I am not overthinking. A person not trained in grapples (Athletics, Acrobatics, or taking the Grappler feat) will not be effective at grappling, just as a person without training in emergency care (or Medicine in this case) will not be effective at stabilizing patients. Grabbing my shirt is not going to reduce my movement to 0. That is not grappling. I can still pull you along when I move, and this will probably follow a contested Strength check à la tug of war, except the rope in this scenario would be my shirt.
My point that I am trying to highlight is that Athletics and Acrobatics are not skills that every person will know in real life,
I'm pretty sure we're on the same page in a way. Your statement that you could pull away is part and parcel of the whole grapple contested roll. The shirt thing was an example I used to show that your arms aren't pinned, you can still fight and perform actions.
Regarding Athletics and Acrobatics, everybody (meaning D&D PCs) can try to climb, jump, run, or swim. Training for it makes you better.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
I am not overthinking. A person not trained in grapples (Athletics, Acrobatics, or taking the Grappler feat) will not be effective at grappling, just as a person without training in emergency care (or Medicine in this case) will not be effective at stabilizing patients. Grabbing my shirt is not going to reduce my movement to 0. That is not grappling. I can still pull you along when I move, and this will probably follow a contested Strength check à la tug of war, except the rope in this scenario would be my shirt.
My point that I am trying to highlight is that Athletics and Acrobatics are not skills that every person will know in real life,
I'm pretty sure we're on the same page in a way. Your statement that you could pull away is part and parcel of the whole grapple contested roll. The shirt thing was an example I used to show that your arms aren't pinned, you can still fight and perform actions.
Regarding Athletics and Acrobatics, everybody (meaning D&D PCs) can try to climb, jump, run, or swim. Training for it makes you better.
But holding onto a shirt is not grappling. Being grappled as a condition means your movement is literally 0, either due to your legs not making meaningful traction and contact with the ground (such as being slightly lifted in a bearhug), or having so much downward force and leverage against your body that if you are trying to move away instead of using all your strength to maintain a standing position, you are going to get knocked prone (such as being under a standing guillotine).
And not everyone knows how to swim either. Floating is not even an innate instinct that everyone has, or else sinking and drowning would not be such huge issues requiring safety measures like floaties and life guards in public pools where water is still and not even flowing.
If you are reasoning that Athletics and Acrobatics is an innate skill that everyone has, where a character's stat modifier in the skill without the proficiency bonus can still have an effect on the game, then that reasoning would also apply to Medicine where people not proficient in it can still do things to help stabilize a critical patient such as applying pressure to stop bleeding and do CPR to stabilize a person suffering from drowning. It is this inconsistency in standards being applied to different skills that I am trying to highlight.
Even with numerous sparrings with my friend and having a year of after school Taekwondo lessons, I would not even consider myself half proficient in Athletics at all. However, D&D still gives me that modifier to Athletics reflecting the limited knowledge I have about grappling to do something about grappling.
I have practically zero professional training in emergency medical care, but I do have basic medical knowledge that everyone practically has in regards to applying pressure, doing CPR, and other simple stuff like that.
Can we just say that D&D combat mechanics aren't really suited or meant for portraying the nuances of realistic combat and leave it at that?
I agree that D&D combat mechanics is not suited for portrayal of realistic combat, but that can also be said for how mental and social skills work. However, D&D's mechanics as a whole is close enough to reflect some bits of reality. But closeness to reality is not my point.
My point is the inconsistency in applying standards to different skills. If dedicated training and study in certain skills is necessary and required to be allowed to roll at all, then why downplay the training and study for some skills compared to other skills?
If a character has absolutely no way to know something, then they don’t get to make many Int-based skill checks. For example, 99.9% of people have no chance to know about an assassination plot.
But anything that’s general knowledge, anyone has a chance to know. Maybe they were flipping through an arcane book when they were bored, or witnessed a cult murder someone in the streets. I’d make it a very high DC, like 18-20 for things commonly known by experts, up to 25 or 30 for obscure facts even your Arcana expert Wizard needs to roll for.
A bigger problem is multiple characters attempting a check. While this is “realistic”, it basically gives the party super-advantage on every check out of initiative, and makes it impossible to balance for a chance of either failure or success. I rarely let more than one player roll the same check, almost never more than two.
And it depends more on background than class. A rogue with the sage background has a more plausible explanation for knowing arcane knowledge than a pig boy wizard who found a spell book in the filth. Don’t penalize a rogue if they take proficiency in Arcana by not letting them roll checks. If they have proficiency in arcana, it means, uncharacteristically for their class, they studied.
A bigger problem is multiple characters attempting a check. While this is “realistic”, it basically gives the party super-advantage on every check out of initiative, and makes it impossible to balance for a chance of either failure or success. I rarely let more than one player roll the same check, almost never more than two.
I do not think it is impossible to balance checks if the entire party rolls. If anything, I think the default assumption in the books is that everyone in the party roll for skill checks unless stated otherwise or if something specifically targets only one character. During a combat encounter, we do not only let the character with the highest damage output to deal damage, we do not only let the highest AC character get hit, and we do not let only the highest HP character take the damage.
For out of combat encounters like noticing traps or answering riddles, I think letting everyone roll increases player engagement and participation.
And it depends more on background than class. A rogue with the sage background has a more plausible explanation for knowing arcane knowledge than a pig boy wizard who found a spell book in the filth. Don’t penalize a rogue if they take proficiency in Arcana by not letting them roll checks. If they have proficiency in arcana, it means, uncharacteristically for their class, they studied.
No one is saying that a character that took proficiency in Arcana should be penalized by not allowing them to roll. The discussion was about penalizing characters who do not take Arcana and not allowing them to roll despite them having a basic stat modifier in the skill, as well as holding different skills to different levels of standards by saying that some skills require proficiency to be allowed to roll while other skills face no such limitations.
But holding onto a shirt is not grappling. Being grappled as a condition means your movement is literally 0, either due to your legs not making meaningful traction and contact with the ground (such as being slightly lifted in a bearhug), or having so much downward force and leverage against your body that if you are trying to move away instead of using all your strength to maintain a standing position, you are going to get knocked prone (such as being under a standing guillotine).
And not everyone knows how to swim either. Floating is not even an innate instinct that everyone has, or else sinking and drowning would not be such huge issues requiring safety measures like floaties and life guards in public pools where water is still and not even flowing.
If you are reasoning that Athletics and Acrobatics is an innate skill that everyone has, where a character's stat modifier in the skill without the proficiency bonus can still have an effect on the game, then that reasoning would also apply to Medicine where people not proficient in it can still do things to help stabilize a critical patient such as applying pressure to stop bleeding and do CPR to stabilize a person suffering from drowning. It is this inconsistency in standards being applied to different skills that I am trying to highlight.
Clearly you are ignoring my response and repeatedly trying to apply real life circumstance to a game rule. Again, I used the shirt example because the rules say the attackers uses one or more hands to grab the target. The target only suffers the loss of movement. If a limb were grappled/grabbed, there might be cause for combat penalty, but there is none.
Every PC can swim, climb, and jump. That's the rule by default. If you choose to have your PC not be able to swim, that's your personal RP decision.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
But holding onto a shirt is not grappling. Being grappled as a condition means your movement is literally 0, either due to your legs not making meaningful traction and contact with the ground (such as being slightly lifted in a bearhug), or having so much downward force and leverage against your body that if you are trying to move away instead of using all your strength to maintain a standing position, you are going to get knocked prone (such as being under a standing guillotine).
And not everyone knows how to swim either. Floating is not even an innate instinct that everyone has, or else sinking and drowning would not be such huge issues requiring safety measures like floaties and life guards in public pools where water is still and not even flowing.
If you are reasoning that Athletics and Acrobatics is an innate skill that everyone has, where a character's stat modifier in the skill without the proficiency bonus can still have an effect on the game, then that reasoning would also apply to Medicine where people not proficient in it can still do things to help stabilize a critical patient such as applying pressure to stop bleeding and do CPR to stabilize a person suffering from drowning. It is this inconsistency in standards being applied to different skills that I am trying to highlight.
Clearly you are ignoring my response and repeatedly trying to apply real life circumstance to a game rule. Again, I used the shirt example because the rules say the attackers uses one or more hands to grab the target. The target only suffers the loss of movement. If a limb were grappled/grabbed, there might be cause for combat penalty, but there is none.
Every PC can swim, climb, and jump. That's the rule by default. If you choose to have your PC not be able to swim, that's your personal RP decision.
I am not trying to ignore your response. I am trying to highlight that you are downplaying the training and practice involved with Athletics and Acrobatics skills. You mentioned grabbing a character's arm or shirt. I stated those specific grappling techniques that I mentioned because those techniques specifically leave an opponent's arms free while actually reducing their movement to zero.
Realistically, a patient that is dying is probably going to be suffering from more than just blood loss or lack of oxygen, and your average Joe honestly is not going to successfully stabilize them. That is not what I am concerned with. The thing I am concerned with is that you are downplaying the training and practice involved with Athletics and Acrobatics and holding different skills to different standards.
Just as every PC can roll for Arcana to recall magical lore or roll for Medicine to stabilize patients, every PC can also attempt roll to grapple and have an innate ability to swim. That is just rules by default. However, with your modifications, you are saying that some skills require proficiency in order to be used, but other skills do not require proficiency in order to be used, with the reasoning being that proficiency represents dedicated training. I am just not sure why you want to downplay the training involved with Athletics and Acrobatics skill and apply different standards to different skills.
By eliminating the usefulness of the plain stat modifiers on skills, that already makes taking ASIs very unappealing for anything outside of combat. And even for combat, it is hard to justify taking ASIs at 4th level when taking a Feat can significantly increase your options or boost your damage output. You will still want to use ASIs eventually later on to round out your stats, but rounding out your stats early on is not really necessary. And by applying that standard unevenly across different skills, it makes using ASIs for Str or Dex less punishing than using ASIs for Int or Wis.
Just as every PC can roll for Arcana to recall magical lore or roll for Medicine to stabilize patients, every PC can also attempt roll to grapple and have an innate ability to swim. That is just rules by default. However, with your modifications, you are saying that some skills require proficiency in order to be used, but other skills do not require proficiency in order to be used, with the reasoning being that proficiency represents dedicated training. I am just not sure why you want to downplay the training involved with Athletics and Acrobatics skill and apply different standards to different skills.
I say so because every PC can swim, jump, and climb. Requiring proficiency for these would be stupid and game breaking. So requiring Athletics to establish a grapple or break one would also be stupid and game breaking. If Athletics were required, then half (at a guess) of the PCs out there would not be able to grab anybody. That makes no sense.
I understand that you want to establish an example of real world grappling but what you are probably thinking about is being Restrained. There is a huge in-game difference between the two.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Just as every PC can roll for Arcana to recall magical lore or roll for Medicine to stabilize patients, every PC can also attempt roll to grapple and have an innate ability to swim. That is just rules by default. However, with your modifications, you are saying that some skills require proficiency in order to be used, but other skills do not require proficiency in order to be used, with the reasoning being that proficiency represents dedicated training. I am just not sure why you want to downplay the training involved with Athletics and Acrobatics skill and apply different standards to different skills.
I say so because every PC can swim, jump, and climb. Requiring proficiency for these would be stupid and game breaking. So requiring Athletics to establish a grapple or break one would also be stupid and game breaking. If Athletics were required, then half (at a guess) of the PCs out there would not be able to grab anybody. That makes no sense.
I understand that you want to establish an example of real world grappling but what you are probably thinking about is being Restrained. There is a huge in-game difference between the two.
Simply grabbing a person is not going to reduce their movement to zero. They can still do a contested check similar to tug of war and move the grabber along with them without the need for the grabber to let go. Grappling a person to cause their movement to reduce to zero requires far more training and skill than simply grabbing a person or applying pressure to stop bleeding or doing CPR, and it makes no sense for a person without training in Athletics to reduce opponent's movement to zero. Just because you think it is easy to grapple people does not mean it is actually easy to do so, and you are downplaying the training and practice involved for certain skills but not others.
For RAW melee combat, there is no way to cause an opponent to be restrained without also restraining yourself, at least not that I know of. The Grappler feat lets you pin an opponent, but it causes both players to be restrained. Bearhugs and a standing guillotine does not restrain the grappler, and the grappler can very much control the movement of the person they are grappling.
This is why I have two house rules on this topic. Number one, only one PC is allowed to make a given check (with advantage if the others help). This makes sure the wizard is always “the smart one,” and the barbarian can’t just become Einstein because she got a lucky roll. Number two, for many skill checks, especially knowledge skills (arcana, history, religion, nature) I require proficiency, and in many cases give automatic success to characters with proficiency. The major exceptions I can think of are Athletics and Acrobatics, for fairly obvious reasons.
This is why I have two house rules on this topic. Number one, only one PC is allowed to make a given check (with advantage if the others help). This makes sure the wizard is always “the smart one,” and the barbarian can’t just become Einstein because she got a lucky roll. Number two, for many skill checks, especially knowledge skills (arcana, history, religion, nature) I require proficiency, and in many cases give automatic success to characters with proficiency. The major exceptions I can think of are Athletics and Acrobatics, for fairly obvious reasons.
If the barbarian managed to roll well and knows one particular factoid from reading about it somewhere, that does not make automatically make them Einstein though. A barbarin that decides to increase Int for roleplay reasons would be punished for not being allowed to use their stat modifier simply because they did not have proficiency in an Intelligence skill.
And as I mentioned above, applying different standards to different skills downplays the training involved for some skills over others. A person untrained in Athletics, Acrobatics, or not have the Grappler feat will definitely not be effective at grappling someone and reduce their speed to 0. At least for Intelligence skills, it is at least a lot more plausible that they heard or read about the information somewhere.
So ... is it accurate to sum up the conversation by saying that mechanically the system doesn't really differentiate between a roll with proficiency and one without (except maybe in very specific niche cases) but that it is also explicitly written as the DM's prerogative when to allow/call for rolls so they can differentiate if they want. Some people like to allow everyone to roll on any skill check and let the dice roll where they lie whereas others like to make the choice of training in a skill give a qualitative difference to those results and no one is wrong in how they like to run this, it's just different styles.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
So ... is it accurate to sum up the conversation by saying that mechanically the system doesn't really differentiate between a roll with proficiency and one without (except maybe in very specific niche cases) but that it is also explicitly written as the DM's prerogative when to allow/call for rolls so they can differentiate if they want. Some people like to allow everyone to roll on any skill check and let the dice roll where they lie whereas others like to make the choice of training in a skill give a qualitative difference to those results and no one is wrong in how they like to run this, it's just different styles.
I would say this is pretty accurate. It's more a discussion on what players/DM's use at their tables, to maybe offer alternative ideas or views on it. Some seek a more "logical" course, to enhance the immersion of the game, while others simply go for dice rolls, without much thought to if the roll makes sense, in a logical sense. Being a fantasy game, tossing logic out the window is perfectly fine, if it works for your table. In the same light, maintaining some will add a bit more depth to the adventure and push players to be more thoughtful and insightful in their character builds and uses during the adventure. Either method works, depending on tour table. RP strong tables will likely prefer the highly selective methods of allowing/making rolls (my preference) while less RP oriented tables will prefer the letting anyone roll for anything methods.
On a side note, I also take character race/size into consideration for some rolls. Recently a Gnome, with a Str of 16 was trying to use a rope to pull a Goliath out of a pit. She rolled with disadvantage, due to the excessive difficulty in moving something that was significantly heavier than herself (maintaining traction on the dusty/dirty floor was the obstacle) If there had been something she could anchor herself to (a pillar she could tie off to) the check would have been with advantage, due to her proficiency in Athletics. (For the record, she failed the first attempt and he fell again, taking another 5 points fall damage lol) The group liked it and readily accepted the challenges inherent to the task. As is obvious, we are quite RP heavy.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
A bigger problem is multiple characters attempting a check. While this is “realistic”, it basically gives the party super-advantage on every check out of initiative, and makes it impossible to balance for a chance of either failure or success. I rarely let more than one player roll the same check, almost never more than two.
I do not think it is impossible to balance checks if the entire party rolls.
Here's an example. Compare the chance of success on a DC 16 check if one PC rolls to the whole party. Assume the single PC has the best mod at +5 and the other four members have +0.
The best player, alone, has a 50/50 chance. Together, they have an 84% chance. (1 - .5 x .75^4)
Now, you can account for that by making the DC higher. But it's not easy math to decide the DC that gives an interesting chance of both failure and success. It also becomes really sensitive to party size, which makes it really hard to write balanced published adventures.
In particular, let's see what DC you'd have to set to get it down to a 50/50 chance. DC 19 gives 57%. DC 20 gives 43%. We need a DC 20 for less than a 50% chance of success. And this is a fairly conservative example. It's quite likely you'll have one party member with better than +5 or two with better than +0. With two players with +5 or one player with +8, even a DC 20 is easier than even odds.
Mathing the crap out of stuff always "proves" allowing multiple rolls is almost like giving it up free. I think that speaks for itself.
Story-wise, I would offer MY opinion (which likely means nothing to anyone NOT playing at my table, but this is a discussion, so...) on the Barbarian example, trying to examine say, a weapon, to see if it's magical. First couple levels, if they specifically ask to look at an item, even after someone else has done so, I will allow it. I set about an 18-19 for them to determine anything at this point. Great roll, ok, you are pretty sure this weapon is magical in some way. No idea WHAT way, but you get a feel that it's magical. If this behavior continues through the campaign, the Barbarian would start getting better chances of finding out something. Still well behind the Arcane casters in the group, but from seeing and handling so many different weapons, and if others have discovered something and he knows, he gets to "feel" the different magics within them. No idea how they got there or anything, but after handling enough different magical weapons, he knows a magical sword that burns when it strikes "feels" different from the one that made a massive boom.
I tend to, on ability checks, set different standards for the characters, dependent of their skills and applicability. Some, jumping across a gap or what not have a flat rating, modifiers make sense, but clue gathering, interpretation and so forth will be easier for some than others, given a situation, setting or any other factor. Trying to DM "Fairly" is a lot of on your feet thinking, when the party starts taking a bunch of unexpected left turns on you.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
If the barbarian managed to roll well and knows one particular factoid from reading about it somewhere, that does not make automatically make them Einstein though. A barbarin that decides to increase Int for roleplay reasons would be punished for not being allowed to use their stat modifier simply because they did not have proficiency in an Intelligence skill.
But the Barbarian does not get a roll just by asking, you are mistaken about the way the whole system works. By default, a barbarian would not have a roll to recall an obscure arcane fact that he would have no chance to have ever heard about. Now, on the other hand, if he took some intelligence training to become more cultured, I would ask him how he did that training, did he read, where, what kind of books, or did he do logic puzzles, mathematical ones, etc.
You see, if it truly was a roleplaying effort that the barbarian did (rather than a purely technical one which is unfortunately the norm), he should be able to roleplay the knwowledge gained and how he now has a chance to recall that obscure arcane fact, and all that would be part of his story, and recorded in the campaign. Isn’t that much better in terms of roleplaying than using “player rights” to roll all over the place without care for the history and the consistency of the player's background?
I do not think a barbarin would have no chance of hearing about arcane facts, since the barbarian is living in a world where magic exists. Everyone has some knowledge of magical lore, or else it would not have made sense for basic stat modifier to exist, and disallowing them to roll effectively treats that modifier as a 0 or worse. A person might not have dedicated training in Arcana, but through just living life and increasing their Int overtime, they are going to encounter and learn some magical lore. Even if the barbarian has a plain 0 or even a -1 modifier in a skill, that does not mean they have never heard of magical lore, it just means they are less likely to hear or know about magical lore.
However, whether allowing a character not proficient in Arcana to roll or not is not the point. Whether allowing a character without proficiency in Athletics or Acrobatics to roll for grappling checks is not the point either.
The point I am concerned with is the uneven standards applied to different skills and downplaying the training of certain skills compared to others. And in my opinion, that uneven standard unfairly punishes some players more than others.
Using mechanics to reflect and enhance roleplay is important in my opinion and I do not think players should be punished for making mechanical decisions to enhance roleplay. A barbarian taking Int is already punished enough mechanically for combat, as they are losing out on a feat and even just picking Str or Con would be better for being a front line tank. The only positive thing for combat is that Int gives a barbarian better saves, but I do not think it is worth the trade off compared to just picking a Feat, Str, or Con. Letting the barbarian roll for Int skills is the least the DM can do to let the barbarian not feel like it is a complete waste. This is not a player trying to minmaxing the system using Int to maximize damage output and curb stomp non-combat encounters with Proficiency in all Int skills. This is a player simply saying that their barbarian is not your stereotypical dumb brute, and while they might not be a know it all like the wizard is, they do know enough to have some knowledge of magic, history, etc. and can use logic to do some basic investigation.
In contrast, allowing a wizard to use their Athletics and Acrobatics skill without any limits means that a wizard is punished far less for taking an ASI in Str or Dex for roleplaying reasons compared to a barbarian taking an ASI in Int.
By eliminating the nuances in mental skills that a character can have, but continuing to allow the nuances of physical skills, that uneven treatment in skills punishes a barbarian who wants to be smart a lot more than it punishes a wizard who wants to be buff.
A bigger problem is multiple characters attempting a check. While this is “realistic”, it basically gives the party super-advantage on every check out of initiative, and makes it impossible to balance for a chance of either failure or success. I rarely let more than one player roll the same check, almost never more than two.
I do not think it is impossible to balance checks if the entire party rolls.
Here's an example. Compare the chance of success on a DC 16 check if one PC rolls to the whole party. Assume the single PC has the best mod at +5 and the other four members have +0.
The best player, alone, has a 50/50 chance. Together, they have an 84% chance. (1 - .5 x .75^4)
Now, you can account for that by making the DC higher. But it's not easy math to decide the DC that gives an interesting chance of both failure and success. It also becomes really sensitive to party size, which makes it really hard to write balanced published adventures.
In particular, let's see what DC you'd have to set to get it down to a 50/50 chance. DC 19 gives 57%. DC 20 gives 43%. We need a DC 20 for less than a 50% chance of success. And this is a fairly conservative example. It's quite likely you'll have one party member with better than +5 or two with better than +0. With two players with +5 or one player with +8, even a DC 20 is easier than even odds.
If combat encounters can have both individual and group rolls, why treat noncombat encounters differently in only allowing one character to roll? Just as an entire party can roll for initiative or a group of PCs rolling for saves if they get targeted by an area of effect spells, non combat encounters like a dragon asking the party a riddle can have the entire party roll and contribute towards the answer instead of allowing only the one with the highest Investigation to roll.
There are also encounters where having a larger party size is actually more detrimental, such as traps that punishes the entire party if anyone fails a roll. Stealth is also another type of encounter where having less members makes the party harder to notice as there are less rolls being made.
But the Barbarian does not get a roll just by asking, you are mistaken about the way the whole system works. By default, a barbarian would not have a roll to recall an obscure arcane fact that he would have no chance to have ever heard about. Now, on the other hand, if he took some intelligence training to become more cultured, I would ask him how he did that training, did he read, where, what kind of books, or did he do logic puzzles, mathematical ones, etc.
You see, if it truly was a roleplaying effort that the barbarian did (rather than a purely technical one which is unfortunately the norm), he should be able to roleplay the knwowledge gained and how he now has a chance to recall that obscure arcane fact, and all that would be part of his story, and recorded in the campaign. Isn’t that much better in terms of roleplaying than using “player rights” to roll all over the place without care for the history and the consistency of the player's background?
I do not think a barbarin would have no chance of hearing about arcane facts, since the barbarian is living in a world where magic exists. Everyone has some knowledge of magical lore, or else it would not have made sense for basic stat modifier to exist, and disallowing them to roll effectively treats that modifier as a 0 or worse. A person might not have dedicated training in Arcana, but through just living life and increasing their Int overtime, they are going to encounter and learn some magical lore. Even if the barbarian has a plain 0 or even a -1 modifier in a skill, that does not mean they have never heard of magical lore, it just means they are less likely to hear or know about magical lore.
We live in a world where quantum theory exists and is used absolutely every day by your mobile phone but I guarantee that if I ask a random person on the street even what is quantum theory I will at best hear a lot of silly things and probably nothing at all. The same with programming theory which is, again, used absolutely every day by people using their phone.
Yes, people might pick up a few tibbits over time, but nothing that will help them program or really understand quantum theory, even after 20 or 40 years.
I am no scientist, but in my own words, quantum mechanics deals with physical laws that govern the universe on the extremely tiny scale. I imagine most people with a college degree to give an answer something similar to mine, usually including physics and small in their definition of quantum mechanics. At best, I can further elaborate that the strong force keeps protons and neutrons bound to each other in the center of an atom, the weak force changes one subatomic particle into another, subatomic particles are made up of quarks of various flavors, energy comes in discrete units, the uncertainty principle states that being certain about something's position means that we are not certain about its velocity and vice versa, and that is all that comes to my mind so far regarding quantum mechanics.
A barbarian might not be knowledgeable enough to explain Arcana in detail, but they can still comprehend some basic principles and concepts.
However, whether allowing a character not proficient in Arcana to roll or not is not the point. Whether allowing a character without proficiency in Athletics or Acrobatics to roll for grappling checks is not the point either.
The point I am concerned with is the uneven standards applied to different skills and downplaying the training of certain skills compared to others. And in my opinion, that uneven standard unfairly punishes some players more than others.
Since when are all skills supposed to be equal ? I will not allow the wizard to roll on a nature or survival check either if it is a bit technical, so I hardly think that it's unfair.
And at least in 5e everyone more or less has the same kind of skills as others...
All skills are equal in the sense that anyone should be able to roll for them, and their modifier in a skill with or without proficiency bonus represents their experience and chances of success. For challenges that are technical and require training to accomplish, a DC of 26 is going to exclude anyone without proficiency from ever overcoming it unless they can get a stat to be 22 or over. For stuff like recalling lore about a magic ring or applying pressure to stop someone from bleeding out, it is something that anyone can realistically accomplish.
Using mechanics to reflect and enhance roleplay is important in my opinion and I do not think players should be punished for making mechanical decisions to enhance roleplay. A barbarian taking Int is already punished enough mechanically for combat, as they are losing out on a feat and even just picking Str or Con would be better for being a front line tank. The only positive thing for combat is that Int gives a barbarian better saves, but I do not think it is worth the trade off compared to just picking a Feat, Str, or Con.
And didn't I just say that if the barbarian players decides to increase his int, I will let him tell me how he did that and probably allow him a greater opportunity to roll if it's appropriate. Now, if what he really is interested in is arcana, he can get a feat to become proficient, so what is the problem exactly ?
In that case, I guess it is fine. It is just that letting players unconditionally roll when a DM calls for a roll instead of arbitraly choosing one player makes for a more inclusive game. And the DM can still let players with proficiency shine by setting the difficulty as high as necessary so that only they have the chance to successfully overcome the difficulty.
Letting the barbarian roll for Int skills is the least the DM can do to let the barbarian not feel like it is a complete waste. This is not a player trying to minmaxing the system using Int to maximize damage output and curb stomp non-combat encounters with Proficiency in all Int skills. This is a player simply saying that their barbarian is not your stereotypical dumb brute, and while they might not be a know it all like the wizard is, they do know enough to have some knowledge of magic, history, etc. and can use logic to do some basic investigation.
And again, there is only so much that 1 or 2 points of intelligence will get you if you try to figure out quantum theory or programming on your own.
This is not a player asking for their barbarian to write a thesis on Arcana theory or creating an iron golem from scratch. This is just giving the player's character a consistent opportunity to roll for Arcana or any other skill, especially when the skill specifically states something like recalling lore about magical items and the challenge is about recalling information. Just because I am trained in accounting and pay some attention to the stock market does not mean I know what the stock price, let alone profit, of every public company out there. However, any friend of mine who is not trained in accounting still has a chance to recall approximate stock price of a company by simply just flipping through the news or wondering through Yahoo Finance.
In contrast, allowing a wizard to use their Athletics and Acrobatics skill without any limits means that a wizard is punished far less for taking an ASI in Str or Dex for roleplaying reasons compared to a barbarian taking an ASI in Int.
However, the barbarian, being in the front line, has actually a fare greater chance to use his proficiency in fights and adventuring than the wizard who will get a check once in a blue moon both in athletics and actually in arcana.
Most wizards generally do not go on the frontline, but that does not mean they cannot. A bladesinger for example can do relatively well on the frontline, or at least be right behind the frontline fighter or barbarian.
By eliminating the nuances in mental skills that a character can have, but continuing to allow the nuances of physical skills, that uneven treatment in skills punishes a barbarian who wants to be smart a lot more than it punishes a wizard who wants to be buff.
Honestly, all this is extremely hypothetical, did you ever have a barbarian who so wanted to succeed at int check that he took an ASI in Int ? Or a Wizard who did the contrary ? Never happened in my book, ever.
In any case, skills are not symmetrical, are never used exactly the same way per adventure and actually the amount of skill checks that you give is highly dependent on your adventure style. What I can say is that we have multiple groups doing this, it works perfectly and noone complains, whether the barbarians or the wizards.
It is not so much as wanting to succeed as wanting to have a chance to succeed. None of my friends have taken any ASIs outside of the stereotypical ones for their character's class, but if they do, I do not think they should be further punished with the DM making their non-typical ASI more useless.
I'm pretty sure we're on the same page in a way. Your statement that you could pull away is part and parcel of the whole grapple contested roll. The shirt thing was an example I used to show that your arms aren't pinned, you can still fight and perform actions.
Regarding Athletics and Acrobatics, everybody (meaning D&D PCs) can try to climb, jump, run, or swim. Training for it makes you better.
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But holding onto a shirt is not grappling. Being grappled as a condition means your movement is literally 0, either due to your legs not making meaningful traction and contact with the ground (such as being slightly lifted in a bearhug), or having so much downward force and leverage against your body that if you are trying to move away instead of using all your strength to maintain a standing position, you are going to get knocked prone (such as being under a standing guillotine).
And not everyone knows how to swim either. Floating is not even an innate instinct that everyone has, or else sinking and drowning would not be such huge issues requiring safety measures like floaties and life guards in public pools where water is still and not even flowing.
If you are reasoning that Athletics and Acrobatics is an innate skill that everyone has, where a character's stat modifier in the skill without the proficiency bonus can still have an effect on the game, then that reasoning would also apply to Medicine where people not proficient in it can still do things to help stabilize a critical patient such as applying pressure to stop bleeding and do CPR to stabilize a person suffering from drowning. It is this inconsistency in standards being applied to different skills that I am trying to highlight.
Even with numerous sparrings with my friend and having a year of after school Taekwondo lessons, I would not even consider myself half proficient in Athletics at all. However, D&D still gives me that modifier to Athletics reflecting the limited knowledge I have about grappling to do something about grappling.
I have practically zero professional training in emergency medical care, but I do have basic medical knowledge that everyone practically has in regards to applying pressure, doing CPR, and other simple stuff like that.
I agree that D&D combat mechanics is not suited for portrayal of realistic combat, but that can also be said for how mental and social skills work. However, D&D's mechanics as a whole is close enough to reflect some bits of reality. But closeness to reality is not my point.
My point is the inconsistency in applying standards to different skills. If dedicated training and study in certain skills is necessary and required to be allowed to roll at all, then why downplay the training and study for some skills compared to other skills?
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If a character has absolutely no way to know something, then they don’t get to make many Int-based skill checks. For example, 99.9% of people have no chance to know about an assassination plot.
But anything that’s general knowledge, anyone has a chance to know. Maybe they were flipping through an arcane book when they were bored, or witnessed a cult murder someone in the streets. I’d make it a very high DC, like 18-20 for things commonly known by experts, up to 25 or 30 for obscure facts even your Arcana expert Wizard needs to roll for.
A bigger problem is multiple characters attempting a check. While this is “realistic”, it basically gives the party super-advantage on every check out of initiative, and makes it impossible to balance for a chance of either failure or success. I rarely let more than one player roll the same check, almost never more than two.
And it depends more on background than class. A rogue with the sage background has a more plausible explanation for knowing arcane knowledge than a pig boy wizard who found a spell book in the filth. Don’t penalize a rogue if they take proficiency in Arcana by not letting them roll checks. If they have proficiency in arcana, it means, uncharacteristically for their class, they studied.
I do not think it is impossible to balance checks if the entire party rolls. If anything, I think the default assumption in the books is that everyone in the party roll for skill checks unless stated otherwise or if something specifically targets only one character. During a combat encounter, we do not only let the character with the highest damage output to deal damage, we do not only let the highest AC character get hit, and we do not let only the highest HP character take the damage.
For out of combat encounters like noticing traps or answering riddles, I think letting everyone roll increases player engagement and participation.
No one is saying that a character that took proficiency in Arcana should be penalized by not allowing them to roll. The discussion was about penalizing characters who do not take Arcana and not allowing them to roll despite them having a basic stat modifier in the skill, as well as holding different skills to different levels of standards by saying that some skills require proficiency to be allowed to roll while other skills face no such limitations.
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Clearly you are ignoring my response and repeatedly trying to apply real life circumstance to a game rule. Again, I used the shirt example because the rules say the attackers uses one or more hands to grab the target. The target only suffers the loss of movement. If a limb were grappled/grabbed, there might be cause for combat penalty, but there is none.
Every PC can swim, climb, and jump. That's the rule by default. If you choose to have your PC not be able to swim, that's your personal RP decision.
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I am not trying to ignore your response. I am trying to highlight that you are downplaying the training and practice involved with Athletics and Acrobatics skills. You mentioned grabbing a character's arm or shirt. I stated those specific grappling techniques that I mentioned because those techniques specifically leave an opponent's arms free while actually reducing their movement to zero.
Realistically, a patient that is dying is probably going to be suffering from more than just blood loss or lack of oxygen, and your average Joe honestly is not going to successfully stabilize them. That is not what I am concerned with. The thing I am concerned with is that you are downplaying the training and practice involved with Athletics and Acrobatics and holding different skills to different standards.
Just as every PC can roll for Arcana to recall magical lore or roll for Medicine to stabilize patients, every PC can also attempt roll to grapple and have an innate ability to swim. That is just rules by default. However, with your modifications, you are saying that some skills require proficiency in order to be used, but other skills do not require proficiency in order to be used, with the reasoning being that proficiency represents dedicated training. I am just not sure why you want to downplay the training involved with Athletics and Acrobatics skill and apply different standards to different skills.
By eliminating the usefulness of the plain stat modifiers on skills, that already makes taking ASIs very unappealing for anything outside of combat. And even for combat, it is hard to justify taking ASIs at 4th level when taking a Feat can significantly increase your options or boost your damage output. You will still want to use ASIs eventually later on to round out your stats, but rounding out your stats early on is not really necessary. And by applying that standard unevenly across different skills, it makes using ASIs for Str or Dex less punishing than using ASIs for Int or Wis.
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I say so because every PC can swim, jump, and climb. Requiring proficiency for these would be stupid and game breaking. So requiring Athletics to establish a grapple or break one would also be stupid and game breaking. If Athletics were required, then half (at a guess) of the PCs out there would not be able to grab anybody. That makes no sense.
I understand that you want to establish an example of real world grappling but what you are probably thinking about is being Restrained. There is a huge in-game difference between the two.
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"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Simply grabbing a person is not going to reduce their movement to zero. They can still do a contested check similar to tug of war and move the grabber along with them without the need for the grabber to let go. Grappling a person to cause their movement to reduce to zero requires far more training and skill than simply grabbing a person or applying pressure to stop bleeding or doing CPR, and it makes no sense for a person without training in Athletics to reduce opponent's movement to zero. Just because you think it is easy to grapple people does not mean it is actually easy to do so, and you are downplaying the training and practice involved for certain skills but not others.
For RAW melee combat, there is no way to cause an opponent to be restrained without also restraining yourself, at least not that I know of. The Grappler feat lets you pin an opponent, but it causes both players to be restrained. Bearhugs and a standing guillotine does not restrain the grappler, and the grappler can very much control the movement of the person they are grappling.
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This is why I have two house rules on this topic. Number one, only one PC is allowed to make a given check (with advantage if the others help). This makes sure the wizard is always “the smart one,” and the barbarian can’t just become Einstein because she got a lucky roll. Number two, for many skill checks, especially knowledge skills (arcana, history, religion, nature) I require proficiency, and in many cases give automatic success to characters with proficiency. The major exceptions I can think of are Athletics and Acrobatics, for fairly obvious reasons.
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If the barbarian managed to roll well and knows one particular factoid from reading about it somewhere, that does not make automatically make them Einstein though. A barbarin that decides to increase Int for roleplay reasons would be punished for not being allowed to use their stat modifier simply because they did not have proficiency in an Intelligence skill.
And as I mentioned above, applying different standards to different skills downplays the training involved for some skills over others. A person untrained in Athletics, Acrobatics, or not have the Grappler feat will definitely not be effective at grappling someone and reduce their speed to 0. At least for Intelligence skills, it is at least a lot more plausible that they heard or read about the information somewhere.
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So ... is it accurate to sum up the conversation by saying that mechanically the system doesn't really differentiate between a roll with proficiency and one without (except maybe in very specific niche cases) but that it is also explicitly written as the DM's prerogative when to allow/call for rolls so they can differentiate if they want. Some people like to allow everyone to roll on any skill check and let the dice roll where they lie whereas others like to make the choice of training in a skill give a qualitative difference to those results and no one is wrong in how they like to run this, it's just different styles.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I would say this is pretty accurate. It's more a discussion on what players/DM's use at their tables, to maybe offer alternative ideas or views on it. Some seek a more "logical" course, to enhance the immersion of the game, while others simply go for dice rolls, without much thought to if the roll makes sense, in a logical sense. Being a fantasy game, tossing logic out the window is perfectly fine, if it works for your table. In the same light, maintaining some will add a bit more depth to the adventure and push players to be more thoughtful and insightful in their character builds and uses during the adventure. Either method works, depending on tour table. RP strong tables will likely prefer the highly selective methods of allowing/making rolls (my preference) while less RP oriented tables will prefer the letting anyone roll for anything methods.
On a side note, I also take character race/size into consideration for some rolls. Recently a Gnome, with a Str of 16 was trying to use a rope to pull a Goliath out of a pit. She rolled with disadvantage, due to the excessive difficulty in moving something that was significantly heavier than herself (maintaining traction on the dusty/dirty floor was the obstacle) If there had been something she could anchor herself to (a pillar she could tie off to) the check would have been with advantage, due to her proficiency in Athletics. (For the record, she failed the first attempt and he fell again, taking another 5 points fall damage lol) The group liked it and readily accepted the challenges inherent to the task. As is obvious, we are quite RP heavy.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Here's an example. Compare the chance of success on a DC 16 check if one PC rolls to the whole party. Assume the single PC has the best mod at +5 and the other four members have +0.
The best player, alone, has a 50/50 chance. Together, they have an 84% chance. (1 - .5 x .75^4)
Now, you can account for that by making the DC higher. But it's not easy math to decide the DC that gives an interesting chance of both failure and success. It also becomes really sensitive to party size, which makes it really hard to write balanced published adventures.
In particular, let's see what DC you'd have to set to get it down to a 50/50 chance. DC 19 gives 57%. DC 20 gives 43%. We need a DC 20 for less than a 50% chance of success. And this is a fairly conservative example. It's quite likely you'll have one party member with better than +5 or two with better than +0. With two players with +5 or one player with +8, even a DC 20 is easier than even odds.
Mathing the crap out of stuff always "proves" allowing multiple rolls is almost like giving it up free. I think that speaks for itself.
Story-wise, I would offer MY opinion (which likely means nothing to anyone NOT playing at my table, but this is a discussion, so...) on the Barbarian example, trying to examine say, a weapon, to see if it's magical. First couple levels, if they specifically ask to look at an item, even after someone else has done so, I will allow it. I set about an 18-19 for them to determine anything at this point. Great roll, ok, you are pretty sure this weapon is magical in some way. No idea WHAT way, but you get a feel that it's magical. If this behavior continues through the campaign, the Barbarian would start getting better chances of finding out something. Still well behind the Arcane casters in the group, but from seeing and handling so many different weapons, and if others have discovered something and he knows, he gets to "feel" the different magics within them. No idea how they got there or anything, but after handling enough different magical weapons, he knows a magical sword that burns when it strikes "feels" different from the one that made a massive boom.
I tend to, on ability checks, set different standards for the characters, dependent of their skills and applicability. Some, jumping across a gap or what not have a flat rating, modifiers make sense, but clue gathering, interpretation and so forth will be easier for some than others, given a situation, setting or any other factor. Trying to DM "Fairly" is a lot of on your feet thinking, when the party starts taking a bunch of unexpected left turns on you.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
I do not think a barbarin would have no chance of hearing about arcane facts, since the barbarian is living in a world where magic exists. Everyone has some knowledge of magical lore, or else it would not have made sense for basic stat modifier to exist, and disallowing them to roll effectively treats that modifier as a 0 or worse. A person might not have dedicated training in Arcana, but through just living life and increasing their Int overtime, they are going to encounter and learn some magical lore. Even if the barbarian has a plain 0 or even a -1 modifier in a skill, that does not mean they have never heard of magical lore, it just means they are less likely to hear or know about magical lore.
However, whether allowing a character not proficient in Arcana to roll or not is not the point. Whether allowing a character without proficiency in Athletics or Acrobatics to roll for grappling checks is not the point either.
The point I am concerned with is the uneven standards applied to different skills and downplaying the training of certain skills compared to others. And in my opinion, that uneven standard unfairly punishes some players more than others.
Using mechanics to reflect and enhance roleplay is important in my opinion and I do not think players should be punished for making mechanical decisions to enhance roleplay. A barbarian taking Int is already punished enough mechanically for combat, as they are losing out on a feat and even just picking Str or Con would be better for being a front line tank. The only positive thing for combat is that Int gives a barbarian better saves, but I do not think it is worth the trade off compared to just picking a Feat, Str, or Con. Letting the barbarian roll for Int skills is the least the DM can do to let the barbarian not feel like it is a complete waste. This is not a player trying to minmaxing the system using Int to maximize damage output and curb stomp non-combat encounters with Proficiency in all Int skills. This is a player simply saying that their barbarian is not your stereotypical dumb brute, and while they might not be a know it all like the wizard is, they do know enough to have some knowledge of magic, history, etc. and can use logic to do some basic investigation.
In contrast, allowing a wizard to use their Athletics and Acrobatics skill without any limits means that a wizard is punished far less for taking an ASI in Str or Dex for roleplaying reasons compared to a barbarian taking an ASI in Int.
By eliminating the nuances in mental skills that a character can have, but continuing to allow the nuances of physical skills, that uneven treatment in skills punishes a barbarian who wants to be smart a lot more than it punishes a wizard who wants to be buff.
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If combat encounters can have both individual and group rolls, why treat noncombat encounters differently in only allowing one character to roll? Just as an entire party can roll for initiative or a group of PCs rolling for saves if they get targeted by an area of effect spells, non combat encounters like a dragon asking the party a riddle can have the entire party roll and contribute towards the answer instead of allowing only the one with the highest Investigation to roll.
There are also encounters where having a larger party size is actually more detrimental, such as traps that punishes the entire party if anyone fails a roll. Stealth is also another type of encounter where having less members makes the party harder to notice as there are less rolls being made.
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I am no scientist, but in my own words, quantum mechanics deals with physical laws that govern the universe on the extremely tiny scale. I imagine most people with a college degree to give an answer something similar to mine, usually including physics and small in their definition of quantum mechanics. At best, I can further elaborate that the strong force keeps protons and neutrons bound to each other in the center of an atom, the weak force changes one subatomic particle into another, subatomic particles are made up of quarks of various flavors, energy comes in discrete units, the uncertainty principle states that being certain about something's position means that we are not certain about its velocity and vice versa, and that is all that comes to my mind so far regarding quantum mechanics.
A barbarian might not be knowledgeable enough to explain Arcana in detail, but they can still comprehend some basic principles and concepts.
All skills are equal in the sense that anyone should be able to roll for them, and their modifier in a skill with or without proficiency bonus represents their experience and chances of success. For challenges that are technical and require training to accomplish, a DC of 26 is going to exclude anyone without proficiency from ever overcoming it unless they can get a stat to be 22 or over. For stuff like recalling lore about a magic ring or applying pressure to stop someone from bleeding out, it is something that anyone can realistically accomplish.
In that case, I guess it is fine. It is just that letting players unconditionally roll when a DM calls for a roll instead of arbitraly choosing one player makes for a more inclusive game. And the DM can still let players with proficiency shine by setting the difficulty as high as necessary so that only they have the chance to successfully overcome the difficulty.
This is not a player asking for their barbarian to write a thesis on Arcana theory or creating an iron golem from scratch. This is just giving the player's character a consistent opportunity to roll for Arcana or any other skill, especially when the skill specifically states something like recalling lore about magical items and the challenge is about recalling information. Just because I am trained in accounting and pay some attention to the stock market does not mean I know what the stock price, let alone profit, of every public company out there. However, any friend of mine who is not trained in accounting still has a chance to recall approximate stock price of a company by simply just flipping through the news or wondering through Yahoo Finance.
Most wizards generally do not go on the frontline, but that does not mean they cannot. A bladesinger for example can do relatively well on the frontline, or at least be right behind the frontline fighter or barbarian.
It is not so much as wanting to succeed as wanting to have a chance to succeed. None of my friends have taken any ASIs outside of the stereotypical ones for their character's class, but if they do, I do not think they should be further punished with the DM making their non-typical ASI more useless.
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