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. If your DM asks for a bunch of Medium checks ("because that doesn't sound that bad, right?"), you need a +6 bonus to the relevant skill (or a stack of buffs) for your chances of success to be better than a coinflip. If you want to be as reliable at hitting Medium checks as you are with attack rolls, you're looking at skill bonuses that are locked behind a ton of character building prereqs. And that's Medium checks.

And, yes, the players do get tools to manipulate probability in their favor... but if my max-skill-bonus-in-Tier-1 (+9, from having a +5 stat and Expertise) character who is getting Help *and* divine Guidance still has a ~15% chance of failing a Hard check, maybe the DC table's a little broken...
The dice are swingy as hell.

My barbarian, who is raging and has Advantage on his Athletics check, just failed to climb a tree at DC 13 with his +7 modifier.