking about DC's of 28-30, the maximum DC the system allows for.The Fighter might be able to hit these on a natural 20, or, in the case of DC 30, finds it impossible to do so.  Which means that they might as well not even have proficiency in Thieves' Tools.  Further, in those cases where the Rogue cannot make the check, they are almost certainly going to fail, meaning that the skill checks are again almost pointless and not interesting at all.Yes, there are other ways you can go about this- forcing doors open, finding keys, hidden entrances, use of magic, but if these are viable alternatives, again, the Fighter's proficiency basically doesn't matter!Expertise becomes back breaking when it means that either characters with it succeed all the time, or you need Expertise to be considered good at something.Considering that 5e is a system that lets any character attempt most rolls (Thieves' Tools being the only standout), this is really bothersome.Someone might say "well, the Fighter can Help the Rogue" to gain advantage, but that just exacerbates the situation- you either have it so one character always succeeds or that no one else but one character has a chance to.Not exactly a great skill system, IMO.</blockquote>

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