I have to say, I'm with the OP and with DND 5e on this one. If there is a need for "puddles", Larian could always introduce homebrew versions of the Create or Destroy Water spell, which has the added advantage that players have better control over whether or not they want to use such an effect. Also those spells could be balanced individually, which would probably be necessary. In fact, the DND rulebooks specifically state, that such a thing can be done if a certain spell doesn't quite fit your needs and if your DM allows for that. The spells in BG3, which have been changed by Larian to include puddles are better the way they are in the books in my humble oppinion.
As for the skill check problem. Please consider this:
In DND 5e there are certain situations, which make an automatic fail or success (on a natural one or twenty respectively) result in pretty ridiculous situations. For example Vampires have a trait called "Spider Climb", which allows them to climb difficult surfaces (like smooth walls) *including* upside down on ceilings without the need to make an ability check. They have this in their stat block, because an ability check (and possibly suitable tools) is usually required, naturally. So what if the player says: "I want to climb after the Vampire."? Well the DM would have the player make an ability check and have the difficulty of the check reflect the difficulty of the task. If the player was lucky and rolled a twenty, they would now be crawling along a perfectly smooth ceiling, without magic, tools or help, just like spiderman. What about swimming? DMs will often make players take a Strength (Athletics) check for that. What if the player wants to swim up a waterfall? With the auto success rule you'd have to allow the player to actually swim up a waterfall if they did roll the lucky twenty.
The same is true for low difficulty challenges, like that DC 5 lock. That specific example would be such an incredibly cheap and simple lock, that it would serve as more of a message stating "Hands off!", than an actual attempt to prevent unauthorised acccess. A rogue - especially one who is proficient with thieving tools - can open it as easily as if they had the key. Sure, other characters, who have never learned how exactly a lock is built (represented by a skill bonus lower than +4), may have trouble and even fail, if they roll a one, but the rogue is a specialist and simply cannot botch this.
TLDR: Yeah, I'd like the game to stick to the rules as written in these cases.
Last edited by Kasai; 15/06/22 02:55 PM. Reason: typos
