Why doesn't the help action have more limits and down sides?

[Veteran Sergeant]

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.

 

[iserith]

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.

You're missing the point. I'm not arguing for this, so you're addressing a strawman. Set aside the specific examples and look at the abstraction: You can imagine there are Easy tasks an adventurer might do that do have an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence of failure. Those are the things under discussion. NOT things that have a certain outcome and/or no meaningful consequence of failure.

More broadly, that the d20 is fickle and often the character's relevant bonuses are insufficient to carry the day even with fairly low DCs, argues for players to try to avoid rolling wherever possible, even if they have to assume a reasonable cost to do so. That's the underlying point of @Ovinomancer's post as I see it.

 

[jgsugden]

My skill system:

If you do not use an action, your skill check is 10+your skill. No roll. +/- 5 for advantage/disadvantage. (Yes, I know about reliable talent...wait).

If you use an action, reaction or bonus action when using a skill (as appropriate), you roll a d20 and add your modifier - but 10 is generally treated as the minimum roll. You're always going to be as good as at least your passive roll ... unless you're under pressure.

If you are under pressure (which is generally any situation where time is short or failure has immediate significant consequences), you roll a d20 and add your skill modifiers. You can be flustered and do worse than your passive skill due to distractions and concern. Reliable talent allows 'under pressure' rolls to have a floor of 10 (you're cool under pressure).

Sometimes you need to do a group check. Common examples are stealth and perception. Everybody is engaged in the activity at the same time. Someone that is good at the skill can use it passively (requiring no action) and then use an appropriate action to 'help' a fellow PC. That assisted ally gains advantage, but the good PC is risking that their skill may not be enough. If they're good enough, that is little risk. If they're not as good as they think or the challenge is harder than expected, they could be the weak link. When you use an action to assist you must roll a skill check on the appropriate skill and get at least A 15 to effectively assist. A roll under 10 results in no assistance, but you can share the blame for a failed skill check if the DM wants to help tell the story that way. You can only assist one ally at a time and only on one skill.

Example:

Alpha, Beta and Gamma are adventuring buddies. Alpha is a stealthy rogue, Beta is a semi-stealthy wizard, and Gamma is a clumsy fighter in full plate. They are about to enter a goblin lair sneakily. No goblins are seen... yet.

Alpha has a stealth of +9. He is happy to take a passive result of 19 as they approach, allowing him to assist Gamma ... He uses a bonus action to dash, uses his standard action to assist Gamma (rolling a 19 result - a successful assist), and moves ahead with a stealth result of 19.

Beta has a stealth score of +3. He could go for a passive 13, or roll a d20 with a minimum score of 13 (but possibly as high as 23) ... but doing so will require an action which will slow him down. Knowing that Gamma has to go slow, he elects to roll a d20 and gets a 6... but we treat that as a 10 and he stays at 13.

Gamma has a stealth score of -1 and disadvantage due to his armor ... meaning a passive score of 4 (10 -1 -5) normally - but with advantage being given from Alpha's help he is back to -9 (advantage and disadvantage cancel out). That is unlikely to be stealthy, so he elects to roll and hopes for a result above 10 on the dies to improve his results. He gets a 16 for a net result of 15.

As they approach the cave they pass a well hidden goblin that is 'on watch'... meaning that he is playing a game with some rocks. He doesn't want to be caught by his tribe neglecting his duty, so he is hiding and managed a 22 result.

As none of the PCs are electing to use an action to use their perception skills, we use their passive skills and they all are insufficient to spot the goblin.

The goblin used an action to hide, but once hidden he doesn't need to continue using actions to hide himself. However, he is actively playing a game, so he is not using his action to perceive and thus we turn to his passive perception which - as is typical of his race - is a 9. He does not spot the PCs. They pass by him, with both sides unaware of the existence of the others. Had the goblin been standing at attention and been known to be watching the PCs, they'd all have needed to roll checks... although Alpha could have hidden on one round and then assisted Gamma on another. However, the goblin might be determined by the DM to be either passively watching (passive perception 9) or actively watching (d20-1 roll).

Once inside the caves the PCs pass by an ancient idol. A knowledge check of 15 in history, arcana or religion will reveal this to be an idol depicting the God of Magic. If the PCs walk by it without taking any time to reflect, we see if any of them have an appropriate passive knowledge of 15 in any of those skills - and the wizard does! The DM tells him that his is an idol of Maggity McMagic, the God of Magic. The wizard asks what he knows about this God of Magic. The wizard uses an action to think about it and rolls a d20... getting a 14. This improves upon his passive knowledge, changing the 15 to a 19... but that is not enough to glean anything else significant. The DM offers a few meaningless tidbits about the God, but nothing useful.

They move in further and encounter a wide crevice that is 40 feet deep that is typically crossed with a bridge that is currently stored on the opposite side. Two goblins guard it, but the PCs get the jump on them and a sleep spell is delivered before they act. ZZZZZZzzzzzzz........

The PCs need to move quickly and Gamma decides to jump the crevice with his 18 strength and +8 athletics. This is a running long jump so he can clear 18 feet automatically... but the crevice is 20' wide. The DM decides that jumping 2 extra feet is a medium difficulty task - DC 15. If there were no time pressure, or if the distance fallen a failed check would result in would be insignificant he could automatically make this check by using a passive result of 18. However, this is a situation in which he needs to roll due to the pressure. Alpha wants to help him, but rolls a 14 total athletics check and fails so Gamma is on his own. He rolls a 6. 6 +8 is 14... meaning he just fails to reach the other side. The DM determines his lower body hits the far wall and gives him a dex save to catch the lip ... which he fails... and falls into the crevice... loudy... alerting the Froghemoth hiding at the bottom that eats him.

 

[Wyvern]

I'm not, at all, talking about group checks.

Just had a thought. What if when helping, both (all) roll. Any success on the rules passes the task, but any failures suffer a setback.

That sounds a lot like a group check to me. It may not be the same as how the PHB defines a group check, but it's still a group, making a check. Now, I can see how Clayton may have read something into your suggestion that wasn't there, but if that's the case it would behoove you to clear up the misunderstanding instead of getting pissy with him because he failed to understand you.

Clayton: I *think* (and Ovinomancer can correct me if I've also got the wrong end of the stick) that your mistake was assuming that Ovinomancer applies critical failures to skill checks, because he used the word "setback". On rereading this post, it seems to me that he's suggesting that *any* failure would result in a "setback", not just failure by a certain margin. He also never said anything about "punishing group effort", so I'm not really sure where you got that from.

As to your comment that "Even a single character running the test could have the same consequences," I think you're missing the point of what he suggested. Again, as I understand it, this post is saying that additional people making a skill check increases the chance of success while *also* increasing the chance of a setback, because it's not binary -- if one character succeeds at the check while another fails, the goal has been achieved but at a cost. (That's *not* possible if a single character is making the check, because they can either succeed or fail, but not both.)

Wyvern

 

[Wyvern]

You're missing the point. I'm not arguing for this, so you're addressing a strawman.

YOU may not be arguing for it, but Ovinomancer was. Those were the examples he used, and that was what Veteran Sergeant was objecting to. Maybe you're willing to assume that he didn't really mean to suggest that he thinks players should be expected to roll the dice when changing a diaper, but it's not fair to accuse V.S. of "addressing a strawman" when all he did was take Ovinomancer at his word.

Set aside the specific examples and look at the abstraction: You can imagine there are Easy tasks an adventurer might do that do have an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence of failure. Those are the things under discussion.

Except that they're not. The only examples of an Easy task that have been offered so far are the examples Ovinomancer came up with. If you want him to discuss "Easy tasks an adventurer might do that do have an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence of failure," then I think that *you* should give some examples of what sort of tasks you would consider Easy for an adventurer, so that we're all on the same page here.

IMO the problem is that people are seeing the word Easy and assuming that it means a task which almost anyone should be able to do automatically with no chance of failure, when it's clear that's not what the designers meant -- otherwise they wouldn't have assigned "Easy" a DC of 10. You can criticize their choice of terminology if you like, but don't try to tell me that skill checks are too difficult based on a flawed interpretation of the difficulty scale. You need to recalibrate your expectations, and understand that in context, "Easy" doesn't mean "guaranteed success", it means that someone with minimal competence has a better-than-even chance of succeeding on their first try, and an expert will nearly always succeed on the first try. If "Easy" meant guaranteed success, there would be no reason to have a "Very Easy" DC.

I'm reminded of how the Fading Suns rules got a lot of criticism because a person of "average" skill and ability level attempting an "average" task will fail 50% of the time. The problem is that "average" means different things in different contexts. A 50% can be excellent, mediocre, or terrible, depending on whether you're talking about a batting average, a star rating for a movie, or an exam score.

When Ovinomancer suggests that players should make fewer skill checks, he's right for the wrong reasons. If his GM is actually making him roll for tasks equivalent to driving to the store or changing a diaper, he's doing it wrong. It shouldn't be incumbent on the player to try to find ways to get out of making the check so that they don't risk failure, it should be incumbent on the GM not to ask them to roll skill checks for such trivial tasks in the first place!

And yes, using a d20 for skill checks gives very swingy results. That's just the nature of the beast, and if you're going to play D&D you just have to learn to live with it. If you can't, there are plenty of other games to choose from.

Wyvern

 

[iserith]

YOU may not be arguing for it, but Ovinomancer was. Those were the examples he used, and that was what Veteran Sergeant was objecting to. Maybe you're willing to assume that he didn't really mean to suggest that he thinks players should be expected to roll the dice when changing a diaper, but it's not fair to accuse V.S. of "addressing a strawman" when all he did was take Ovinomancer at his word.

Except that they're not. The only examples of an Easy task that have been offered so far are the examples Ovinomancer came up with. If you want him to discuss "Easy tasks an adventurer might do that do have an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence of failure," then I think that *you* should give some examples of what sort of tasks you would consider Easy for an adventurer, so that we're all on the same page here.

As I've stated in other threads, examples are dangerous for exactly the reason we're debating here. People get hung up on the specifics of the examples and in my view miss the overall point. I prefer to deal at the level of abstraction hence "easy tasks an adventurer might do that have an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence of failure." We can both understand that without getting hung up on examples. Or so I hope.

IMO the problem is that people are seeing the word Easy and assuming that it means a task which almost anyone should be able to do automatically with no chance of failure, when it's clear that's not what the designers meant -- otherwise they wouldn't have assigned "Easy" a DC of 10. You can criticize their choice of terminology if you like, but don't try to tell me that skill checks are too difficult based on a flawed interpretation of the difficulty scale. You need to recalibrate your expectations, and understand that in context, "Easy" doesn't mean "guaranteed success", it means that someone with minimal competence has a better-than-even chance of succeeding on their first try, and an expert will nearly always succeed on the first try. If "Easy" meant guaranteed success, there would be no reason to have a "Very Easy" DC.

I don't take the position that the DCs are too difficult. I would say they are just difficult enough to encourage reasonable efforts to avoid rolling if the players can manage it.

When Ovinomancer suggests that players should make fewer skill checks, he's right for the wrong reasons. If his GM is actually making him roll for tasks equivalent to driving to the store or changing a diaper, he's doing it wrong. It shouldn't be incumbent on the player to try to find ways to get out of making the check so that they don't risk failure, it should be incumbent on the GM not to ask them to roll skill checks for such trivial tasks in the first place!

And yes, using a d20 for skill checks gives very swingy results. That's just the nature of the beast, and if you're going to play D&D you just have to learn to live with it. If you can't, there are plenty of other games to choose from.

I don't think it's trivial to roll checks for "easy tasks an adventurer might do that have an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence of failure." I think it's reasonable behavior for a player to want to bypass that fickle d20 and the "just difficult enough" DCs and go straight for automatic success if he or she can set up the circumstances and take action to make that happen, at a cost even, if that cost is worth it. So sure, live with the d20, but avoid it if you can. That seems like smart play to me, if succeeding more often than not is one of the player's goals.

 

[Wyvern]

As I've stated in other threads, examples are dangerous for exactly the reason we're debating here. People get hung up on the specifics of the examples and in my view miss the overall point. I prefer to deal at the level of abstraction hence "easy tasks an adventurer might do that have an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence of failure."

I haven't seen these other threads you're referencing, so I don't know why it is you think that giving specific examples of what you mean is dangerous. To my mind, defining your terms is never detrimental to clear communication, and the problem here is that the definition of "Easy" is subjective. I have no idea what YOU would consider "easy tasks an adventurer might do that have an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence of failure," and therefore I have no basis to judge whether I would agree with you on whether DC 10 is too high, too low or just right for such tasks.

I *do* know that the examples Ovinomancer gave were ridiculous, and that no good GM should ever ask their PCs to make skill checks for such tasks unless a) they're doing so for the humor value (in which case they should at most be DC 5) or b) there are complicating factors, such as if they're trying to drive to the store during an earthquake.

We can both understand that without getting hung up on examples. Or so I hope.

I think the evidence so far bears out the conclusion that we can't come to an understanding without more specific examples, as Veteran Sergeant (and I) clearly have very different opinions from Ovinomancer on what constitutes an Easy skill check. I suppose you could make a case that if he hadn't given examples in the first place, this argument would have been avoided, but in that case you should be chiding him for giving such poor examples instead of chiding the Sergeant for taking issue with them.

I don't take the position that the DCs are too difficult. I would say they are just difficult enough to encourage reasonable efforts to avoid rolling if the players can manage it.

On that, I think I can agree with you.

I don't think it's trivial to roll checks for "easy tasks an adventurer might do that have an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence of failure." I think it's reasonable behavior for a player to want to bypass that fickle d20 and the "just difficult enough" DCs and go straight for automatic success if he or she can set up the circumstances and take action to make that happen, at a cost even, if that cost is worth it. So sure, live with the d20, but avoid it if you can. That seems like smart play to me, if succeeding more often than not is one of the player's goals.

And on that.

Wyvern

 

[CapnZapp]

Remember the topic of the thread. It's not just that DC 10 is laughably easy for the point man that attempts them, it's the ridiculous insanity of an easy time that guidance, Bardic Inspiration and indeed the help action results in.

Let's say the party needs to make three Really Important checks during one day of adventure; seducing the baroness, convincing the Bridge Troll of passage, and impressing the Kobolds of Food with an eating contest.

Each time, the best man (or woman) steps up for the job.

Now, if you believe the rules designers, you're supposed to find excitement and drama in making a DC 10-15 check, when your roll is d20+d8+d4+8 with advantage, and then a Lucky reroll just for good measure.

That is justifiably utter insanity. Wasn't D&D supposed to be about finding glory and fame in success because there actually was a risk of failure?

Man, I'm getting old, if y'all are content rolling meaningless dice where you risk nothing and never fail.

Of course you must rule that all these bonuses never apply out of combat, or you can never gain the satisfaction of success,or more to the point: the satisfaction you dared to gamble with defeat but won anyway.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That sounds a lot like a group check to me. It may not be the same as how the PHB defines a group check, but it's still a group, making a check. Now, I can see how Clayton may have read something into your suggestion that wasn't there, but if that's the case it would behoove you to clear up the misunderstanding instead of getting pissy with him because he failed to understand you.

Clayton: I *think* (and Ovinomancer can correct me if I've also got the wrong end of the stick) that your mistake was assuming that Ovinomancer applies critical failures to skill checks, because he used the word "setback". On rereading this post, it seems to me that he's suggesting that *any* failure would result in a "setback", not just failure by a certain margin. He also never said anything about "punishing group effort", so I'm not really sure where you got that from.

As to your comment that "Even a single character running the test could have the same consequences," I think you're missing the point of what he suggested. Again, as I understand it, this post is saying that additional people making a skill check increases the chance of success while *also* increasing the chance of a setback, because it's not binary -- if one character succeeds at the check while another fails, the goal has been achieved but at a cost. (That's *not* possible if a single character is making the check, because they can either succeed or fail, but not both.)

Wyvern

Oh, good grief, another one who's declared themselves expert on my thinking so they can tell me I'm absolutely wrong about what it was I meant.

 

[iserith]

I haven't seen these other threads you're referencing, so I don't know why it is you think that giving specific examples of what you mean is dangerous. To my mind, defining your terms is never detrimental to clear communication, and the problem here is that the definition of "Easy" is subjective. I have no idea what YOU would consider "easy tasks an adventurer might do that have an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence of failure," and therefore I have no basis to judge whether I would agree with you on whether DC 10 is too high, too low or just right for such tasks.

I *do* know that the examples Ovinomancer gave were ridiculous, and that no good GM should ever ask their PCs to make skill checks for such tasks unless a) they're doing so for the humor value (in which case they should at most be DC 5) or b) there are complicating factors, such as if they're trying to drive to the store during an earthquake.

I think the evidence so far bears out the conclusion that we can't come to an understanding without more specific examples, as Veteran Sergeant (and I) clearly have very different opinions from Ovinomancer on what constitutes an Easy skill check. I suppose you could make a case that if he hadn't given examples in the first place, this argument would have been avoided, but in that case you should be chiding him for giving such poor examples instead of chiding the Sergeant for taking issue with them.

That's exactly my point though - "Easy" is subjective and requires an understanding of the total context at the table. Which means examples are often pointless distractions that harm understanding as has been shown here quite easily in my view. So it's better to sit at the level of abstraction. It doesn't matter what I consider to be Easy tasks which is why I distilled @Ovinomancer's examples down to "Easy task with an uncertain outcome and a meaningful consequence of failure." I consider that a charitable reading that allowed me to understand the larger point: It's smart play for players to avoid making ability checks, even Easy ones, if they can avoid it because guaranteed success is better than rolling that d20. There's a decent chance that even a trained character at lower levels will blow it.

On that, I think I can agree with you.

And on that.

Then, as far as I can tell, you also agree with @Ovinomancer. What you may not agree on is what constitutes an Easy task. But that is, as you already said, subjective.