D&D 5E (Un)-Reliable Talent? How do you do it?

[DND_Reborn]

But houserules should address actual real problems that are likely to occur. Houserules for hypotheticals which are never likely to cause an issue in a game are nothing but pointless bloat.

I couldn't agree more. We've had a lot of house-rules that get thrown out. But since this ACTUALLY came up in our last session (hence why I posted about it), it is an actual real problem that occurred.

Rogue has a level of exhaustion, so disadvantage on ability checks. Makes a check using RT, how does the disadvantage affect it? At the time, the DM allowed it to work as you want, but after the session the question came up and we all agreed disadvantage should have some impact instead of allowing both rolls to be 10s.

So, while I can appreciate you don't think this is an issue, it is for our group and does happen.

And FWIW, after I run some number, talk it over with the others on Monday, we might simply decide to drop it. But we want to explore it first.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I couldn't agree more. We've had a lot of house-rules that get thrown out. But since this ACTUALLY came up in our last session (hence why I posted about it), it is an actual real problem that occurred.

Rogue has a level of exhaustion, so disadvantage on ability checks. Makes a check using RT, how does the disadvantage affect it? At the time, the DM allowed it to work as you want, but after the session the question came up and we all agreed disadvantage should have some impact instead of allowing both rolls to be 10s.

So, while I can appreciate you don't think this is an issue, it is for our group and does happen.

Even an exhausted rogue can pick a regular lock (or whatever). This is what sets the professional rogue apart from the talented amateur. If the lock (or whatever) had been of a high DC, then disadvantage would have still had an effect.

Note that DC 25 is not unreasonable for locks.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I think if I was going to tweak reliable talent into an semi-unreliable talent I'd do it by making natural ones a failure when you have disadvantage. It feels most in line with how players typically expect dice rolls to work.

 

[MarkB]

For advantage when both rolls are below 10, yes. But advantage still helps because it decreases the odds of getting a 10 overall, and of course you still take the highest roll if it exceeds 10 anyway.

Yeah, but my point is that your proposed houserule of "only the highest roll gets bumped up to 10 when rolling with advantage" doesn't actually change the maths for Reliable Talent from the way it works under the normal rules.

 

[Maxperson]

Quick question to throw out there: How would you rule a rogue using Reliable Talent when the check has disadvantage?

It seems a bit too good for it to make the minimum 10 when both dice are rolled.

It doesn't make sense to say only one of the dice becomes a 10 because if the other is less it doesn't help at all.

So, I was thinking of making the minimum 5 when there is disadvantage. I think that is a decent compromise.

Thoughts?

EDIT: rolling both dice and using the lower result, then applying reliable talent to that result, more or less make the disadvantage a non-issue. I am trying to avoid that, so I am focused more on something that makes the reliable talent less reliable due to the disadvantage than it would be otherwise.

Why not just assign a lower value to reliable talent when disadvantage is present? Make it so that it only raises the die to 7 or 8.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Why not just assign a lower value to reliable talent when disadvantage is present? Make it so that it only raises the die to 7 or 8.

I was thinking of 5 since disadvantage is about a -5 penalty. If that works out to be TOO much, 7 or 8 would probably work well.

 

[Maxperson]

I was thinking of 5 since disadvantage is about a -5 penalty. If that works out to be TOO much, 7 or 8 would probably work well.

I think 5 is too steep. It is supposed to be reliable and raising something to a 5 wouldn't do much. I'd go with 7 or 8 myself.

 

[Umbran]

I was thinking of 5 since disadvantage is about a -5 penalty. If that works out to be TOO much, 7 or 8 would probably work well.

So, the average roll of a d20 is 10.5, of course.

If I recall correctly, the average roll with disadvantage comes up to be 7.2 or something. So, if you set the ability to result a 5... that's making the ability significantly worse that just taking the roll.

 

[DND_Reborn]

So, the average roll of a d20 is 10.5, of course.

If I recall correctly, the average roll for disadvantage comes up to be 7.2 or something. So, if you set the ability to result a 5... that's making the ability worse that just taking the roll.

Actually I've been running the numbers and it makes it 8.1 on average, nearly 1 point better than regular disadvantage.

But, it is too much of a drop, as @Maxperson thought. Making the floor 8 for disadvantage bring the average for RT up to 9.625.

However, in running the number the issue of advantage also came up. Although advantage can help when RT is a factor, the chance of it helping and the amount of increase it offers is fairly small.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Yeah, but my point is that your proposed houserule of "only the highest roll gets bumped up to 10 when rolling with advantage" doesn't actually change the maths for Reliable Talent from the way it works under the normal rules.

It does if you have a 3 and an 8, the 3 becomes 10, so 8 is the "lower roll". In normal disadvantage, the 3 would be lower. In this way, even using RT with this house-rule, the base roll would be 8 instead of 3, so it definitely still helps and changes things.