>D&D 5e >Roll under your ability score for all checks

Doesn't sound too bad, but I'm neither a mathematician or a gae designer.

Wouldn't that force everyone to be casters as casting is a faster way than doing things manually?

What HD do characters start out with?

>>50523236
>Roll under your ability score for all checks
>add proficiency bonus to ability score for things you're proficient in (e.g. Dex14+ Stealth prof at 2nd level=Stealth 16)
>add penalties for circumstance (calculated by 10-DC; DC 25 check becomes a minus 15)
What is the point? This doesn't really change the math, it just disconnects ability checks from the system where all resolution is rolling at or over given DCs.

>>50523236
I'm pretty sure this was done by old school d&d. Doesn't sound bad to me.

>>50523236
Seems fine. The bigger difficulty would be purchasing class features.

I feel like you'd at least want to have third, half, and full caster as 'classes', and match hit dice with that progression as d10, d8, and d6.

>>50524522
This, even then it will take some time (years) to actually make exp costs for everything and balance that. You would end up with all GWFs getting the champion 19-20 crits, sorcery points and Twin being the only real advantages of Sorcerer many would take that with Warlock/Wizard/Cleric spells and maybe also warlock slots on top because that's pretty good. It essentially boosts multiclassing so all those semi-broken combos of sorlock, pallock etc. become necessary to be optimized.
I'd play it for sure, would be cool to try out, but only if it was balanced which is going to take a lot of time and effort. And then you play one game and it's a clusterfuck and you probably never play it again.

>>50526327
Well I feel like all those options would be fairly expensive to buy up to the point that they'd be useful. Keep in mind that in this kind of system you'd have to consciously keep advancing skills, they wouldn't just auto advance because you gained more experience. So for any one of those options to work well you'd have to put a fair amount of experience in.

>>50523236
So you want to make D&D a d100 system?

>>50523236
to what end? if you want to play a classless roll under system go play that, no one is stopping you

>>50523236
Dude, there is literally ability score proficiency in the DMG. I would suggest just modifying it to give the Rogue class a bonus Dexterity proficiency.

What if buying class features from one class multiple times reduces the cost of taking new features from it? Making highly sought after features as >>50526327 mentioned expensive to upkeep as >>50529335 suggested cheaper for characters who didn't just splash into sorcerer. No need to punish players with simpler builds right?

>>50523236
I'd give it a shot.

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542KB, 1200x1000px

>>50529417
>>50524188
It makes martials far more competent.
5e went a lot of the way towards nerfing spellcasters, this finishes the work by bringing martials up to par.

Consider the classic example of the 19 STR barbarian losing an arm wrestling contest to an 8 STR wizard. Using modifiers as is, the wizard has an incredible 30% chance of winning. 1/3 of the time, the weaker person will win a direct contest.

If we have opposed roll unders, this brings it down to ~16%. Not perfect, but far more reliable.

Let's take the most extreme example: a 1 vs. a 20. Maybe the barbarian is arm wrestling a shadow demon. So, the weakest that a being can be and exist (-5 mod) vs. the mightiest mortal in existence (+5 mod) has an 11% chance of swinging towards the weakling. If we do the same math for roll under, then this possibility is precluded, with only a very tiny fraction of a percent (.0025) of a probability of a tie, which by RAW the stronger side wins anyway

This gives martials a huge boost that keeps them competent for a long time, but it really benefits everyone. Smart people are smart, wise people are observant, etc., and that's before you even factor in proficiency bonuses.

>>50532767
You could do the same thing without completely upending a third of the game's resolution systems by lowering DCs across the board or using the DMG's suggest of automatic successes.

>>50532814
Well DCs wouldn't really be lowered, they'd just be applied to the stat as a penalty