Originally Posted by GM4Him
Originally Posted by CJMPinger
I feel very apprehensive about this kind of house rule. I think a similar effect can be achieved purely by lowering the DC on a few of the checks in the game because I don't think the issue is that players don't have enough bonuses, but that the DC for certain skill checks feels off. Similar with AC, many of the enemies we face at our level have a fairly high AC because a lot of them are not meant to be encountered at our level.

Guys, D&D 5e works very well if done right. CJMPinger has hit the nail on the head. The issue isn't bonuses, it's difficulty levels. When you start the game at level 1, you are supposed to be not very good at things. A few proficiency skills give you a bit of a bonus, but that's it. The point is that when you first start you are barely better than your average grunt or common person, but as the game progresses you start to become a hero.

So you are meant to start as barely a hero and end up a champion. The issue, therefore, is we are being thrown into battles against monsters way above our pay grade. Although this is fun, if we can kill them, it makes it so that we have to break the 5e rules in order to survive in the game.
The issue I have with lowering DC's is that it makes it even easier for a non-skilled PC to succeed. The biggest problem is that the skill gap between the highest skilled individual and the worst amateur is negligible. Picking your skills in character creation has almost no meaning. It doesn't make you feel that you are actually good at something. Another +2 would go a long way into making you feel like you are skilled.

I think in some areas they took the bounded accuracy and lack of incremental modifiers too far, where things start to feel bland and meaningless.

Last edited by 1varangian; 10/04/21 12:50 PM.