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Message: <blockquote data-quote="harpy" data-source="post: 4955705" data-attributes="member: 85243">I've been googling, searching forums, etc.  I just can't seem to find this issue being address directly, but it's bound to have come up in the past...What is the "value" of rolling two d20's and keep the better result?That is, how do the above stack up versus strait bonuses to the roll?There is the bell curve factor, or the option of "taking 10", but in both of these situations you aren't being bound necessarily by the average result.In 3.5 I was playing a Gnome Archivist in one game that had the Trivial Knowledge feat which allows rolling two d20s and keeping the highest result on knowledge checks.  With optimized knowledge skills, and using it for the "Dark Knowledge" feature of the archivist, it was... a bit cheesy.  I'd lazily pick up my two d20s, and after many many sessions of making Dark Knowledge checks (Which add insight bonuses to the party to fight monsters) I only had one result which made me deal out the minimum insight bonus for an encounter.So in that situation having the "roll two d20s and keep the best" was really valuable.I guess I'm trying to tie down a metric value as to how valuable that kind of rule would be in a d20 game in general.  I know that it is a moving target, since the bonuses and target numbers are all over the place.  In general it seems like it shifting towards a bell curve result, however you aren't bound by the bell curve, so it's both a safety net and a spring board all in one.But in a fuzzy, inchoate way is it "kinda-like" having a +5 bonus?  A +10 bonus?  My math fails me!</blockquote>

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