I think it is a reasonable discussion. I'm not finding myself super excited by the concept, any more than I have been by Wreccan or other people over the years expounding basically the same thing. Its not that it doesn't work, but it seems mostly like SCs with bigger numbers.
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I guess the question is, if you have a 'fighty' challenge, maybe the truth is it SHOULD be more of a variant of a combat encounter, outright. Perhaps this points more towards a better tool for making slightly more abstract 'combats'. So maybe the 'break into the castle' thing is run like a combat, but instead of a straight up grid to play on you have a map and the combatants move around in zones on the map, only getting into direct standard combat when they are in contact.
I only ever ran one infiltration. I can't remember if it was a skill challenge or a couple of individual skill checks. The main thing I did, which I think can work for the castle, is allow a successful check to "minionise" the enemies, so they are easily dispatched. If the check fails, then the fight is more of a real one.
In the case of a castle's defenders, I also think swarm rules come into their own.
I agree with you that I'm not that excited by giving skill challenges "hit points", and I'm not persuaded it solves the problem of bridging non-combat and combat: eg there is this fn to
the third blog post:
That is, if you sneak past the guard and get him to down to zero, you should be taking him out (in whatever manner you see fit). If all you're doing is going past him and not actually impacting the situation, that's just a roll, not a challenge.
I can see the reason for it - if you don't shank the guard, then how come s/he isn't going to show up later with full hp? Thus undermining the premise of the system.
But it seems to me that sneaking past a guard, and thus bringing it about that the guard isn't aware of your presence in the interesting place,
is changing the situation!
I think the big issue here is that D&D - including 4e - simply doesn't have a uniform system for establishing consequences and fiction. In combat there is not only position as well as hit points, but there are also conditions of a mechanical variety, and fictional positioning that bleeds into them (like "not having perceived someone", being blocked by a wall or portcullis, etc). Trying to reduce them all to a single commodity - hit points - doesn't really work, in my view.
HeroWars/Quest gets much closer to this. So does another system I know better - Cortex+ Heroic. All abilities, all elements in the fiction, all consequences, are all Traits rated on the same scale (d4 to d12) with a uniform resolution system for relying upon them, trying to eliminate them, etc. So in Cortex+ you can sneak through the castle by establishing a No One Has Notice Me Yet asset (via a roll against the Doom Pool). If the GM narrates the presence of a guard, you can impose a You Haven't Noticed Me Yet complication (via an opposed check against the guard, perhaps buffed via the preceding asset). If - as the situation and fictional positioning unfold - you find yourself in combat with the guard, then the asset and complication may or may not help you, depending on the further details of the fictional positioning (eg are you fighting with your Bow and using your Deadly Sniper trait, or are you fighting with your Battle Axe using your Furious Rage trait?)
There are clear strengths to Cortex+ Heroic - the smooth interface of combat, social, etc; the uniform mechanics and traits; etc. There are features that might be seen as weaknesses compared to D&D or (say) BW or RQ or other games that use more "traditional" ways of handlling fiction, consequences etc. For instance, it is very abstract and not very gritty. Fictional positioning doesn't affect
resolution (as opposed to framing) unless it has somehow been "mechanicsed" by being turned into a trait (so there's no "playing for fictional position", like taking the high ground or ducking for cover, independently of making checks to generate assets). This enhances the abstractness and lack of grittiness.
4e isn't gritty on the "gritty vs gonzo" spectrum, but it is very gritty on the "details matter vs abstract" spectrum, as far as combat is concerned, and in skill challenges elements of that grittiness are still relevant (eg equipment lists are meant to matter, and they're a different resource pool from powers, which are a different resource pool from rituals, etc).
So I'm not persuaded that these schemes for homogenisation are heading in the right direction. (On the other hand, fixiing skill maths (expected bonuses and DCs) so that it tracks combat maths (expected bonuses and defences) is a no-brainer, and it's almost criminal that they didn't get this right before they released it! Then it would be easy to (say) use Intimidate to inflict psychic damage via p 42, as an attack vs Will.)
I mean, lets take Climbing the Mountain, you can clearly implement this with ease as a classic SC. I can see some argument for basically having an SC mechanic where it is scaled with hit points so you can directly inject them into play as a 'currency', but that's about the most cogent argument in favor.
My thoughts were that it looks like a complexity 3 or 4 challenge, with damage (due to storm and avalanches) on a failed check - or perhaps with secondary group checks to avoid damage (I've done this before for environmental challenges) - and with an encounter with wolves (1 standard and 5 minions) as one check in the challenge (let's say that if they last more than a round, it counts as a failure due to the exhaustion of fighting them in the storm and the cold). His "scattered" could be implemented as a consequence for failure, breaking the character out of the group check and forcing them to make their own.
When I look also at the long list of things his method
can't handle, I'm not persuaded that it's adding flexibility that justifies the extra complexity.
