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Centauri wrote:

Misremembering instead of not knowing: People in real life can misremember things, so the characters in games can too.

Then the PhB knowledge skills need to be rewritten to include this, cause currently they do not allow for it.

It's fine for this to be the way things work, but they need to be the way things work.

Keithric wrote:

The math is pretty bad.

I'd argue that the concept of using a simple tally of successes and failures isn't good either.

Now the concept of having a 'challenge' that isn't combat is great. But I think it should be laid out in a more simulationist line, rather than the abstraction that skill challenges strive towards.

Take for example a challenge where you can use a skill multiple times.. do you elect to roll a different skill at 2-3 less or just keep on using the same skill? That you are penalized for not just rolling the same skill again and again seems bad.. perhaps it's just the design of the skill challenge however. But it seems as if that's more the rule than the exception with them.

(Now I'm sure that a great story teller can spin a decent yarn about using Arcana eight times in a row, but it would seem an easier and better story if other skills were interwoven here).

Keithric wrote:

Hmm, are you objecting to the cooperative storytelling entirely, or just to people using their best skills consistently? Skill challenges are one area that is much more creating a story than simulating a real problem - which is indeed the point, so if one of the objections is based on realism that's one essential disconnect with 4e's style true. That said, I do want it possible for Conan the Barbarian to participate in an encounter rather than it just being the bard talking show, so there's some give and take there.

Well for me I do object to cooperative storytelling and I admit that it's something I dislike about 4e. And I think that is indeed part of my disconnect.

Worse still is when 'skill challenge mode' or 'story time' (if you will) changes how your PC's actions should be. It makes it into a side game, and that imho is very bad.

But again it might come down to my goals here. I would indeed want something to represent the actual challenge my character faces rather than a choose your own adventure kinda deal.

Keithric wrote:

I am however extremely grateful that the skill challenge rules help the adventures to be less pure combat fests, make non-combat facets more important, which has its own influence on people's character building.

Oh I agree that the concept of having obstacles that are non-combat focused is great. But the implementation is horrible.

And I'd argue that the influence the mechanics here have on character building is detrimental if compared to the alternative. The mechanics favor having a few skills done well rather than spread out. It's far better to roll that Arcana at +15 eight times in a row than to roll several different skills at +12.

-James

tyweise wrote:

PC interaction and DM narration are not mutually exclusive. Both are required to have a meaningful experience.

The PC states what they want to do, and makes a skill check. The DM compares the result to the relevant DC, and considers the party's progress so far and tells the PC the results of his or her actions.

That's pretty much the basis for every pnp roleplaying game that I've ever played.

There's a difference here that perhaps I'm not getting across.

The difference is between the DM setting the stage for you and the DM telling a story.

Consider the following:
PC: I use my knowledge of history to convince the noble.
DM: (After seeing the check) You bring up the incident 200 years ago where the country faced a similar peril. You warn him that ignoring this (X) now will only lead to history repeating itself.

As opposed to:
PC: Do I know if anything similar has happened before, here or elsewhere?
DM: (After asking for and seeing the check) You know that 200 years ago they faced a similar peril.
PC (IC): Didn't something like this happen two centuries ago? I seem to recall...

Now both of these are doing the same thing. I just consider the later as a better style than the former. But regardless of personal opinion/evaluation that's the kind of difference to which I was referring.

-James
PS: Again I dislike using numbers of successes and failures as the method. Towards the ship repairing example.. how does getting successes in haggling make repairing the ship easier by the later needing less successes? Or is that just a story contrivance?

James,

In a lot of ways I agree with you.

I agree that the latter example is the better style. I also think that style can be achieved within a Skill Challenge. It depends on the players and DM both playing into that style to do so, but that's true regardless.

Regarding the post-script, I'd say that haggling is not the Success--it's obtaining the materials. So that either way you're at the same point of progress, just possibly with more money left in your pockets. If you* wanted the haggling itself to count as a success, then it could be used to represent obtaining more or better quality materials which could make the actual repairs easier.

* "You" could be the player, the DM, or the author. As a player, you could say that you want to are trying to convince the vendor to give you the best quality materials for ship repairing, instead of or in addition to negotiating price.

As a DM, you could decide the vendor takes a liking to the PC. "Hey, you're doing some boatwork? Let me get you some of these boards instead. The weather treating gives 'em a natural curve that fits the shape of most boat hulls."

As an author, you could include information about the shopkeep. Perhaps he's a shady dealer who will sell inferior or damaged goods to anybody he thinks is a sucker. A PC making a successful Diplomacy check will convince him to sell decent goods to them. Otherwise, a successful Nature check can spot the poor quality of the goods he does provide.

Keithric wrote:

Looking at your early description of DRAG1-3, it highlights the exact problem that bothered me about many earlier such events in LG. It was indeed arbitrary how much success or failure was required, where even a single failed check at the wrong person could have resulted in overall failure. Just because you're a good DM and your players enjoy it doesn't mean that a less skilled DM wouldn't screw it up. It also doesn't protect against DM whack-a-mole where you have to do the exact right thing to please your DM... having been docked xp because the module said we got XP for going to a specific place to figure something out, but not needing to _because we figured it out another way_, I can say that way has some issues.

I agree that my solution is not ideal and it definitely has its dangers. However, the skill challenge mechanic is a bad mathematical model that is at least as likely to lead to those dangers as it is to lead away from them. It needs to be re-worked.

As I am tooling up to prepare a couple MyRealms adventures now, I am coming to the conclusion that each unique situation probably requires its own unique mechanic.

For instance, one skill based non-combat challenge I am thinking of creating is the saving of survivors after a level-appropriate evil bad guy attack on a town and I was thinking of using an approach where success is measured by how many survivors are saved and only heal or powers that heal without using surges can save them, but other skills can find more survivors and thus increase the possible number of successes and diminish the impact of failures. For instance, nature or perception might enable PCs to track injured villagers who escaped from the anonymous bad guys and are currently bleeding out under a bush in the woods. Athletics and Endurance might enable PCs to move rubble out of a collapsed building and rescue a few people who were trapped under a beam or whatever. And, streetwise might locate a skilled NPC healer who could either be persuaded to come with the PCs (into danger) with diplomacy (or intimidate, but that would have consequences as it might earn his enmity) or who could be persuaded to care for villagers the PCs brought to him much more easily but that would require another skill to bring the villagers there safely. I'm still unsure of how it can all work to create a good skill based encounter, but I want to make sure that there are concrete measurements rather than abstract successes or failures. The people in the PCs' care don't suddenly die just because the fighter rolled three ones in a row trying to muddle his way through the smouldering rubble. And each success means a person saved rather than something vague and abstract. Now, whatever model I end up using will hopefully work for this encounter, but will probably not translate well if I decided to use it for escaping from pursuing gnolls in the wilderness.

The math is pretty bad. I have to completely agree there. I'm primarily arguing against the statements that skill challenges are inherently bad and no good can come from them. Since I've seen an improvement in the handling of non-combat encounters by several DMs, I can't agree with that statement. I'm also pointing out that the examples given of DMs running bad skill challenges are just as often due to bad DM calls or poor adventure writing, and not in line with the examples of how they should be run.

That's a fair criticism of any anecdotal evidence, but I think that it is a good defense to note that the particular bad DM calls and poor adventure writing are encouraged by the rules as written.

In truth, it's really way too easy for my comfort under most circumstances. I've only seen one skill challenge fail in LFR, I don't even know why it was a skill challenge in the module except to use up xp budget, at a table that had no cards, where the DM went around the table from one end to the other asking what skill people used and having them roll and it failed out before it got to me at the far end. In a home game (so, no cards, again) I've seen a second skill challenge fail where we came within a hair's breadth of succeeding, then had three 1s or 2s rolled in a row. Much like there needs to be a chance for death for combat to be truly interesting, I do think there needs to be some chance of failure at a skill challenge. In this particular case, the game was actually _more_ interesting due to the failure to be honest.

I'm not sure I agree that there actually needs to be a risk of death for combat to be interesting. There has to be a theoretical risk of death, but most LFR mods pose no real risk of death unless you combine a poorly balanced party of poor players running poorly designed characters without tactical skill against a tactically gifted DM in a tough encounter combined with bad luck for the players and good luck for the DM. And even then, the risk is not that great.

And yet, LFR combat still manages to hold my interest. I would suggest that there are several factors to that:

1. There is the theoretical risk of death. When I end up at a weak and poorly balanced table featuring one of that rare breed of players who manage to get a 10th level PC without figuring out how to play the game, the risk of death could well become real if I do not exercise my mind and encourage the other players to play tactically. (It helps that I often play leader characters in this regard--people are much more willing to be told what to do and when to do it if you just gave them +7 to hit and +8 damage).

2. New modules are unknown factors. You could be walking into a cakewalk. Or you could be walking into Spec 1-2. Until you've played it, you don't know what will happen. This can be true of old modules too. Impiltur 1-4, for instance, has a number of paths you can take. The first time I played, it was completely different from this Monday. I'm scheduled to play again on Saturday and I expect that, once again, it will be a very different experience. And DMs have been known to change things up from time to time.

3. Even in a combat you know is relatively easy, there are still interesting tactical decisions to make. The tieflings who turned invisible and moved up are almost certainly waiting to OA someone who moves to engage the visible opponents; do I play it safe and fey step into position or do I take a chance that I am their target and walk over there? That monster probably has more than one hit left in him; do I take a risk with brash assault in order to finish him off now and let my allies attack other monsters on their turns? I missed with warlord's favor. Do I use the helm of heroes with surprise attack now or save it for another combat? If I save it, I could miss with the attack I was saving it for.

Hmm, are you objecting to the cooperative storytelling entirely, or just to people using their best skills consistently? Skill challenges are one area that is much more creating a story than simulating a real problem - which is indeed the point, so if one of the objections is based on realism that's one essential disconnect with 4e's style true. That said, I do want it possible for Conan the Barbarian to participate in an encounter rather than it just being the bard talking show, so there's some give and take there.

A little bit of both really. What I find important is the story aspect of the non-combat encounter.

Thus if the wizard is using his insight and arcana and the bard uses diplomacy and arcana throughout an entire mod dealing with a wizard's academy, I'm fine with that. Odds are good that their actions make sense within the narrative framework of the story. What I object to is the silly justifications for using skills that you are good at, as per the classic, "I flex my muscles and try to attract the queen by my sheer awesome physique. Athletics for this social skill challenge." Those are transparent attempts to use the best mathematical skill even though it makes no sense whatsoever in the context of the story.

Shared narrative frameworks also have a few problems inherent to them. The first, particularly as it relates to skill challenges is that players are not telling the story of how the party overcame the obstacle. Often, what they end up doing is making up an obstacle and then saying how they overcame it individually. That can easily make sense, but it can also easily lead to absurd results or to the first person to start narrating setting the limits of what stories can make sense. For example, in my hypothetical discussion of a skill challenge resembling Core 1-1's enter the forbidden zone challenge, I addressed the wizard who uses history to remember a hidden tunnel that leads into the forbidden zone. If the wizard goes first, and remembers this item then the rest of the party can build on it. The bard can disguise himself and case the joint determining that the owners of the house are not in. The rogue can then pick the lock on the door and the ranger can spot the hidden stonework under a half-century of dust and paint. On the other hand, if the wizard goes last, everyone else has made their stealth checks and athletics checks and climbed over the wall while the wizard ducks out of the way and goes through the hidden passage. It would have been much easier for everyone to have simply done that and now the story doesn't make any sense. It is certain that the wizard would never have gone off on his own like that outside the context of a skill challenge.

The second problem inherent to the shared narrative framework is that the players are often not in command of all the information, or attempt to do too much in one skill roll. Consequently, they frequently make up something that does not work with the story or the module, the DM has to find a way to say that it doesn't work without turning the encounter into a game of "guess what solution the DM will like." For example, every situation that calls for players to escape from or enter into a secure location is fodder for the "History: do I remember a hidden way in?" gambit. That's fun and creative once in a blue moon, but let that work more than once or twice and your villains will make the Evil Overlord's List look like a graduate course in diabolical planning rather than the kindergarten basics that it is supposed to be.

Now, I'm sure there are places where a bit of shared narrative framework can be helpful to the game, but I think it is essential to limit and control it in order to maintain the cohesion of the story and the nature of the challenge.

Have you seen any of Stalker0's skill challenge proposals on enworld, by any chance? There's some interesting discussion there by someone who completely finds the math flawed, but likes the overall goal and concept of skill challenges, so he made two variants on skill challenges with the math fixed. *does a little bit of hunting*

http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-cre … 1-2-a.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-cre … 1-8-a.html

I have seen his proposals and I think that they address some
of the mathematical issues with skill challenges but run into the same conceptual hurdles. The strategies for success in Stalker0's version are still going to be more or less the same no matter what the situation is. Like the original skill challenge model in the DMG+errata, it is too vague to react well with concrete challenges and will not reliably reward strategies that make narrative sense.

I have to admit - I am extremely curious to see how skill challenges are handled at Gen Con this year. Out of something like 10 slots of play last year, one abstained from skill challenges (which made us miss out on one scene, so I think it hurt the module a little bit, but was still fun), and of the remaining nine slots, 3 were run poorly but I'm actually worried 2 would have been worse without the skill challenge mechanic to protect the players from the DM, 3 would have been fine with or without the skill challenge handling, and 3 were very much aided by the skill challenges.

I'll be interested to hear reports from Gen Con myself.

And because of the design of LFR using skill challenges so much, I'm much more careful to design my characters so they can help out in every encounter (physical, social, investigation basically), making it easier for me to not take a back seat in any encounter and making the skill facets of my character far more important than in LG or Xendrik where it was extremely easy to just make a combat character who offered nothing in the way of skills and be completely fine.

Hmm. I actually did that in LG anyway. And even in LFR, the skill challenges only bring an illusion of importance to skills. It is actually much easier to build a character to survive the impact of failing skill challenges than to make build choices that increase your chances of succeeding on them. Durable gives you a 2 healing surge buffer that will usually account for the healing surge tax of failing skill challenges. There's not any one skill or even combination of two skills where skill training and skill focus (up to four feats) would increase your chances of succeeding in skill challenges enough to account for that many surges.

And, with the general design philosophy being that failing a skill challenge gets you to roughly the same place as succeeding--it justs costs you more (usually a healing surge or two), mitigating the cost of failing skill challenges is probably just as viable a strategy as setting yourself up to succeed on them.

Now, I don't plan to take that approach myself because I would prefer that the story feature my characters succeeding to failing (also, I suppose if I didn't have some skills, I'd have to shut up or actively sabotage the party during the skill challenge bits of mods and I wouldn't enjoy either approach), but from a pure power-gaming point of view, non-combat skills are less important than ever. (Note that this is not really an effect of skill challenges--instead it is an effect of the philosophy that non-combat encounters should never roadblock a module. You can adopt that philosophy with or without skill challenges. In fact, it was the frequent adoption of this model in LG that made non-combat skills seem irrelevant. If you didn't succeed in the non-combat portion of the mod, it didn't matter because bad guys conveniently carrying crucial clues would impale themselves on your swords. The same thing, different system).

Madfox11 wrote:

Let me requote myself, but with sections bolded: "As for the chances of success and failures I have NEVER seen a group fail an equal level skill challenge in LFR as long as the players properly plan how to overcome the challenge and the DM remains fair and open to player creativity and that is at it should be. PCs who use their heads also never loose a equal level fight."

I never said that I did not see groups fail. Just as with a fight, when a group of players rushes in without planning and thinking it is going to be tough and they can fail. I have seen groups fail under these circumstances.

Or when the players simply don't have some of the appropriate skills. The failed skill challenge for my party in Impiltur 1-4 was not a matter of lack of planning; it was because there was no getting around stealth and no-one in the party was good at it combined with 1s on a couple athletics checks and my own not packing a not this time card.

Why is that wrong? I mean when you run a fight with a disbalanced group all players are expecting and accepting the fact that fights are going to be harder. Then why is it so difficult for players to expect similar trouble if they have a skill disbalanced group? Granted, it is much harder to make sure all skills are represented at the table (although if you think good combat powers is important, you should always design a character with a social, a physical and a knowledge skill), but chances are much bigger in 4E that all important skills are present then it ever was in 3E. What is more, a properly designed skill challenge offers different paths to the same goal, and allow the PCs to pick the path they are best suited.

It's not unreasonable for players to expect trouble if they have an unbalanced group, but there are some important caveats.

First, these "properly designed skill challenges" are a bit like unicorns in the real world. You hear them discussed, but it's hard to find someone who has actually played through one. Most skill challenges generally elicit excuses for how bad they are.

Secondly, while it is possible to design a character along the lines you suggest, there is no guarantee that your social, knowledge, or physical skill will be useful in the skill challenge. How many fighters have found intimidate to be counterproductive? More importantly, just because you can take such a skill does not mean that you will be good at it. Unless you have a high relevant stat, mere training is not enough to keep you from being a liability in a difficult skill challenge. My 10 charisma (tactical)warlord has diplomacy as a trained skill, but he is still a bad bet as the party's face man. (Though he is stuck in that role far more frequently than I would like). If a skill challenge requires him to roll hard diplomacy checks, he is likely to make the party fail the skill challenge. (Fortunately, tactical warlords don't have any use for the at-will re-roll cards, so I can pack an extra that'll do when I play him).

And how is this different from what I said? I said that the level of the skill challenge needs to be increased or decreases if you want to change the DC of the majority of skills (and concequently give the PCs more or less xp). I am going to give up the discussion. I am clearly not skilled enough in the English language to hold this discussion since you seem to be missreading or missing half of my posts.

I suppose it's not substantially different from what you said. However, from your post, I got the impression that you were dismissing the relevance of the math for easy and for hard DC skill challenges because "all skill challenges are moderate DC." However, since all skill challenges are not equal level and you do not know whether you are going into a lower level or a higher level skill challenge before you start rolling skills, the easy and the hard DC math do represent skill challenges that characters can and will encounter. As long as we all admit the relevance of the math for harder or for easier skill challenges, then I think we're in agreement on that point. (Though perhaps not with my conclusion that the probabilities for hard skill challenges are very punitive and the probabilities for easy skill challenges are such that the basic skill challenge mechanic is not worth using without alterations as described in my post detailing the odds involved in easy skill challenges).