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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Skills - Does anyone actually like the way they're headed?
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<blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 6199942" data-attributes="member: 1465"><p>Maybe.</p><p></p><p>One problem with skills is that the d20 is too swingy i.e. there is too much range between 1 and 20. This might cause the problem, that you still have a too high chance of failure for tasks that should be trivial. If you have even a 5% of swimming up a waterfall, it's not believable that you still have a chance of drowning in a still pond (note: this is just a made-up example, maybe with the current DCs you can't).</p><p></p><p>But on the other hand, there are other skills for which the d20 is fine, especially when you have different degrees of success. That's actually one very good way IMHO to handle Knowledge checks. When the check is not for answering one specific questions but rather to get clues (e.g. "What is this arcane symbol on this door?") then the way I've done it hundreds of times is to grant cumulative clues based on the result: something like 10+ "It's a protection symbol", 15+ "It blasts with fire anyone trying to touch the door", 20+ "It cannot be dispelled but only bypassed with a password", 25+ "Here's the password...". In such case, large range actually makes it easy to allocate a few cumulative effects.</p><p></p><p>Take10 made sense in 3e, but what I didn't like about it, is that you can choose. I didn't like that you sometimes Take10 because there's no rush, then it's not enough so you retry with a roll. Furthermore, Take10 works <em>horribly</em> for lore checks, because it changes those skills from "What you know" to "What you can remember at the moment" (it's a possible interpretation, but it's one that forces you to allow retries at least after some time, so you need to be sure to know what retries imply).</p><p></p><p>Honestly I prefer not to see Take10 and Take20 come back, at least not in the Basic core game. </p><p></p><p>But OTOH you are suggesting something different IIUC, i.e. that there can be a feature to some character to <em>automatically</em> have a minimum result of 10 on certain skills. This is GOOD, and has already been in 5e playtest at some point, for example the Rogue had it in some packet, and spellcasters had it in Lores (instead of proficiency). I think this can be used well for skills that have a penalty for failure (hazard). So you could have <strong>Expertise</strong> in skill A, meaning you have a +5, but you could also have <strong>Reliability</strong> in skill B, meaning you get minimum 10.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Li Shenron, post: 6199942, member: 1465"] Maybe. One problem with skills is that the d20 is too swingy i.e. there is too much range between 1 and 20. This might cause the problem, that you still have a too high chance of failure for tasks that should be trivial. If you have even a 5% of swimming up a waterfall, it's not believable that you still have a chance of drowning in a still pond (note: this is just a made-up example, maybe with the current DCs you can't). But on the other hand, there are other skills for which the d20 is fine, especially when you have different degrees of success. That's actually one very good way IMHO to handle Knowledge checks. When the check is not for answering one specific questions but rather to get clues (e.g. "What is this arcane symbol on this door?") then the way I've done it hundreds of times is to grant cumulative clues based on the result: something like 10+ "It's a protection symbol", 15+ "It blasts with fire anyone trying to touch the door", 20+ "It cannot be dispelled but only bypassed with a password", 25+ "Here's the password...". In such case, large range actually makes it easy to allocate a few cumulative effects. Take10 made sense in 3e, but what I didn't like about it, is that you can choose. I didn't like that you sometimes Take10 because there's no rush, then it's not enough so you retry with a roll. Furthermore, Take10 works [I]horribly[/I] for lore checks, because it changes those skills from "What you know" to "What you can remember at the moment" (it's a possible interpretation, but it's one that forces you to allow retries at least after some time, so you need to be sure to know what retries imply). Honestly I prefer not to see Take10 and Take20 come back, at least not in the Basic core game. But OTOH you are suggesting something different IIUC, i.e. that there can be a feature to some character to [I]automatically[/I] have a minimum result of 10 on certain skills. This is GOOD, and has already been in 5e playtest at some point, for example the Rogue had it in some packet, and spellcasters had it in Lores (instead of proficiency). I think this can be used well for skills that have a penalty for failure (hazard). So you could have [B]Expertise[/B] in skill A, meaning you have a +5, but you could also have [B]Reliability[/B] in skill B, meaning you get minimum 10. [/QUOTE]
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