Quote Originally Posted by Tehnar View Post
Why? Why is rolling for everything so much better, or fun? What purpose does rolling for everything serve?

I am not saying that you should be able to build a character that auto succeeds at everything, just that you should be able to build a character that auto succeeds at certain things. Things that should be trivial for that character concept.

So what if a Rogue can stealth around goblins and orcs all day long? He invested a lot into stealth, why deny him the opportunity to use that? That does not mean he should be able to automatically stealth around dragons and beholders.
Rolling engages the players and lends an air of suspense to the game because success is not certain. Even a master thief gets sloppy sometimes.

Additionally, your system isn't granulated enough to represent incremental character growth. With your system, if the Rogue is at Great, and he's forced to roll, then he already knows the DC is just five points higher. He will know almost instantly if he succeeded or failed. Sad to say but I find it very boring and uninteresting.

If there were, say 20 levels of Mastery, then the system would be more interesting because there would be more mystery as to just how high the DC actually is in comparison to your Mastery Level. However, at that point, you may as well just go back to a more normal skill system.