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Here's what each class features says:

Reliable Talent

Whenever you make an ability check that lets you add your proficiency bonus, you can treat a d20 roll of 9 or lower as a 10.

and

Portent

When you finish a long rest, roll two d20s and record the numbers rolled. You can replace any attack roll, saving throw, or ability check made by you or a creature that you can see with one of these foretelling rolls. You must choose to do so before the roll, and you can replace a roll in this way only once per turn.

How do these features interact if a roll is replaced with a Portent die of less than 10?

Codex
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1 Answers1

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There is no reason Reliable Talent cannot affect foretelling rolls

Something to note first is that Portent replaces only the d20 roll, not the entire result. Because of this, the roll would still be one that "lets you add your proficiency bonus", so we know that requirement for using Reliable Talent is still met.

The scenario would be that you are about to make an ability check, when a Divination wizard uses Portent to declare your d20 roll to be, say, a 5. You are still making an ability check and Reliable Talent lets you "treat a d20 roll of 9 or lower as a 10". In this case, the d20 roll is a 5 and I can see no reason Reliable Talent wouldn't increase this to a 10.

A potential sticking point is the fact that Reliable Talent states:

[...] you can treat a d20 roll of 9 or lower as a 10. [...]

So one might wonder whether Portent's die still counts as "a d20 roll" at all. The rules never actually define the phrase "a d20 roll" so we're be left looking to natural language where I would say Portent certainly counts as a d20 roll. The feature even states "roll two d20s" and calls these "foretelling rolls" which I would consider good enough evidence that the a Portent die is indeed a d20 roll.

Exempt-Medic
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    Is replacing a roll still considered rolling for the purpose of Reliable Talent? – Codex Sep 24 '21 at 16:21
  • @Codex As in, does Portent allow you to deny the creature any of their modifiers to the roll, purely on the grounds that it isn't 'their roll' anymore? – Stop Being Evil Sep 24 '21 at 16:30
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    @StopBeingEvil but Reliable talent isn't a modifier, it's a replacement. – Tiger Guy Sep 24 '21 at 16:38
  • @StopBeingEvil No, I'm know that you still add modifiers to a Portent die.

    As to the edit, good explanation but does replacing a die count as a roll? You roll the d20 for Portent but you replace a roll with Portent.

     – Codex Sep 24 '21 at 16:47
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    @Codex And I would say that those dice are rolls, they're just being used after the roll was made. I can't imagine any part of the actual rules support this either way so it's left to natural language, expectations from how the rules usually work, and GM fiat – Exempt-Medic Sep 24 '21 at 16:51
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    This makes sense from a story point of view as well. The diviner can't have predicted the target would perform poorly (roll of 5), since Reliable Talent means the target reliably performs at worst average (roll of 10). – StarHawk Sep 24 '21 at 20:28
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    @TigerGuy Since this is about rules lawyering... Reliable talent isn't a replacement. It just allows treating a number lower than 10 as a 10. The critical difference is, "replacement" is an event that happens at one point in the sequence of determining the roll result, while "treating as" is an ongoing condition. – WakiNadiVellir Sep 25 '21 at 08:14
  • @WakiNadiVellir so it's a treatment? – Tiger Guy Sep 26 '21 at 18:47