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Oct 2, 2012 -- 3:30AM, EnglishLanguage wrote:

Oct 2, 2012 -- 3:28AM, Shasarak wrote:

Oct 2, 2012 -- 3:23AM, EnglishLanguage wrote:

Not sure if reading.

Oh, good.

I meant you. What you posted didn't seem to do with anything he actually said, since he said noithing about not using SCs.

The irony of your screen name is not lost on me.   Insert Lokiare patented smilie

Oct 2, 2012 -- 3:14AM, Shasarak wrote:

Oct 1, 2012 -- 7:24PM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

Uhhhhhh, I'm the DM, it will take as many successes as I say it takes.

Which brings us right back to the begining again.

Why have SC's if you are not even going to actually use them?  Or are they just trap options for the DM's who do not know enough not to use them?

I agree, and what I found is that SCs don't get used completely unless you railroad the players through them.

As a DM, I think they are a waste of time to develop.  Even a perfectly developed skill challenge won't always play out as you had expected and you'll be forced to improvise anyway.     In this case, developing a skill challenge requires a good DM, one that is capable of predicting all the possible outcomes of any given situation before the game even starts.  

Let's say the goal is to sneak into the castle.  The skill challenge(s) you design might include climbing over the wall at night or wearing a disguise to enter through the main gates.  In fact, you might end up writing half a dozen different skill challenges in hopes that you have covered all the possible actions the players might perform.    In fact, you might be very proud of all the work you put into them and had them reviewed on the D&D forums.   The problem is that all that work will be in vain. The PC might decide to bribe the guard that watches the northern wall to drop a rope and look the other way as they climb over.    In that case all the stealth checks you had originally created to sneak past the guard and climb the wall are not used.    As the DM, you've just wasted your time developing these skill challenges.

Finally, I think that far more XP should be rewarded to the PCs for executing a good idea that circumvents an encounter / SC.   

Oct 2, 2012 -- 1:14AM, Steely_Dan wrote:

Oct 1, 2012 -- 8:40PM, lokiare wrote:

See the works wonders doesn't it!

Not really, it does not give you carte blanche to do what you do on these boards, and of course the moderators know this.

I use it to offset the automatic assumption that whatever I say is evil and meant in a completely negative light. Rarely do I say something with the intent to hurt or anger someone. I'm just anti-social...

Oct 2, 2012 -- 9:56AM, cheethorne wrote:

But the goal of sneaking into the castle isn't just to get inside the castle walls (I'm assuming). Even bribing the guard to throw the rope and then climbing the rope could itself be a couple of skill rolls. Once the party has gotten over the walls, they are not automatically at their destination and they will have to proceed from there. To my thinking, sneaking into the castle is not the best place for making a whole bunch of pre-planned skill challenges since the party has so many approaches and divergent paths they could take. Instead, it should be a place where the DM can set an XP target that they want the party to earn for suceeding on the task, she should create a few "situations" for the party to deal with as they approach their goal and insert them when appropriate, and then keep an internal track of success and failure as she deems necessary.

You're right that they wouldn't be at their destination, but that next part would logicially be another encounte ror a nother skill challenge, which is something else you'd have to design and hope that the PC's don't have a bright idea that circumvents it.  

The organic or improvised method of executing a skill challenge isn't what is presented in modules and the DMG.   It's true that you can keep internal track of success and failure, but there is no point in forcing the mechanic.   If the huge skill challenge ends up twarted by a bright idea and one skill check then so be it.    There is no need force 3+ success rolls for the sake of a mechanic.       

Oct 2, 2012 -- 9:56AM, cheethorne wrote:

The Skill Challenge tools allow the DM to organize that work logically into a discrete package just like monsters, room layout, and terrain can be logically organized as a combat encounter. Now, some people don't orgainze things in this way or do so naturally without the aid of tools and Skill Challenges wouldn't help such people, but it can be helpful to some people.

I think that if you're going to improvise the execution of a skill challenge and justt rack success internally,  then there is no value in organizing the challenge into a descrete package.    The act of organizing the situation into a skill challenge block (complete with repercussions linked to failures) is a waste of time. 

Oct 2, 2012 -- 9:56AM, cheethorne wrote:

That said, personally, I think that Skill Challenges will be removed because the focus is changing from encounters that provide discrete chunks of XP to adventures that provide lump totals of XP. In 4e, sneaking into a castle could be organized as a Skill Challenge and XP rewarded when it is completed, but in 5e, it has no value in an of itself. Instead, sneaking into the castle is part of an overall adventure that is worth experience, but each individual part of that adventure is not. Or maybe Adventuring Day or something like that, I'm not entirely sure how they are going to end up detailing it.

I think they will be removed from the game for that reason as well.  I'd rather see the players awarded for bright ideas than for skill rolls anyway.  

Oct 2, 2012 -- 8:16AM, dmgorgon wrote:

Oct 2, 2012 -- 3:14AM, Shasarak wrote:

Oct 1, 2012 -- 7:24PM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

Uhhhhhh, I'm the DM, it will take as many successes as I say it takes.

Which brings us right back to the begining again.

Why have SC's if you are not even going to actually use them?  Or are they just trap options for the DM's who do not know enough not to use them?

I agree, and what I found is that SCs don't get used completely unless you railroad the players through them.

As a DM, I think they are a waste of time to develop.  Even a perfectly developed skill challenge won't always play out as you had expected and you'll be forced to improvise anyway.     In this case, developing a skill challenge requires a good DM, one that is capable of predicting all the possible outcomes of any given situation before the game even starts.  

Let's say the goal is to sneak into the castle.  The skill challenge(s) you design might include climbing over the wall at night or wearing a disguise to enter through the main gates.  In fact, you might end up writing half a dozen different skill challenges in hopes that you have covered all the possible actions the players might perform.    In fact, you might be very proud of all the work you put into them and had them reviewed on the D&D forums.   The problem is that all that work will be in vain. The PC might decide to bribe the guard that watches the northern wall to drop a rope and look the other way as they climb over.    In that case all the stealth checks you had originally created to sneak past the guard and climb the wall are not used.    As the DM, you've just wasted your time developing these skill challenges.

Finally, I think that far more XP should be rewarded to the PCs for executing a good idea that circumvents an encounter / SC.   

The trick is to codify the skill encounter into 'obstacles', and then let the players describe how they overcome those skills and expend items, gold, spells, class features, or skill checks to overcome them.

Infiltrating a castle might have these obstacles:

1. Get past the outer wall
2. Get past the guards
3. Get into the inner building
4. Get into the throne room
5. Take the McGuffin
6. Get out of the throne room
7. Get out of the inner building
8. Get past the guards
9. Get out of the outer wall

Now maybe a Wizard can get past all of that with a scry and teleport. Maybe the Rogue sneaks in with the party in a bag of holding with Iron Skin spells cast on all of them (no breathing) and makes a bunch of stealth and open lock checks. Maybe the Fighter chops a hole into the wall or the druid casts move earth to dig a tunnel under the wall. Each obstacle when overcome counts as a success. Maybe the number of failures aren't like they were in 4E, maybe you can fail to get past the wall as many times as you want, but failure to get past the guards once ends the skill encounter. We are flexible in the design.

The idea is you can see that there are 9 obstacles of X average difficulty so if they succeed they get Y experience because its considered an 'encounter'...