I think this is why pathfinder has rules for rolls that require a certain amount of training to even be attempted at all
Of course this in theory is also solved by “the GM just says you cannot in fact do the thing you very obviously cannot do” or “the player doesn’t piggyback off the actual expert for no in-character reason” but in practice this definitely wont happen for every group
This is the kind of stuff that I really like about Daggerheart’s Hope/Fear system.
Wish that literally anyone I knew irl understood Daggerheart enough for me to run a campaign in it.
I still do not know how daggerheart works despite trying to find the rules
tbf I think this is Mostly a thing in 5e and 5elikes, it’s not zero a thing in other systems (particularly at low levels) but it’s generally going to happen less often in systems that have skill ranks rather than just an untrained/trained or untrained/trained/expertise di/trichotomy
(this is not to say those systems don’t introduce other problems,)
(I would absolutely run a small Daggerheart campaign this semester if I didn’t see my school’s TTRPG club members resoundingly reject any campaigns not run in DnD 5e last year. There was a really cool Candela Obscura one that got two people of its desired six, from a pool of 80 people.)
Im driving up to college and it’s interesting how many people drive considerably faster than the speed limits (sampling bias is afoot). The one vehicle going my speed was a truck, which had a speed limit 15mph lower.
I mean I think john barbarian being able to do that is comical
Like Tess Ardent once high heel kicked an entire door down and launched it towards the enemies doing AoE damage because she nat 20’d after the party’s martials all failed to knock it down
different tables have different tones or levels of camp, so like john barbarian being better at hacking than the hacker is jarring in a more serious game than one that’s more focused on comedy in the same way that having someone who actually named their character “john barbarian” would be appropriate at some tables but not necessarily at others
In fairness anyone can realistically kick down a door
Yeah should be noted that that campaign involved Wazza marrying a guy called Lord Spaghetti Spinelli
i think mitigating the like weirdness factor of doing things in d20 systems is having players describe what they do first and the GM tell them what to roll and figure out the outcome accordingly. so john barbarian doesn’t get to make a hacking roll without first describing narratively how illiterate john barbarian even tries to tackle the problem. there’s almost no way that character could conceivably accomplish the actual goal, and we’re into the “how should the GM handle a player asking to do something impossible” weeds in the same way a dwarf trying to leap across a 200 foot gap with only his legs would be. a GM can also smooth things over by describing the door as hanging on by a thread as tess ardent comes and kicks it in which still allows for a comedic moment while lessening the absurdity of it (unless absurdity is welcome at the table then by all means)
…kick down as in like
Force open in general, I do not think I can high heel kick a door open in real life
True
I do unfortunately play mostly that category of thing due to 5e and permutations of it being the lion’s share of the ttrpg space
I acknowledged it as funny
This in and of itself is an ask because a major strength of skill checks is that they can resolve situations where the player themselves does not know how to do a thing (see: various charisma skills in systems where they exist)
The player may be rightfully annoyed that the describe method is being applied in one instance when it wouldn’t be in another
This isn’t to say that I disagree in this case it’s just a problem to use this common sense solution in an actual game
I do think that if I get john barbarian just asking me to make a hack check despite being completely untrained I am willing to make it impossible to succeed
Granted this might not work if the skill gap between hackerman and john barbarian is too thin, but then if that’s the case this clearly wasn’t a difficult hack in the first place
Hacking probably wasn’t the best example to go with because it’s frequently a ‘trained only’ type skill
