The Cloud Giant has some level of elemental magic. In 3e it's kinda crappy, but in 5e he gets Control Weather and Telekinesis. The Cloud Giant is also Huge. So it's a giant monster you fight in the middle of a thunderstorm. Seems reasonably different from Orcs. And if you were writing a new game, you could easily tweak that some more to give him flight, or something like Call Lightning.
Sure. But my point is that a lot of skill checks genuinely don't need progression. There's no reason that it should be harder to convince the king of the elves to help you because he is personally harder core.
Sure, but is there a need to have +40 checks and the associated DC 50 tricks? Bounded Accuracy doesn't have to mean no progression, it just means that progression stops at some point.For unopposed checks I do not see a reason to cap the progression. There is real progression from being able to do DC 10 tricks occasionally to being able to always succeed on DC 15 tricks.