Probably the default assumption of 4th edition that you don't need to play through a skill challenge, but can just roll the dice through it, and then IF every party member fails you would need to worry with thinking through it.
I'd say that is a pretty faulty assumption! The entire point of a skill challenge is to have a situation you can resolve in a fast-paced, dynamic fashion, with characters trying different things to accomplish their goal, and the DM deciding what skill and DC and effect each attempt involves.
Now, yes, you can just have folks choose their best skill and roll some checks. But I don't think that is by any means the ideal of how the system is supposed to work.
Why should the DM ever describe a challenge, when all you need is some number to combare a series of die rolls to?
...because describing a challenge and making it interesting and exciting is one of the highlights of the game?
You could just as easily ask why players, in a free form situation resolved by RP instead of dice, should ever bother to come up with creative answers or actions, when the DM is going to decide whether they win or lose based on his own judgement anyway?
How much of 4th now can be done by JUST rolling dice?
But the complaint being made here isn't that 4E has the
option of rolling dice for success - you seem to be saying it
forces that upon people. Which is simply absurd - you can just as easily run a puzzle or roleplaying encounter without ever involving the dice. The success of the puzzle would come down to how smart and creative the players are, the success of some diplomatic negotiations would come down to how smooth-talking the players are. If that is what your group finds best, it is 100% supported by the 4E rules system.
And if your players instead want to check and see if their characters have ancient knowledge to help them solve a puzzle, or can make diplomacy checks to resolve the situation instead, 4E also supports that.
Are you saying that your desire is to remove the skill system from D&D entirely? To make it so that the only knowledge a character has is what knowledge the player has? To ensure that the smooth-talking player of a Charisma 6 dwarven barbarian is a far more successful negotiator than the socially-awkward player of a Charisma 20 elven paladin?
I'm not saying that is inherently wrong - if a group wants to emphasize more on player skills, that is just fine. But you seem to be suggesting the system should enforce that, instead of allowing each group to determine what option works best for them.
While it may be better to have story related puzzles, there is nothing that says you can't have logic puzzles to challenge the player int he game and have them somehow be something else in the story, or even the exact same logic puzzle in the game.
Again, 4E has no problems with this view. The section on puzzles is
right next to the section on skill challenges in the DMG! And while a smaller section, it covers everything that needs to be covered and gives valuable advice for running such events.
4th edition relies heavily on stat management and dice rolling to make the game easier and more streamlined. It doesn't mean you cannot include the other things, but they are not given to the players as option for those new to the game are they?
How are they possible not given as an option to the players? If a DM has a door with a riddle to open it, and one of the players figures out the riddle, do the rules at any point say that the player has to roll a die to figure out the riddle? Do they say that if he does not do so, but solves the riddle by looking at it carefully, he is somehow not allowed to use that information in the game? I see absolutely nothing that says this, nor even implies this. And, as mentioned above, the DMG even includes an entire section on puzzles that outright says otherwise.
What are the rules in the PHB for skill challenges? What is in the PHB are the player expectations, and what is in the DMG is where a disconnect can happen if the same type of information is not given to both. The DM could likely forget the PHB doesn't explain as much about the game as the DMG does.
The PHB has no rules for skill challenges, just a few brief mentions of them. What is has is a section on skills, and what they can be used for. What it has is an opening chapter that talks about the roleplaying nature of the game, with quotes like: "
You have almost limitless control over what your character can do and say in the game."
Indeed, the first 'mention' of skill challenges in the PHB is in the initial mention of non-combat encounters: "Sometimes you overcome noncombat encounters by using your character’s skills, sometimes you can defeat them with clever uses of magic, and sometimes you have to puzzle them out with nothing but your wits."
So, given that players are told, right off the bat, that they can solve problems through skills or creativity or player intelligence, I'd say there is nothing about the system that prevents a DM from running puzzles and creating obstacles that challenge player skill rather than character skill.
If I am playing and given a puzzle to solve, and want to actually solve it and another player rolls some dice to get us past it, without letting me enjoy solving the puzzle, I will get up and leave the game not to return. They can do thing they normally couldn't but not at the expense of other players enjoyment of the game.
Then I'd say that group has a significant disconnect in what players want out of the game. Some players will want to be able to use character knowledge to help them get past an especially challenging puzzle, particularly one that might occupy them for a large amount of time without any success at solving it. Other players might live for such challenges.
If you have a group that has players interested in different things, that doesn't mean one player's area of enjoyment is
wrong - it just means that either the DM needs to be more careful about what puzzles he puts in the game, or one of the two needs to find a group more suited to their style of play. Honestly, 4E indicates that your style of puzzle-solving is more of the default - it recommends only allowing skill checks to gain hints, and only when the players are having trouble solving it. While it does have a section on solving puzzles entirely through skill challenges, thats the optional system, not the default one.
In the end, given that 4E allows for a campaign to be run that suits each player, I'd certainly say you can't place the failing on the system. Or rather, you can, but only by saying that the other players idea of fun is
incorrect and that the system shouldn't allow for it - which is simply an absurd point of view, and one that game design is better off without.
, but that's not a requirement to make the player aware of failure or success.
