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[Stalker0]

I thought I would take some time to explain some of the new features of this version and into the rationale for why they are there:

Two Segment Skill Challenges:

The most common complaint I receive with the basic skill challenge is that its structure is too forced, and in some cases too long. The three rounds provide a solid base for most challenges, and can be strung together to provide longer ones. However, there is no ground for a quicker challenge.

I have completed a lot of math analysis to try and come up with a two segment system that gives approximately the same results as the normal system, but that can be quickly and easily adapted to a DMs use. I was very pleased with the results. While the two segment system isn’t quite as sturdy as the normal system, it is very close. Further the tweaks that a DM needs to make are seamless, just an adjustment of success numbers and DCs. While I still recommend the normal 3 round system for most challenges (as in my opinion skill challenges should be reserved for fairly in depth encounters anyway), I think people will get a lot of good use out of the two segment system.

Combat Skill Challenges:

In the previous version, combat challenges were mainly designed as a quickie way for a DM to conduct a skill challenge in combat, but it didn’t have the polish of the normal system. Further, the idea of the no time limit combat challenge was an optional rule.
The more I worked with it and thought about it, the more I found the no time limit challenge the most appealing. For a normal skill challenge, I liked the sense of time and flow the 3 segments provided, but in combat the structure was already present in combat rounds. In addition, I realized that combat already provides all of the consequences of failure embedded within, the threat of character death.

With that in mind, I constructed a timeless challenge that would consume actions as its baseline. The idea is simple, if you perform the skill challenge and succeed; you gain a benefit that will help you with the rest of the combat. If you fail, then you have wasted actions that could have gone towards just beating up the monsters…which for most players is plenty of failure in the first place.
Another aspect I recognized in my playtests was that in combat, players need a fair amount of incentive to perform actions that aren’t directly combat related. After all, no one wants to be wasting their time when monsters are trying to kill you. One of the biggest disincentives to players is time. Most players want their action to have a quick result on combat. Few people are going to want to spend 3 or 4 rounds on something that might evolve no benefit whatsoever. In addition to this, I recognized that players didn’t work as a team as much in a combat challenge. In a regular skill challenge, a player would try a skill even if he wasn’t the best at it, afterall, he can only help. But in a combat challenge, if that player didn’t have the best skills for the job he would simply attack the monsters. And…that’s perfectly fine. I recognized I was designing the challenges around too much team involvement. In a combat challenge, it’s often only a small part of the party that is participating in a challenge, most times one individual. That person will enjoy the skill aspect of the combat, the others the more direct side.

So with these ideas in place, I created the combat challenge system to provide general bonuses to the players for the combat, or to disable some obstacle(like a trap). The number of successes required was normally very small (2 or 3).That meant a player could theoretically finish the challenge in 1 or 2 rounds, which gives them incentive to try. Of course, with the chance of failure, the challenges can often take a round or two more, but ultimately most challenges should be completed in 2 or 3 rounds.
Ultimately the combat challenge is a more much looser framework than the regular system, simply because combats by their nature are chaotic. But it should give the DM enough framework to create interesting additions to their combats, using mechanics that the players are familiar with.

DC Change at 12th, 13th level

When I created Obsidian, my calculations noted that around 11th level, the party’s success rate was a bit lower than I preferred. Further, when I increased the DC at 12th and 13th level, the success rate dropped even lower than I preferred. My solution was to leave the DC static, and let the success rate naturally settle as the players skills increased.
Unfortunately, this was very confusing to a lot of people. I received a number of questions as to whether the DCs were an error. Afterall, they seemed very unintuitive compared to the rest of the system.

Ultimately, I decided to smooth out the progression in the table. My reasoning is this, currently all of my higher level DCs are based on theoretical parties, I don’t have a lot of empirical evidence yet to see how good a party’s skills really are at those levels. With that in mind, I accepted the fact that there is going to be error in my calculations, so those lows around 11th level could easily be a result of those errors. At this point until I have more concrete knowledge of levels, I prefer to keep the system consistent and easy to understand. However, I will be watching these levels closely, and I’m ready to change the DC again if I feel that the balance of the system will ultimately be served better with the original DCs.

I would greatly like the communities help in this section. If you have a party around 11th level, please let me know what kind of skill numbers your party has, and what kind of utility powers they have that bump skills. The more real info I have about group’s and their skills, the more accurate I can make the system for everyone.

Unburdened Player Option

In my group’s playtest of Obsidian, I noted a great resentment over the armor check penalty. Generally, fighter types should have skills as good as anyone else, at least in their areas of expertise. However, because of the armor check, a fighter type’s best skills were often penalized. An eladrin wizard could have +11 arcana check at 1st level, but a dragonborn fighter in plate only had a +7 athletics check. That difference is pretty large when it comes to skill challenges, and didn’t seem fair to the melee guys.
On the other hand, heavy armor is supposed to have a penalty, some cost associated for its benefit, and I didn’t want to remove that completely. So the answer was to use healing surges. A fighter can now spend one of his resources (one he gets a lot of) in order to counteract the penalties to his armor. He can perform better in skill challenges, but still pays a cost. This option has proven very popular in my group, and so I have decided to make it a core part of the system.

Brazen Action Player Option
With my new combat skill challenge, I wanted an option to let players brave danger for extra skill benefit. It basically allows a player to “ignore” the dangers of combat in order to perform his job. It’s a simple option that should be intuitive to players, and I’m interested to see how it performs in playtesting with other groups.