Quote Originally Posted by Amechra View Post
Another flaw? People hate ability checks because they're hilariously unreliable thanks to the d20 being so dang swingy.
I think there's maybe a bit of player expectation bias at fault here as well. It very much must be considered that so long as it's at all possible for your character and without time or risk pressure, no dice are required. You should really only be rolling dice for when the circumstances are, well, dicey and that brings up the question of what those difficulty DCs are relative to. "Medium" difficulty might not sound linguistically that challenging, but it actually means "For a proficient character of low level, it's basically a coin flip whether you can nail this in one" and that's actually a pretty high bar.

When you recalibrate the expectation based on both this and the auto-pass rule, the skill system, at least for me, makes a little more sense. DC:25 is only Very Hard (in my book) for someone with a +10 modifier (i.e. a natural 15 on the dice). For anyone with less than a +5 mod, it's Actually Impossible; it requires proficiency or peak physical or mental capacity (Ability Score 20) to even be possible, let alone to achieve it "in the moment" of a combat or other critical scenario.

Add to that the consideration that, outside of Expertise or magic, modifiers of +10 or more are strictly the purview of Tier 3+ play, it should inform prospective players on what the game expects of the different levels of challenge. For further reinforcement, a level 20 Wizard with peak Intelligence "only" has a spell save DC of 19.