CORM1-6 Curse of the Queen of Thorns had some very interesting skill-challenge-vs-combat elements. (Some "evening" encounters hit on what I like in a skill-during-combat encounter.)
CORE1-11 Drawing a Blank also had a nice use-of-skills-during-combat encounter.
DRAG1-6 Night of Falling Petals had some great terrain/skill elements in multiple encounters.
{Explicit spoilers avoided.}
From these examples, these authors are "getting on the right track" for my personal preference in play experience. Especially CORM1-6 - (Skill checks, as well as traditional tactics, progress toward combat victory.)
Dan Anderson @EpicUthrac Living Forgotten Realms Calimshan Writing Director Living Forgotten Realms Epic Writing Director
Meet me at TotalConfusion: http://www.totalcon.com/RolePlaying.html
I will just say this. Please, please, please do not ruin combats by adding execrable skill challenges into them. It's just an irredemably bad and inexcusable mechanic. I can ordinarily ignore them and at least enjoy the combat and non-skill challenge story elements of the module. But if you put a "can't kill this monster until you beat the skill challenge" element into a mod, that's pretty much making it a "don't play" for me. (And before you say, "give them a chance", it's been two years and they haven't gotten any better. I think the authors and designers have had plenty of chances to make them work--it just hasn't happened).
Skill checks are fine as long as they make sense and have sensible DCs. But, please, no skill challenges.
Fortunately, you're not the only person playing LFR adventures. Many people enjoy skill challenges during combat - they make things more dynamic. If you want to keep playing mods with boring, static combats where you can freely beat the crap out of the bad guys without breaking a sweat, there are plenty of those out right now for you to choose from.
And, I will say that it is fortunate you are not the only person writing LFR modules. There, tit for tat, can we have a useful conversation now?
Skill Challenges during combat are not the only way to keep combats from being "boring, static combats where you freely beat the crap out of bad guys without breaking a sweat." In fact, there are many ways to address all of these issues separately that do not involve skill challenges. Furthermore, skill challenges themselves come with a number of unique problems that make them a poor mechanic--especially in a combat situation.
1. Skill challenge actions are different from other actions in combat. A. In general, with a character's normal actions in combat, he can only fail to help the party; he is unlikely to end up hurting the party (including party members in area effects and then critting them notwithstanding). If the character hits and deals damage, he usually helps. If he misses, he rarely hurts the party. On the other hand, a skill challenge roll that fails actively hurts the party--it would be better if the character had never attempted the check. B. All characters have useful things to do during combat. All characters are not useful in any given skill challenge. Yes, I suppose you could make a character who is absolutely useless in combat, but you'd have to try. On the other hand, in any given skill challenge, characters will frequently have nothing useful to contribute. For instance, you have the evil trap that is spewing cold damage over the party and the monsters, making them immune to damage by author fiat. You need to disable it with a skill challenge to continue. It requires thievery or arcana to deactivate. The fighter has neither, so he's done. He can beat on the trap, but that won't help the skill challenge. (If beating on the trap is likely to break it, the rogue and wizard should join him in doing so). He can beat on the monsters, but that is useless due to the combat design. He could use aid other, but seriously, Aid other? That's hardly an interesting or useful level of involvement. The cleric is basicaly in the same situation. He may be trained in Arcana, but this is paragon and any DC that the wizard does not automatically beat will cause him to fail (due to the 5-8 point difference in their arcana skill checks). Therefore, attempting the arcana check is actually worse for the party than him doing nothing. C. Ordinary combat has "in between stages." If there are five monsters ina combat and you bloody one halfway through round 1 and kill it at the end of round 1, you have just seen two things happen and at least one of them made a difference to the combat. Heck, you could also knock the monster prone, mark it, weaken it, or immobilize it, all of which will make a difference in the combat. Skill challenges generally have no in between stages. You succeed or you fail. Until you succeed or fail, none of your individual checks make a difference. That is boring and makes ordinary combat options generally more attractive. D. Skill challenges are often mystery meat quests. You see a strange device. It is clear that it is effecting the combat. It is also clear that disabling it is probably either hitting it and doing lots of damage or a skill challenge. But it is not clear what skills one would have to use in order to disable it. Sometimes DMs will tell you, often they won't. If you are not told, are you going to waste a standard action trying Arcana only to be told, "that does nothing; it's not a primary skill so, you just wasted a standard action" or worse yet, "Arcana is an auto-failure." So, are you going to take that mystery meat? Or are you just going to bash it. A subsection of this mystery meat skill can be seen in the Corm Mod, All the King's Men. The final fight featured a skill challenge of sorts, but characters needed to spend a standard action to succeed on an insight check to figure out what any of the options were. Without knowing in advance whether or not you will uncover any options and with past experience that such options are only rarely useful, a lot of parties (mine included) proceeded to ignore the option. Once we did succeed on each of the insight options, we figured out that one of them was actually useful (diplomacy could box the creature in with the motes so that it was unable to move or escape melee range) and that using it was a minor action (we certainly would not have guessed that if we hadn't been told--skill checks are usually standard actions).
2. Skill challenge solutions compete with non-skill challenge solutions in-combat. So, let's go back to the standard trap in combat skill challenge. Two party members can contribute to the trap in combat skill challenge. The other two can only contribute failures or beat-down. If both parts of the party do what they are able to do, either the beat-down boys finish the trap off before the skill challenge is complete or the skill challenge crew finishes the challenge a bit after the trap is bloodied. Either way, half the party has wasted its time. The solutions to this prevent the skill challenge from having the effect you suggested on the combat. If you give the beat down boys some monsters to kill while the challenge crew is working on the skill challenge, then obviously the skill challenge isn't preventing the beat down boys from killing the monsters.
3. Skill challenges are inherently more swingy than combat encounters. A. Party composition. It's a social skill skill challenge in-combat. One party consists of a pacifist Wis/Cha cleric, an artful dodger rogue, a charisma paladin, a dark pact warlock, and an inspiring warlord. They're on easy street. The other party is a tactical warlord, a Str/Dex fighter, a rageblood barbarian, a whirling barbarian, and a staff wizard. Even if intimidate isn't an auto-failure, they don't have anyone who could is better at any social skill than "trained with the skill connected to a dump stat." But both parties are balanced according to role which is still more than you will often get in LFR. B. Number of rolls required. Even in a two round combat, the outcome hangs on a large number of d20 rolls. If it's a short combat, we'll speculate that each character averages 1.5 attacks per round and action points and minor action attack generate another four rolls in round 1. Also, four monsters attack in round 1 and three attack in round 2 before the party finishes them all off. That's 26 d20 rolls to determine the outcome of a very short combat. If there are save-ends effects and extra saves happening or if the combat stretches to five rounds, there could easily be 100 rolls. That large number of rolls renders the results relatively predictable (even if paragon combats are still quite swingy). Skill challenges, on the other hand? If it's four successes, it has succeeded or failed after six rolls. Even a ridiculously complex (and doubly so for an in-combat skill challenge) skill challenge that requires 12 successes will be over one way or the other after 14 rolls. C. Skill challenges generally have failure consequences. This makes them more swingy than simply adding another monster. Very few monsters get tougher if you miss them three times. Traps and trap-inspired skill challenges do. If you fail the skill challenge, you are worse off than if you had been stunned for all the rounds you spent working on it.
4. All of the usual objections to the skill challenge mechanic in other situations apply. Skill challenges encourage characters to work alone rather than together, etc etc.
Now, I don't think that puzzle encounters are inherently a bad idea, but they don't have to involve skill challenges. Kiltpads alludes to one example where he suggests that applying his dwarven lockpicks to the column rather than the monster is the way to go. Radiant Vessel of Thesk's option to get Braal to stop fighting is also arguably an example of this. Dungeon Siege and WoW also doubtless offer examples of this (curiously, Diablo II did not). I'm sure that they can be well done and that skill checks will be appropriate elements of some of them. But skill challenges are not a promising mechanic for accomplishing this.
My favorite kind of trap/skill challenge is where the skill check does damage to the trap.
A trap with 100 hit points (and resist 10/all) where a DC ## Arcana/Thievery/Religion check does 25 damage is fun. The beat-down characters can hit it, working in cooperation with the skill-check PCs. Everyone contributes, and the result is generally fun.
I agree with Elder Basilisk in that my experience to-date with traps and skill challenges/checks in combats has been negative: It's taught me that anything other than fighting the monsters is strictly a waste of my actions.
As a DM, I'm trying to fight this trend. Regardless of what the mod says, I explain the mechanic to the players, so they can make an informed decision. I explicitly state what is a minor,move, standard action and will at least generaly state what result they can expect.
I've also altered traps with skill challenge results so that each success (step along the path) is meaningful; maybe it gives the "trap" a penalty to hit or damage, or something else. I've seen this in some mods.
That said - one of my favorite fights to-date is in DRAG1-2 with the exploding barrels. The PCs have 4 rounds to make six successes before bad things happen. I've seen some parties kill the baddies first, then concentrate on the barrels, I've seen them split focus, and I've seen them hit the skill checks first.
The key thing as writers/DMs is that we shouldn't PUNISH the players for taking an intelligent action. If it sounds reasonable, it should be HELPFUL. And we shouldn't deny them obvious information. If it's not obvious (how the situation works) - treat it like a knowledge check, in that it's a FREE ACTION for everyone to use Arcana/Insight/Nature/Dungeoneering/Religion to "understand" the mechanics/purpose of the special skill challenge in the combat, and how it works.
All these weird skill challenge variants are nice, but players aren't familiar with them so there needs to be more transparency.
Fortunately, you're not the only person playing LFR adventures. Many people enjoy skill challenges during combat - they make things more dynamic. If you want to keep playing mods with boring, static combats where you can freely beat the crap out of the bad guys without breaking a sweat, there are plenty of those out right now for you to choose from.
Agree. And while I may generally agree that skill challenges as a whole haven't gotten a ton better, they are improving. I actually don't mind most of the recent ones. As for SCs in combat: DRAG1-6 had possibly the best Skill Challenge in combat I've seen so far. I love that bit, I recommend it and for those that hate it, I don't have much to say other than you're (in my opinion) wrong.
That said - one of my favorite fights to-date is in DRAG1-2 with the exploding barrels. The PCs have 4 rounds to make six successes before bad things happen. I've seen some parties kill the baddies first, then concentrate on the barrels, I've seen them split focus, and I've seen them hit the skill checks first.
I will add that, while I have not DMed this, something that did work most of the times I played it was that characters were able to use powers to fight the fire (perhaps the DMs made this up; if they did, good for them and it's still instructive for other writers). In one run through, for instance, my warlock used armor of agathys and ran through the fire to put parts of it out. This integrated it much more thoroughly into the combat and made it more enjoyable. The ability to use powers to solve problems made the integration much more seamless and also made it so that it was not necessarily mutually exclusive to fight the fire or fight the monsters. Dropping a slightly less efficient icy terrain, for instance, might allow you to get one one of the monsters and the fire at the same time.
... _every_ skill challenge should let powers work in it. I am once again reminded that you may have had some bad DM experiences with skill challenges.
Keith Richmond Living Forgotten Realms Epic Writing Director
... _every_ skill challenge should let powers work in it. I am once again reminded that you may have had some bad DM experiences with skill challenges.
Perhaps. I think I would argue that it is other people who may have had a few atypically good experiences with skill challenges though.
The judges I've had have run the gamut from excellent to mediocre (with one judge so bad that, upon thinking about it, I would have been better off if I had left the table, reported him to the con organizer and played in the delve or watched anime for the remainder of the slot--but he didn't make skill challenges any worse than anyone else). I would say that most of the judges I've had have been of reasonably average skill and they have all tried to work with the mechanic as best they could. There has only been two times I remember when the skill challenge did not get in the way of the story it was trying to tell and both of those times the judges veered a long way off the mechanical script of the skill challenge in order to accomodate the story.
spoilers for a core mod whose name I can't recallShow
In one instance, we were trying to infiltrate a Sharran monastery and rescue captive children before they could be sacrificed. Rather than fight the priestess who had the invitation we needed, we pretended to be agents from the monastery, told her that foreign agents had been given invitations and that we were here to collect the original invitations (thus implying that we would catch the person who had given the foreign agents her invitation because she wouldn't have one to give us) and give her the replacement invitation. We had the right skills and characters and got lucky enough to pull the bluff off and it was great. (But it wasn't the skill challenge in the mod and I don't think the DM used all of the skill challenge rules (I know this much at least--we were rolling against higher DCs than standard hard skill challenge DCs, as we should have been)).
The other instance was an actual skill challenge--and one of the more silly ones at that (Core 1-1). We had a group of new players at the table and I suggested an alternate route into the forbidden zone to see if our DM would run with it. He did and put specific obstacles to be overcome into our path which we dealt with in a much more natural manner than is typical with skill challenges.
In both cases, though, I think it is much more a case of a good DM making the best of a bad mechanic than a good mechanic working as intended. (Back in college I had a DM who made Rolemaster fun, but I'm not about to defend the mechanics of that system).
I'm finding (especially at High heroic and paragon) that skill challenges are typically going way "off book", and as a DM I frequently "wing it". I treat the S.C. setup as a framework. The PC's need to "do stuff" to complete the task, I just need to make sure they make enough die rolls along the way.
I've let people use powers and rituals in S.C.'s, sometimes as automatic success(es), sometimes in conjunction with a skill roll (Icy terrain the fire fine, but make an Arcana check instead of an attack roll on the fire so I can gauge the success; roll really high and I'll let it count as two successes).
In DRAG1-3 (another favorite of mine) the S.C. requires you to get past some guards at one point. I've let PCs bonk them on the head, typically with an "initiative skill check" or an "intimidate attack check". In one case a player offerred to cast Sleep; in that instance I told the player if he used his Daily1, I wouldn't require a roll, I'd assume they both went instantly to sleep (i'd pretend it was 2e for a bit).
I'm more willing than some (or most) to bend the rules in an S.C. Part of being a DM is coming up with a fair and fun way to deal with players wacky ideas.
there was a brief time where we would use DME to re-write adventures (frequently turning them into classic star wars storylines). CCG7 or 8 nipped that in the bud with the more explicity DME rules (plus, MYRE now let us flex our creativity more).
Unforunately, as writers - we can't aggregiously break the rules in a mod (though I've seen authors do it in horrible ways and get away with it); and we can't write down ideas for every scenario.
I'm not sure if the OP was looking for Author or DM (or both) ideas for making H3/P1+ adventures more fun/challenging....
Action Points. They're just too darn frequent in LFR. 90% of adventures have enough skill challenges (or too few combats) such that players know/believe they'll have an A.P. in 90% of combats (instead of maybe 50-70%).
One thing I do as a DM now, is that I take to heart the DMG leeway with milestones. If encounters are too weak, they shouldn't count towards a mileston (DMG 123). With S.C., I try to think of them like real encounters. A complexity 1 S.C. is like fighting one monster. that's not a significant challenge. A standard encounter has 4-5 monsters of your level to be challenging (not one). So in my mind, an S.C. doesn't count towards a milestone unless it's at least complexity 4 (or there are multiple skill challenges that add up to a complexity 4).
this is kind of weird, but keep in mind that I've seen DM's count non-combat, non-S.C. encounters towards a milestone. I've also seen clarifying text in LFR modules that will say in an RP encounter (that doesn't award XP) that "this encounter does not count towards a milestone".
i'd like to see that same thing on small (complexity 1,2) skill challenges as well.
Another option, is that since you can't realistically have a 4-7 fight dungeon crawl in a 4-hour LFR mod (which is sad -because most of the WOTC published material fits this description), you can simulate it by simply taking away healing surges at the beginning of the "adventure". Example:
You're heading into the [monster-X] dungeon. you go through several rooms that have [monster x] in them. After fighting them, you all make a [some type of d20 roll] and based on the result, lose 1,2, or 3 surges. (the result could also be based on your role).
I did this in a MYRE setup a while back. Players simulated multiple fights by having a post combat skill challenge (gathering information about the dungeon). based on how well they did (and their role of defender, striker, leader, controller) they lost 0, 1, 2, or 3 surges.
Another option, is that since you can't realistically have a 4-7 fight dungeon crawl in a 4-hour LFR mod (which is sad -because most of the WOTC published material fits this description),
Actually, I think you could do that. You would just need to run it as a two-rounder. Two MYRE mods, a special, or a two-round 4 hour core would give you enough experience.
Those of us who did the Delve two years ago at GenCon managed to get through 2-3 encounters in a half hour so getting through 6-7 in four hours shouldn't be impossible, provided that you were willing to have everything predrawn or pre-laid out and play quickly. There should even be some time left over for some semblage of a story.
Now, maybe not at paragon. But it should certainly be possible in the heroic tier.
