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I would probably house rule that you can only use 1 die/check if it became a problem. It says in the DMG that you should only force players to roll if the result is random or hard to calculate through logic. Having an ability that removes all the tension from the die rolling means you shouldn't make them roll at all.

This seems like another one of those obvious problems that will get fixed in the next big update.

Oct 31, 2012 -- 2:47PM, Jenks wrote:

Oct 31, 2012 -- 1:15PM, Gwathir wrote:

The current Skill Mastery pretty much breaks the whole point behind bounded accuracy.

So does Iron Will, Great Fortitude and Lightning Reflexes... anytime you get caught doing a save out of combat, obviously you will add all your expertise dice, therefore +11 to str/con saves as a 10th level fighter with great fortitude and 16 con... its too high.

I would agree to this, but I don't think this will be a huge issue because you would have to choose one of these over another maneuver. There's plenty of people on these forums saying "Drop IW, GF, and LR because no one will ever take them". With this, it makes it seem much more like a problem on paper, less in practice.

I agree with this. Lets say a level 10 fighter is fighting a dragon. The dragon breaths acid on him, so the fighter dumps all 3d10 dice into his save, and so he makes the save easy. Now he rushes in to attack with two attacks. He likely will hit once, but now he has no expertise dice for extra damage, he just does regular weapon damage.

Or switch it around, fighter charges in first, hits and spends expertise dice. He does say, a d12+3d10+6. Pretty good hit! Dragons turn, dragon breaths acid, uh oh, fighter needs to make a reflex save based off a 13 (+1) dex vs DC 16 with no specialty dice to spend. Now its the fighters turn to hurt....Or, you could spread your dice around, maybe saving one of those d10s for later for your saving thorw or parry, and using only two d10 to for extra damage.

With rogues, it is some what similar when in combat. The real issue is using skill mastery when you are out of combat, for traps or open locks. It says in the dm packit, typical lock is dc 16, elaborate lock is dc 19, and dwarven lock is dc 22.  Given this,  level one rogue would have +3 for training, +3 from dex, for a plus 6 total. That gives him a 50 percent chach to pick typical lock before adding a 1d4 (5-20 percent bonus) specialty die. The dwarven lock would require a roll of 16 or only a 20 percent chance, before adding in a single d4.

At 10th level, the rogue could max out their skill at +8, probably have +5 from mod, for a total of +13. This is an 85 percent success against typical lock and roll of 9, or, 45 percent chance to pick dwarven lock before adding in the specialtie dice. Rolling a d10 gives you any where from a +5 percent to +50 percent bonus. Rolling all three and taking the best d10 means you probably get a 40 percent bonus, giving something like an 85 percent chanch to pick the dwarven lock. 

So, at high levels, most skills will be trivial. Maybe they should just re-word skill master to limite your use of specilaty dice to one die. Then, you would usually get a 25 percent bonus instead of a 85 percent bonus at 10th level. That gives you a 70 percent chanch to pick a dwarven lock at level ten, on average, instead of 85 percent. 

Of course, a 10th leve rouge having near automatic success for even the most difficult of tasks is nothing new for the game. I remember having an 8th level rogue in 3.x that routinly rolled between 29-31 for move sliently and hide. In older editions where theif skills were percntile based, by 9th level, you had 80-90 percent success on almost all skills. In 4th ed, since most standard dcs were quite low compaired to the skill bonus, it was also easy to pass skills (for example open lock at level one would likely have a +5 mod, plus another +5 for being trained. So, you had +10 to your rolls and most lock dcs would be 13-15. So, you only needed to roll betwen 3 or 5 on a d20, for a 85-75 percent chanch of succes, or, 50 percent chance of success against a dc 20 lock, and this is at level one. Since everything in forth 4th ed scaled with level, those numbers would hold pretty consistantly.)

So, rogues being awsome at their skills at high level is not anything new and because of this, I have a feelign it works pretty well (yeah, it eventually makes wizards knock spell obsoleate but he can memorize other things). 


Now that I think about it, in playing DnD basic, Adnd 2nd, 3.0 and 3.x, and 4th ed, every edition rogues got to a point of near auto success at high level, and it never broke the game. Every class, by level 10, seemed to have a nich in which they were totally awsome. The thing to keep in mind is that 10th level is very powerful, so we should expect the classes to be able to do very powerful things. I think if anything, we could just limit the use of skill mastery to one die but I would like to play test high level play before I can know for sure which way to go. 

 

Skill Mastery:

When you make a check of which one of your trained skills applies, and you roll 9 or less. You can spend expertise dice to change the result to 10.

Skill Mastery:

When you make a check of which one of your trained skills applies, and you dislike the result, you can spend expertise dice to re-roll but must accept the second result.