I mean the best way to truly run skills is first question if a role is even needed. Web DM started a new series on Skills and rolling and the first thing they say is if you don't want a person to fail a check - then don't have it be a rolling check. It's very easy to do exactly what you are saying without changing skill. The DMG acutally lays out what you say in the "Rolling the Dice" section and the "Ability Score" Section of the Running the Game chapter of the book
Pulled from the Ability score section of the DMG:
When deciding whether to use a roll, ask yourself two questions:
Is a task so easy and so free of conflict and stress that there should be no chance of failure?
Is a task so inappropriate or impossible — such as hitting the moon with an arrow — that it can’t work?
I don't think there's really any need to make things more complicated; if your character has expertise in a skill and it's something they obviously do all the time, then you can appeal to your DM, though if you've built the character properly it shouldn't matter if you're asked to roll.
Rules as written there are no critical failures on a skill roll in 5th edition, so if you have proficiency and a suitably high ability score then you have little chance of failing an easy roll, and if you have expertise then it's almost impossible. My bard for example had +10 on Deception and Persuasion at level 5, so easy checks for those are automatic, and he has a huge advantage to most opposed rolls (especially now he has Enhance Ability and Hex 😈)
Some DMs like to have a natural 1 always fail so there's still some risk that even the smoothest talker says the wrong thing, or an experienced climber makes a mistake, but even in such cases it only turns an automatic pass to a 1/20 chance of failing.
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I really dislike the way we do skills. Among other things, there are cases when an Expert will fail easy things (at least at lower levels).
Basically, the current skill checks are described as:
Here is what I propose, a radically different method, and it depends on whether you are Unskilled, Jack of All Trades, Proficient, or Expert
Just say you can’t be an expert at anything u til lvl 10
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I mean the best way to truly run skills is first question if a role is even needed. Web DM started a new series on Skills and rolling and the first thing they say is if you don't want a person to fail a check - then don't have it be a rolling check. It's very easy to do exactly what you are saying without changing skill. The DMG acutally lays out what you say in the "Rolling the Dice" section and the "Ability Score" Section of the Running the Game chapter of the book
Pulled from the Ability score section of the DMG:
I don't think there's really any need to make things more complicated; if your character has expertise in a skill and it's something they obviously do all the time, then you can appeal to your DM, though if you've built the character properly it shouldn't matter if you're asked to roll.
Rules as written there are no critical failures on a skill roll in 5th edition, so if you have proficiency and a suitably high ability score then you have little chance of failing an easy roll, and if you have expertise then it's almost impossible. My bard for example had +10 on Deception and Persuasion at level 5, so easy checks for those are automatic, and he has a huge advantage to most opposed rolls (especially now he has Enhance Ability and Hex 😈)
Some DMs like to have a natural 1 always fail so there's still some risk that even the smoothest talker says the wrong thing, or an experienced climber makes a mistake, but even in such cases it only turns an automatic pass to a 1/20 chance of failing.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.