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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6785174" data-attributes="member: 996">5e was striving for a more 'natural language' feel after the jargon-dense 4e and RAW-litigation of 3.x/PF.The target audience for 5e, as just came up in another thread, was 'everyone who ever loved D&D,' so, yeah, between that and having a free basic PDF for people to try first, it's not completely unreasonable to assume some familiarity.  I'm not sure the PH really does that, but I've been playing D&D since 1980, so I've lost any ability to judge...The assumption is that the DM would make a ruling.  Like, if the 20 STR hero wants to hoist the yard-arm himself, he makes some difficult check, if the usual number of able seamen do it, there's no check.  Not so much.  Mathematically, Adv/Dis has the greatest impact on even-money checks.  If you need to roll an 11 to succeed, advantage is like having a +5 bonus.  But, if you need a 20 to succeed or a 1 to fail, advantage is mathematically equivalent to about a +1.  It is mostly up to the DM to rule on things like that.  Players will get to know a given DM over time, though...Another nifty 5e developer catch-phrase is 'rulings not rules,' 5e is meant to run on the DM's judgement more than adherence to the letter of the rules.Probably in the character's background, like Guild Artisan or something, and proficiency in the tools of that trade.No & Yes.  No, casters can be reasonably tough, not made of glass or glass-jawed.  And, Yes, spells are powerful, but because they're a limited resource that must be managed over a 6-8 encounter day.Yes, that was an unfortunate design choice, IMHO.  One variant I like is to add a +1 to +4 bonus (ie Proficiency -2) over 20 levels to non-proficient saves.  OTOH, saves are rarely save-or-die in 5e, so failing saves constantly even at 20th level isn't entirely untenable.Advancement in terms of checks is intentionally limited in 5e, a design doctrine called 'Bounded Accuracy' that's gone over pretty well with the community (as has Adv/Dis, which you also seemed leery of), in general.  The idea is that, regardless of level, PCs/NPCs/Monsters will always be able to interact on the same scale, thus you can run in a fairly stable world, rather than moving the PCs from low-level to high-level 'areas' or even to other planes to challenge them, and you can use the same stable of monsters & NPCs for a whole campaign.Thus, while PCs don't advance in everything, they don't 'need' to.</blockquote>

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