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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6734591" data-attributes="member: 6790260">At least in the default game, no. Back in 4e D&D, all ability checks got a half-level bonus. 5e uses Proficiency instead of a half-level bonus--and it scales at, very roughly, one-quarter your level (the actual formula is P=2+(level-1)/2, round down, or equivalently (level+7)/2 round down). This reduction was intentional (though, barring one meaningful feature, it's really just "scale half as fast as 4e did")--part of the overall design philosophy referred to as "Bounded Accuracy."It's possible--not likely, IMO, but possible--that your DM mistakenly thought the half-level bonus was retained in 5e when it wasn't. You might want to have a conversation asking about it. Take care to be as polite and open-minded as you can--it sounds like this situation really bothers you, but venting at the DM almost surely will not accomplish your goals. Remain focused on the idea that the DM did not do this to you, but either chose it to evoke a specific feel, or chose it without realizing that it is not actually a rule in 5e. Don't hide that you're upset, but be as fair and open-minded as you can be about it.No worries. It happens. Addressing a deep emotional reaction with respect, rather than with a sycophantic or preachy tone, isn't easy. Hope I did so!In this case, you're running into one of the deeply-imbedded...questions, I guess, of the D&D ruleset as a whole. A thing that's been wrestled with since the earliest editions. Some frame it as a territory debate over what is "allowed," e.g. "everything which is not forbidden is allowed" vs. "everything which is not allowed is forbidden." 3rd edition was probably the height of the latter philosophy, and it's the one that (IMO) most clearly reflects your perceptions. No edition (IMO) has ever been 100% "everything not forbidden is allowed," but the idea has been waxing again since the start of 4e.As for the "really fair" thing, I'm not sure I understand what you mean. A Wisdom(Medicine) roll to stabilize an ally is, essentially, "can you keep this person from dying of shock." Technically, it can be viewed as "staunching the blood flow" or whatever else you like if you really have to have 0 HP = mortally wounded,Skills, and ability checks in general, are meant to be something that everyone can participate in. Almost all of them have "basic" or "general" uses that the "untrained" can perform. For example, kicking open a door with an Athletics check--you don't need to be a trained athlete to do it, but your odds of succeeding are better if you are; or, say, a Nature check to try to follow tracks in muddy ground doesn't require that you've had an overt (formal or informal) education in zoology/botany/tracking, but it'll really help if you do. Other times, though, you really do need to be "trained," and it's just straight-up impossible to do a thing without such training. Swimming against the current of a swift river is a sufficiently difficult task that someone who doesn't know how to ply their advantages (swimming in a zig-zag rather than trying to directly fight the current) will almost surely fail, so a DM might rule that someone without Athletics proficiency simply can't do it. Similarly, if you don't actually know the lore of the wilderness, you'll probably have no idea whether a particular berry or mushroom is lethal poison or tasty treat.As for your question--"Why would a warrior or sorcerer know how to heal?"--the answer lies more in the nature of the specific action (keeping an ally from slipping away in the next 30-60 seconds) than in the general principle (totally random dude knows how to heal dying people). "Stabilizing" a person simply means they're not in imminent threat of death, and thus fits alright with basic ideas of first aid. Given that the people doing this are adventurers, and thus need to give a thought to things like surviving "a nasty man with a sword just tried to kill me," a handful of simple first-aid ideas like "don't let people fall into shock" and "stick a bit of cloth into a bleeding wound to staunch the flow" don't seem out-of-place. Specific, knowledge-based actions though--stuff like identifying a disease, creating a treatment, or extracting the medically-valuable parts of a plant? Those things simply flat-out cannot be done by someone who doesn't have the training.But, again, it sounds like you have this idea that the only way for these things to be "fair" is for run-of-the-mill, "untrained" people to have a substantial negative, and "trained" people to be (essentially) at +0 or slightly positive. That is not, mathematically, true--it is possible to have exactly the same system, except that the minimum state is not "you have a -5 penalty and must reach a target number of 10," and instead "you have a +0 bonus, and must reach a target number of 15." In 5th edition D&D, the target numbers for skill rolls have been selected so that the latter is how things work: people with no bonus are not very likely to achieve success, because the target numbers are too high; people with a high bonus not only have much better chances of success, but can also meet target numbers that would be completely impossible for the person with no bonus.I'll give you a similar example. In 3rd edition D&D, if you try to use a weapon you aren't proficient with, you take a penalty (something like -2 or -3, I don't recall). This means that Fighters, for example, can use a greater variety of weapons with no problems--they're proficient in nearly everything, so it's rare for them to find a weapon that would give them a penalty. By comparison, in 4e and 5e D&D, there really aren't any penalties for using a weapon you aren't proficient with...however, being proficient with a weapon gives you a bonus. In 4e, that bonus was either +2 or +3 (the latter being given to weapons that were meant to be 'high-accuracy'); in 5e, that bonus is your Proficiency score. Notice...in both cases, the non-proficient person is (at least) 2 points below the proficient person. Thus, mathematically, the two systems are equivalent: they result in (more or less, given scaling differences) exactly the same "gap" between those who are proficient, and those who aren't. The 4e and 5e Fighter is still very good at using pretty much any (non-"exotic") weapon...it's just represented as "you do well with most any weapon!" instead of "you never do poorly with most any weapon!"But the "bonus for being proficient" side is purely addition, while the "penalty for being non-proficient" side involves both addition and subtraction. Subtraction is well-documented, by psychologists and education researchers, as a more-difficult mental math process than addition; this is just a quirk of the human brain, we spend ever-so-slightly less time adding than subtracting, on average (and for some people the difference is very significant). Thus, although "you aren't proficient with that weapon, take a -2 to attack" accomplishes *precisely* the same goals, mathematically (and thus I would hope it is equally "fair"...) as "you aren't proficient with that weapon, so you cannot add your +2 proficiency bonus," the latter has some small benefits that the former lacks, so it is slightly preferable from a design standpoint.Another way of saying this: If absolutely everyone starts out at a substantial negative (say -6), and must "claw their way up" to being merely +0...is that really any different than adding 6 to all numbers...including the difficulty values...and having the "you must claw your way up from here" point be at 0? Because, compared to the systems you've played before, that's exactly what 5e has done: ALL numbers, both player-side and DM-side, have gone up slightly, so that (most of the time) there are no negative values. There are still a few--usually from spells or magical effects--but they are relatively rare, the only "common" example being a person who has stats less than 10 (because the modifier becomes negative for stats 9 and lower).Edit:This is not to say that the DM cannot make (or apply) negative effects, nor that negative effects are missing from the game. One simple example: Small characters cannot use Heavy weapons very well, and get a serious minus (Disadvantage) for trying to do so. Disadvantage is, in fact, often the go-to choice for applying situational negative effects to something. E.g. you're just put in a position where, while it is still possible for you to succeed at everything you could normally succeed at, the situation conspires against you. Another example: Trying to hit a target with a ranged weapon, when that target is outside your range, applies Disadvantage to the attack roll.</blockquote>

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