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13 months ago ::
Jun 24, 2012 - 9:38PM
#1
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Date Joined:
Jul 17, 2008
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Has this been covered anywhere yet? I'm not as voracious as some of you, so forgive me if I'm asking or stating anything redundant.
I have a love/hate relationship with skill challenges. I like the concept, and from time to time I find that skill challenges actually execute in a way that roughly corresponds to the way they were intended to execute... but most of the time not really.
My main gripe is the complexity mechanic. I generally have a hard time making it plausible that the PCs haven't accomplished something after making many successful skill checks in a row, just because they haven't hit the magic number of 6 or 8 or 704 or whatever number of successes the challenge demands.
I'm thinking of a simpler design for DDN: skill challenges are just called role-play encounters, or possibly non-combat encounters. The encounter outlines what the PCs need to do and gives guidance to the DM on how to run the situation. A big focus would be on things that automatically help or hinder the party's efforts, rather than the focus being on skill check after skill check. As in, "if the PCs remind the NPC about X he helps them by offering this information..." no checks needed, just a reward for good role-playing.
Then the encounter text ends with a conclusion: if the PCs were successful they get an XP reward and optimal outcome A, if they were unsuccessful they get no XP reward and sub-optimal outcome B. Much simpler and the DM is given more fiat to let the encounter play on or cut it short based on the players' approach, rather than trying to map their actions to a really artificial complexity scheme.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 25, 2012 - 1:04AM
#2
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Date Joined:
May 24, 2012
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Skill challenges were a good idea that nobody (including whoever designed them) really understood how to use. The errata for them didn't help matters much, and they remained very poorly-explained throughout the life of 4e.
They're gone, and not coming back.
I think this is a shame, but the skill challenges I quite regularly use in my games have nothing to do with the system that was given in the books. My players like them and agree that the way I use them is the way the designer intended they be used, but unfortunately arriving at the solution that I did requires much reading between the lines that most D&D players don't want to bother with.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 25, 2012 - 7:28AM
#3
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The problem, imo, with Skill Challenges was they were too mechanically strict... and ultimately the math behind the mechanics was wrong. It's sad how wrong the math was. I can't fully trust any mechanic WotC publishes after Skill Challenges, but that's another topic.
The takeaway from Skill Challenges in 4e is rolling multiple skill checks.
If you remove the mechanics of Complexity and Successes and Failures (and have decent DCs) and just write a chapter about skill checks being steps to solve a problem rather than single rolls to solve a problem, it would have been a great improvement in D&D.
Take all the DMG, DMG2, DMKit, etc. on Skill Challenges and Groups checks in all their variations and throw them in a blender and just present it as multiple skill checks. Multiple skill checks one player ca make or checks the whole party can make.
It has to be less about calculating XP, and more about engaging the players. Having multiple checks everyone can get in on is more engaging than the single check.
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13 months ago ::
Jun 25, 2012 - 7:38AM
#4
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Date Joined:
Jan 20, 2005
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Bounded Accuracy may help some. At least in the realm of attainable DC's for both the specialists and the non specialists, it should make the math a little more correct. If a layman has a 50% chance to make some DC, and the specialist has a 75% then something like 2 successes before 3 failures may be a good number.
If they do them though, it needs to be better explained on how it works, how to use them, and when one is appropriate.
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