The help action is not broken, but Working together is

[mortwatcher]

even the familiar thing, 10g for one advantage and wasting one monster action seems worth, considering you won't have that much use for gold in majority of campaigns

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

I believe that's by design. Since working together means a huge improvement in the chances of getting the job done, players will be inclined to approach every situation as a group, instead of trying to solve things by themselves. It helps to keep players engaged when their characters would not have any other meaningful contribution to give.

 

[CapnZapp]

Shiroiken has it right.

There's a whole section on this: Working Together, p. 175.

If a second character can meaningfully contribute (in the DM's estimation), then advantage. Otherwise no.

No, characters are usually powerful enough, and DCs low enough that in most cases it's better to simply skip the roll and say "you succeed" in these cases.

Even at early levels the "point man" of the party - the character volunteering for the skill check - will have at least a 75% chance of making a DC 10 check (persuading the city guard, finding the blood trail, identifying what weapon killed the princess or whatever) and probably a 75% chance of making a DC 15 check too (considering proficiency, bless, inspire dice and so on).

Advantage just makes a travesty of skill checks in 5E. They are already too easy (for the skilled character, and a party will always select a skilled character for their skill tests).

Even a DC 20 test becomes way too simple for the party rogue if just any street bum can give him or her advantage.

The only solution is to ban "working together". If the party really wants advantage, I'm sure they can cast a spell or something. There is zero need for the game to basically give you advantage whenever you feel like it.

 

[Sadras]

The only solution is to ban "working together". If the party really wants advantage, I'm sure they can cast a spell or something. There is zero need for the game to basically give you advantage whenever you feel like it.

Another solution for your table is to increase the DC for Task Difficulty by 5 (or x) across the board.

01-09 - No roll required
10 - Very Easy
15 - Easy
20 - Moderate
25 - Hard
30 - Very Hard
35 - Nearly Impossible

 

[Sadras]

Even a DC 20 test becomes way too simple for the party rogue if just any street bum can give him or her advantage.

This is a real issue with D&D, with so much continuous conflict in the cosmos and the danger from Dragons without Borders the number of street bums have increased. Walls and border control should lower the influx of street bums and curb this guaranteed advantage given to rogues.

 

[Reynard]

In combat, I decided to stop worrying and just embrace it. I added lots of small minions to big guys that hit hard to give them advantage on their attacks. Good for the goose, and all.

Out of combat, I try and avoid binary results if I can. Sure, picking the lock or disarming the trap don't leave much room for interpretation, but gathering info, convincing NPCs of a thing, doing investigation or whatever, I don't generally set DCs. Instead, I interpret successes based on the roll. If the roll is a 5, they "succeed" in doing a simple thing, and if they roll a 30 they succeed in an impossible manner. This gives me more room as DM to guide the flow of the game and eliminates plot stopping checks where you can't move forward unless you find the secret door or convince the prince to help you or whatever.

 

[dave2008]

The only solution is to ban "working together". If the party really wants advantage, I'm sure they can cast a spell or something. There is zero need for the game to basically give you advantage whenever you feel like it.

This seems a tad extreme. I would not consider someone who is not proficient in the required skill(s) able to "meaningfully contribute" as required for working together. Thus, no advantage. Conversely, if two people are proficient in a skill and are working together, they should get advantage on the check I would think. It seems fine to me. Am I missing something (I haven't look a the working together guidelines in a long time)?

 

[DEFCON 1]

Oh, if only to have a set of rules that would let me be a Dungeon Master that could take any WotC adventure book off the shelf and run it as-is straight through without once needing to think about making rulings or changes to tailor it to my specific table. Just mindlessly run the game with little to no thought required and have every number in every book splice together beautifully to produce the exact game I wish to run and play. If only the rules worked like that...

If only...

If only...

 

[cmad1977]

In another episode of ‘I don’t want to take responsibility for my game’...

 

[5ekyu]

No, characters are usually powerful enough, and DCs low enough that in most cases it's better to simply skip the roll and say "you succeed" in these cases.

Even at early levels the "point man" of the party - the character volunteering for the skill check - will have at least a 75% chance of making a DC 10 check (persuading the city guard, finding the blood trail, identifying what weapon killed the princess or whatever) and probably a 75% chance of making a DC 15 check too (considering proficiency, bless, inspire dice and so on).

Advantage just makes a travesty of skill checks in 5E. They are already too easy (for the skilled character, and a party will always select a skilled character for their skill tests).

Even a DC 20 test becomes way too simple for the party rogue if just any street bum can give him or her advantage.

The only solution is to ban "working together". If the party really wants advantage, I'm sure they can cast a spell or something. There is zero need for the game to basically give you advantage whenever you feel like it.

In 5e the DMG has the auto-success which let's a proficient character succeed without roll on easy checks if they dont have disadvantage or such. So, this 75% bit of yours is not a bother to me.

Then again, the three tasks you listed in parens are likely not Easy DC 10 in my games (depends large blood trail, guard being persuaded to sound alarm, etc.)

For my games the vast majority of DC are 10-15-20 based on the DMG guidelines with +5 or -5 for "did it get extra attention or help when it was setup" - so, as an example, if the blood trail was one guy bleeding by his buddy covering tracks, that's "help" and the DC goes up by 5 (the passive advantage) and if the innkeeper spent a lot of money on locks that's also gonna show...

Key is, to me, when determining DCs in your world, the "opposition" might have had "help" too and that can show in DCs when that is appropriate for the folks involved. (Typical innkeep unlikely to spend cash on better locks - except maybe his door.)

Net result - the DCs and Working Together are as "broken" or not as the GM makes them - no more - no less.