D&D 5E Skills in 5e

[Li Shenron]

If yes, then there are several issues with the system that need to be ironed out, in addition to flat-math.

Once again your language makes it sound like a different gamestyle than yours is inferior... Why "if no" then ok, "if yes" then it needs to be fixed?

For instance, what has the rogue been doing for the last 20 levels? Why didn't the wizard memorized Knock 15 levels ago when the locks were a real issue? Why didn't the fighter smack it to pieces? Why didn't the cleric summon something to eat the lock?

And all these are possible reasons why I don't think it's bad for a system to not let everybody pick that lock. You are making it sound a bit like "one way or the other, the PCs are going to win the game, so why bother with the details? just let them pick that lock..." Well personally I love those details and I absolutely love a game filled with corner cases, which once the game is full of them they're together not so irrelevant.

In my favourite gamestyle, that Rogue at 20th level can certainly pick almost any lock if he bothered to invest in lockpicking. Otherwise maybe the wizard can cast Knock if she chose to learn that spell. Maybe the Cleric cannot summon anything imaginable. Or eventually the fighter can smack it, and this is very probable unless he shouldn't break it for some reason (avoiding noise, wanting to put it back like it was, maybe the lock is not on a door but on a box and smashing would destroy the box...) but there are also games where even that 20th level Fighter isn't always a Hulk with uber Strength, and weapon skills won't help him break the lock with brute strength.

All these alternatives are fun for me when they work, but they are also fun when you don't have them covered and you have to find even another way. I prefer a game where it's your choice to make your PC learn these stuff, or learn something else. I won't say that it's badwrongfun if someone else likes a game where every Rogue has lockpicking, every Wizard has Knock, every Fighter has 25 Strength at some point, every Cleric can summon anything he needs... I'm saying, once again, that my own favourite style is that there is always a choice, and you can never be really good at everything. I do not like a rules systems that assumes everybody (or the party as a whole) will find a way to be good at everything so let's just make them good at everything by default. I'm fine if you like it, so be fine if I like something else.

 

[sheadunne]

Yeah, pick locks isnt the best example because there are so many other ways to it. But for methe central point is your character isn't going to be good at things unrelated to his class or that he didnt invest points in simply because of his level. That just feels off to how I run and approach the game.

It's not how I run games either. The adding of level to skills is worse, in my opinion, than adding ability score to skills. It trivializes the skill in some ways, as I feel ability scores do as well.

But if I'm playing a high level character adventuring through a dungeon by myself and come across a simple locked door and don't have a way to bypass the door, I'm not sure I have a good grasp of the game.

The question then becomes, how do you keep high level play interesting with simple locks, when the lock can be ignored by simple virtue of damage, spells, magic items, or just plain strength?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You reasoning clearly demonstrates that you have a very specific gamestyle in mind, and you're still unable to see or willing to accept that other people prefer other gamestyles and they are not "wrong" (which style is more popular I cannot say, maybe your style is vastly more popular than mine, but from my little perspective I see our gamestyle all the time because obviously it's the one we use...).

You are stating that something which is a challenge for a 1st level character should not be a challenge at all for a 20th level character. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the message I get is that everything which is a challenge at 1st level should be trivial at 20th. This is one gamestyle, and AFAIK it's a design assumption of 4e.

I am stating that in my gamestyle something ceases to be a challenge only for those characters that choose to get better at that.

The idea that challenges get harder as you level up is only half of the point.
The other half of the point, is whether the game should leave behind those who don't invest in a skill or not, and in this regard 4e is different for example from 3e: the 4e philosophy (therefore the reference gamestyle) is that nobody should be left behind, thus IIRC everybody gets better at everything, and the difference between someone who invested in a skill and someone who didn't is bounded (e.g. roughly the same difference in % of success); the 3e philosophy is that if you don't invest in lockpicking, you'll never get better at lockpicking, thus that 1st level lock is always going to be a challenge.

These are two different playstyles, with 4e being more heroic so that everything becomes trivial at some point for heroes, and 3e being more gritty because if your party doesn't have a Rogue in 4e, well it's a nuisance but can be managed, if it's a 3e party then you have a problem. And here lies the key question: what is more fun, having a problem or not? Well let me tell you that there is no answer to this! For some gaming group, getting stuck in front of a lock when you're all heroes saving the world is frustrating (apparently unless the lock if presented as "made by the gods", even if at the end it still takes a d20 roll with the same % of success), but to other gaming groups having some things in the game here and there which blocks you, is a chance for being required to find a creative solution.

So it's not only a problem of individual PCs but also of the whole party. 4e uses its design solution to allow a party any combination of classes with minimal drawbacks. Don't have a Rogue or Cleric in the party? It makes a small difference, don't worry. More or less a 4e party is capable of handling any type of challenge, although with varying % of success. This is very good for some groups. OTOH in my favourite playstyle this is not so good... because I want sometimes not to be capable of handling something in the straightforward way (e.g. roll a skill check), so for me a party of PC that can handle everything is actually not as much fun as a party that sometimes is stuck and forces the players to find an uncanny way out.

Therefore, of course I want a Rogue who's investing in lockpicking to get better so that at 20th level those 1st level locks are a joke for her... but I do not want that to happen to everybody else. And if nobody in the party invests in lockpicking, I want the party to be still challenged by those rusty cheap locks forever (although as I said before, clearly this means only if they try to pick those locks... an epic PC will have plenty of other ways to blast the lock away!). Having someone invest in lockpicking is a choice in my favourite gamestyle.

I'm sorry if I'm not so good at delivering my point... check out also @Sadrik posts which probably say it better

The problem is you guys have forgotten the issues with the 3e approach in the first place which mandated the 4e approach. It wasn't a 'change in game philosophy' or 'playstyle', it was a desire to fix perennial problems with the way the game played in ANY style.

The issue is that as the gap between a trained and an untrained use of a skill increased beyond the range of a d20 2 things happened. 1) it becomes impossible to allow for ANY chance at all for someone to succeed at something without training. This is OK for many things but there are simply things that you should always be able to have some baseline chance to succeed at. ANYONE might climb a cliff or swim a river or etc. In fact these sorts of things are probably as much based on luck and general confidence and experience as anything else. Training gives you an edge, but it should NOT be required to succeed. In 3e EVERYTHING ALWAYS universally got harder and harder and eventually impossible. 2) The only things you can end up doing at all are things you are trained in, and most PCs can't deploy the ever increasing number of ranks in different skills in 3e to maintain a relevant level of skill. In effect every character is stuffed into an ever narrower 'box' of what they can effectively accomplish in any challenging situation. Eventually all you could really afford was ranks in class skills. The result is that the system overly pigeonholes the PCs and punishes anyone terribly for going outside the box of their class.

Now, DDN might do away with the 'out of class punishment' aspect, but it will STILL suffer from the same problem that 4e solved, which was pushing everyone too much into a niche. The truth is that EVEN IN 4E you still had growing disparity and the DC chart slanted towards high level hard DCs being pretty close to impossible for untrained PCs, but at least it only really showed up at really high levels and it wasn't a drastic sacrifice to mitigate (IE you can afford a feat/power to get a +5 on any Athletics check once a day, enough to make such actions viable and with broad skills a power like that is not overly niche for at least some PCs).

So it REALLY REALLY is not a playstyle issue, it is an issue of general desirable functioning of the entire skill system across all characters and levels.

 

[sheadunne]

Once again your language makes it sound like a different gamestyle than yours is inferior... Why "if no" then ok, "if yes" then it needs to be fixed?



And all these are possible reasons why I don't think it's bad for a system to not let everybody pick that lock. You are making it sound a bit like "one way or the other, the PCs are going to win the game, so why bother with the details? just let them pick that lock..." Well personally I love those details and I absolutely love a game filled with corner cases, which once the game is full of them they're together not so irrelevant.

In my favourite gamestyle, that Rogue at 20th level can certainly pick almost any lock if he bothered to invest in lockpicking. Otherwise maybe the wizard can cast Knock if she chose to learn that spell. Maybe the Cleric cannot summon anything imaginable. Or eventually the fighter can smack it, and this is very probable unless he shouldn't break it for some reason (avoiding noise, wanting to put it back like it was, maybe the lock is not on a door but on a box and smashing would destroy the box...) but there are also games where even that 20th level Fighter isn't always a Hulk with uber Strength, and weapon skills won't help him break the lock with brute strength.

All these alternatives are fun for me when they work, but they are also fun when you don't have them covered and you have to find even another way. I prefer a game where it's your choice to make your PC learn these stuff, or learn something else. I won't say that it's badwrongfun if someone else likes a game where every Rogue has lockpicking, every Wizard has Knock, every Fighter has 25 Strength at some point, every Cleric can summon anything he needs... I'm saying, once again, that my own favourite style is that there is always a choice, and you can never be really good at everything. I do not like a rules systems that assumes everybody (or the party as a whole) will find a way to be good at everything so let's just make them good at everything by default. I'm fine if you like it, so be fine if I like something else.

I most certainly don't like it, but it exists in every edition. High level play minimizes challenges that defeat low level play. I've had the same issue from 1e onward. My point isn't to keep it because it's better. I don't think it is. My point is to find a solution. 4e has a solution. It might not be the best solution, but it is an attempt to acknowledge the problem. It's not the direction I would go, I personally think adding most anything to skills is a bad idea, but it's there nonetheless. Skills exist in a game that emphasis combat and casting. If Skills are to compete in that arena, they need a micro-game element themselves, otherwise they can usually be defeated by the other two things: smashing or casting.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The problem is you guys have forgotten the issues with the 3e approach in the first place which mandated the 4e approach. It wasn't a 'change in game philosophy' or 'playstyle', it was a desire to fix perennial problems with the way the game played in ANY style.

The issue is that as the gap between a trained and an untrained use of a skill increased beyond the range of a d20 2 things happened. 1) it becomes impossible to allow for ANY chance at all for someone to succeed at something without training. This is OK for many things but there are simply things that you should always be able to have some baseline chance to succeed at. ANYONE might climb a cliff or swim a river or etc. In fact these sorts of things are probably as much based on luck and general confidence and experience as anything else. Training gives you an edge, but it should NOT be required to succeed. In 3e EVERYTHING ALWAYS universally got harder and harder and eventually impossible. 2) The only things you can end up doing at all are things you are trained in, and most PCs can't deploy the ever increasing number of ranks in different skills in 3e to maintain a relevant level of skill. In effect every character is stuffed into an ever narrower 'box' of what they can effectively accomplish in any challenging situation. Eventually all you could really afford was ranks in class skills. The result is that the system overly pigeonholes the PCs and punishes anyone terribly for going outside the box of their class.

Now, DDN might do away with the 'out of class punishment' aspect, but it will STILL suffer from the same problem that 4e solved, which was pushing everyone too much into a niche. The truth is that EVEN IN 4E you still had growing disparity and the DC chart slanted towards high level hard DCs being pretty close to impossible for untrained PCs, but at least it only really showed up at really high levels and it wasn't a drastic sacrifice to mitigate (IE you can afford a feat/power to get a +5 on any Athletics check once a day, enough to make such actions viable and with broad skills a power like that is not overly niche for at least some PCs).

So it REALLY REALLY is not a playstyle issue, it is an issue of general desirable functioning of the entire skill system across all characters and levels.

I am mot seeing how this was an issue in 2E and 1E. 2E had nwp, which were basically just ability checks, they didn't use DCs like 3E. So there wasnt this wild scaling where something was impossible for some and super easy for others. Tieves skills were all percentage chances, and those increased with level as you invested them. But regular characters didnt have access to most of those. They had some baseline stats for stuff like climb, but those didnt improve. But what you are descirbing as a perrenial, nonplaystyle problem, isnt something I remember encountering.

 

[sheadunne]

I am mot seeing how this was an issue in 2E and 1E. 2E had nwp, which were basically just ability checks, they didn't use DCs like 3E. So there wasnt this wild scaling where something was impossible for some and super easy for others. Tieves skills were all percentage chances, and those increased with level as you invested them. But regular characters didnt have access to most of those. They had some baseline stats for stuff like climb, but those didnt improve. But what you are descirbing as a perrenial, nonplaystyle problem, isnt something I remember encountering.

I agree, it is primarily a 3e thing, and it happens a lot in that edition. It's really not an issue for earlier edition skills.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, pick locks isnt the best example because there are so many other ways to it. But for methe central point is your character isn't going to be good at things unrelated to his class or that he didnt invest points in simply because of his level. That just feels off to how I run and approach the game.

But you're also kind of overstating it. In 4e if a character puts no resources into something then their bonus will grow at about half the rate that it will for a trained PC on a primary score. The hard DC goes from 19 at level 1 to 42 at level 30, an increase of 23 points in 30 levels, of which 1/2 level only covers 15 points. That leaves 8 more points. It is those 8 points that are key because the guy at level 1 who can barely pick a level 1 lock will be 8 points worse (actually 7 points, you get a freebie from level 11/21 score boost) at it at level 30. He's not picking level 30 locks, unless he picks up Thievery, in which case he's STILL 2 points worse off than he was at level 1 relative to a hard lock. A character with no training who's got a primary in the skill is in a similar situation, he'll gain +5 or possibly +6 (some EDs) and will still be a BIT worse off at 30th level on locks. Meanwhile the TRAINED PRIMARY character is also off by a point or 2, but could easily make that up from any of a vast array of options that are likely things which fit his character concept.

The point is that as the PCs go traipsing about the dungeon and gain levels the locks get harder, and they get harder FASTER than PCs get better at picking them. NOBODY picks an at-level lock as well at level 30 as at level 1 even in 4e without spending resources specifically on lock picking (grabbing skill focus for instance will cause the best lock pickers a gain of +1 relative to DC increase).
[MENTION=27570]sheadunne[/MENTION] in essence that's what is meant by it is a corner-case that a high level PC would be foiled by a low level lock. They just won't care. If you want to make SURE that they don't even bother to try, by all means just tell the player outright that he's not up to picking that lock. 4e clearly states that any given situation can REQUIRE training, and as soon as that training exists in a PC the whole argument evaporates, they're trained, they should be getting better as they level up.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I won't say that it's badwrongfun if someone else likes a game where every Rogue has lockpicking, every Wizard has Knock, every Fighter has 25 Strength at some point, every Cleric can summon anything he needs... I'm saying, once again, that my own favourite style is that there is always a choice, and you can never be really good at everything. I do not like a rules systems that assumes everybody (or the party as a whole) will find a way to be good at everything so let's just make them good at everything by default. I'm fine if you like it, so be fine if I like something else.

The only version of D&D that didn't work this way was 3e. In EVERY other version of D&D every thief got the same set of skills which advanced at the same rate, etc. NWPs advanced with level in 2e as well, effectively. So did saves, to-hit, etc which are all when you boil it down subject to the same arguments. This is all part and parcel of any standard class based leveling system. It is like you want D&D to be turned into a skill based point buy system instead. Heck, I played OD&D, you were just GOOD AT EVERYTHING in Gary's original game. You were an adventurer, of course you could do all those things, maybe you did some better than others because you were strong or quick or smart, but mostly you could try anything you could describe. That's pretty much what 4e is trying to capture. It actually comes very close to how things worked, certainly before 2e (where the rogue type characters could shift some of their thief skill points around, so you could be better or worse at lock picking, etc). Even then you still always got somewhat better at most things every level or two.

 

[Bedrockgames]

The only version of D&D that didn't work this way was 3e. In EVERY other version of D&D every thief got the same set of skills which advanced at the same rate, etc. NWPs advanced with level in 2e as well, effectively.

NWP didnt automatically go up with level. You got more points to invest in them, but they were such a small amount investing in one nwp to raise your rank was a lot less common than in 3E +. But all you needed was to roll your ability score rating or lower (have a 13 Wis, then you just need to roll 13 or less for a NWP related to it-----some did have penalties to such checks if the skill was particularly hard). In 2E you got more thief skill points and could spend them as you leveled. In 1E, i think it went up automatically.

 

[Lanefan]

In no edition of D&D before did it work this way that a hard to pick lock was always forever hard to pick. You went up in levels and your pick locks went up until you could easily pick it.

For a Thief, yes. For everyone else, if you can't pick it at 1st level you ain't gonna be picking it at 15th level.

That's how it worked in AD&D and still works in 4e! If the high level party goes into the level 1 dungeon, guess what, the poison is trivial, the locks are a joke, and the monsters are speedbumps.

The poison is the same but the characters' saves are better, the locks are still exactly the same only the Thief has a better chance at picking them, and yes the monsters are irrelevant.

We sorted this all out 20 yrs ago and it got fixed in 3e.

I suspect this is one thing that in fact got broken in 3e, and 4e didn't fix it enough.

Lan-"can somebody tell me how many experience points a lock needs to advance from level 1 to level 2"-efan