Originally Posted by 1varangian
Ability checks with a d20 is a bad concept in almost all cases. Even worse than skill checks. A character with 8 in an ability score can succeed while someone with 20 in the same stat can fail. That's only a 30% shift in success rate between the absolute worst and best.

I can think of a certain burning building in EA where you need to pass a DC10 Strength check to bash the front door in.

It's entirely possible Lae'zel with 18 Strength fails and Gale with 8 Strength succeeds. How do you even begin to explain something like that in the context of BG3? In PnP the DM could just make up a shaky explanation that the fighter slips and the frail wizard finds a weak spot near the hinges and just sort of leans against the door to bring it down. A video game can't even do that. It just makes no sense. A physically weak 8 Str character should never succeed in a strength feat if a character as strong as an ogre, a freaking giant, with 18 Str can fail. This is not a question of probability. It's a question of something you can or can't do.

So why not use thresholds for this kind of stuff? Like Pillars of Eternity does, proabably for this very reason.

Skill checks are almost just as bad as plain ability checks, because an additional +2 isn't going to make a big difference either.

These checks are the biggest flaw in 5e imo and I hope the next edition fixes this.



There is nothing in the D&D rules that say you cannot require a flat "14 strength" for example to push a wall down without rolling a dice. Same with other checks like perception, you can actively search an area and have many perception checks against the same trap or switch if you stay and look longer.

You are correct about some dice rolls making no sense. You are either strong enough to pick up "object" or not. You are dexterous enough to jump over "gap" or not. I think some options require this type of limitation rather than dice a roll.