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Solik wrote:

It's a bigger potential problem than reusing the same skill over and over. Some characters can (presumably?) focus on being skillmonkeys (classes with extra skills + feat expenditures). When Skill Challenge time rolls around, everyone but Skillmonkey sits on their hands while Skillmonkey makes most of or all of the roles, going for that magic success number.

Given that the goal of this system was to create something as fun as combat that involved everyone, I seriously cannot accept the idea that there's nothing built into the mechanics of the system to prevent this. I'm aware of various tricks the DM can use (forcing rolls, ad-hoc penalties, etc), but that seems inelegant and a potential point of contention to me.

I believe there's more to this that we haven't been told from this excerpt. I was mostly wondering if anyone was privy to some information we didn't get from it (such as, for example, from the recent marketing events where the books have been on display, or from a dev post somewhere). Otherwise, it looks like an attempt to market a bland and unfinished system feature.

Except in cases where the entire party must use their skills to complete a goal. Lets say that the party has to escape from a city for whatever reason. You cant just have the skillmonkey be the only one who rolls because it involves every party member actually doing something. Thats the difference between an action skill challenge and a social skill challenge. In a social encounter usually only one person speaks, or at the very least one main PC. In an action encounter usually it will be up to everyone to complete their own task.

ViolenceInTheMedia wrote:

Shenanigans. A big, burly (STR 18) nerd who is unsure of himself and easily cowed by others (CHA 3) isn't any scarier because he can rip a phonebook in half. Why? Because most normal people (CHA 10) can sense that he doesn't have the stones to back up his threats. Or they view the attempt as blatantly ridiculous and now think he's deficient in the INT department as well.

Now, he can learn how to be more intimidating, but he's still shoring up an inherent weakness in his force of personality. The times that people happen to be impressed with his phonebook trick are the few times that he rolls really well, and is not an indication that he's using his impressive STR score to achieve that result.

Also, given how granular STR is, as compared to most of the other stats, would it make sense for you to be able to impress another creature with your STR if they're stronger than you? If you can hurl boulders and uproot trees, is a puny demonstration of STR by someone half your size really going to have any effect?

Intimidation does not mean an idle threat. It is an advance notice of an action to provoke a response before going through with it. It doesn't take charisma to have stones! As a matter of fact, when the ogre steps up to you and say "uh, me gonna rip out yur innerds and eat your liver!" You just going to go nah, no charisma there... he doesn't mean it.

"taski"]Somehow I was under the impression that you'd roll for initiative and take turns.

This is interesting. If that's the case, is it a failure if you choose to do nothing? A potential issue here, too, is that one character who's terrible at skills bogging down everyone. Maybe you can choose to aid instead of choosing to try to beat a DC yourself, with no cost for failure (except no bonus)?

Mrrr. I can't wait to see what that missing pi wrote:

Archtyrant Terevoth wrote:

If you're outmatched in terms of strength, you will certainly be intimidated in such a case.

Certainly? It's an absolute then now?

I mean look at it this way. If a guy draws a gun on you, you're going to be scared. Even if it seems the guy may not pull the trigger, there's always that chance. Obviously a high CHA guy will do the intimidation better, but you're going to be more scared of a guy who has a demonstrated threat as opposed to some high charisma guy who isn't threatening at all.

Then provide circumstance bonuses if you feel it's appropriate to the situation. I notice though, that the gun wielding guy isn't using his STR stat in that instance.

Actually low charisma people can be quite scary. Look at most creepy stalker types. Awkward socially, yet you always get that feeling that they're screwed up in the head somewhat and you're not sure what kinda stuff they might do.

That's the key word there. Can, not are. I'd argue that more low-CHA people are pathetic, annoying, non-threatening, or meek than scary. I'm not saying that it's impossible to intimidate someone with your low CHA, I'm saying that it's more difficult.

I always found it odd that social proficiency was linked to being good at intimidation. Sometimes if you just portray yourself as a total wackjob, you're going to be more intimidating than some eloquent speaker.

So you're acting or bluffing someone into thinking that you're unpredictable and crazy? Wow, that sure sounds like something that a person with a high CHA, or one who learned how to intimidate people, would be pretty good at.