D&D 4E 4e Encounter Design... Why does it or doesn't it work for you?

Tony Vargas · Nov 20, 2012

Kamikaze Midget said:
I like 4e just fine. But it's worse for me for non-combat for one big reason that I point out in the article:

there are not rules where I want them.

Pre-4e there were rules that played to the archetype. Fighters could bend bars and lift gates. Wizards could charm people. Clerics could command. Rogues could hide in shadows.

Ookay. Command had a one-round duration, so wasn't exactly non-combat. Charm, likewise, if it failed or there were more NPCs involved than you could charm, probably initiated hostilities. Hide in Shadows is covered in 3e & 4e by Hide and Stealth, respectively. Bend bars/lift gates is covered in 3e by raw STR checks and in 4e by Athletics. 4e even has arcane utilities that are explicitly usable out of combat to sway NPCs, though they're not the "SoD/I win button" that Charm used to be.

These were important abilities because other characters didn't really get these capabilities -- they were exclusive to your archetype. Their exclusivity was part of their power. More so than their raw bonus.

Bend-bars/lift-gates was not exclusive, it was based on STR, which everyone had, and anyone could get very high indeed with a spell or magic item. Charm was pretty exclusive, but so were a lot of exceedingly powerful things that casters got, which led to the game being badly broken at higher levels.

Okay, Rogues can have the highest Stealth, but everyone else can hide in shadows too, with reasonable success chances, so now my rogue isn't unique, so his ability to hide isn't special, it's the same as everyone else, just more likely to succeed.

The "grounded in believability" aspect of the rules helped make for interesting interactions of these abilities, too. Hiding in shadows was a good tactic against humans, but bad for anything that lived in shadows.

Wow, I can't believe you just made this point for me. There is nothing remotely believable about everyone except thieves being unable to hide. It's profoundly gamist niche-protection, reeking of balance-over-verisimilitude (something 4e catches a lot of flack for). How can you praise classic D&D for giving the thief niche protection by taking the fairly universal ability to hide away from every other class then go on to praise it for being "grounded in believability?"

In 4e, a skill check does whatever it needs to do to count as a "success," regardless of what skill it is or what character type you're playing as or what situation you find yourself in. It is removed from the actual activity and abstract, grounded in the balance of the game rather than the circumstances of the imaginary world.

The system makes some attempt at balance, yes (though the design of classes doesn't really come through in the end, and some classes end up non-contributing in many more skill challenges than other - particularly the tradtional whipping boy of D&D, the fighter, 4e is like every other ed in that respect, the fighter sucks out of combat). But, a skill has a function as a skill in 3e, as well (the only other ed with skills). So if Climb lets you get out of a pit, you can get out of a pit with a decent climb check, even if you're not a Thief. Is that all you're getting at? Because, really, it'd be patently absurd to claim that only pickpocketing ne'er-do-wells can climb out of pits.

Skill Challenges do something D&D never did before: they provide the DM with a mechanical framework for constructing out-of-combat obstacles that are challenging but can be overcome for a party at a given level. That's a tool no other version of D&D even attempted to provide. So, yeah, once that tool was actually banged into functional shape, it was 'better' than anything prior to it, by default. Because there simply was nothing else to compare it to. Rather like D&D in 1974, when it was the best RPG on the market, because it was the only RPG on the market.

Non-combat challenges in 3e were very much like encounters in AD&D: There were rules elements that could be used in resolving them, but the DM just threw together whatever 'felt right' and counted on his experience to avoid making it too easy or impossible. Single skill checks often carried the day, making out of combat challenges quick pass/fail tests - which was fortunate, since stats, ranks and items could make the swing on a given skill check between the best and second-best characters so extreme that there was generally no way to include anyone but the best PC in most cases, so making resolution a quick single-roll pass/fail at least kept everyone else from getting bored for a long time. That is, when a caster with the right spell (perhaps on a scroll or in a wand) didn't obviate the challenge automatically.

In classic D&D, non-combat challenges were either instantly obviated by the right spells, fell into the protected niche of the Thief, or were handled using the player as resolution system. The last is something some players - the one that are good at solving puzzles and snowing the DM, in particularly - have been delighted with. It gives them a chance to ignore the mechanical weakness of their characters and play a sort of separate mini-game with DM, possibly getting some advantage for the character out of it. It's great for "immersion" where you get the sense of playing yourself rather than your character, but not so great for actually modeling the abilities of the character. It's one of those stylistic things, you come down on one side or the other. But, either way, love it or hate it, it's the result of the game not even trying to handle something.

But it's not right to say that 4e is obviously better in this regard. It isn't. It tried to be, but for a lot of players (like me), it failed. Denying that failure isn't going to improve anything. It works for others, and that's fine, too, but just because it works for you doesn't mean it has to work for everyone.

The failure clearly has nothing to do with the quality of the mechanics presented, nor with the fact that they were presented, at all. 4e failed to capture your 'customer loyalty' or excite your imagination for whatever reason, but the quality of the mechanics wasn't it. 4e is technically a better game. WotC may have mis-handled it badly, or people may have conceived an irrational emotional hatred for it, or some may even dislike no longer being able to exploit so many profound flaws in the current version of D&D. Even if you just think that it tried to handle out of combat challenge design, but you didn't care for the way it did, you have to admit that it was the first edition to actually /try/. That's better than not trying at all.

Manbearcat · Nov 20, 2012

Tony Vargas said:
The 'skulk past scouts/sentinels' scenario is one best handled, in 4e, as a skill challenge. With a partial failure, you can pull it out of the fire by ganking them fast enough - and they should likely be minions or just a single standard, because the SC counts as some 'standard monsters.' With complete success they never see you. With complete failure they get off the alarm before you can even attack them, and complications ensue.

Yup. That is certainly a functional way to mechanize it in 4e. Alternatively, partial success can mean the DM moves the scouts/sentinels to their bloodied value rather than minionize them. Some folks might like that if they're good with the 1st 50 % of HPs are primarily meta-plot armor (divine favor, luck, skill) and the 2nd 50 % (bloodied value) removes that from the equation and is primarily "meat". They may see it as more simulatory rather than meta-gaming.

pemerton · Nov 20, 2012

TerraDave said:
Inot every fight (or scene) can be the ultimate one. Not all will be equally memorable.

This is true, I think, just because of the foibles of human ingenuity and accomplishment.

But in principle I'm not sure I agree.

In principle, I would like every movie I see to be the ultimate one, equally memorable. And RPG sessions are similar. I play for 3 to 4 hours once over 2 to 3 weeks. I would like each of those sessions to be the ultimate one, equally memorable. I'm not going to become jaded, I don't think.

It's true that within a session there has to be pacing. For me, in 4e, that is achieved most often by free roleplaying and low-to-moderate complexity skill challenges around a single combat. I do have sessions with more than one combat, but these are a minority. And normally one of those combats, at least, will be low-stakes, moderate opposition, where the real issue is not "do we live?" but rather the context that led to the combat, and the consequences that follow from the situation being resolved via violence. (These things matter to a big combat too, but it will also give rise to the "do we live?" question.)

CroBob · Nov 20, 2012

Imaro said:
Was thinking on this recently and was wondering about it mostly from the perspective of the 4e fans who claim that the encounter guidelines "work" in 4e. What does this mean? What is the criteria being used to determine this? Is a challenging encounter usually "challenging"? If so how do you relate this descriptor to what actually happens in an encounter? Same for easy and hard as well.

On the other hand I would also be interested in hearing from those for which the guidelines don't work and why that is... In general is a hard encounter usually a cakewalk? Is challenging too easy? How do you view the descriptors of easy/challenging/hard and do 4e's encounter guidelines fall in line or outside of what you picture these descriptors as representing?

As with all things, there are several important factors to consider. The first, most obvious, one is right there in the rules. Number of characters, and their level. Ever since third edition, encounter design has had some specific math necessary to determine what an appropriate encounter for level is. Third edition was more loosely defined than fourth, but it was certainly there.

That's also not the only aspect, however. It's possible to design a "difficult" encounter which the characters storm through, or an "easy" encounter that nearly wipes them. You have to consider, quite simply, what the characters can do. There was one time I had a group that was weak at a range, yet the enemies they faced had some pretty awesome ranged monsters that I could not think of a good reason for them to use. So this simple encounter, a group of five PCs and their NPC healbot, versus 2 lower leveled archer demons, got their behinds royally handed to them.

Sure, it's wise for players to form a well rounded team, but it's not like you can force the be as a DM, you can only show them the consequences of not being. The point is, a group could ignore one sort of strategy, and be weak in that department due to it.

Related, you can have a group that's very strategicly minded, and just plain good at it, while another group may not even be tracking what their character can even do. It irritates me when I know one of my players' characters better than they do, but it happens. How good the players themselves are effect how good their characters are, and that needs to be factored in. Experienced players are more fun to throw the curve-ball at, and can handle pretty much everything better, more efficiently.

With all that in mind, the official rules for encounter building can go right out the window, and you just design the thing you know the players can handle, making it as difficult or easy as you want.

4th edition encounter design may seem intimidating at first, but then you factor in the fact that you can basically ignore it, so long as you're aware of your players' (and also their characters') ability. Just do what seems right. This may also require a bit of system mastery, of course, but a DM should have at least a good idea what they're doing in the first place.

TerraDave · Nov 20, 2012

pemerton said:
It's true that within a session there has to be pacing. For me, in 4e, that is achieved most often by free roleplaying and low-to-moderate complexity skill challenges around a single combat. I do have sessions with more than one combat, but these are a minority. And normally one of those combats, at least, will be low-stakes, moderate opposition, where the real issue is not "do we live?" but rather the context that led to the combat, and the consequences that follow from the situation being resolved via violence. (These things matter to a big combat too, but it will also give rise to the "do we live?" question.)

And thats one way to do it. I had a 2E game many years ago that would fit that pattern (though we didn't call them skill challenges, of course).

Other situations, e.g. the classic dungeon crawl, are harder to fit with that pattern.

Quickleaf · Nov 20, 2012

Kamikaze Midget said:
And yet every game of 4e that I have played has had a MUCH bigger percentage of the time dedicated to combat than any of the things I find so much more fun, because 4e does not make them as fun or as interesting as earlier e's made them. I'm sure the first reaction will be "YOU'RE DOIN' IT WRONG!" but that's the thing with any sort of design: if your users are doing it wrong, then the blame still falls on your design. Good design makes it hard to do things wrong and easy to do things right. Whenever I enter a skill challenge, I feel like I'm doing something that the game doesn't really want me to engage in, because none of my most interesting, varied, and character-defining abilities come into play.

Skill checks are not a robust enough mechanic to hang 2/3rds of the game on for me.

Hey KM, while I might disagree with some of your assessments, I whole-heatedly agree with your sentiment here. 4e has glaring design flaws leading to it often being used in a combat-centric way...we may disagree on what those flaws are, but most of us see the end result. Just cause I've "figured it out" at my table, doesn't mean that the flaws aren't there.

Anyhow I would XP ya if I hadn't done so too recently.

pemerton · Nov 20, 2012

TerraDave said:
Other situations, e.g. the classic dungeon crawl, are harder to fit with that pattern.

Agreed. Since 2009 I've been arguing that, contrary some apparently popular belief to the contrary, 4e is not especially well-suited to dungeon crawling in the traditional mode.

That's not a problem for me - I don't run that sort of game, and have not done so since I started GMing Oriental Adventures in the mid-80s. I can see how it might be an issue for others, though.

Based purely on armchair speculation rather than experience, if I wanted to run a traditional dungeon crawl in 4e without making any major hakcs I would (i) use mostly minions for my monsters, treating whole sections of the dungeon as making up my encounter budget, (ii) use wandering monster rules to put pressure on short rests (so the players have to choose whether to press on and maintain tactical momentum, or rest but risk losing tactical momentum) and (iii) keep a tight rein on extended rests (at a minimum, none in the dungeon).

I'm not entirely sure what sort of play experience that would deliver - for my tastes, I would expect it to be a little boring and operationally-focused - but it might get close to the Moldvay Basic dungeon crawl vibe.

pemerton · Nov 20, 2012

I pretty much agree with [MENTION=70707]dkyle[/MENTION] and [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] upthread.

Kamikaze Midget said:
HP is a resource. For HP to be balanced within the encounter, it needs to come back at the end of every encounter.

<snip>

4e could be played with a "you gain all your hp back at the end of the encounter" hand-wave without any major hiccups

The first sentence is true, although it is certainly possible to run encounters in which some of the PCs are not at full hp because they've run out of surges (I've done this, it changes the dynamic a lot - there's nothing llike having the sorcerer holding the front line!).

But I don't agree with the second sentence. Healing surges are a constrained resource, and at least at my table that constraint affects the dynamics of play (eg players try to conserve surges, play more cautiously when they are low on surges, etc).

Kamikaze Midget said:
If you limit HP loss to the individual encounter, you make HP something that cannot be truly affected outside of the encounter. [/quotes]That is semi-tautological (it leaves room for hp to be affected oustide the encounter via replenishment rather than loss, but I assume that that's not the sort of effect you have in mind).

The question is, does 4e limit hp loss to the individual encounters. The answer is no. Hit points can be lost outside of a combat encounter, and outside of skill challenge. Of course, if the loss doesn't kill the PC it will probably be converted to surge loss in short order, if surges are available.

Kamikaze Midget said:

you can't have falling down a cliff deal HP damage in a game where you can heal all your HP easily, because then it becomes irrelevant.

Click to expand...

This seems to assume what in my experience is false, namely, that surge loss is irrelevant.

Kamikaze Midget said:

HP is the tool with which one models "damage" and "life-threatening injury" in D&D because it's one of the few things that can actually kill your character permanently (running out of surges does not, unless you also combine it with HP damage).

But HP cannot be used for that when HP are an encounter resource because life-threatening injuries that are not also part of encounters cannot use HP to model the damage they do.

That's a pretty strong disconnect. It's something that 5e is still struggling with, because it wants to preserve HP as this easily-recovered resource, which isn't letting it be used to model damage and life-threatening injury, because those things are mutually exclusive.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure I follow this. Falling down a cliff can be modelled by hit point loss - but, as with other life-threatening injuries, the PC pushes on through it (by spending a surge).

I can see a practical point in the general neighbourhood - it is only within the context of an encounter that the combination of (i) hit point loss, and (ii) action economy constraints on surge expenditure, is likely to be severe enough to produce death or a serious risk of death.

I think that is true of 4e. It means that PCs only die in action scenes, not in the lulls between the action - where the worst that happens is mere annoyance (even if, within the fiction, it was temporarily life threatening). That's a deliberate design feature that, for me, is a strength.

Kamikaze Midget said:

it's still just roll the dice to see if the DM lets you win.

Click to expand...

That's no better as a description of skill challenges then the same phrase applied to combat.

And it implies that a game like HeroWars/Quest, or Maelstrom Storytelling, which relies exclusively on skill-challenge type mechanics, is "roll dice to see if the GM lets you win". Which is obviously mistaken.

There's a lot that can be said about skill challenge framing and adjudication (some of it is said here), but the most basic point about a skill challenge that its not about "the DM letting you win". If the skill checks are framed, then made, and then succeed, the GM is obliged by the rules of the game to narrate a win - just as, if an attack hits and the damage reduces the NPCs hit points to zero, the rules of the game oblige the GM to narrate a win.

LostSoul said:

In a 4E skill challenge, if you get a success on your Stealth check (for example), that moves you one step closer to resolving the challenge.

3E's Move Silently/Hide check resolves whether or not your PC moves quietly or remains out of sight. It doesn't necessarily resolve the challenge you're facing (not without a judgement call from the DM).

In 4E there's only an abstract connection between what you're doing and resolving the skill challenge. An extra step is required: the players have to interpret the check and what it means in the game world. In 3E it's pretty concrete what you're doing, but what's left up in the air is if that check matters or not.

Click to expand...

I think this is pretty accurate. I would point out that it is 3E, not 4e, that emphasises GM fiats and permissions, because in 4e success on the check mandates moving towards success.

I would also point out that 4e requires GM adjudication and judgement call where I prefer it to be located - in helping to ascertain what is happening in the fiction, and more imporantly in framing and reframing the situation that confronts the PCs, rather than in deciding whether or not to throw the players a bone.

Kamikaze Midget said:

Pre-4e there were rules that played to the archetype. Fighters could bend bars and lift gates. Wizards could charm people. Clerics could command. Rogues could hide in shadows. These were important abilities because other characters didn't really get these capabilities -- they were exclusive to your archetype.

Click to expand...

Kamikaze Midget said:

Skill checks are not a robust enough mechanic to hang 2/3rds of the game on for me.

Click to expand...

Like some others, I'm not sure of your comparison class. Is it spells?

The players in my 4e game have no trouble doing stuff out of combat - my last two sessions have been combat free but for one pit fight between the fighter and an arena-trained ogre, but have been far from mechanics free. And they are not same-y - there is the nature guy (elf ranger-cleric), the bluff guy (drow chaos sorcerer), the noble guy (tiefling paladin with diplomacy and intimidate), the scholar (deva invoker-wizard with a book imp familiar) and the tough guy (dwarf fighter-cleric). They bring pretty distinct things to non-combat situations.

Kamikaze Midget said:

The "grounded in believability" aspect of the rules helped make for interesting interactions of these abilities, too.

<snip>

In 4e, a skill check does whatever it needs to do to count as a "success," regardless of what skill it is or what character type you're playing as or what situation you find yourself in.

Click to expand...

I think you may have misread the skill rules.

From the 4e DMG, p 75:

Reward Clever Ideas
Thinking players are engaged players. In skill challenges, players will come up with uses for

This encourages players to think about the challenge in more depth and engages more players by making more skills useful.

However, it’s particularly important to make sure these checks are grounded in actions that make sense in the adventure and the situation. If a player asks, “Can I use Diplomacy?” you should ask what exactly the character might be doing to help the party survive
in the uninhabited sandy wastes by using that skill. Don’t say no too often, but don’t say yes if it doesn’t make sense in the context of the challenge.

In other words, "believability" is prior to the making of a skill check in a skill challenge. As [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] said upthread in reply to [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION], the 4e rules require framing the check (including its context and believability) prior to resolving it.

In HeroQuest revised, the comparable step in action resolution is expressly called a "credibility test".

CroBob · Nov 20, 2012

pemerton said:
Agreed. Since 2009 I've been arguing that, contrary some apparently popular belief to the contrary, 4e is not especially well-suited to dungeon crawling in the traditional mode.

That's not a problem for me - I don't run that sort of game, and have not done so since I started GMing Oriental Adventures in the mid-80s. I can see how it might be an issue for others, though.

Based purely on armchair speculation rather than experience, if I wanted to run a traditional dungeon crawl in 4e without making any major hakcs I would (i) use mostly minions for my monsters, treating whole sections of the dungeon as making up my encounter budget, (ii) use wandering monster rules to put pressure on short rests (so the players have to choose whether to press on and maintain tactical momentum, or rest but risk losing tactical momentum) and (iii) keep a tight rein on extended rests (at a minimum, none in the dungeon).

I'm not entirely sure what sort of play experience that would deliver - for my tastes, I would expect it to be a little boring and operationally-focused - but it might get close to the Moldvay Basic dungeon crawl vibe.

You're mostly correct. For each separate area of a dungeon, which sometimes needs and arbitrary divider, it counts as somewhere between 1 and 2 encounters, depending on how spread out the monster sin that area would naturally be and what just plain makes sense. Minions are generally a must in dungeons, and don't forget to include traps! (I kind of hope that last part isn't really advice)

Neonchameleon · Nov 20, 2012

Kamikaze Midget said:
But by the numbers, CLW are not an unlimited resource. Plentiful, but there's wealth by level, and treasure is awarded based on encounters, and magic items can only be sold in towns of certain sizes, etc.

OK. Something that costs a trivial amount of cash is a limited resource and something with a hard cap is an unlimited resource. Wait, what? 4e hit points are limited by healing surges.

Those miss the point. HP is the tool with which one models "damage" and "life-threatening injury" in D&D because it's one of the few things that can actually kill your character permanently (running out of surges does not, unless you also combine it with HP damage).

OK. Two fallacies there.

1: If you run out of surges and take a healing surge's worth of damage you lose that many hit points. Healing surge loss along can kill you.

2: Hit points are not life threatening injury. A character with 1 hit point is just as comptent at doing things as one with a hundred.

But HP cannot be used for that when HP are an encounter resource because life-threatening injuries that are not also part of encounters cannot use HP to model the damage they do.

Healing surges on the other hand do not recover until an extended rest. Your argument here is that you can't hammer very well with a screwdriver when there is a perfectly good hammer in the box. Healing surges do exactly what you want them to.

Pre-4e there were rules that played to the archetype. Fighters could bend bars and lift gates.

Let me unpack this. Fighters were literally no better at bending bars or lifting gates than anyone else of the same strength (and athletic score in 3e) and only had a better strength than equivalent if they had a natural 18. Fighters could bend bars and lift gates just like everyone else. And they did it the same way as everyone else with about the same chance of success as everyone else.

So "having a high strength score" is your demonstration of what fighters did.

Wizards could charm people.

Wizards could do anything. This was another problem. Of course if we want to talk differented and 4e, Wizards get Prestadigtatation At Will. That makes them more wizardly than the commoner with a few "I can do cool stuff buttons" to use. Cantrips are more reenforcement of the archetype than we saw before 3.X - and 4e and Pathfinder making cantrips as at will abilities means that wizards are a lot more wizardly than ever before.

Clerics could command.

This I'll grant - they had a combat spell that people would recover from too fast to be much use outside combat. Clerics can now cast rituals whereas Warpriests come with their own utility powers.

Rogues could hide in shadows.

And this was silly. No one could hide in shadows except a rogue? Your differentiation here is that everyone except the rogue is inept? Are they painted in neon paint?

These were important abilities because other characters didn't really get these capabilities -- they were exclusive to your archetype.

Except the fighter. Who got? The same ability to lift bars and bend gates that his strength would give anyone else? And the rogue? Who got? The ability to hide in shadows while the wizard simply turned invisible. The ability to climb walls (which anyone could do) while the wizard cast spider climb or fly. The ability to pick locks while the wizard could cast Knock.

And if we're going for 1e, the cleric was almost as good at fighting as the fighter, could wear the same armour and could cast spells. And even, just to add insult to injury, brought more hit points to the party due to being able to get Cure Light Wounds. As of Unearthed Arcana the fighter did get Weapon Specialisation. Still couldn't do much out of combat that anyone else couldn't, mind.

Their exclusivity was part of their power. More so than their raw bonus. Okay, Rogues can have the highest Stealth, but everyone else can hide in shadows too, with reasonable success chances, so now my rogue isn't unique, so his ability to hide isn't special, it's the same as everyone else, just more likely to succeed.

You are talking about 3.0 or 3.5 here? Where the above is precisely true. In 4e it's false.

In 4e we have Utility Powers. In the PHB, the rogue level 2 options include Fleeting Ghost, allowing a rogue to be better at stealth than anyone, Quick Fingers, allowing the rogue to be faster at thievery than anyone, and Master of Deceit, allowing them to be better at Bluff than almost anyone. At level 6 the rogue can take Chameleon allowing them to stay hidden when someone is looking straight at them, and Nimble Climb making them the best climber (or could no one in your day other than the rogue climb walls?)

We have exactly what you are talking about. The rogue who uses his utility powers to specialise really is the best there is at what he does. If you want an edition to attack on those grounds, try 3.0 or 3.5. Because you are factually wrong about 4e here.

Now you can claim that not all rogues have both Chameleon and Nimble Climb. Or even many rogues don't have either. That's right. You get to pick what you are good at. I fail to see how choosing your own niche to be outstanding rather than merely good at is a problem.

The "grounded in believability" aspect of the rules helped make for interesting interactions of these abilities, too. Hiding in shadows was a good tactic against humans, but bad for anything that lived in shadows.

You mean any creature with tremorsense or darkvision? I guess 4e must have neither of these vision types. Or perhaps it does. Perhaps the rules for Darkvision say "Darkvision lets creatures see normally regardless of light" and for Tremorsense says "Creatures that have blindsight or tremorsense ignore obscured squares or invisibility within range. They can see creatures in range regardless of these conditions." (DMG p 67). And as you need something obscuring the monster's line of sight in order to hide (unless you're a rogue with the camoflague utility power) hiding in shadows is a bad idea against these creatures.

Breaking down barriers was good in a dungeon or in a locked room, but it attracted attention.

Guess what? It still does.

In 4e, a skill check does whatever it needs to do to count as a "success," regardless of what skill it is or what character type you're playing as or what situation you find yourself in.

Stop spreading misinformation please. This is wrong and it is against the advice in both the DMG 1 and the DMG 2. Even the awful skill challenge rules in the DMG 1 explicitly restrict what skills can be used and explicitely tell the DM to "prompt a player into giving more information in how they are using that skill" and if the skill doesn't match the fiction you can't use it. You are saying one thing, the DMG is saying the literal opposite.

Again, other editions aren't perfect, and I wouldn't say that everyone needs to play with them. But it's not right to say that 4e is obviously better in this regard. It isn't. It tried to be, but for a lot of players (like me), it failed. Denying that failure isn't going to improve anything. It works for others, and that's fine, too, but just because it works for you doesn't mean it has to work for everyone.

There are reasons it doesn't work for everyone. The combat being too big and too exciting is one. But the list of reasons you give stand in direct opposition to the rules of the game and to the guidance in the PHBs, DMGs, and Rules Compendium.