4e Fan Creations and House RulesWorking on variant powers? Statting up a PC race or your version of a monster? Creating or converting an adventure? Put it here!
Well, I finally got a chance to try it out. Here's a brief breakdown on how I think the attempt went, I don't think I have enough data to provide a direct analysis of how well the system itself fit the game.
1.) I don't think I did a very good presenting or running the system. The notes I had weren't sufficient, and it fit into the encounter oddly. I certainly need to review the materials and make fresh notes.
2.) I think the players were a bit confused about what was being asked of them, but that's fair. This was their first encounter with skill challenges at all, and I wanted it to be a sort of blind encounter.
3.) The feedback I got from players was overwhelmingly positive. They didn't know what they were dealing with, but they liked the vague outlines of what they saw.
4.) It's extremely difficult for me to be disciplined with the Challenge system as of yet. Certainly, in the situation I was in it was way too tempting for me to simply use it as a way of 'fixing the rails' for every other plot point I didn't want to deal with directly.
At first I felt ashamed, but now I'm not entirely certain if that wasn't the point the whole time.
Hi Stalker - I'm working on the mechanics, rather than the numbers, and wondered if you could look at something.
Premise Players being the only source of successes and failures, the best control strategy is trivially realised to be control over participation.
Proposal Challenges require N successes per round, or the round outputs a failure. Successes >N output a success (possibly scaled for quality).
N must be < the number of successes players could generate per round. N might therefore be expressed as a set of numbers scaled against participants. 1=0, 2=1, 3=2, 4=3, etc. At the expected number of participants N can be more freely assigned.
So, my question Does this idea hold up mathematically? That is to say, with players needing N successes in a round to avoid counting a failure, what happens to the numbers?
Finally, in the backdrop I am engineering a number of skill challenge powers that will help players gain successes: the basic power reads 'do this, roll again if you fail your next check'.
Stalker (and others), I was wondering what your views are on the uses of "Bonus" / "Backlash" skills (see the DMG example of the negotiation with the duke). History was a skill that was opened up by the use of another, whereas Intimidate was an automatic failure (I am writing this from memory as I don't have the book with me).
I like the idea of skills opening up to the players. The "Backlash" skills are easily implemented in making the players unable to succeed in that skill, but this needs to be out-weighed by the bonus skill(s) - or the challenge will be harder of course.
My initial thought is to let the players get the same +2 on the bonus skill as for the primary skill, but it might only be usable a set amount of times or to gain a certain amount of successes?
Hi Stalker - I'm working on the mechanics, rather than the numbers, and wondered if you could look at something.
Premise Players being the only source of successes and failures, the best control strategy is trivially realised to be control over participation.
Proposal Challenges require N successes per round, or the round outputs a failure. Successes >N output a success (possibly scaled for quality).
N must be < the number of successes players could generate per round. N might therefore be expressed as a set of numbers scaled against participants. 1=0, 2=1, 3=2, 4=3, etc. At the expected number of participants N can be more freely assigned.
So, my question Does this idea hold up mathematically? That is to say, with players needing N successes in a round to avoid counting a failure, what happens to the numbers?
Finally, in the backdrop I am engineering a number of skill challenge powers that will help players gain successes: the basic power reads 'do this, roll again if you fail your next check'
I see a few issues with this:
The RAW skill system is pretty broken no matter how you look at it. Adding more failure chances will only make it worse.
The Errata'd skill system eliminates rounds. The assumption now is that a single player is making all key rolls, with everyone else usually aiding or opting out. Your mechanic doesn't really fit with this system either: if the skill monkey fails his roll, do you count two failures instead of one?
Obsidian doesn't count failures. It only counts successes. The proposed mechanic also doesn't fit here.
If you're working on an alternate system that combines the original RAW "rounds" model, but with minimum success requirements per round, my first instinct is to say that this will not work nearly as well as either Obsidian or the errata'd DMG system.
Also note that, even with the errata, the DMG challenge Lost in the Wilderness still does not work, since it was written to fit the old "rounds" model. If I were running this challenge, I would simply require every character to make an Endurance check or lose a healing surge every time the leader rolled a failure on his Nature check.
Right, I see you have followed a similar thought process as I did. The problem with pending the ultimate decision on the final segment is the lack of interim tension points. Also, it may sometimes happen that a loss is inevitable by the end of segment two.
I therefore feel it is better to break this down segment by segment. Look for N successes per segement, not overall, and output a success or failure. I like your quality of outcome stuff, but that is easily replicated by considering successes over N within a segment. Ultimately you might need to abandon having just three segments, but I feel that will prove no loss.
I used the Obsidian System in yesterday's game to great effect.
The party consists of a Dwarf fighter, an elf ranger, a tiefling rogue, a half-elf warlock, a human wizard and a human paladin. They're adventuring in a homebrew world. All of them are new to D&D. Two of them were sitting in with the group for the first time. They are all still very much learning the game.
I built several skill challenges into the adventure, exploring various options for the system.
In the first, the party spotted and chased saboteurs who were making their way way through the city. The players picked up on the concept right away. The fighter and ranger concentrated on their endurance. The wizard used her insight to determine where they were headed. The rogue using her stealth and acrobatics and the warlock his streetwise to get ahead of the saboteurs. The party got their 10 victories, stopping the saboteurs before they could open the city gates to an invading army. The players came up with lots of colorful descriptions of their actions.
In the second challenge, the party tried to get their patron, a priestess of the Raven Queen, to disclose information about the true situation they faced. They had a harder time coming up things to do, and only scored a partial success on this challenge, which focused on Religion and Diplomacy.
The third challenge occurred in the caverns below the city's catacombs. The party came up on a very recent, very blood fight. Numerous dead bodies littered the ground. The "Battlefield Detectives" challenge, focused on insight and perception, went a bit better, as the players came up with some excellent descriptions and, although a close call, got their 10 victories. I have the Dwarf a +2 racial bonus, and when they won, handed him this note to read to the party.
"Here a Dwarf of the Streggi Clan fought many of the Low Men, who are sometimes called Orcs. The Dwarf approached from the direction we did, and was ambushed by the Orcs, who he may have been following. He has some sort of spike in his chest, and it is clearly of infernal and magical origin. Not all who fought here died. The tracks of a someone wearing shoes leads off in the direction we are heading."
As I said, the players picked up on the idea of the system right away. The only real problem was their unfamiliarity with their skills and what they could or should do with them. All three challenges ran well technically, provided lots of dramatic interaction for the players, and gave me a chance to introduce some new dynamics to the game.
Thanks Stalker0 for an excellent addition to the game! Since we're both in Atlanta, you'll have to come watch your system in action sometime.
The RAW skill system is pretty broken no matter how you look at it. Adding more failure chances will only make it worse.
The Errata'd skill system eliminates rounds. The assumption now is that a single player is making all key rolls, with everyone else usually aiding or opting out. Your mechanic doesn't really fit with this system either: if the skill monkey fails his roll, do you count two failures instead of one?
Obsidian doesn't count failures. It only counts successes. The proposed mechanic also doesn't fit here.
If you're working on an alternate system that combines the original RAW "rounds" model, but with minimum success requirements per round, my first instinct is to say that this will not work nearly as well as either Obsidian or the errata'd DMG system.
Hi Bardolph. Great feedback, thank you
To explain: I'm neither trying to fit with RAW or Obsidian. I realise Obsidian counts only successes, and RAW is good and broke. I hate the one-expert assumption, and I can think of examples where it doesn't produce SOD.
Obsidian is a nice system with a great maths grounding, but mechanically it lacks the tension-from-crunch I desire. See my quick reply re: that.
Well, I ran a session that included the skill challenge system presented in this thread.
I ran one of the hardest things to do well mechanically-- an investigation!
The players had returned to town after discovering a piece of evidence that the Abominations of Khyber (underworld in the Eberron setting) had a spy in the fraternal order they were part of. Not all members of the order are necessarily adventurers or whatever. Lots of regular people from all walks of life.
There were 12 main possible suspects to which they initially could narrow it down.
Here's how I handled it:
Each roll, success or failure, would get them a piece of information. If they succeeded, the information was air tight. If they failed, it was probably accurate, but they'd have to assess it's merits on their own. Also, they didn't just "get the information" but learned it from NPCs through dialogue. So they could assess the information based on who it was coming from and all that.
I did not start out with any one of the 12 as the traitor. It could have been any of them. It didn't matter to me as a GM. For each of the 12 I figured out a piece of information that would prove their guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt and another piece of information that exonerated them. They two or three pieces of information that might implicate them but not necessarily conclusively. A few particularly devious ones who also suspected a spy had planted false information to implicate their rivals in the order.
I generally kept the information that completely implicated someone for near the end of the 2nd segment and into the 3rd.
I allowed mental and social skills. For the first segment, I assigned insight and diplomacy as the main skills (the ones that get you a +2). A few physical skills were rolled during the challenge as they were appropriate.
It really works for an investigation. The key I think, as the DM, might be to not have the answer set in advance. Whomever the players go after is likely the guilty party. Go with the flow of the story and give information even when they fail their skill roll. Yes, this means lots of prep work to prepare information for each and every roll.
Just want to send a shout out to N, who lurks here and has also ran an investigation with this system with his group out west. Sign up and post about it! Failing that, email me and I'll post your AP from your email last nigh.
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Last edited by grickherder; 21st July 2008 at 06:55 PM..
Stalker (and others), I was wondering what your views are on the uses of "Bonus" / "Backlash" skills (see the DMG example of the negotiation with the duke). History was a skill that was opened up by the use of another, whereas Intimidate was an automatic failure (I am writing this from memory as I don't have the book with me).
I'd have to run some math to check on these ideas for sure, but in general one of the advantages of Obsidian is that each roll is more "self-contained". In the normal system, not getting a success is really bad because it also gives you a failure, and that can prematurely end the challenge. In my system, each roll matters less so you can have a larger variance in any single check without having a huge impact on the challenge as a whole.
So bonus and backlash skills would likely work alright.
Right, I see you have followed a similar thought process as I did. The problem with pending the ultimate decision on the final segment is the lack of interim tension points. Also, it may sometimes happen that a loss is inevitable by the end of segment two.
I recognized that these could be issue points with some people when first making the system. In the long run I chose a cleaner and simpler system instead of one that addressed these issues, though I recognize they can be sticking points for some.
In the long run though, the Obsidian system is a skeleton for the DM's and players imagination, a framework that is durable enough to handle a variety of "hey...let's try this" ideas. So if you want to have success and failure points more within each segment, you can likely do that.
The DM can also make certain segments different by changing the primary skill (an elegant suggestion that was posted earlier) or by adjusting the DC for one segment only. Perhaps the second segment is exceptionally difficult so the party gets a -1 to their skill checks for that one, etc.
I recognized that these could be issue points with some people when first making the system. In the long run I chose a cleaner and simpler system instead of one that addressed these issues, though I recognize they can be sticking points for some.
In the long run though, the Obsidian system is a skeleton for the DM's and players imagination, a framework that is durable enough to handle a variety of "hey...let's try this" ideas. So if you want to have success and failure points more within each segment, you can likely do that.
The DM can also make certain segments different by changing the primary skill (an elegant suggestion that was posted earlier) or by adjusting the DC for one segment only. Perhaps the second segment is exceptionally difficult so the party gets a -1 to their skill checks for that one, etc.
Good calls to be honest. Since I'm hitting the same problems I decided to run with Obsidian for awhile: I feel you've found one of the better places to be in the design space.
This came as a reversal of my original despair, as I came to embrace the precept for what it is. And in that line, please find attached Amethyst, which I've cavalierly dubbed an expansion for Obsidian. I'd love to know what you think of it!
It's necessarily incomplete, but you will discern the direction it takes with a quick skim read.
Good calls to be honest. Since I'm hitting the same problems I decided to run with Obsidian for awhile: I feel you've found one of the better places to be in the design space.
This came as a reversal of my original despair, as I came to embrace the precept for what it is. And in that line, please find attached Amethyst, which I've cavalierly dubbed an expansion for Obsidian. I'd love to know what you think of it!
It's necessarily incomplete, but you will discern the direction it takes with a quick skim read.
-vk
vk, I liked what I read in the beginning of your expansion, but you lost me a bit with the extensive list of keywords and when the feats/powers. In my opinion, it makes skill challenges a bit too complex and hard to prepare for, but that is just my opinion. It is not for everyone of course. What I did like however (and might incorporate), is the parts about skills having varying DC's and keywords (a little like what I posted earlier, some can be used once, some has to be used, some automatically fail, etc). I still think you did a splendid and very thorough job though, and it looks balanced (based on the skim I had).
Hmm, just noticed that ENW ate an earlier response I had.
It was something like 'When I thought I wanted to work on skill challenges, I was thinking of maybe having X rounds (default 3), where you didn't check total #s of successes or failures, but checked for each round. And there was Total Failure, Partial Failure, Partial Success, Total Success depending on how many rounds you beat.'
Anyhow, that's one possible way to keep each round/segment important, but I never ran the math on it strenuously.
Is the earlier version here inferior to the newer 1.8 version of Obsidian?
I suppose you are referring to the other system created by Stalker0 (unless I missed a huge update). This and the other system are just two takes on how to fix the skill challenge system as presented in the DMG. Either is viable, but where the other sets out to fix the skill challenges as designed by Wizards, this one only keeps the core concept (the idea of having several rolls for a skill check) and the system is designed around that. So it is really up to you which to choose.
vk, I liked what I read in the beginning of your expansion, but you lost me a bit with the extensive list of keywords and when the feats/powers. In my opinion, it makes skill challenges a bit too complex and hard to prepare for, but that is just my opinion. It is not for everyone of course. What I did like however (and might incorporate), is the parts about skills having varying DC's and keywords (a little like what I posted earlier, some can be used once, some has to be used, some automatically fail, etc). I still think you did a splendid and very thorough job though, and it looks balanced (based on the skim I had).
Thank you, and great first pass criticisms. I need to go back and make it more palatable. Also I have the same fears as you about how much play people really want in their skill challenges. With 4th combat focussed, many players likely want something that's fun and over quickly. I am working more toward something with some meat in it!
With regard to the keywords, I did freely use good ideas from other posts - perhaps yours too! With regard to the DMG, rather than all those random examples, WotC should have provided us with the extracted properties (or keywords) to tag on skills when we set up a challenge. I'll break out and work on that part, since it looks like it'd be most helpful.
I'm hoping Stalker0 might have a chance to comment.
My friend N on the West Coast emailed me his AP for his skill challenge using Obsidian 1.1 that he inserted into Keep on the Shadowfell. We were both planning on running investigation skill challenges. Mine was good, but it sounds like his turned out awesome:
Warning, Possible Keep on the Shadowfell Spoilers
The default skill challenge in KotS is to convince this guy to give you his magic sword. Boring!!! I changed it to figuring out who in the town was secretly part of the Orcus cult. While the module actually specifies this, I chucked that as well. Whomever the players accuse in the process of the skill challenge (assuming success in their rolls) is the guilty party (proved conclusively in a complete success, not proven or the person escapes on a partial and innocent on a failure). I made a list of facts and gave a piece of informatin through RPing/dialogue even if they failed their skill roll.
It was awesome. They spend the first segment narrowing down their suspect list just like in your game. Their second was spent gathering information on those like liked for the crime. The third segment was a feast in their honour for killing the goblin warlord, Irontooth (thanks for the idea of making the last segment be where everyone including all the suspects might be gathered together). At this feast they had sort of a Agatha Christie style unveil going on.
Until one player threw a bomb. They had learned about different relationships and desires and whatnot of the different key townsfolk (I made them up as KotS is sorely lacking in this regard). One of their suspects (the young priestess Linora of the local shrine) was in love with Lord Padreig's clarke, Weldly. The lord himself, was getting on to his 50s and had no heir. One of the PCs spent the whole day drinking with the mayor and so Lord Padreig was quite drunk by the time the feast even started and was also quite inclined to listen to the dwarven warrior's suggestions at this point.
So the player had his dwarven warrior, a hero of Winterhaven and drinking buddy to the noble lord, convince Lord Padreig to declare his intention to take a new wife-- the young priestess. He stands up and announces it.
Kaboom! What came out of the multi participant shouting match effectively exonerated the priestess and Weldly (in the eyes of the PCs), leaving the party looking at a local hunter/scout which was the last suspect to not be cleared. While it also resulted in both the priestess and young Weldly losing their positions and being arrested as cultists, the Dwarf felt it was a price worth paying.
At this point, they had almost enough success for a partial success. In advance I told them that a partial success would mean they figure out who it is but either lack the proof to convince everyone else or the spy/cult leader escapes. The 3rd to last player in the last segment then accuses her, outlines their case and the suspect makes a defense. Unfortunately for the player (who failed the roll), the character who made the accusation was an Infernal Pact Warlock and it wasn't too hard in a town of people fearful of dark powers to shock everyone that the so-called heroes of winterhaven deal with the dark powers of the Abyss (or whereever one gets infernal power). Then the guileless halfling rogue (PC, named Plucky), acting shocked at the implication himself, added a confirmation that his ally does indeed traffic with dark powers.
A "conviction" at this point doesn't seem likely unless she can pull something off. The 2nd to last player says that some piece of evidence is false and contradicts something she knows. She makes a brilliantly high Arcana roll and pushes the results into a partial success. The spy had been keeping a fake journal hidden away to be found in case she was ever suspected which would seem to exonerate her. In it it outlined how she had left her homeland because of a repugnant arranged marriage to a foul and cold elf. It portrayed her as a traggic hero who had been investigating the cult herself. She masterfully acted angered when it was produced during the Warlock's accusation (the PCs had searched her house while she was away). But the Arcana check! She remembers that Elves do not practice arranged marriage! Atleast not those in the Elven settlement the accused claimed to be from. The journal was a fake!
So the suspect bolted. They only had a partial success and needed two more successes to make it complete. But there was only one PC left to go. An Elven Ranger who, suspecting that if the spy tried to escape, would go out the North Gate towards the ruined keep (the suspected base of operations for the cult). The spy arrived at the gates, killed the guard there (most of the town and the guards had been called to the feast as a result of the ruckus there with the preistess, the clarke and druken Lord Padreig. But the ranger was there. The case was made for an athletics check to try to stop her from escaping.
Natural 20. Which in that system means two successes. He just pulled off a complete success. The ranger lowers himself outside of the wall as the spy approaches and taking a position to hold the gates shut and keeping them from being pushed open, preventing her escape. The rest of the party and 4 or 5 guards arrived. Given the spy only had a small dagger, no armour and these were the heroes of Winterhaven who had bested Irontooth, she decided to give herself up.
You were right though, prep work took a long time. It took me quite a while to generate a list of contradictory facts for each character depending on who the PCs decided to go after as the guilty party. And each time I gave a piece of information I had to go through my list and cross out ones that were too contradictory so the list gradually narrowed down to a single, cohesive answer.
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One thing I'm definitely going to do is for any time the players need to figure out "who" as a skill challenge it won't be set in advance (or atleast only loosely). It just works too well to have the guilty party result from the roleplaying that happens during the skill challenge.
How would any of you feel about that as a player? That the DM may change the answer depending on how you do in the skill challenge? Would you feel like you actually didn't solve the mystery or does that not matter because you characters did?
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Last edited by grickherder; 24th July 2008 at 08:44 PM..
How would any of you feel about that as a player? That the DM may change the answer depending on how you do in the skill challenge? Would you feel like you actually didn't solve the mystery or does that not matter because you characters did?
That's the thing, they won't know Great to hear you had good success with the system.
My group had a recent skill challenge that I thought was worth mentioning. We were trying to rescue a party's members old friend, and found him at the site of a dark summoning ritual. We stopped the ritual, but it caused the green slime that was buried beneath us to erupt from the ground.
It was a physical challenge, and the DM let us choose the results of our partial victory. A p. victory would either let us escape the area, or save the man (but possible encur a lot of damage or worse). A complete success would get us both, we would get the guy and escape.
One of the group had purchased a special elxir that protected agaisnt green slime (we knew about the slime in advance) and he decided to use it all for the challenge. The Dm gave him an 15-20 crit range for the roll, and gave everyone else a +2 bonus for that round.
The paladin actually had primordial as a language, so the DM allowed him to use diplomacy to calm down the slime as a one time check. He used astral voice and got a very strong success. The rest of us used acrobatics and endurance to grapple the prison our friend was him and haul it off the caldera of slime before it blew. My wizard used nature to try a ritual on the spot to calm down the process. I failed miserably
Overall we spent 2 action points and a lot of gold in slime protection, but we got a complete success!!
I'm really happy to here about all the little customization I'm hearing from other groups. That's the big point of Obsidian, in the normal system, giving the group a +2 to their rolls for one round would result in a massive swing in results, in Obsidian its just a solid bump.
That's certainly true. It's entirely possible though, that my players or N's might read this forum and see our examples and learn that neither of us had the mystery pre-solved.
So it's possible that players will know.
You know, I'll do an experiment and report back. I'll email N and see if he'll report back as well. I'm going to tell my players I had no idea who it was until after they solved it. I'll find out what they think about it.
Quote:
Great to hear you had good success with the system.
N's comments from his email:
"WotC needs to buy this, release it as a Dragon article and put a version of it in all re printings of the DMG."
While I would prefer that it remains in the hands of it's original author, I agree with the sentiment.
Quote:
My group had a recent skill challenge that I thought was worth mentioning. We were trying to rescue a party's members old friend, and found him at the site of a dark summoning ritual. We stopped the ritual, but it caused the green slime that was buried beneath us to erupt from the ground.
My favorite thing about Obsidian is how easily it handles resolving such a wide variety of situations as a skill challenge.
Quote:
It was a physical challenge, and the DM let us choose the results of our partial victory.
Awesome. That was a great act of DMing. I could totally see how this would work great for the scene in the Spiderman movie where Green Goblin makes Spiderman choose between saving Mary Jane and that trolly full of children.
Here's the only downside I see about Obsidian. It scales up to 7 people just fine by requiring more successes, but that multiplies the amount of individual roleplaying interactions and skill checks. In a group of 7 players, 21 seperate interactions and rolls can take a long time.
My investigation with 7 players took about 2 and a half hours. While I don't think that's long at all given that it was 2 and half hours of intense roleplaying, some players did find it a bit long and the wait between them getting the spotlight to be long. But that's 7 players, it's to be expected. I tried to encourage them to go places together while investigating the fraternal order.
LinkBack to this Thread: http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-house-rules/232340-stalker0s-obsidian-skill-challenge-system-update-version-1-1-now-pdf.html
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