D&D 5E Skills in 5e

[AbdulAlhazred]

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. 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.

Poisons also do get stronger, as can locks, it depends on which variation of rules you follow in the DMG, there are actually a couple different ways to handle those things in 1e (monster poisons OTOH mostly work as you say, they are 'fixed level' things). That's the point though, most things DO get easier for a leveling up PC, and aside from (usually) monster poison and MAYBE locks depending your DM there are progressively harder versions of things to be challenged by. AD&D is far from having an entirely consistent idea about level scaling in any case.
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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[/QUOTE]

FOR ME at least 4e reached a sufficiently good compromise. At least it sticks the dirty laundry under the bed instead of piling it in the doorway...

 

[Sadrik]

Ultimately the 4e concept of a 'level 20' lock IS just a measure of 'quality', you can come up with a formula for lock costs and there are 30 entries on that, one for each level.

30 entries of a lock is far too granular for my interest. Simple, average, and masterwork. Then of course you can have complex locking mechanisms and then when you throw in magic and traps it explodes the number of potential possibilities. Starting with 3 options vs. 30 though... Also, gasp I think a low level character trained in lock picking should have a good chance at opening a standard lock, and a slight chance at a masterwork and then a high level rogue, locks of any type should be only a second thought.

Which is exactly what scaling does, it makes it so that challenges get easier as you level up. The 20th level guy can go through the level 1 lock with ease. Again, this is not really different from how AD&D etc have always worked.

This is a lot different, a thief had a low percentage to start and then as he leveled he got better and with bonuses he could get over 100% as I recall. The difficulty of the lock came in by -% to the check. So by this, it shows that a lock was a lock and a hard lock increased the difficulty of picking the lock. This is what I am making my case for.

3e was similar although it got messed up along the way by scaling much too high the numbers and... ( well there were lots of problems with the system) but the one problem that 3e attempted to fix while creating others was the scaling. In 3e you had skills rise at two levels cross class were 1/2 level and class skills increased at every level. So you have at low level a difference of 2 but at high level you have a difference of ~11 pretty dramatic on a d20. 3e had scaling issues for BAB and saves too.

4e's big contribution was to fix scaling and make high level play better by scaling more evenly. Conceptually I like that. However, it was put into effect full tilt without any concept of realism. So whereas 3e gave lip service to a lock is a lock and just scaled the DCs to insane levels. DC 40+ locks rings a bell. Then again you could take 20...

Look at the AD&D rogue, his chances of picking a lock GO UP WITH LEVEL, and right in the DMG it talks about using "higher quality locks" in lower dungeon levels, adding traps to the locks, etc to make it harder again. With no scaling we are just dropped back to AD&D level design where no official way to make things harder exists.

Um, that does not make sense.

Having a tighter and flatter DC system will not make it any easier for PCs.

I've run plenty of Sandbox D&D. High level PCs don't waste their time on low level challenges. The DM rarely even points them at those. 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. 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.

It does not work that way in 4e. Characters are on a treadmill with DCs. DCs are always staying relatively equal to make them a challenge in 4e. In 1e/2e, they got progressively easier. So a master thief was popping locks in his sleep and a novice struggled mightily. Much different. This goes into the scaling system that was integral in 1e/2e though. The concept in 1e/2e was characters get better with level. the world stays the same around them, but they get better. Saves start crappy and then get better, to the point where you are almost immune to things. 3e changed that idea. Things started scaling big time on both sides characters and the world around them. Then 4e refined that concept, and took it to the next level. 5e hopefully resets the world.

 

[Sadrik]

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 think I agree with you. 3e skill system was crap for many of the reasons you cite.
bonus higher than die. uneveness of skill progression. 4e did combat those and alleviate the issues, however it brought its own set of issues. What about by 12th level you are getting more bonus from your level (+6) than from your skill training (+5).

Point is strip the +1/2 level from the 4e skill system fix all the DCs and I think you have a pretty good skill system that is playable. I would subtract some skills and add some skills and perhaps tweak them in a slightly different way but it is pretty close.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

30 entries of a lock is far too granular for my interest. Simple, average, and masterwork. Then of course you can have complex locking mechanisms and then when you throw in magic and traps it explodes the number of potential possibilities. Starting with 3 options vs. 30 though... Also, gasp I think a low level character trained in lock picking should have a good chance at opening a standard lock, and a slight chance at a masterwork and then a high level rogue, locks of any type should be only a second thought.

Why in the world should locks ever be "only a second thought"???? Sorry, I prefer my game elements to be selectable by me, the DM, whenever I want to use them, not at only this or that level. That was half of what irked me about AD&D. Stop telling me what I should and shouldn't be doing in my game and give me rules that cover WHAT I ACTUALLY DO. lol. As for "30 types of lock" the point is there's no lock table that has to have 30 entries. In the real world there are infinite possible locks. In the game they have an attribute, level, that really isn't exactly complicated.

This is a lot different, a thief had a low percentage to start and then as he leveled he got better and with bonuses he could get over 100% as I recall. The difficulty of the lock came in by -% to the check. So by this, it shows that a lock was a lock and a hard lock increased the difficulty of picking the lock. This is what I am making my case for.

OK, and this is different from 4e how? Sure, we use a d20 now instead of d100, but other than that...

3e was similar although it got messed up along the way by scaling much too high the numbers and... ( well there were lots of problems with the system) but the one problem that 3e attempted to fix while creating others was the scaling. In 3e you had skills rise at two levels cross class were 1/2 level and class skills increased at every level. So you have at low level a difference of 2 but at high level you have a difference of ~11 pretty dramatic on a d20. 3e had scaling issues for BAB and saves too.

4e's big contribution was to fix scaling and make high level play better by scaling more evenly. Conceptually I like that. However, it was put into effect full tilt without any concept of realism. So whereas 3e gave lip service to a lock is a lock and just scaled the DCs to insane levels. DC 40+ locks rings a bell. Then again you could take 20...

Realism, its an FRPG. I mean basically, if you want to create a character where he never ever picks a lock and theoretically has no ability to do that even for the simplest lock, and he's 30th level, that's what the game is for, to let you make up that story. IDEALLY no corner cases ever exist, but they ALWAYS will. No system is even faintly realistic.

Um, that does not make sense.

Having a tighter and flatter DC system will not make it any easier for PCs.


It does not work that way in 4e. Characters are on a treadmill with DCs. DCs are always staying relatively equal to make them a challenge in 4e. In 1e/2e, they got progressively easier. So a master thief was popping locks in his sleep and a novice struggled mightily. Much different. This goes into the scaling system that was integral in 1e/2e though. The concept in 1e/2e was characters get better with level. the world stays the same around them, but they get better. Saves start crappy and then get better, to the point where you are almost immune to things. 3e changed that idea. Things started scaling big time on both sides characters and the world around them. Then 4e refined that concept, and took it to the next level. 5e hopefully resets the world.

I disagree. 4e is the same as 1e/2e. The master thief is popping locks like they're nothing. He can walk through town and his 20th level +25 Thievery check will overcome every lock the townspeople have ever dreamed of. If he instead goes to the lair of the world's greatest thief and tries to pick HIS locks, well that might be a different story... Of course if locks are REALLY a big deal they'll be festooned with other interesting story elements, traps, tricks, puzzles, etc. or whatever.

4e's world does not change around the PCs, I don't know where you guys get this. The game is just more explicit in telling you that the challenges you should face should be getting harder, and providing ways to make every aspect of them as hard as you wish. People seem to vastly overvalue those concepts. They aren't meant to pervade every nook and cranny of the world. You are perfectly free to make the kings treasure vault's lock a worthless piece of junk and the rogue can unlock it on a 2. It is just set dressing, not part of the challenge, that's fine. The problem seems to be this weird double vision where when things get scaled in 1e that's one thing and when the same process happens in 4e its somehow totally different and has to be taken to ridiculous extremes so people can yell about how it broke their game or something.

I mean really, take saves as an example. Saves get easier at high levels, so the monsters actually get tougher, scaling. The PCs also get nastier spells, so they keep up. Likewise monsters start having 'no save' powers, ridiculously powerful damage spells, etc. I mean LOOK at upper level 1e monsters sometime. Demon lords and such things can barbecue the whole party quicker than you can get out your toothpick. Things DO get easier, but it is basically the same thing that happens in 4e, with often less sorted out math.

I also think that if your 4e game is nothing but a 'treadmill' that's dreadful. The math is just a scaffolding, a tool that lets you easily handle the stuff that doesn't matter much. IMHO if you're going through a 4e campaign by just 'follow the math' and nothing else is going on that's at very best a really narrow sort of game. It isn't much like the 4e games I've been in at all.

 

[Li Shenron]

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.

...

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.

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.

Not at all. You're still talking about problems and solutions with the assumption what is a problem for a gamestyle is a problem for every gamestyle. It is not a problem in every gamestyle, you can definitely play a completely legitimate gamestyle where the gap increases.

Sentences like "there are simply things that you should always be able to have some baseline chance to succeed at" once again are just assumptions presented as universal truth. Who decides what things should work like that? Maybe "walking" is something that should always have a baseline success, but as soon as you get into anything more interesting from the game POV such as "climbing", things can be handled in different ways.

And that applies to almost everything in the game. There are no such thing as "universal problems" that affect everyone, there are only popular problems that sometimes drive the design of next edition, and lead to a solution that becomes a new problem for those who didn't see the previous problem as such.

And please don't bring Gygax into the discussion... he was clearly a great designer, but he still designed D&D with a certain playstyle in mind (or a few, but not every gamestyle conceivable), and that's not the only "true way" of playing the game. In fact, there are plenty of gamestyle issues that gamers wanted to change over time so that the most common general way of playing D&D today is very different. So don't use Gygax to try proving that because he shared your style of handling skills, such style must be a universal truth.

 

[sheadunne]

Not at all. You're still talking about problems and solutions with the assumption what is a problem for a gamestyle is a problem for every gamestyle. It is not a problem in every gamestyle, you can definitely play a completely legitimate gamestyle where the gap increases.

Sentences like "there are simply things that you should always be able to have some baseline chance to succeed at" once again are just assumptions presented as universal truth. Who decides what things should work like that? Maybe "walking" is something that should always have a baseline success, but as soon as you get into anything more interesting from the game POV such as "climbing", things can be handled in different ways.

And that applies to almost everything in the game. There are no such thing as "universal problems" that affect everyone, there are only popular problems that sometimes drive the design of next edition, and lead to a solution that becomes a new problem for those who didn't see the previous problem as such.

And please don't bring Gygax into the discussion... he was clearly a great designer, but he still designed D&D with a certain playstyle in mind (or a few, but not every gamestyle conceivable), and that's not the only "true way" of playing the game. In fact, there are plenty of gamestyle issues that gamers wanted to change over time so that the most common general way of playing D&D today is very different. So don't use Gygax to try proving that because he shared your style of handling skills, such style must be a universal truth.

I have no idea what you're talking about, nor do you have any idea what my playstyle is. The issue of mundane skills becoming irrelevant at high levels is an issue in every edition. The only time it's not an issue is if you don't have mundane tasks presented at high level, which is just one of the many solutions to the issue.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I have no idea what you're talking about, nor do you have any idea what my playstyle is. The issue of mundane skills becoming irrelevant at high levels is an issue in every edition. The only time it's not an issue is if you don't have mundane tasks presented at high level, which is just one of the many solutions to the issue.

I think people are talking about a few different issues here. Are you talking about mundane sills becoming irrelevant at high levels because magic takes care of it? Or are you talking about the gap between a character with low level skill and high level skill. Bcause the latter isnt the case in a game like 2E where your NWPs dont go up by twenty ranks like they do in 3E. You could easily have a NWP check that is equally challenging to a 1st and 20th level guy. If the former, that really depends on what spells you have, but also what spells you have used.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think I agree with you. 3e skill system was crap for many of the reasons you cite.
bonus higher than die. uneveness of skill progression. 4e did combat those and alleviate the issues, however it brought its own set of issues. What about by 12th level you are getting more bonus from your level (+6) than from your skill training (+5).

Point is strip the +1/2 level from the 4e skill system fix all the DCs and I think you have a pretty good skill system that is playable. I would subtract some skills and add some skills and perhaps tweak them in a slightly different way but it is pretty close.

At least we sometimes agree . I'd MUCH rather keep the half-level bonus myself. Call me old-school, but level means to me "get better at stuff", and I just don't see 20th level PCs wandering around on 'dungeon level 1' and expecting or needing anything to challenge them. The other thing is just simplicity. All the skills just work the same all of the time, there's no muss or fuss, the rules are just simple and straightforward.

 

[sheadunne]

I think people are talking about a few different issues here. Are you talking about mundane sills becoming irrelevant at high levels because magic takes care of it? Or are you talking about the gap between a character with low level skill and high level skill. Bcause the latter isnt the case in a game like 2E where your NWPs dont go up by twenty ranks like they do in 3E. You could easily have a NWP check that is equally challenging to a 1st and 20th level guy. If the former, that really depends on what spells you have, but also what spells you have used.

I'm not talking about skills becoming either impossible to fail or impossible to succeed at, that's primarily at 3e issues. I'm talking about the universal problem that there isn't a skill that can't be ignored by high level characters either through the use of magic, magic items, brute force, or combat. I thought I made that clear a number of posts back, but perhaps it was missed. This is a universal issue, across all editions and skill subsets. It doesn't matter the play style. I want skills to be relevant. I want them to have as much impact on the game as combat and spell casting, but in play they just get irrelevant past a certain level. My argument is that 4e at least attempts to address this issue by making the issue either irrelevant (auto success an the mundane) or challenging (scaling the DC of the task based on level). It's not a system I enjoy and it's not one which I use, but at least it attempts to make skills a part of the system, rather than the lessor cousin of the other sub-systems of D&D. 2e NWP maybe a direction to go, but it needs a sub-system that makes it difficult to bypass with the use of outside systems. Climb check cannot be ignored by flying. Locks cannot be ignored by bashing them into dust, diplomacy cannot be ignored by charm person, etc. Currently the only way to make skills relevant is for the DM to say no you can't do that. And that's a valid option, certainly as valid as the 4e system. The 5e current system feels more like NWP than it does either the 3e or 4e system, but I don't know if it will stand up to high level play. I don't have a solution which is why I'm fine with any skill system 5e wants to use. They're all pretty much flawed in my opinion and we can do better.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I'm not talking about skills becoming either impossible to fail or impossible to succeed at, that's primarily at 3e issues. I'm talking about the universal problem that there isn't a skill that can't be ignored by high level characters either through the use of magic, magic items, brute force, or combat. I thought I made that clear a number of posts back, but perhaps it was missed. This is a universal issue, across all editions and skill subsets. It doesn't matter the play style. I want skills to be relevant. I want them to have as much impact on the game as combat and spell casting, but in play they just get irrelevant past a certain level. My argument is that 4e at least attempts to address this issue by making the issue either irrelevant (auto success an the mundane) or challenging (scaling the DC of the task based on level). It's not a system I enjoy and it's not one which I use, but at least it attempts to make skills a part of the system, rather than the lessor cousin of the other sub-systems of D&D. 2e NWP maybe a direction to go, but it needs a sub-system that makes it difficult to bypass with the use of outside systems. Climb check cannot be ignored by flying. Locks cannot be ignored by bashing them into dust, diplomacy cannot be ignored by charm person, etc. Currently the only way to make skills relevant is for the DM to say no you can't do that. And that's a valid option, certainly as valid as the 4e system. The 5e current system feels more like NWP than it does either the 3e or 4e system, but I don't know if it will stand up to high level play. I don't have a solution which is why I'm fine with any skill system 5e wants to use. They're all pretty much flawed in my opinion and we can do better.

i guess I dont see this as a problem. It still can come up, if the players dont have a relevant skill or magic item, and if they need to resort to combat to get around something a skilled person could overcome through his skill, then I would argue it is still relevant in that case (because if they had the skill they wouldnt need to be fighting). For me it is about keeping the setting consistent and believable. NWP worked fine at high level in my opinion. I really think seeing this as an issue though is related to playstyle. If you create adventures by building challenges around skills, then yes, when the players get around a wall you hoped they would climb by flying then it could be an issue. But in my campiagns the wall is there because it makes sense ot be there. Thief has a flat climb percentage chance, which he can raise as he levels if he wishes. Other characters do too but they dont go up. A 20th level fighter will find a wall climb about as challenging as a 1st leel fighter, except he can fall more. The wizard might be able to get around it with a spell.

I am not going to worry about whether it presents an appropriate challenge to the party (if they have a tool that gets around it, they have a tool that gets around it). But I wouldn't overstate the impact of magic. It really does boil down to what spells you have and have memorized, whether the spell caster is still standing present, and what spells you have already spent. A non-weapon proficiency like Ettiquette could still come in handy when you appear before nobility or the king for instance even at high level. But if the wizard happens to use a divination spell instead, I am not really seeing a problem (ettiquette in 2E isnt like diplomacy in 3E, it is a knowledge nwp).