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3 years ago ::
Dec 21, 2009 - 12:59PM
#41
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My friends and I stopped using rewards cards. I'm a big fan - I enjoy the game a great deal more than I did when I snapped out of everything.
Dave Kay
LFR Writing Director Retiree
dkay807 [at] yahoo [dot] com
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3 years ago ::
Dec 21, 2009 - 1:50PM
#42
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Date Joined:
Jan 26, 2005
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I don't even know what elemental fury does, that's how common it is here 
I've seen players take SC for a while, but it very rarely comes up and eventually they tend to realize that That'll Do is just flat-out better. OSOK and MS I've also seen players take but very rarely actually use, because their triggers are pretty rare, and never seem to come up when you actually need them.
Since you were commenting in the general "these cards might as well not exist", I was offering commentary from a different point of view. I can't help it if your players don't use these cards. 
As for SC versus That'll Do: it depends on when and where you think you'll use it. That'll Do is great for your trained skills, when you know that if you take a 10, you'll probably succeed. But re-rolling is a better choice if you know you can't succeed on a 10 (usually if you're untrained) and really want to deal with the possibility of having a failure in a Skill Challenge. I'd go with SC for those times when we had a relatively unbalanced party and skill coverage was likely to suck. In that case, someone is going to be rolling untrained skills and SC is better in that case (IMO).
Second Chance gives you an average of 10.5 on a skill check if you roll a nat 1 in a skill challenge. That'll Do gives you a sure 10 on a skill check whenever you fail any skill check. The trigger is much broader for That'll Do, and the surety of getting a 10 (instead of, say, a 4) makes its effect better, too.
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3 years ago ::
Dec 21, 2009 - 2:29PM
#43
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Date Joined:
Dec 16, 2005
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I don't even know what elemental fury does, that's how common it is here
I've seen players take SC for a while, but it very rarely comes up and eventually they tend to realize that That'll Do is just flat-out better. OSOK and MS I've also seen players take but very rarely actually use, because their triggers are pretty rare, and never seem to come up when you actually need them.
Since you were commenting in the general "these cards might as well not exist", I was offering commentary from a different point of view. I can't help it if your players don't use these cards.
As for SC versus That'll Do: it depends on when and where you think you'll use it. That'll Do is great for your trained skills, when you know that if you take a 10, you'll probably succeed. But re-rolling is a better choice if you know you can't succeed on a 10 (usually if you're untrained) and really want to deal with the possibility of having a failure in a Skill Challenge. I'd go with SC for those times when we had a relatively unbalanced party and skill coverage was likely to suck. In that case, someone is going to be rolling untrained skills and SC is better in that case (IMO).
If you will not succeed on a 10, you have no business rolling the skill in a skill challenge. Mathematically, you generally need to succeed on a 2-5 (depending upon the complexity of the challenge) when rolling a skill in a skill challenge for your party to be more likely to succeed than to fail. If you have to start rolling dice where a 10 won't succeed, you might as well just stop wasting time and take the 'failed skill challenge' result.
Anyway, even in the situation that you describe, you are far better off with that'll do. If we assume that you have an unbalanced party and are counting on getting lucky here is the relevant question:
Is it more likely that a 10 will succeed or that you will: A. roll a 1 on the initial check and B. roll whatevever you need on the next check?
Since there actually is math for this, we can answer the question. There is less than a 2.5% chance that second chance will get you a success on a check where that'll do will not. (You have a 5% chance of rolling a 1 and if a 10 fails, you have a maximum 50% chance of success--probably less. Therefore, the odds that second chance will give you a success where that'll do would not are no higher than 50%x5% or 2.5%).
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3 years ago ::
Dec 21, 2009 - 2:32PM
#44
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Date Joined:
Aug 22, 2007
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If you will not succeed on a 10, you have no business rolling the skill in a skill challenge. Mathematically, you generally need to succeed on a 2-5 (depending upon the complexity of the challenge) when rolling a skill in a skill challenge for your party to be more likely to succeed than to fail. If you have to start rolling dice where a 10 won't succeed, you might as well just stop wasting time and take the 'failed skill challenge' result.
Roleplay! (Yes, I am one of those annoying people.)
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3 years ago ::
Dec 21, 2009 - 2:40PM
#45
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Date Joined:
Oct 26, 2008
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If you will not succeed on a 10, you have no business rolling the skill in a skill challenge
I can't believe there are people that are still willing to say this.
Not only are you wrong on the badwrongfun principle, not only are you wrong on the not-every-PC-is-optimized-or-even-nominalized-for-every-single-skill point, but you are also wrong on the basis of mechanics in skill challenges. Having recently played or playtested several mods in which all PCs must make certain checks, and not all of them will in fact have said skills trained, and in fact those who wish to aid them might in fact also fail, I can clearly and indubitably say that people -will- roll skills in skill challenges where they will not succeed taking 10. And in some cases, player's/PCs will want to attempt skills for reasons entirely unrelated to Skill Challenges where they might fail on a 10.
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3 years ago ::
Dec 21, 2009 - 3:00PM
#46
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Date Joined:
Dec 16, 2005
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If you will not succeed on a 10, you have no business rolling the skill in a skill challenge
I can't believe there are people that are still willing to say this.
Not only are you wrong on the badwrongfun principle, not only are you wrong on the not-every-PC-is-optimized-or-even-nominalized-for-every-single-skill point, but you are also wrong on the basis of mechanics in skill challenges. Having recently played or playtested several mods in which all PCs must make certain checks, and not all of them will in fact have said skills trained, and in fact those who wish to aid them might in fact also fail, I can clearly and indubitably say that people -will- roll skills in skill challenges where they will not succeed taking 10. And in some cases, player's/PCs will want to attempt skills for reasons entirely unrelated to Skill Challenges where they might fail on a 10.
I can't believe that people still refuse to accept the science of probabilities.
Skill challenges operate on a fairly complex and rather unforgiving probability model. If you roll checks that fail on a 10, your party will fail the skill challenge more often than not. If all PCs have to make the skill check, then, either the "skill challenge" is modifying the normal skill challenge rules (which is a good thing because the core skill challenge rules are unforgivably and execrably bad) or the parties are likely to fail the skill challenge due to those forced errors.
Now there may well be people who like rolling skill checks even when they are only contributing a failure to the party. And there may be people or groups--perhaps even most of them--who prefer to consistently fail skill challenges than to forgoe that enjoyment. (I am not one of them--I would like to come up with plans and attempt them without worrying about the skill challenge mechanic but I'm stuck with skill challenges, so I would rather give up spontanaiety than consistently fail skill challenges). But none of that changes the fact that, mathematically, rolling skills that fail on a 10 in a skill challenge is a reliable path to failure and all of the strategy that was so highly vaunted in the runup to 4e consists of "never roll a skill check in a bad skill if you can avoid it/always roll skill checks with your best skill(s) if possible." If you like to ignore the strategic elements of skill challenges, you're free to do so and there's nothing wrong with that if all of your party is on the same page, but don't pretend that doing so is good strategy.
I will also add that second chance is absolutely worthless for people attempting a non-skill challenge skill where they fail on a 10 because it only triggers if you roll a natural 1 on a skill check in a skill challenge. It's kinda hard to do that if you're not in a skill challenge.
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3 years ago ::
Dec 21, 2009 - 4:26PM
#47
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Date Joined:
Aug 26, 2008
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If you will not succeed on a 10, you have no business rolling the skill in a skill challenge.
If you will not succeed on a 10, you have no business rolling the skill in a skill challenge
I can't believe there are people that are still willing to say this.
I can't believe that people still refuse to accept the science of probabilities.
Skill challenges operate on a fairly complex and rather unforgiving probability model.
IIRC, EB is a fairly vocal opponent of Skill Challenges, and I'm starting to see why. If success in every skill challenge outweighs the fun of roleplaying them, than I'm sure they are very stressful situations. This is veering way OT, and I don't want to derail a really great thread though. I hope we can discuss skill challenges in another thread.
I don't believe RPGA Cards have nearly as negative an effect on skill challenges as they do combat.
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3 years ago ::
Dec 21, 2009 - 5:10PM
#48
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- Senior Volunteer Community Lead
Date Joined:
Aug 19, 2007
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Truth to be told, That'll Do _normally_ means that folks can do whatever they want for RP in a skill challenge and get through, so I approve of that one most. Though I did a skill challenge Friday that was DC 23 (level 13 mod) for skills that we were only okay with - +12 and +13 in the group, everyone else worse, so we burned our that'll dos and then hit some bad luck. Part of it was that we didn't really get the situation at all as a group. And having just looked over the module, yeah, it's the mod's fault for a bad setup to the skill challenge. Ah well. That's the first skill challenge I've failed since 1st level at Gen Con. Over about fifty tptal levels of gameplay. So, yeah. Guess I'm still not worried about skill challenges, despite EB's the end is nigh predictions every time the topic comes up If we turn off reward cards? Then I guess we'll fail more skill challenges with no That'll Dos and lose some xp. I actually know some people who would consider that a benefit, since they'll get to play more adventures with their characters.
Keith Richmond
Living Forgotten Realms Epic Writing Director
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3 years ago ::
Dec 21, 2009 - 8:28PM
#49
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Date Joined:
Aug 18, 2007
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That'll Do is the only card I would miss to be honest, and the only reason I would miss it is due to the random nature of LFR tables - both in DM and PC make up.
The other reason is that LFR is episodic, we can call it a campaign all we like, but each little adventure is a story in and of itself rarely meaningfully connected to anything else, even when it is a sequel. This makes the skill challenges more important on a case by case basis.
In a full campaign with the inherent continuity of such a game failing a skill challenge here and there doesn't matter, you know the DM will catch up the xp etc some how and the story will keep making sense. In LFR it is succeed or fail now - this is one of the reasons that low complexity skill challenges are generally better in LFR.
Basically as I play home games without cards as much as I play LFR with them, my experiences have been that cards make a noticeable difference to character effectiveness but the truth is that they make very little difference to the overall experience of playing, and arguably they might well damage the experience in some ways.
As a result I would have no problems with cards being removed, they are hardly a reward for loyalty anyway, or being significantly reduced in availablility.
Oh and the 7th Sea mechanic (adopted by Spycraft) of "when the PCs do X the DM gets Y" works well when intergrated into the system, but I don't see it being a good thing for LFR.
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3 years ago ::
Dec 21, 2009 - 9:29PM
#50
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Date Joined:
Apr 10, 2009
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To summarize the thread to this point:
• Issue: Player rewards cards give enough of an extra "bump" as to unbalance the game, sometimes to the point of it being less fun. (A bad thing.)
Proposed solutions so far:
• Reduce the number of cards in the stack (5 at early paragon seems very high for most players)
• "Type" the cards, and limit the number of each "type"
• Disallow using dupliates. (In other threads, the feeling is that this rule should be restricted for magic items as well.)
• Give the DM a minimal "balancing" effect each time a card is used. (Perhaps +1 bumps that can be used before a die roll, bonus to saves, etc.)
• Give the DM a power/effect that can be used only against the player who "triggered" the card. (i.e. You use a card, I get a reroll/bonus vs. an attack vs. you.)
• Penalize players with GP/XP for using cards. (I am personally not a fan of this solution, but include it for completeness. Why should someone be punished for using "earned rewards.")
• Issue erratta for "overpowered" cards.
Most popular ideas:
(1) Reduce the number of cards, and do not allow duplicates.
(2) Have a minimal consequence for using cards, such as was done in ADCP1-1. (Note: Personally, I do not agree with the idea of removing XP/GP when a player "activates a reward. A pile of +2 counters that the DM may spend before a die roll though . . . .)
I think that this ignores the easiest solution:
Keep stack sizes the same, but limit the actual number of cards that the player can use.
This limit could be per day (i.e. two cards per day at heroic tier, three cards per day at paragon and four cards per day at epic) or it could be a limit per encounter (i.e. a limit of one card per character per encounter - which brings them inline with how other character abilities are balanced in the game). Or perhaps one card per tier per character per encounter (so a paragon character could use two cards per encounter from their stack).
This gives the players an advantage in having a large stack (increased flexibility) while limiting the actual benefits from the cards to a more reasonable value.
Another option would be to allow a party stack which could either supplement a small player stack or replace the player stack altogether.
Perhaps something like: The characters each get a personal stack of one card per tier (plus one creation card if applicable) and the party gets a party stack of party size plus one per tier. Thus at paragon tier each character would have two cards in front of them and (assuming a party size of five) there would be a party stack of seven shared cards. This makes the potential cards available to any character fairly high (nine cards) but the total cards the party can spend is limited to less than four cards each.
To bring in my earlier suggestion: You could also limit each character to one card per encounter (one one card per tier per encounter).
I would also probably allow the party to swap out unused personal stack cards during short rests. Why not?
On the flip side, I can also see allowing solo and elite opponents to use a card. They can have action points, why not cards?
Carl
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