That aside,
I'm finding myself wondering what sorts of DMs you other folks have had in the past, to leave you with view points like this...
- A level one character who is proficient, or even expert, in a particular skill is better, on the whole, in that area than someone who isn't, but they're not *That* great at it yet. No, they should not be a *lot* better at those skills at level one; they're level one. They've just got a good start ahead of most average others. At level one, if you've got a good stat to back up your good skill, you'll be a +6; at level one, you generally shouldn't be facing any checks much above a 12, at least not often. If you are facing a 15 or above at that level, then you're trying something that's actually quite difficult for someone of your limited experience, and yeah, you can expect to not nail it half the time. Welcome to level one? You're just starting out? Don't expect to be fantastic even at the things you're training yourself towards at this point? Expect to be competent at them, dare I even say, proficient at them, and better than your contemporaries... but not a master, or everyone's go-to gal. In a training room with 20 "my first lock" puzzles (DC 10), the level one wizard, who understand the concept of lock picking, but doesn't know a cinching pin from hair clip when presented with the tools, might be able to fumble his way through ten of them, or so. Meanwhile, a level one rogue who has learned how to use their tools properly, and is nimble of finger (18 dex, thief tool expertise, +8 bonus), might expect to open nineteen of the twenty locks in the same time... probably all twenty, but mistakes can happen. 5e's bounded statistics and the d20 are working just fine.
Hey, you know what... I just ran that experiment five times, using physical dice... the 'rogue' got all 20 locks four times, and got nineteen one time, with a single natural 1. The 'wizard' got 9 locks, followed by 13, 8, 7 and 14 locks on the fifth set - he rolled slightly above average expectations overall. But I don't know what else to say, other than that the system does what it's intended to do... this all feels pretty correct and satisfying to me.
If Bumblefoot Mugbreaker needs a 16 to sneak past the guards, and has 8 Dex and no proficiency, then he's going to fail most of the time, but sometimes (4/20, 20%) he'll luck out and not tip them off, provided his club foot isn't giving him disadvantage on stealth checks to move silently... it probably should be... but if we figured that in, his success rate drops to almost nothing.
If Darkstalker Shadowcloak has been training himself in the arts of stealth for years... then he's probably not a level one character... but that aside, if he IS level one, then he's going to be decently dexy and is apparently a self-proclaimed expert. Let's cut it right back, the bare minimum for edgelording, and call it a 16... then he will succeed more often than not (12/20, 60%). It's a notable margin. It's not an insignificant margin, in fact. It's three times the chance, at level one. It's not 10%, certainly.
The sheer magnitude of skill numbers in older editions were the exact opposite of fun - they meant that, as with all contested arms races, right off the bat, the DCs for things would shoot so high that no-one except super-specialists would have any hope at all of succeeding. It discouraged people from trying anything outside of their very narrow, specific wheelhoues, and it forced players into wedging themselves into said wheelhouses, to the complete exclusion of almost everything else... because if they *Didn't*, then *No-one* would be able to do it at all. Let's NEVER go back to that, thanks.
In an average level party (let's say 9th level; the experts are really starting to seem like genuine experts at a world-class level by this point), that group stealth check goes something like this: The rogue rolls a 3, and has a final check of 16 (presuming no magic items). The clumsy one with 8 dex *Needs* to roll 17 or over (an excellent attempt and a slim chance at best) just in order to do as well as the rogue when she *screws up*. That sounds right to me; where's the problem?
How often has the 8 Int barb come up with super specific arcana knowledge while the wizard is left scratching her head? Well, for my games... Never. Here's why:
- Skill checks are supposed to represent situations where there is a realistic chance of failure or success. IS there a realistic chance of the barbarian with 8 int and a backstory that involves growing up getting hit with rocks might know the lore needed while the wizard doesn't? No? Then the barbarian doesn't roll arcana here. That's how it's meant to work. Players and DMs who regularly request skill checks over ridiculous things where it defies sense for at least one of the outcomes to occur need to take a step back and ask why they're doing a check there, and then not.
- An extra one or two makes a lot of difference, especially with attack rolls, in 5e. My variant human ranger started her adventuring career off with a +9 to her ranged attack rolls... compared to the warlock's +6 and the cleric's +5, it made a positively phenomenal difference over those first 3 levels. She virtually never missed, was happy to shoot with disadvantage, and it was so much of a sure shot thing that it felt completely broken and over-powered for the system. The small numbers are worth a lot; it's a good thing that most people's attack bonus, whatever their method, all generally start within one or two of each other, at least for those character who intend to be using that attack bonus most of the time.
If it 'feels bad' for you, to only be a *Little* better than everyone else at your chosen specialisation at *Level 1*, that's not the fault of the game, or the d20... that problem lies between chair and character sheet. If you are repeatedly and consistently failing checks that you have a high bonus for, and regularly succeeding in checks that you don't think you ought to have been able to succeed at... that's a DM problem, not a problem of the system or the d20 (maybe the d20, if it's the same one and providing such a predictable result - maybe float it and check).
Thank you for giving such a detailed and well thought-out reply to my earlier post. You make a lot of good points, and your math checks out. But I think we're never going to agree on this topic, as we have fundamentally different ideas of what is fun. What you call "the exact opposite of fun", I call exactly fun. You want us to "NEVER go back to that", I wish we'd never left that. I like a game of specialists, even specialists right from level 1. I like a lot more character customization and choices than 5e provides. It's one of many reasons why I stopped DMing 5e and probably never will again, unless it's with a heavy dose of my own house rules.
As I said in my post, I hate the tyranny of the d20. It's just too swingy. There's no probability curve. 5% of the time you're gonna be super lucky. 5% of the time you're gonna be super unlucky. And only 5-10% of the time are you gonna do just average. It just makes luck far too important of a component in how the story plays out. Since any version of D&D is going to use the d20 (it's too iconic not to), I will always prefer any version of D&D that mitigates it's wild randomness more by making the actual die result a smaller component of total success. I don't think the DCs need to escalate to extreme levels. And thematically, narratively, I just like the idea that most challenging tasks will be extremely hard for characters who aren't actually good at that thing, and extremely easy for characters who are. I like the characters to feel more unique from each other.
Thematically, I hate the idea of someone's total capabilities as a person, all of their training, knowledge, and raw ability only contributing 5, or 7, or even 10 toward success, but pure random chance can contribute up to 20. If my surgeon was relying on sheer luck for half of their total success chance of operating on me, I think I'd pass on having any procedures.
I've designed a few of my own RPG systems, and a lot of homebrew versions of D&D as well. The main thing I try to do is reduce the impact of randomness. I prefer it when the most knowledgable wizard is the one who studied hardest, not the luckiest one. 5e doesn't even let you make "the wizard who studied hardest". Every wizard is gonna have the same bonus to Arcana, at any given level. (Give or take +1 if some aren't raising Intelligence as quickly as others.) At 1st level they're all gonna have +5, at 20th level they're all gonna have +11. The d20, that massive 1 to 20 range of possibilities, is still more important than even the sum total of all the learning of an archmage. In 3rd and 4th editions, and many other RPGs, this is not the case. You can have characters who are really good or really bad at things, and that's what's fun for me.
It's not fun for you, that's fine. I understand that. Everyone has their own preferences. More people agree with your idea of fun, I'm sure. As I've said before, 5e is the best edition of D&D ever for the largest number of people. Just not me.
None of this has any applicability to Baldur's Gate 3, of course. (Except, perhaps, as an argument FOR the easier means of getting advantage that Larian has given us, which serves to help mitigate the swingyness of the d20.) But the thread is about Josh Sawyer's tweets, so I'm just explaining why I agree with him that the "d20 + a little bit" game design "feels bad" for some people.
