As you can see here, the average of 1000 d20 rolls turned out to be 10.535. 0.035 more than expected. 52 1s were rolled, 2 more than expected. 70 20s were rolled, 20 more than expected. If you ask me, the dice roller is balanced, or a bit generous if not. You could claim I'm just lucky, and there's no way I can respond to that, other than try for yourself. You could try a number higher than 1000 for more accurate average statistics.
Oh clearly, if the dice roller actually WAS biased, we'd definitely hear about it and D&DB would actually fix it. I think we just have folks with terrible, terrible luck.
I DO wanna try it though just to see what happens.
Okay, I think I did it right, STILL got way more 1's than 20's.... so my luck just sucks.
I tried rolling just 1d20 multiple times though and the results were definitely skewed. In 20 rolls, I got 5 1's and only rolled higher than 10 seven times.
Ability scores - can definitely be increased via training AND use. Farmers don't go out an lift weights to get stronger as part of being a farmer. They use their muscles and get stronger over time. Same with blacksmiths, etc. Remember that gyms as we know them arose because people were not getting exercise in their daily lives anymore, IMHO.
STR - this is obvious DEX - Also pretty obvious CON - Measures physical endurance which can obviously be improved by training and simply by using your body more (as with STR & DEX) INT - NOT a measure of raw intellect. INT in D&D (and every other game system I've played) measures reasoning and memory, both of which can be improved with training and practice. WIS - Does not measure what most think of as wisdom. In D&D it measure perception and insight. Again, these things can be improved with training and practice. CHA - Measures force of personality which is something that can be improved. It is possible to learn to be more confident and assertive.
So all ability scores can be improved with use, practice and training.
Training and practice to improve
These are the basic rules in XGtE
"Receiving training in a language or tool typically takes at least ten workweeks, but this time is reduced by a number of workweeks equal to the character’s Intelligence modifier (an Intelligence penalty doesn’t increase the time needed). Training costs 25 gp per workweek"--which equates to 250 gold, which is way too much. As DM, I would charge 10 gold but that's me, and maybe half or a third if you try to improve without a trainer.
This means that after 10 weeks of work, my character should learn how to speak Orc or sail a boat. I see no reason this cannot be expanded to a new skill, say medicine or perception (which would also open up options for characters to earn money by training others), or ability scores
I would suggest a new skill: Training/Teaching
When you get right down to it, any skill you work at for a time you will acquire. If you want to add some randomness you could require a skill roll by the trainer followed by the applicable characteristic roll by the character (WIS for perception, DEX for thieves' tools, etc), modified by the trainer's success for failure. I'm not sure how to figure the DC, maybe set it at 10 for initially learning the skill/language/tool. If already have the skill, DC is 10+proficiency bonus. To improve ability scores, DC could be the current score, as you currently do. If a skill, then once there's proficiency, you'd roll that skill instead of a characteristic.
Nat 1: no chance of improvement
Failed Roll: characteristic/skill roll made at Disadvantage
Success Roll: characteristic/skill roll made with a bonus of +1 for each point over the DC the trainer rolled. If DC is 12 and trainer rolled a 14, PC gets to add 2 to the learn roll
Nat 20: Either automatic success (don't like this) or rolls with advantage or DC is cut in half or something good
If no trainer (and it's certainly possible to learn on your own) base DC for initial skill/language/tool is 13 or 15. For ability score, DC remains current score but you don't get the possibility the trainer will help. After all, a good trainer can make all the difference.
in general, what are your thoughts about offering the ability to increase proficiency outside of levelling up? Is it just asking for overpowered characters? Personally, when I look at how characters level up, the REAL differences between levels are largely related to unlocking feats. HP increases, sure, but actual growth seems pretty feat-dependent. Not a whole lot really changes all that much about your character besides being a little bit tougher to kill. Personal skill doesn't seem to hold much weight, which basically puts a lot, a LOT of emphasis on ability scores being higher than average to survive, and there are very few ways to increase your ability scores that don't involve fantastical boons in the PHB. Skill is something that really does organically grow with experience more than anything else, but when you look at the tables for proficiency growth, it goes from +2 to +6.
That's pretty underwhelming.
That basically means that a level 20 character is just 20% better at a skill than a level 1. Of course, more than likely, that level 20 will have a treasure trove of gear and feats, but when it comes to pure skill, the chance to pass a skill check only increase by 20% in 20 levels through personal skill alone.
Doesn't seem right to me.
Weigh in, lemme know your thoughts on the matter. I would really like to allow you guys to continue 'training' throughout the campaign and give you options on how to go about that, cause personal time can sometimes be short and I'd like there to at least be some rules in place that allow players to just throw dice and say that their character is training rather than force a long, possibly drawn-out RP scene (not that I'm against those, I love those) from every player who may not have the time or imagination.
in general, what are your thoughts about offering the ability to increase proficiency outside of levelling up? Is it just asking for overpowered characters?
It's not a bad idea and if done right you can avoid overpowered characters. There has to be a cost associated with it, a cost beyond simple time. Money is the easiest and the most logical. I'm biased, I'll admit, but I think what I came up, which is just a modification and expansion of the existing training rules, works well. It's simple, there's a real cost involved, and if you decide to go cheap and not pay a trainer (thereby reducing costs, but not eliminating them), your chances of success are reduced.
But aren’t the skills set up to kind of give each class their schtick? Kind of like their special set of what they’re good at. We need the wizard for arcana, or the rogue to pick that lock. Fighter- kick the door in! I like the idea of being able to learn new skills but for me non essential. As far as improving ability scores you can take a feat or bump up an ability score by two or two abilities by 1 in the rules as written. How much ‘down time’ are we going to have?
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Fleabag Fleabane-Tabaxi Ranger | Lenny Coggins- Halfling Barbarian | Sid Shatterbuckle- Dwarf Fighter/Rogue| Lazlo - Satyr Bard in Training
But aren’t the skills set up to kind of give each class their schtick? Kind of like their special set of what they’re good at. We need the wizard for arcana, or the rogue to pick that lock.
Not really. More than wizards can learn arcana, not to mention the skill choices associated with various backgrounds or races. And anyone can kick in a door in 5e. That's just strength or if you want to athletics, that's available all over the place. There are feats which allow you to learn any skill you want.
I like the idea of being able to learn new skills but for me non essential. As far as improving ability scores you can take a feat or bump up an ability score by two or two abilities by 1 in the rules as written. How much ‘down time’ are we going to have?
Absolutely non-essential but it does add some nice RP abilities. Yes, you can increase ability scores via the ability increase/feats option but it's fairly limited and not really realistic and, in this case, I believe realism should get the nod. As for downtime, the rules from XGtE don't require 10 weeks of downtime in a row, just 10 weeks, so 2 here, 1 there, 1 here, 2 there, etc. and you'll get to 10. I'm merely suggesting expanding those rules to also include skills and ability scores.
I don't really see why we need all that, though. More realistic? Yes. That said, we're likely to have more than the average 4 skills a character starts with, each of us, and we all have great stats too, even before the prologue is over. I prefer having the characters always chasing what they should have, rather than being much stronger than they should be. Imagine we could train fighting faster and increase number of attacks. Having 1 attack as a Fighter at level 5 is weaker than normal but not the end of the world. A Rogue that trains extra attacks, with 2 attacks at level 5, will be greatly overpowered. I don't want to reach a point where we must fight an ancient red dragon at level 5, or have a DC of 30 for each check, just so we don't get bored of succeeding. Failing is more important than succeeding.
I'm largely wanting to address proficiency bonuses, which are by and large the only advantage characters with only 'average' ability scores have.
I'm still not really sure what would be a 'fair' way to increase ability scores outside of leveling up. And even then, unless you pump 2 points for the 3 ability score increases you get into a single ability, the most you can grow is 6 points.
Again, the best I could come up with was basically moving XP points into a 'Traiing point pool' and voluntarily missing out on XP gains.
Taking you back to the past to play the games that don't necessarily suck ass, the old (And I mean OLD) SSI D&D games actually required you to go to a training hall to level up. That's right, leveling up cost money. 100 GP if I recall, in fact. It was NOT cheap. Definitely there should be a monetary cost to 'learning the basics' but also, depending on the skill, practicing would also cost money. Like, if you're practicing the medical skill, it goes beyond just studying books. You'd have to get your hands on cadavers (not necessarily human), probably, expensive surgical tools, an alchemical bench for potions, AND costly textbooks to study. Training with bows would carry some cost in arrows and replacing worn-out targets, that sort of thing. There really wouldn't be that many skills you COULD practice without it being quite the costly endeavor. Heck, to build party cohesion, there could even be a rule that training needs to be done as a group for maximum benefit. Not that everyone would need to study the same thing, but rather, they all agree to take some time off and help each other study.
I agree but who said anything about extra attacks. We were discussing ability scores, languages, skills and tools.
I gave an extreme example, but AS aren't much better. Give a 1st level Barb or Monk 20 in two stats and you just threw all battle encounters for the next 16 levels to waste. 18 in each isn't much less.
With skills, we'll have a group that are basically gods. If you REALLY want to make it realistic, skills also recede. If you don't train a skill for too long, it should lose some of its proficiency bonus. Otherwise, expect every character to have all proficiencies or close to that. Just think about the 11th level Rogue's ability. Seems balanced.
Tools make sense, I guess, and not too much impact, so that doesn't bother me much, except stepping on the toes of any class/subclass/whatever that gives proficiency with one of them.
Languages are so much more complicated than 10 weeks of learning. I'm learning English since I was 7 years old and my English is nowhere near perfect - only from this game I've probably learnt ~20 new words, not all of them that 'rare'. To boot, I had books, movies, shows, videos and games, and English teachers that gave a lesson at least twice a week. Sure, school teaching isn't ideal, but it's not far off either. I tried learning additional languages with Duolingo with only partial success. Of course, my time invested there doesn't amount to 10 weeks, but that doesn't matter. What I'm saying is that learning languages isn't that simple. The average person knows ~1.5 languages, after all. Yes, there are people who speak a few dozen languages, but those are special people. Also, to what extent does 'knowing a language' goes? I can read, speak, write and understand my native language and English very well, so I guess I know them. There is one language in which I can form simple sentences, do I 'know' it? Three more where I know simple greetings and a few random words. Do these also count?
Take all that, and add one's innate ability to learn languages. It's not just a matter of rolling dice. Some people are gifted, and I'm not referring to those who know a lot of languages. If my English isn't perfect yet, there are people who have been learning it for much, much longer and, if they tried, would simply not be able to read this wall of text with the same ease that I do.
I agree but who said anything about extra attacks. We were discussing ability scores, languages, skills and tools.
I gave an extreme example, but AS aren't much better. Give a 1st level Barb or Monk 20 in two stats and you just threw all battle encounters for the next 16 levels to waste. 18 in each isn't much less.
With skills, we'll have a group that are basically gods. If you REALLY want to make it realistic, skills also recede. If you don't train a skill for too long, it should lose some of its proficiency bonus. Otherwise, expect every character to have all proficiencies or close to that. Just think about the 11th level Rogue's ability. Seems balanced.
I think you're overstating the possible danger, really. That's 3 ability score rolls, re-rolling 1s always. The last is the best. Depending on your race, some of these will go up. Let's take standard human: the 17 becomes an 18, the 18 a 19 and so on. If an elf, I could start with a 20 DEX and a 19 INT or WIS or CHA, depending on sub-race. My point is that many characters start with multiple high stats and, while effective, are hardly overpowering. Moreover, to have a chance to raise a characteristic even 1 point would take weeks of time and hundreds of gold pieces with no guarantee of success.
As for skills, again, even if the change were introduced (and I'm not advocating that. just discussing ideas--I think the 5e system is pretty much fine as is), we're talking weeks of in-game time, lots of gold, and maybe a failed attempt to learn. You seem to be suggesting that it would be quick and virtually automatic, and it wouldn't.
Again, not advocating any changes but while I respect your concerns, I think they are overstated.
I think you're overstating the possible danger, really. That's 3 ability score rolls, re-rolling 1s always. The last is the best. Depending on your race, some of these will go up. Let's take standard human: the 17 becomes an 18, the 18 a 19 and so on. If an elf, I could start with a 20 DEX and a 19 INT or WIS or CHA, depending on sub-race. My point is that many characters start with multiple high stats and, while effective, are hardly overpowering. Moreover, to have a chance to raise a characteristic even 1 point would take weeks of time and hundreds of gold pieces with no guarantee of success.
As for skills, again, even if the change were introduced (and I'm not advocating that. just discussing ideas--I think the 5e system is pretty much fine as is), we're talking weeks of in-game time, lots of gold, and maybe a failed attempt to learn. You seem to be suggesting that it would be quick and virtually automatic, and it wouldn't.
Again, not advocating any changes but while I respect your concerns, I think they are overstated.
Interesting, but you're rerolling 1s always, which already changes everything drastically. Notice than none of your rolls even has a negative modifier. You take a small amount of a buffed rolling system and even so it is not even close to the balanced area the game is designed for. A balanced encounter for a 1st level caster assumes their spell DC is 12-13. Your rolled character can have 15 already, which is what a 5th level caster would have if they were using the Standard Array. With those stats, a 1st level Fighter can have a +9 to hit with a bow, while a normal Fighter would reach that only at - you guessed it - level 5. You're a whole tier in front of what you should be.
As for time and cost, that's clearly negligible. DM already hinted at a 'training week' being shortened to a series of rolls. If our characters don't have a time pressure, nothing stops them from doing it. Money? This is one of the easiest things to earn in 5e. Depends on the eventual cost DM decides upon, obviously, but I doubt it'll be a huge amount, or we'd never discuss it at all.
I think you're overstating the possible danger, really. That's 3 ability score rolls, re-rolling 1s always. The last is the best. Depending on your race, some of these will go up. Let's take standard human: the 17 becomes an 18, the 18 a 19 and so on. If an elf, I could start with a 20 DEX and a 19 INT or WIS or CHA, depending on sub-race. My point is that many characters start with multiple high stats and, while effective, are hardly overpowering. Moreover, to have a chance to raise a characteristic even 1 point would take weeks of time and hundreds of gold pieces with no guarantee of success.
As for skills, again, even if the change were introduced (and I'm not advocating that. just discussing ideas--I think the 5e system is pretty much fine as is), we're talking weeks of in-game time, lots of gold, and maybe a failed attempt to learn. You seem to be suggesting that it would be quick and virtually automatic, and it wouldn't.
Again, not advocating any changes but while I respect your concerns, I think they are overstated.
Interesting, but you're rerolling 1s always, which already changes everything drastically. Notice than none of your rolls even has a negative modifier. You take a small amount of a buffed rolling system and even so it is not even close to the balanced area the game is designed for. A balanced encounter for a 1st level caster assumes their spell DC is 12-13. Your rolled character can have 15 already, which is what a 5th level caster would have if they were using the Standard Array. With those stats, a 1st level Fighter can have a +9 to hit with a bow, while a normal Fighter would reach that only at - you guessed it - level 5. You're a whole tier in front of what you should be.
As for time and cost, that's clearly negligible. DM already hinted at a 'training week' being shortened to a series of rolls. If our characters don't have a time pressure, nothing stops them from doing it. Money? This is one of the easiest things to earn in 5e. Depends on the eventual cost DM decides upon, obviously, but I doubt it'll be a huge amount, or we'd never discuss it at all.
I re-rolled the ones to get the best possible scores, to highlight my belief that the issues you've raised are not as serious as you've portrayed them. If I were to DM, I'm not sure if I would go that route. And I've ever seen Standard Array used once (personally I hate it). Most DMs here go with roll 4, take best 3, re-roll 1s once. I'm also not sure how you get a +9 for a bow attack, I get +7. What am I missing?
I agree that the cost to improve in the system originally outlined is not significant. I don't agree that the time and cost in the system I outlined is negligible. 10 weeks of game time is not nothing, unless your DM is doing weird stuff, especially as you'd have to do other things during those 10 weeks like earn a living. As for gold, it's always been as easy or as hard to earn as the DM makes it. In my Adventure League games, we earn gold pretty easy. In my other games (3 or 4 PBP and a FTF) we mostly earn very little. In the one PBP where we earn a decent amount, it's nowhere near enough to abuse the training system in XGtE (nor does the DM give us enough downtime to abuse it even if the gold was plentiful).
That said, I'd like there to be no changes at all. I'm quite pleased with the overall structure of 5e. It's a good blend of simplicity and fun. Where there is complexity it serves to enhance the game, IMHO.
Archery Fighting Style, I specified a bow for a reason. Other options are +7 damage with dueling or 18 AC with Defense, using a mere Studded Leather armour. The rest are less often used, or don't give a direct numerical benefit, or I forgot about them.
Well, that's just a difference of opinions. I personally like the SA and have used it multiple times. It gives a sense of balance and fair play. Rolling is nice, but if you have a character that's simply weaker in all fields when compared to all others, it might be hindering your fun. Perhaps you want the character to be so, but otherwise... Imagine someone rolled so well they can allow themselves to end up with an 18 in Str as a Wizard while the Barbarian had to choose whether their Con or Str would be 13, because that's their second highest stat.
Most DMs do ask for what you said, and I don't like that method either. Either a fair roll (no rerolls) or just not at all, IMO.
KJ already hinted at a huge time-skip of almost a year. 365 days, that's quite a long time. That's before the end of the prologue, and another skip between prologue and actual play. Enough time to earn money, train, fail and try again.
I was mostly talking in very GENERAL terms of course. Learning a new language, for instance, honestly, takes more than 2 and a half friggin months. A LOT more, because in order to be fluent, you have to use it everyday. That's why immersion is THE most effective means of learning a new language, because you don't have any other choice and you are constantly accessing that part of your brain.
And that's just speaking it! Learning to write a language takes even longer, especially if the language uses pictographs rather than an alphabet.
Again, I just want the optionto be there for my players. If you don't have the time to type out a lot, or say you're at a table, and you don't WANT to play out a long scene negotiating with a scholar for training, there should be a way to 'just throw dice at it'.
Put simply, I feel that 5e is just a little too dependent on ability scores and inventory to determine your character's full potential. I don't want to burden players by having to keep track of more than they have to like skill decay or vitality or anything else that would just slow things down, nor demand that every player be a roleplaying expert and figuring out thematic reasons for their character to learn certain skills. I mean, I wouldn't be against that, but I don't want to demand it, is what I'm saying.
I'm trying to walk a fine line between realism and game mechanics, and I don't think that I'm alone in saying that the balance in 5e is lacking, but then, the ruleset is kept loose and vague BECAUSE they know that every DM and player has their preferences and actively encourages making homebrew rules to address those tastes, and the reason I've put effort into thinking about these homebrew rules is because it seems you guys have been enjoying having your characters earn and learn their proficiencies and when I think about taking away that ability because you hit level 1, I stopped and said "but why though?"
If it's fun, and makes sense, why stop there just because it's 'not in the rules'?
So, that's why we're here. I think I'm starting to get my eye in on some possibilities for making a sufficient cost to learning new skills (Especially custom skills. Like, why the hell isn't blacksmithing part of the PHB? Seriously guys?) or raising proficiency outside of experience levels. The key of course is that the process is fun and interesting over all else.
So, with that said, and with this being a workshop thread, rather than me just throwing ideas at you guys, let's do some -active- simulations in this thread to see mechanically how they could play out.
If I could have a volunteer, we'll play out a possible situation where you're trying to learn a brand new skill. The key thing for the mechanics is that it should never feel like there's drag anywhere. It should be engaging and fun the whole way through or it's not worth even considering putting in as homebrew.
Only one thing I want to say, though, is that the reason blacksmithing, cooking, sowing and so on isn't a skill in the PHB is because they're tied to a specific set of tools, thus making it a proficiency with a tool instead. Hyre may have proficiency in "Cooking" in this game, but it would have been "Cook's Utensils" in any other game. "Blacksmithing" would be "Smith's Tools" and so on.
Alrighty, after giving it some thought, I think I have something to try out.
So, give yourself a really, really rough character to play as, like, what class they might be, a skill they want to learn, and we'll say he's level 3 and has a modest living situation for the moment. We'll also assume these are his ability scores: STR: 14 DEX: 9 CON: 13 INT: 12 WIS: 18 CHA: 11
Your character is essentially between adventures, just came back from his first real test and wants to be of more use to his party. You can roll your gold or we'll just assume he currently has 400 GP to spend on trying to learn this new skill.
The town he's in gives him several avenues to pursue: he can enroll at the local academy for a single course, which is the most costly but offers a stable learning environment, seek out a personal tutor, where the amount he learns is largely dependent on his own personal effort and how capable his tutor is, or attempt to learn a skill by having someone teach him the basics and his improvement will be entirely dependent on how efficiently he practices, which is the cheapest but most dependent on good rolls.
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DM, professional illustrator and comic artist, suffering from severe spinal stenosis, married, middle aged, and nerdy.
Huh, didn't get a notification about this until... now.
Okay, then. By their stats, I'd say we're talking about a Sorcerer, of the Storm Sorcery (for no real reason). For reasons x and y, Sorci wants to train her Acrobatics skill. She wants to save her money for spell components, however, so she will ask the party's Rogue to teach her (I'm not sure if this is allowed, but I don't really see a reason why not, and I'm trying to force an abusable situation here). The Rogue shows her how to do some flip-flops and other stuff for just a bit before going to do his own thing, leaving Sorci alone. I'm assuming 7 days of downtime.
Character INT: 15. Need to roll 12 or under. Current proficiency: +0, trying to get to +1. Day 1: 13126421. Day 2: 9201768. Day 3: 1056113. Day 4: 12209137. Day 5: 10101147. Day 6: 32114812. Day 7: 4421182.
Okay, 1 success. The 5 throws, requiring 3 in a row is truly difficult to land. Let's see the other option, taking 3 days for example. Day 1: 3 attempts. Day 2: 4 attempts. Day 3: 7 attempts.
Day 1 rolls: 72921111621. Day 2 rolls: 167614. Day 3 rolls: 12412.
3 days, 1 point. Okay. Just for the sake of it, I kinda want to see Bacon rolling this. Her rolls are on average much lower than mine, but it is good in this case. I wonder if Kallista is secretly just waiting to learn everything later, once the numbers mean opposite things.
Oh! Err, I had something else in mind. Like, actually roleplaying this out, I have some ideas that really can only be tested by doing a mockup situation. So, in this case, I'll be the rogue and we'll test out a different and less screen-consuming system I think might be both fun and simple enough to throw dice at for less experienced players.
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DM, professional illustrator and comic artist, suffering from severe spinal stenosis, married, middle aged, and nerdy.
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Btw, I figured that... why not?
As you can see here, the average of 1000 d20 rolls turned out to be 10.535. 0.035 more than expected. 52 1s were rolled, 2 more than expected. 70 20s were rolled, 20 more than expected. If you ask me, the dice roller is balanced, or a bit generous if not.
You could claim I'm just lucky, and there's no way I can respond to that, other than try for yourself. You could try a number higher than 1000 for more accurate average statistics.
Varielky
Oh clearly, if the dice roller actually WAS biased, we'd definitely hear about it and D&DB would actually fix it. I think we just have folks with terrible, terrible luck.
I DO wanna try it though just to see what happens.
Okay, I think I did it right, STILL got way more 1's than 20's.... so my luck just sucks.
I tried rolling just 1d20 multiple times though and the results were definitely skewed. In 20 rolls, I got 5 1's and only rolled higher than 10 seven times.
2 14 4 17 16 2 2 5 20 7 1 6 2 9 18 5 5 17 16 20
Yeah, my luck just sucks :P
DM, professional illustrator and comic artist, suffering from severe spinal stenosis, married, middle aged, and nerdy.
Many things:
Ability scores - can definitely be increased via training AND use. Farmers don't go out an lift weights to get stronger as part of being a farmer. They use their muscles and get stronger over time. Same with blacksmiths, etc. Remember that gyms as we know them arose because people were not getting exercise in their daily lives anymore, IMHO.
DEX - Also pretty obvious
CON - Measures physical endurance which can obviously be improved by training and simply by using your body more (as with STR & DEX)
INT - NOT a measure of raw intellect. INT in D&D (and every other game system I've played) measures reasoning and memory, both of which can be improved with training and practice.
WIS - Does not measure what most think of as wisdom. In D&D it measure perception and insight. Again, these things can be improved with training and practice.
CHA - Measures force of personality which is something that can be improved. It is possible to learn to be more confident and assertive.
Training and practice to improve
Tandor the White, Human Life Cleric
in general, what are your thoughts about offering the ability to increase proficiency outside of levelling up? Is it just asking for overpowered characters?
Personally, when I look at how characters level up, the REAL differences between levels are largely related to unlocking feats. HP increases, sure, but actual growth seems pretty feat-dependent. Not a whole lot really changes all that much about your character besides being a little bit tougher to kill.
Personal skill doesn't seem to hold much weight, which basically puts a lot, a LOT of emphasis on ability scores being higher than average to survive, and there are very few ways to increase your ability scores that don't involve fantastical boons in the PHB. Skill is something that really does organically grow with experience more than anything else, but when you look at the tables for proficiency growth, it goes from +2 to +6.
That's pretty underwhelming.
That basically means that a level 20 character is just 20% better at a skill than a level 1. Of course, more than likely, that level 20 will have a treasure trove of gear and feats, but when it comes to pure skill, the chance to pass a skill check only increase by 20% in 20 levels through personal skill alone.
Doesn't seem right to me.
Weigh in, lemme know your thoughts on the matter. I would really like to allow you guys to continue 'training' throughout the campaign and give you options on how to go about that, cause personal time can sometimes be short and I'd like there to at least be some rules in place that allow players to just throw dice and say that their character is training rather than force a long, possibly drawn-out RP scene (not that I'm against those, I love those) from every player who may not have the time or imagination.
DM, professional illustrator and comic artist, suffering from severe spinal stenosis, married, middle aged, and nerdy.
It's not a bad idea and if done right you can avoid overpowered characters. There has to be a cost associated with it, a cost beyond simple time. Money is the easiest and the most logical. I'm biased, I'll admit, but I think what I came up, which is just a modification and expansion of the existing training rules, works well. It's simple, there's a real cost involved, and if you decide to go cheap and not pay a trainer (thereby reducing costs, but not eliminating them), your chances of success are reduced.
Tandor the White, Human Life Cleric
But aren’t the skills set up to kind of give each class their schtick? Kind of like their special set of what they’re good at. We need the wizard for arcana, or the rogue to pick that lock. Fighter- kick the door in! I like the idea of being able to learn new skills but for me non essential. As far as improving ability scores you can take a feat or bump up an ability score by two or two abilities by 1 in the rules as written.
How much ‘down time’ are we going to have?
Fleabag Fleabane -Tabaxi Ranger | Lenny Coggins- Halfling Barbarian | Sid Shatterbuckle- Dwarf Fighter/Rogue| Lazlo - Satyr Bard in Training
Not really. More than wizards can learn arcana, not to mention the skill choices associated with various backgrounds or races. And anyone can kick in a door in 5e. That's just strength or if you want to athletics, that's available all over the place. There are feats which allow you to learn any skill you want.
Absolutely non-essential but it does add some nice RP abilities. Yes, you can increase ability scores via the ability increase/feats option but it's fairly limited and not really realistic and, in this case, I believe realism should get the nod. As for downtime, the rules from XGtE don't require 10 weeks of downtime in a row, just 10 weeks, so 2 here, 1 there, 1 here, 2 there, etc. and you'll get to 10. I'm merely suggesting expanding those rules to also include skills and ability scores.
Tandor the White, Human Life Cleric
I don't really see why we need all that, though. More realistic? Yes. That said, we're likely to have more than the average 4 skills a character starts with, each of us, and we all have great stats too, even before the prologue is over. I prefer having the characters always chasing what they should have, rather than being much stronger than they should be. Imagine we could train fighting faster and increase number of attacks. Having 1 attack as a Fighter at level 5 is weaker than normal but not the end of the world. A Rogue that trains extra attacks, with 2 attacks at level 5, will be greatly overpowered. I don't want to reach a point where we must fight an ancient red dragon at level 5, or have a DC of 30 for each check, just so we don't get bored of succeeding. Failing is more important than succeeding.
Varielky
I agree but who said anything about extra attacks. We were discussing ability scores, languages, skills and tools.
Tandor the White, Human Life Cleric
I'm largely wanting to address proficiency bonuses, which are by and large the only advantage characters with only 'average' ability scores have.
I'm still not really sure what would be a 'fair' way to increase ability scores outside of leveling up. And even then, unless you pump 2 points for the 3 ability score increases you get into a single ability, the most you can grow is 6 points.
Again, the best I could come up with was basically moving XP points into a 'Traiing point pool' and voluntarily missing out on XP gains.
Taking you back to the past to play the games that don't necessarily suck ass, the old (And I mean OLD) SSI D&D games actually required you to go to a training hall to level up. That's right, leveling up cost money. 100 GP if I recall, in fact. It was NOT cheap.
Definitely there should be a monetary cost to 'learning the basics' but also, depending on the skill, practicing would also cost money. Like, if you're practicing the medical skill, it goes beyond just studying books. You'd have to get your hands on cadavers (not necessarily human), probably, expensive surgical tools, an alchemical bench for potions, AND costly textbooks to study. Training with bows would carry some cost in arrows and replacing worn-out targets, that sort of thing. There really wouldn't be that many skills you COULD practice without it being quite the costly endeavor.
Heck, to build party cohesion, there could even be a rule that training needs to be done as a group for maximum benefit. Not that everyone would need to study the same thing, but rather, they all agree to take some time off and help each other study.
DM, professional illustrator and comic artist, suffering from severe spinal stenosis, married, middle aged, and nerdy.
I gave an extreme example, but AS aren't much better. Give a 1st level Barb or Monk 20 in two stats and you just threw all battle encounters for the next 16 levels to waste. 18 in each isn't much less.
With skills, we'll have a group that are basically gods. If you REALLY want to make it realistic, skills also recede. If you don't train a skill for too long, it should lose some of its proficiency bonus. Otherwise, expect every character to have all proficiencies or close to that. Just think about the 11th level Rogue's ability. Seems balanced.
Tools make sense, I guess, and not too much impact, so that doesn't bother me much, except stepping on the toes of any class/subclass/whatever that gives proficiency with one of them.
Languages are so much more complicated than 10 weeks of learning. I'm learning English since I was 7 years old and my English is nowhere near perfect - only from this game I've probably learnt ~20 new words, not all of them that 'rare'. To boot, I had books, movies, shows, videos and games, and English teachers that gave a lesson at least twice a week. Sure, school teaching isn't ideal, but it's not far off either. I tried learning additional languages with Duolingo with only partial success. Of course, my time invested there doesn't amount to 10 weeks, but that doesn't matter. What I'm saying is that learning languages isn't that simple. The average person knows ~1.5 languages, after all. Yes, there are people who speak a few dozen languages, but those are special people. Also, to what extent does 'knowing a language' goes? I can read, speak, write and understand my native language and English very well, so I guess I know them. There is one language in which I can form simple sentences, do I 'know' it? Three more where I know simple greetings and a few random words. Do these also count?
Take all that, and add one's innate ability to learn languages. It's not just a matter of rolling dice. Some people are gifted, and I'm not referring to those who know a lot of languages. If my English isn't perfect yet, there are people who have been learning it for much, much longer and, if they tried, would simply not be able to read this wall of text with the same ease that I do.
Varielky
Ability scores: 12 16 16 18 13 15
Ability scores: 14 13 13 7 15 12
Ability scores: 12 13 16 16 14 15
I think you're overstating the possible danger, really. That's 3 ability score rolls, re-rolling 1s always. The last is the best. Depending on your race, some of these will go up. Let's take standard human: the 17 becomes an 18, the 18 a 19 and so on. If an elf, I could start with a 20 DEX and a 19 INT or WIS or CHA, depending on sub-race. My point is that many characters start with multiple high stats and, while effective, are hardly overpowering. Moreover, to have a chance to raise a characteristic even 1 point would take weeks of time and hundreds of gold pieces with no guarantee of success.
As for skills, again, even if the change were introduced (and I'm not advocating that. just discussing ideas--I think the 5e system is pretty much fine as is), we're talking weeks of in-game time, lots of gold, and maybe a failed attempt to learn. You seem to be suggesting that it would be quick and virtually automatic, and it wouldn't.
Again, not advocating any changes but while I respect your concerns, I think they are overstated.
Tandor the White, Human Life Cleric
Interesting, but you're rerolling 1s always, which already changes everything drastically. Notice than none of your rolls even has a negative modifier. You take a small amount of a buffed rolling system and even so it is not even close to the balanced area the game is designed for. A balanced encounter for a 1st level caster assumes their spell DC is 12-13. Your rolled character can have 15 already, which is what a 5th level caster would have if they were using the Standard Array. With those stats, a 1st level Fighter can have a +9 to hit with a bow, while a normal Fighter would reach that only at - you guessed it - level 5. You're a whole tier in front of what you should be.
As for time and cost, that's clearly negligible. DM already hinted at a 'training week' being shortened to a series of rolls. If our characters don't have a time pressure, nothing stops them from doing it. Money? This is one of the easiest things to earn in 5e. Depends on the eventual cost DM decides upon, obviously, but I doubt it'll be a huge amount, or we'd never discuss it at all.
Varielky
I re-rolled the ones to get the best possible scores, to highlight my belief that the issues you've raised are not as serious as you've portrayed them. If I were to DM, I'm not sure if I would go that route. And I've ever seen Standard Array used once (personally I hate it). Most DMs here go with roll 4, take best 3, re-roll 1s once. I'm also not sure how you get a +9 for a bow attack, I get +7. What am I missing?
I agree that the cost to improve in the system originally outlined is not significant. I don't agree that the time and cost in the system I outlined is negligible. 10 weeks of game time is not nothing, unless your DM is doing weird stuff, especially as you'd have to do other things during those 10 weeks like earn a living. As for gold, it's always been as easy or as hard to earn as the DM makes it. In my Adventure League games, we earn gold pretty easy. In my other games (3 or 4 PBP and a FTF) we mostly earn very little. In the one PBP where we earn a decent amount, it's nowhere near enough to abuse the training system in XGtE (nor does the DM give us enough downtime to abuse it even if the gold was plentiful).
That said, I'd like there to be no changes at all. I'm quite pleased with the overall structure of 5e. It's a good blend of simplicity and fun. Where there is complexity it serves to enhance the game, IMHO.
Tandor the White, Human Life Cleric
Archery Fighting Style, I specified a bow for a reason. Other options are +7 damage with dueling or 18 AC with Defense, using a mere Studded Leather armour. The rest are less often used, or don't give a direct numerical benefit, or I forgot about them.
Well, that's just a difference of opinions. I personally like the SA and have used it multiple times. It gives a sense of balance and fair play. Rolling is nice, but if you have a character that's simply weaker in all fields when compared to all others, it might be hindering your fun. Perhaps you want the character to be so, but otherwise... Imagine someone rolled so well they can allow themselves to end up with an 18 in Str as a Wizard while the Barbarian had to choose whether their Con or Str would be 13, because that's their second highest stat.
Most DMs do ask for what you said, and I don't like that method either. Either a fair roll (no rerolls) or just not at all, IMO.
KJ already hinted at a huge time-skip of almost a year. 365 days, that's quite a long time. That's before the end of the prologue, and another skip between prologue and actual play. Enough time to earn money, train, fail and try again.
Varielky
I was mostly talking in very GENERAL terms of course. Learning a new language, for instance, honestly, takes more than 2 and a half friggin months. A LOT more, because in order to be fluent, you have to use it everyday. That's why immersion is THE most effective means of learning a new language, because you don't have any other choice and you are constantly accessing that part of your brain.
And that's just speaking it! Learning to write a language takes even longer, especially if the language uses pictographs rather than an alphabet.
Again, I just want the option to be there for my players. If you don't have the time to type out a lot, or say you're at a table, and you don't WANT to play out a long scene negotiating with a scholar for training, there should be a way to 'just throw dice at it'.
Put simply, I feel that 5e is just a little too dependent on ability scores and inventory to determine your character's full potential. I don't want to burden players by having to keep track of more than they have to like skill decay or vitality or anything else that would just slow things down, nor demand that every player be a roleplaying expert and figuring out thematic reasons for their character to learn certain skills. I mean, I wouldn't be against that, but I don't want to demand it, is what I'm saying.
I'm trying to walk a fine line between realism and game mechanics, and I don't think that I'm alone in saying that the balance in 5e is lacking, but then, the ruleset is kept loose and vague BECAUSE they know that every DM and player has their preferences and actively encourages making homebrew rules to address those tastes, and the reason I've put effort into thinking about these homebrew rules is because it seems you guys have been enjoying having your characters earn and learn their proficiencies and when I think about taking away that ability because you hit level 1, I stopped and said "but why though?"
If it's fun, and makes sense, why stop there just because it's 'not in the rules'?
So, that's why we're here. I think I'm starting to get my eye in on some possibilities for making a sufficient cost to learning new skills (Especially custom skills. Like, why the hell isn't blacksmithing part of the PHB? Seriously guys?) or raising proficiency outside of experience levels. The key of course is that the process is fun and interesting over all else.
So, with that said, and with this being a workshop thread, rather than me just throwing ideas at you guys, let's do some -active- simulations in this thread to see mechanically how they could play out.
If I could have a volunteer, we'll play out a possible situation where you're trying to learn a brand new skill. The key thing for the mechanics is that it should never feel like there's drag anywhere. It should be engaging and fun the whole way through or it's not worth even considering putting in as homebrew.
DM, professional illustrator and comic artist, suffering from severe spinal stenosis, married, middle aged, and nerdy.
I don't mind being your guinea pig for that.
Only one thing I want to say, though, is that the reason blacksmithing, cooking, sowing and so on isn't a skill in the PHB is because they're tied to a specific set of tools, thus making it a proficiency with a tool instead. Hyre may have proficiency in "Cooking" in this game, but it would have been "Cook's Utensils" in any other game. "Blacksmithing" would be "Smith's Tools" and so on.
Varielky
Alrighty, after giving it some thought, I think I have something to try out.
So, give yourself a really, really rough character to play as, like, what class they might be, a skill they want to learn, and we'll say he's level 3 and has a modest living situation for the moment. We'll also assume these are his ability scores: STR: 14 DEX: 9 CON: 13 INT: 12 WIS: 18 CHA: 11
Your character is essentially between adventures, just came back from his first real test and wants to be of more use to his party. You can roll your gold or we'll just assume he currently has 400 GP to spend on trying to learn this new skill.
The town he's in gives him several avenues to pursue: he can enroll at the local academy for a single course, which is the most costly but offers a stable learning environment, seek out a personal tutor, where the amount he learns is largely dependent on his own personal effort and how capable his tutor is, or attempt to learn a skill by having someone teach him the basics and his improvement will be entirely dependent on how efficiently he practices, which is the cheapest but most dependent on good rolls.
DM, professional illustrator and comic artist, suffering from severe spinal stenosis, married, middle aged, and nerdy.
Huh, didn't get a notification about this until... now.
Okay, then. By their stats, I'd say we're talking about a Sorcerer, of the Storm Sorcery (for no real reason). For reasons x and y, Sorci wants to train her Acrobatics skill. She wants to save her money for spell components, however, so she will ask the party's Rogue to teach her (I'm not sure if this is allowed, but I don't really see a reason why not, and I'm trying to force an abusable situation here). The Rogue shows her how to do some flip-flops and other stuff for just a bit before going to do his own thing, leaving Sorci alone. I'm assuming 7 days of downtime.
Character INT: 15. Need to roll 12 or under.
Current proficiency: +0, trying to get to +1.
Day 1: 13 12 6 4 21.
Day 2: 9 20 17 6 8.
Day 3: 10 5 6 11 3.
Day 4: 12 20 9 13 7.
Day 5: 10 10 11 4 7.
Day 6: 3 21 14 8 12.
Day 7: 4 4 21 18 2.
Okay, 1 success. The 5 throws, requiring 3 in a row is truly difficult to land. Let's see the other option, taking 3 days for example.
Day 1: 3 attempts.
Day 2: 4 attempts.
Day 3: 7 attempts.
Day 1 rolls: 7 2 9 21 11 16 21.
Day 2 rolls: 16 7 6 14.
Day 3 rolls: 12 4 12.
3 days, 1 point. Okay.
Just for the sake of it, I kinda want to see Bacon rolling this. Her rolls are on average much lower than mine, but it is good in this case. I wonder if Kallista is secretly just waiting to learn everything later, once the numbers mean opposite things.
Varielky
Oh! Err, I had something else in mind. Like, actually roleplaying this out, I have some ideas that really can only be tested by doing a mockup situation. So, in this case, I'll be the rogue and we'll test out a different and less screen-consuming system I think might be both fun and simple enough to throw dice at for less experienced players.
DM, professional illustrator and comic artist, suffering from severe spinal stenosis, married, middle aged, and nerdy.