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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gribble" data-source="post: 7688787" data-attributes="member: 12430">Not really, no. In a d20 system, a character having one rank (or being "trained") in a skill, generally denotes some level of training, but not expertise. That typically requires focus on a skill and/or expenditure of feats (depending on the version of D&D). In 5e, this is a bit less true as training is much more binary, though there are still things like a Rogues "expertise" and feats that differentiate between someone who knows a bit about something and a true expert.In Gumshoe, training in an Investigative skill represents true expertise, to the level where there is literally no chance for someone to fail to get the important clues in an area of expertise. Again, it models the genre, it doesn't try to simulate "reality". In genre, there really aren't dabblers - you have experts, and you rely on them when it comes to their areas of expertise.You seem to be completely missing the point. What you propose does a great job at saying "the group will get the core clues, and the experts may get some extra clues" - I don't debate that at all. However, by setting DCs to 0, what you're actually saying is the group will all get the core clues - i.e.: each and every one of them will be able to uncover the core clues and the presence and actions of the experts is irrelevant to whether the group gets the core clues or not.This is completely different from what Gumshoe does. Yes it is similar in that it also says "the group will get the core clues, and the experts may get some extra clues", but it does this by also saying "the experts, and their presence and actions, are what determines that the group gets the core clues". That is the missing ingredient from your outlined approach for d20. Without that core ingredient, the rolls and skills are completely irrelevant for the core clues. It's all dependent on player actions and not character skill. And if you try to introduce some dependency on skill, then you necessarily introduce some chance that those skilled characters will fail. Unless you make it dependent on whether or not the character has training (i.e.: at least one rank) in the skill, even if the skill can normally be used untrained. Then you run into a whole new kettle of fish in that some of the party will have no useful investigative skills... (think your 8 Int fighter/barbarian/etc. with 1-3 skill points per level), and hence won't be able to contribute to the investigation at all. Conversely, just by sheer number of skill points rogues and wizards will be the uber characters in the campaign, and the poor fighters/clerics will be relegated to supporting roles. It'll result in very wonky builds, where no-one wants to actually be an expert at anything, and instead would rather spread their skill points around as many different skills as possible, just so they can get a chance to roll. And pity the poor bards, which usually have an ability granting them a bonus to untrained skills... this will be all but unusable in in most investigative scenarios which will now require training, even though logically they should be really good at it. This one "simple" houserule would have a number of knock-on effects.Now imagine a campaign where a large part of the action is investigation... no thanks, I'll stick to Gumshoe for that sort of campaign.I don't think you give the difference enough credit. For Gumshoe, the players get to determine when it is important for them to get additional clues. For d20, it's completely in the hands of chance. This is not only very different for the players, but also for the outcome of the campaign.It's a bit like saying instead of wizards choosing when they want to cast spells, they *always* have to make a d20 + level + spellcasting stat roll to see if they're able to or not. Certainly makes them feel a lot less like experts, and could have drastic results on the outcome of the campaign (you could easily have a TPK if the wizard failed to cast spells at crucial times, or if the adventure assumed access to certain types of magic and the spellcasting failed).</blockquote>

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