Veteran Sergeant
First Post
I think the way to interpret the examples of "driving to the store" or "changing a diaper" would be as the equivalent "easy adventuring tasks for an adventurer given an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence of failure." Not that the tasks themselves are necessarily mundane, have a certain outcome, and no meaningful consequence of failure.
But that's still the problem. You shouldn't be testing tasks with effectively no chance for meaningful failure. The game doesn't intend for you to do it. That is nothing more than a waste of everyone's time. Just suggesting those examples implies a disconnect with the intent of Skill Checks. A "easy adventuring task" like starting a campfire in normal conditions with a tinderbox and wood available isn't a DC 10 Survival Check. It just happens. Now, if you're trying to put a diaper on a rambunctious chimpanzee, maybe that requires a skill check. A Level 0 commoner midwife doesn't fail 45% of her diaper changes, just as a merchant doesn't fail 45% of his trips to market. Those aren't Easy checks. He's just wrong. He's getting caught up on the word "Easy" not realizing that there are tasks that are well below Easy that the game doesn't expect you to roll for. Hitting a baseball for a proficient batter is Easy. Still, even with the pitching machine at the batting cages you're going to hit the occasional grounder.
Stop putting the PC on a pedestal. They're supposed to fail from time to time; it's part of the game. But a Party of 4 characters all attempting to search a room with Perception/Investigation, two of which have a +4 and two have a +0, are going to succeed against DC 10 effectively over 98% of the time. The two PCs with +4 are succeeding 93.75% of the time alone. If everyone rolls at +4, their success rate is 99.61%, lol. That's without Help, and just rolling their own individual checks with the hope that somebody succeeds. Why are we rolling DC 10 checks for these things? That's literally just performing dice rolling chores. This idea that DC 10 checks are hard only exists in the small vacuum where only one character can attempt at something. So sure, a DC 10 lock in a party with only one character proficient in Thieves Tools could end in failure, though his theoretical "best of the best" thief should have Expertise, no?. So his failure rate is 10%. But he's only Level 1. Why should he be automatic? However, DC 10 checks where all Party members can participate are basically a formality. D&D modules literally just describe what treasure is in a room without a DC all the time. Why is this? Because the game design acknowledges that not everything requires a skill check. You didn't need Perception to find that sword hanging on the wall rack. Driving your car to the store isn't an Easy task. Otherwise most of you would be crashing about twice a week.
But even if the rogue fails to open a lock, so what? It's a new challenge for the party. Smash the chest? Take it with you? Leave it behind? Why are we treating failure in the game as something that shouldn't happen? If there's no challenge, no jeopardy, no risk, all we're doing is getting together for a theatrical afternoon eating snacks. You need to adjust your perception of what an Easy task is in D&D. His hyperbolic analogy and unrealistic expectation of automatic success is what's throwing you off.