Quote Originally Posted by Satinavian View Post
Why would that be a problem ? Many tasks should be impossible for untrained characters and if a system does that naturally instead of relying on the GM to overrule the skill rules all the time to prevent stupid results, that is a mark of quality.
Making everything a windowed treadmill system means that every character interested in succeeding at their skill checks must become more specialized over time. Instead of a non specialist having a small chance to be useful, it drops to zero. Worse, even someone trained but not specialized will soon have no chance of success. I’d much rather have a bounded accuracy system that only specialists can break, or include special perks only available to specialists to mechanically reward their specialization, than represent excellence purely by ludicrously escalating numbers.

Additionally, if a player has invested a significant fraction of their character build into being good at something, it might be nice to give them something a little more engaging than a single pass-fail roll.

Now, my issues with the D&D 3.5/Pathfinder style non-bounded skill numbers are based on the criticisms I’ve read from others, not personal experience, but I’ve found 5e’s system pretty resilient, and easy to get what I want from without too much pondering. If you want something hard but not impossible, where the experts will shine, simply setting a low DC check but applying disadvantage due to the circumstances works really well.

It also aligns with my sensibilities fiction-wise, because to me the difference between an expert and a novice is more often that the expert can do the task upside-down in the dark wearing gloves, not that the novice can’t do the task at all (especially for non-crafting adventuring tasks).

I grant you this may be more preference for bounded systems and a bias against big numbers and lots of modifiers. I have been quite happy with 5e and Fate, where lining up more than a handful of bonuses and a re-roll for any task is generally impossible.