D&D 5E Status of skills/tools and expected changes

[Mistwell]

I disagree with everyone that disagrees with me.

This should be your signature line.

 

[PinkRose]

AGAIN, for Lane-I'm not listening-fan & Lil Sheron, I did not use Picking locks or climbing walls as an example.
Page 61, Player's Handbook v3.0: Take 20 - "When you have plenty of time... and when the skill being attempted has no penalties for failure, you can take 20."

Player: "I try to <choose one that you can do repeatedly; bake a pie, write a letter, search a room >."
DM: "OK, you take a while and give it your best shot - basically rolling a 20 on your skill check."
Player: (doesn't roll 20 times) "20, plus 4, that's 24."
DM: "Excellent. What do you do next?"

See? Mine works too.

 

[Li Shenron]

AGAIN, for Lane-I'm not listening-fan & Lil Sheron, I did not use Picking locks or climbing walls as an example.
Page 61, Player's Handbook v3.0: Take 20 - "When you have plenty of time... and when the skill being attempted has no penalties for failure, you can take 20."

Player: "I try to <choose one that you can do repeatedly; bake a pie, write a letter, search a room >."
DM: "OK, you take a while and give it your best shot - basically rolling a 20 on your skill check."
Player: (doesn't roll 20 times) "20, plus 4, that's 24."
DM: "Excellent. What do you do next?"

See? Mine works too.

I see your point, I'm just saying that personally I like randomness because unpredictability usually makes the game more exciting (for my tastes of course).

There is no problem in letting one take 20 (or automatically succeed) on things that are not exciting per se, such as baking a pie or write a letter. If you want them to be occasionally exciting (are you baking a special pie to impress the king? are you writing a letter to plead the bishop a favor?), you can always put a check back in the game if you want randomness. I understand that some people don't want randomness even in this case, they favor predictability over unpredictability. I just don't, in general (although I wrote many times that the d20 feels too swingy for skills).

I do think however, that there are cases where Take20 removes some kind of unpredictability that is to me especially dear. Lockpicking and searching for hidden things are the most important ones, since the exploration pillar is my favourite part of the D&D game.

At least if the time required for Take20 is vastly increased, so that it effectively restricts using Take20 to a rare occurrence, it would be already an improvement. But in 3e it takes one round to open a lock, i.e. 2 minutes to Take20. That equates to nothing in the context of the exploration phase, it always leads to the player maybe rolling once or twice just for fun, but then always using Take20 because it cannot fail (or complain with the DM if it does).

edit:

Let's also remember that 3e had another concept, that of Take10. At least that concept works a little better for me because it is not an automatic success, but the truth is that it is really a sign that d20 has a too large range.

Maybe a slightly more complex rule such as skills requiring a d10+10 roll when in comfortable conditions, and a d20 when in uncomfortable conditions, but no retries after X hours/days/weeks (depending on the skill) would work even better for me.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

AGAIN, for Lane-I'm not listening-fan & Lil Sheron, I did not use Picking locks or climbing walls as an example.
Page 61, Player's Handbook v3.0: Take 20 - "When you have plenty of time... and when the skill being attempted has no penalties for failure, you can take 20."

Player: "I try to <choose one that you can do repeatedly; bake a pie, write a letter, search a room >."
DM: "OK, you take a while and give it your best shot - basically rolling a 20 on your skill check."
Player: (doesn't roll 20 times) "20, plus 4, that's 24."
DM: "Excellent. What do you do next?"

See? Mine works too.

It doesn't really because "Taking 20" is defined in the rules as attempting something over and over again 20 times.

That last line should say:
DM: "Excellent. You make a pie, then you decide it isn't perfect and throw it in the garbage. Then you bake another one and it isn't perfect either. You throw it in the garbage. After 20 tries, you finally make one you think is perfect."

Besides, one could say there is a penalty for failure for baking pie...the penalty being that you make a poor pie that doesn't taste good or makes people sick.

That's kind of why taking 20 is such an annoying rule. What one person sees as "A penalty" another does not. So, when you could use it was applied randomly depending on the game. And it didn't seem natural in the flow of narration. Who bakes 20 pies to find the best one?

 

[gweinel]

(leaving the Take20 discussion behind and going back to the skills list)

It's possible that the skills list is not finalized yet, although it does feel to me like most likely they'll change the list of tools rather than the list of skills.

Now I'm just comparing the old 3e skills list with the new 5e skills list, and check for things that are possibly missing...

Alchemy, maybe there should be a tool(s) for this? Alternatively, see Profession below

Architecture & Engineering, although this was technically a knowledge skill, see Profession below

Gather information currently missing, but recently it was said that search will be renamed investigate, and that sounds a very good place for gathering info too

Geography & Local... have no idea! If all lumped under nature, it might make it too powerful and encompassing. There's however a large variety about how these are treated by different DMs, so I'm not sure there's a good one-size-fits-all solution.

Profession, in a sense there is no need for this since backgrounds pretty much cover professions


Thoughts?

These are very big omissions in my opinion. I use them in my games often and I find em quite usefull. I am actually against the centralization of the skills we saw at 4the but on the other hand i found many skills useless and inferior at 3rde. Probably i am between these two editions.

Another question is what happens if someone wants to learn a new profession or any other skill during his adventuring career. Is there any way to learn or even to advance his desired skill apart from spending a feat?

 

[Lanefan]

AGAIN, for Lane-I'm not listening-fan & Lil Sheron, I did not use Picking locks or climbing walls as an example.
Page 61, Player's Handbook v3.0: Take 20 - "When you have plenty of time... and when the skill being attempted has no penalties for failure, you can take 20."

Yes, I've seen it. Played it, too.

Bad design, dumb rule.

Player: "I try to <choose one that you can do repeatedly; bake a pie, write a letter, search a room >."
DM: "OK, you take a while and give it your best shot - basically rolling a 20 on your skill check."
Player: (doesn't roll 20 times) "20, plus 4, that's 24."
DM: "Excellent. What do you do next?"

Except there is *always* a penalty of some sort for failure, some examples:

- You bake a lousy pie and chuck it out (and now need more ingredients if you want to bake another)
- You can't get the wording right in your letter and end up unintentionally offending the recipient with what you wrote
- You don't find something hidden in the room and thus deprive yourself of its value later and-or usefulness now

The DM above's first words here should be "OK, you take a while and give it your best shot, now roll a d20 and let's see how you did."

Lan-"it's La-ne-fan, three syllables"-efan

 

[Viking Bastard]

I don't really have anything against Take 20 conceptually, I just find it redundant in play.

Generally, if there's a task that a PC should reasonably be able to do given time, they can just do it if given the time. If I request a roll, it's to check how long it will take (if I find that relevant).

If it's just a normal lock, even if it's a good one, I expect that someone trained in lockpicking is going to be able to pick it. Again it's just a matter of whether the PCs have the time.

If it's a fancy/expert/magic lock, I may make the PC check for whether they have the experience to crack it, too. And if they fail, they just don't--it's out of their league. Can try again when graduating to the next league* or the something else significantly changes about the situation.

If the PC is baking a pie for the king, and it's established that the PC is an expert pie maker, they're not gonna have to check if they successfully bake the pie. The check is gonna be for whether the king finds the pie up to royal snuff.


As I see it, a check will vary by what exactly is being checked--not which ability (although that as well, up to a point) but what specific result needs checking. The check is not the action, but a way to settle any uncertainty about the action's execution. As well as to add some much needed random, because that way it's more fun (to me, anyway).



* In a perfect world and perfect game, gaining more in-game experience in picking locks should be tied to in-game lockpicking attempts, but as we're playing D&D, it's gonna be next level up.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

That's kind of why taking 20 is such an annoying rule. What one person sees as "A penalty" another does not. So, when you could use it was applied randomly depending on the game. And it didn't seem natural in the flow of narration. Who bakes 20 pies to find the best one?

Characters on a sitcom will do it, and those are just exaggerated caricatures of believable people. I don't find the idea of baking 20 pies and selecting the best one to present to someone important to be such a far-fetched circumstance.

Fortunately, 3E at least spelled out most of their "penalties". Failing by 5 would set off a trap, ruin your tool, cause you to take damage as you fall, and so on. It's not even that they needed to formalize the Take 20 rule - they could have just said, "If you attempt a task twenty time, instead of rolling for them, take the results for having rolled each of 1 through 20 and add them together"; obviously, you can't try something twenty times where the outcome from different rolls would be mutually exclusive - you can't bake any subsequent pies if a result of 1 on the die roll would involve you burning down the kitchen.

It's supposed to be a time-saving measure that exploits statistics and averages, just so you can get on with the game. It's not supposed to give you anything you didn't already have.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

If it's just a normal lock, even if it's a good one, I expect that someone trained in lockpicking is going to be able to pick it. Again it's just a matter of whether the PCs have the time.

If it's a fancy/expert/magic lock, I may make the PC check for whether they have the experience to crack it, too. And if they fail, they just don't--it's out of their league. Can try again when graduating to the next league* or the something else significantly changes about the situation.

Take 20 is just a tool to prevent the DM from needing to arbitrarily decide whether a task is something that would be reasonable for a given PC, taking into account that everyone has different capabilities - that a reasonable task for someone with skill training and a good stat might be different from a reasonable task for someone untrained and with a poor stat.

Locks have designated DCs so that you don't need to arbitrarily decide whether it's good "enough" that you won't eventually break through. I mean, what's your threshold for the difference between a normal/good lock and one that's fancy/expert? The only thing that Take 20 does is make that decision for you: a lock is fancy enough that a character will not eventually break through if the DC is more than 20 points higher than the bonus to the check.

 

[Viking Bastard]

Locks have designated DCs so that you don't need to arbitrarily decide whether it's good "enough" that you won't eventually break through. I mean, what's your threshold for the difference between a normal/good lock and one that's fancy/expert?

How do I decide what's normal or fancy? I think: "Would I like this lock to be standard or complex? Which makes more sense in context? Which makes for a better game?" I then answer myself. If I don't find the answer obvious, I will err on the side of the players or roll something.

As I see it, the DC is the arbitrary decision. Who decides what the DC of the lock is? That would be me. Is it a DC 14, 16 or 20-something? Erm. It's fancy, ok? Roll DEX.

Take 20 just feels like an added mechanical hoop to jump through.