D&D 5E Average skill modifiers by level?

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

Has anyone done/seen a chart with average skill modifiers by level for a 5e character that has invested in a skill and not? How much can you expect to improve on the base from there in an encounter (through spells, etc.) if you decide to use resources?

I am trying to run some 4e type skill challenges (regular and Obsidian) in 5e and this would be very helpful.

Thanks!

 

[overgeeked]

I ran the numbers ages ago and don’t have them at hand. They vary wildly. Assuming a standard array, you can have anywhere from -1 to to +8 at first level. That’s the 8 ability score for a -1 mod and no proficiency on up to a variant human with the 15, +2 to stat racial, a half feat, and expertise. At 20th level, you still have that same -1 as the bottom but the cap is somewhere in the 20s. Max stat, expertise, and a magic item or two.

The best bet is to keep with the standard DCs for 5E and not adjust them based on high bonuses. It throws the system off. If the players burn resources they deserve the easier success.

 

[Charlaquin]

I don’t know about what’s average, as that would be entirely dependent on the group and their tendencies. But, the assumption 5e’s math is built around is +3 in the relevant stat at 1st level, increasing by +1 at ASI levels. That means:

Level	Modifier
1st-3rd	+5
4th	+6
5th-7th	+7
8th	+8
9th-12th	+9
13th-16th	+10
17th+	+11

Note that, thanks to the ability score cap of 20, the expected modifier doesn’t increase at 12th, 16th, and 19th levels, which gives folks who started with less than 16 in the relevant score and/or took Feats at instead of ASIs at 4th/8th a chance to catch up.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I don’t know about what’s average, as that would be entirely dependent on the group and their tendencies. But, the assumption 5e’s math is built around is +3 in the relevant stat at 1st level, increasing by +1 at ASI levels. That means:

Level	Modifier
1st-3rd	+5
4th	+6
5th-7th	+7
8th	+8
9th-12th	+9
13th-16th	+10
17th+	+11

Note that, thanks to the ability score cap of 20, the expected modifier doesn’t increase at 12th, 16th, and 19th levels, which gives folks who started with less than 16 in the relevant score and/or took Feats at instead of ASIs at 4th/8th a chance to catch up.

If you really want to focus on "average of a skill you focus on" over potential, I'd lower it by one point from 1-11, and follow the chart from then on. This should account for starting with a +2 or taking a feat.

Which would give a 'middle' DC number by tier of:

1st to 4th: 15 (about a +5, assuming you want t 10+on the die as the middle)
5th to 10th: 17
11th to 16th: 19
17th to 20th: 21

Which is a lot smoother than I expected.

(note that the number should reflect a different challenge in the fiction - sneaking past basic guards is always the same DC, sneaking past epic guards is 6 points higher)

 

[Charlaquin]

If you really want to focus on "average of a skill you focus on" over potential, I'd lower it by one point from 1-11, and follow the chart from then on. This should account for starting with a +2 or taking a feat.

Personally, I think focusing on potential over average is the better choice, given that (in my experience), players tend to select the character with the highest bonus to perform any given task. Maybe for something like social challenges, where the players might have less ability to select who makes the roll, it would be a good idea to focus on averages, but for exploration tasks, I would definitely design the challenge around potential - though I would probably discount expertise, since being able to outstrip the expected difficulty curve for a specialized task is kind of the point of the feature.

Which would give a 'middle' DC number by tier of:

1st to 4th: 15 (about a +5, assuming you want t 10+on the die as the middle)
5th to 10th: 17
11th to 16th: 19
17th to 20th: 21

Which is a lot smoother than I expected.

(note that the number should reflect a different challenge in the fiction - sneaking past basic guards is always the same DC, sneaking past epic guards is 6 points higher)

Which checks out with the simple DC-setting guideline of 10 for easy, 15 for medium, 20 for hard. It’s like the designers already did this math for us or something

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

Which checks out with the simple DC-setting guideline of 10 for easy, 15 for medium, 20 for hard. It’s like the designers already did this math for us or something

Yeah, it may work well for single checks, but DCs likely need to be adjusted in a multi check encounter resolution system like traditional 4e skill challenges (X success before Y failures) and Obsidian skill challenges (at least X successes in 3 rounds). Hence knowing the underlying average / peak potential modifiers is helpful.

 

[overgeeked]

Yeah, it may work well for single checks, but DCs likely need to be adjusted in a multi check encounter resolution system like traditional 4e skill challenges (X success before Y failures) and Obsidian skill challenges (at least X successes in 3 rounds). Hence knowing the underlying average / peak potential modifiers is helpful.

In practice this means your PCs will fail a bunch of skill challenges.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yeah, it may work well for single checks, but DCs likely need to be adjusted in a multi check encounter resolution system like traditional 4e skill challenges (X success before Y failures) and Obsidian skill challenges (at least X successes in 3 rounds). Hence knowing the underlying average / peak potential modifiers is helpful.

For sure. Personally I’m not a big fan of porting skill challenges to 5e. They were great for 4e (once they fixed the math, and if you knew how to run them right, which admittedly I didn’t at the time), but for 5e I prefer a different approach. Still, for those who want a 5e skill challenge system, I hope these numbers are helpful.

 

[overgeeked]

Now that I'm back at my desk. If anyone's interested here's the skill challenge system we use...

Since we’re doing skill challenges, here’s this from another thread. I’d love for something like this to be in 5.5.

I really, really loved skill challenges in 4E. They had their flaws but it was a great idea. We found it really hard to come up with interesting consequences to failure that weren't forced combat, death, or lose a healing surge. To us that was boring. So we loosened up the already loose framework, but made it more concrete instead of abstract. Though it could still easily handle abstract and montage scenes well. The DM would set up some montage or action scene and would include obstacles to overcome. There was generally either a separate timer (be done in X rounds or bad thing Y will happen, survive the night, etc) or some consequential fail state, NPC dies, lose some resource, lose favor with NPC, etc.

You rolled as normal, a regular success counted as one and a crit counted as two. A failure counted as one but fumbles weren't used. A failure would either add a new obstacle (usually one success' worth) or would add one to a given obstacle. So you need to climb a wall that takes two successes. Get one success and you're halfway up the wall. Fail and you slide back down and now you need two successes to climb the wall. But it had to make narrative sense. If you're halfway up a wall and you fail the wall doesn't get taller. You slide down. And you populate a skill challenge with a few obstacles that take different skills to overcome and that require differing numbers of successes. You can see an official 4E skill challenge that basically works like this in Dungeon 173. The Colossus of Laarn. Because we'd already converted to doing it this way, switching over to 5E didn't mean abandoning skill challenges.

Two of my favorites were the giant obstacle course and the zombie horde.

We were captured by giants and forced to go through an obstacle course while the giants were cheering, jeering, and throwing boulders. A failure could mean either you fell, slid down a wall, or a giant threw a boulder at you. A PC was halfway up a wall, failed and fell down, failed again so a giant threw a boulder. DEX save or take damage. The player then used the boulder to climb up the wall. There was more to it, of course, but that was the most memorable part.

We were in a town attacked by a zombie horde and had to survive the night. Checks to sneak from building to building without being caught. Checks to scrounge for supplies. Checks to barricade the building we were in. Failures meant time wasted or attracting zombies. The zombie horde would degrade the barricades by one every few hours depending on how many were there. If we were loud more would show up and degrade the barricade faster. Each success made the barricade stronger so it would last longer, but we only had so many resources to work with. We went to the inn and broke up the tables and chairs for wood to barricade the door. One PC was a guild artisan carpenter and handled that while the barbarian pulled larger bits of furniture, barrels, etc in front of the barricade.

It's a loosey-goosey system but it was a lot more fun, dynamic, and interesting than the nailed down skill challenges as written.

 

[bert1001 fka bert1000]

In practice this means your PCs will fail a bunch of skill challenges.

The DCs just need to be lowered. I'm trying to figure out by how much. Skill challenges are an abstraction anyway, so doesn't matter to me that they use a different scale than single checks.