Imaro
Legend
I just don't find it all that hard so I guess for me skill challenges solve a problem I dont have...
Do you use skill challenges?
I just don't find it all that hard so I guess for me skill challenges solve a problem I dont have...
Quickleaf
Legend
I've found it far more useful for me to think of "skill challenges" as just challenges. And challenges can have any number of solutions, including clever thinking, great role-playing, combat, casting a spell, using an item, or making a skill check.
Breaking free of the skill challenge structure – X successes before Y failures – allows for a more organic flow to the game that is far less abstract and, thus, more relatable for the players. In my experience.
The last time I ran a formalized skill challenge in 5e was in August 2015 during an interrogation scene, of which I've posted about; that came completely from the players with no prompting from me, and it just so happened we ended the session after the decided to question these cultists so I had time to prep my notes. In that case I did use 3 failures as an endpoint for interrogating a cultist, but I had no defined # of successes that had to be reached. This facilitated a natural flow to the game that mostly made the mechanics I was using fade into the background. It was a really fun tense scene to play through.
Breaking free of the skill challenge structure – X successes before Y failures – allows for a more organic flow to the game that is far less abstract and, thus, more relatable for the players. In my experience.
The last time I ran a formalized skill challenge in 5e was in August 2015 during an interrogation scene, of which I've posted about; that came completely from the players with no prompting from me, and it just so happened we ended the session after the decided to question these cultists so I had time to prep my notes. In that case I did use 3 failures as an endpoint for interrogating a cultist, but I had no defined # of successes that had to be reached. This facilitated a natural flow to the game that mostly made the mechanics I was using fade into the background. It was a really fun tense scene to play through.
MichaelSomething
Legend
Can you write an essay explaining how to do it for people who don't have your natural gifts in DMing?
Sadras
Legend
I'm going to lump for your first two responses together since we are specifically referring to SC with opposing antagonists.
Regarding antagonists I'm suggesting that in a SC one could use passive DC's based on the skills/abilities of the antagonists - as opposed to rolling for them. Regarding the rest of it, I don't disagree with you at all, I think my initial post dealing with this issue was unclear.
You initial contention was that you dislike mechanical process supposedly dictating the fiction.
There is nothing stopping a party from refusing to chase a thief and thereby leaving a SC.
There is nothing stopping the party from refusing to escape a collapsing tower and thereby leaving the SC.
Okay so I lean towards player fiat (and I'm by no means an expert in SC), but should a player derive another method of achieving a success without the use of a skill (which is highly plausible as the DM cannot think of everything), I count it as a success. Granted, this is not the mechanics of the regular SC but the goal is the same we are still attempting to gain x successes over y losses.
You don't have to narrate action declarations, however the goal of the SC should be established beforehand - whether it be to journey to Bryn Shander during the heart of winter, escape a collapsing tower, catch a thieving culprit or obtaining an audience with the princess. The party's previous successes propel the outcome of success.
So in the SC example attempting to gain an audience with the princess - lets say its easy, so 4 successes before 3 failures
1. Attempting to gain an audience with the princess using normal channels (failure but you might get a lead about her closest subjects)
2. Discovering the princess's personal handmaiden and her daily route - through investigation, bribery or persuasion (1st success)
3. Making a good first impression with with the handmaiden at the market square - whether is be through general charm or an impressive display (2nd success)
4. Impressing on the handmaiden that she must deliver the note your wrote to the princess ensuring her of your good intentions (3rd success)
5. Using the manor's map given to you by the handmaiden you decide how you wish to enter noble manor and to bypass the guards - (4th success)
6. Perhaps the door to the princess's room is being guarded by a dog - there would have been another check to pacify the dog by throwing scraps of food or even casting a spell, but because 4 checks were already achieved - the handmaiden is narrated as being there to calm the guard dog and so no alarm is raised.
I find this statement strange. Not even in combat? And they don't just roll dice, they provide action declarations to DM scene framing before the call to dice.
The PCs are supposed to engage with the fiction and provide their own ways of overcoming the challenges you present them leaning on their skills and abilities. I don't see how your example is any different.
Regarding antagonists I'm suggesting that in a SC one could use passive DC's based on the skills/abilities of the antagonists - as opposed to rolling for them. Regarding the rest of it, I don't disagree with you at all, I think my initial post dealing with this issue was unclear.
You initial contention was that you dislike mechanical process supposedly dictating the fiction.
There is nothing stopping a party from refusing to chase a thief and thereby leaving a SC.
There is nothing stopping the party from refusing to escape a collapsing tower and thereby leaving the SC.
Okay so I lean towards player fiat (and I'm by no means an expert in SC), but should a player derive another method of achieving a success without the use of a skill (which is highly plausible as the DM cannot think of everything), I count it as a success. Granted, this is not the mechanics of the regular SC but the goal is the same we are still attempting to gain x successes over y losses.
You don't have to narrate action declarations, however the goal of the SC should be established beforehand - whether it be to journey to Bryn Shander during the heart of winter, escape a collapsing tower, catch a thieving culprit or obtaining an audience with the princess. The party's previous successes propel the outcome of success.
So in the SC example attempting to gain an audience with the princess - lets say its easy, so 4 successes before 3 failures
1. Attempting to gain an audience with the princess using normal channels (failure but you might get a lead about her closest subjects)
2. Discovering the princess's personal handmaiden and her daily route - through investigation, bribery or persuasion (1st success)
3. Making a good first impression with with the handmaiden at the market square - whether is be through general charm or an impressive display (2nd success)
4. Impressing on the handmaiden that she must deliver the note your wrote to the princess ensuring her of your good intentions (3rd success)
5. Using the manor's map given to you by the handmaiden you decide how you wish to enter noble manor and to bypass the guards - (4th success)
6. Perhaps the door to the princess's room is being guarded by a dog - there would have been another check to pacify the dog by throwing scraps of food or even casting a spell, but because 4 checks were already achieved - the handmaiden is narrated as being there to calm the guard dog and so no alarm is raised.
I find this statement strange. Not even in combat? And they don't just roll dice, they provide action declarations to DM scene framing before the call to dice.
The PCs are supposed to engage with the fiction and provide their own ways of overcoming the challenges you present them leaning on their skills and abilities. I don't see how your example is any different.
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Imaro
Legend
Not to be glib but are you paying me to write this essay? More seriously I think I could offer advice if I understood what exactly your specific problem was (unless of course your problem is you just like and want to use the SC structure, to which my answer would be... more power to you). 5e has movement rules, it has interaction rules for changing attitudes, improvised damage rules, calls out not to roll unless there's uncertainty, makes allowances for story xp and so on... what exactly isn't provided that you need? Also, I'm not a professional writer but there are plenty of streams and podcasts where challenges happen and the SC framework isn't used so my first suggestion would be to look and listen to those for ideas on how it's done.
I have to say your implication that this is a really hard thing that requires extraordinary gifts to achieve makes me wonder how the game survived this long... I mean what did people do before 4e's Skill Challenges when their players encountered challenges??
Imaro
Legend
Yes we could always modify and change the SC rules... but then I have to ask at what point have we entered the realm of free forming it vs. a structured model? If I'm discarding the DC structure when antagonists appear in the SC or better yet making a bunch of changes to get it to work the way I want, at what point does the structure of this particular mechanic loose it's value?
Initially and I'm not certain if this is still true but it may not be since SC's went through numerous revisions, players were in fact required to participate in a SC.
But even putting that aside you're missing the fundamental difference here... You assumed that the encounters would be combat encounters when in fact they don't have to be. If you handle an encounter through diplomacy, stealth, lying, etc. as long as you achieve whatever goal you have (getting deeper into the dungeon, stealing the treasure, not having your resources depleted, etc.) you have still interacted with said challenge and overcame it. It's not quitting the challenge it's being able to handle it in numerous ways that aren't prescribed already do to mechanical assumptions. In the above examples given by you...the players haven't overcome the challenge or failed at it they've just quit.
No I think this is actually part of one of the revised versions, maybe... I don't know haven't looked at the final rules in a long time...
but again, IMO, we are loosing more of that structure which is the whole point of SC's and drifting further into freeform. Yes we have x successes over y losses but now anything outside of skills can generate those successes and (I would assume) failures as well. So is the value of the SC just that I've abstracted this challenge out with how many rolls it must consist of to succeed or fail... I'd rather do that organically as opposed to pre-setting it. I agree with you that a DM cannot think of everything, and that's exactly why I don't find much value in deciding beforehand that X successes are necessary before Y failures. What if the PC's can actually overcome it (fiction wise) with one less success than I decided beforehand? Do I manipulate the fiction to force them to have to roll again?
The thing is my PC's would probably go about this in a totally different manner (unless I lay out that it's a SC and what the courses of action might be)... so what is my value proposition in writing all this out if I want them to have the freedom to deal with it in their own way?
So are you advocating that you be transparent with the players about SC's? Because if so then I see how it works out... but if you are not letting them know they've entered a SC with X successes necessary before Y failures they can still end up with the necessary successes but lacking the fictional positioning to achieve their goals, what do you do in that situation (and if you need an example let me know and I'll write one up a little later...
No not even in combat... why am I as DM describing what your character does? I describe what my NPC's and monsters do, what type of attack they go for, how they miss (Or the player can describe how they dodge or parry, though it's rare) or hit etc... but I don't understand why I would also narrate the PC's actions as well. They see the die roll just like I do, they can narrate appropriate fiction during the exchange just like I can, so why would I do this?
Because unless they are aware of the underpinnings of the SC (Which is a totally viable suggestion)... how do they know when they are about to reach their X successes or Y failures? They could garner all 4 of their successes... but never actually (fiction wise) confront the challenge. So mechanically they have succeeded while in the fiction they don't have the positioning to succeed. Yes I can step in as DM narrate it as the challenge is overcome but this isn't really optimal for my group and I.
Once you break free of the structure, you get back to the challenge as exemplified in the 1e DMG (pg 103). This works well under a good DM. Under a bad DM what can happen is the obstacles to accomplishing a goal/completing a scene are never-ending.
I believe a lot of the structure found in 4e was there to help prevent bad DM behaviour under the belief a good DM would automagically know when and how to vary from the restrictions.
D
dco
Guest
Oh, is this a thread about combat?
Mandatory or not players need to know what are the rules for the given situation, they don't like to feel or be cheated.
If there are n different rules to resolve a situation the players would want to know what rules are going to be applied for the current situation and as a DM if I have to tell what are those rules then I'm narrating rules. When combat starts they know we are going to use the combat rules, if another encounter can be resolved with a skill check, a skill challenge, a flip coin, playing a card game, etc they will want to know.
In most RPGs players tell the DM what they do and thats all, they resolve the action. For a skill challenge I need to create trees of skills, determine how many successes and fails are available, tell the players how it is going to work ,etc, too complicated for nothing.
It seems you didn't understand anything of what I said.
Let's say I tell the players they need 5 successes to do something, instead of thinking what they want to do they will start to think what actions could give them successes, they will take it more like a puzzle.
Second, they will start doing a lot of actions merely to resolve the "puzzle", using the example of fixing the vagon that someone posted, a player could tell you I try to fix the vagon, but others could try to separate it on infinitesimal actions. The DM is going to be the one determining how they should resolve the encounter and the players adapt to that.
Sadras
Legend
@Imaro, apologies for the long absence - life just became a little hectic earlier this year and I disappeared from Enworld for a while.
and
I see. My answer to your above queries and observations is that a SC mechanic need not be used for every non-combat encounter encountered.
One can then ask what is the value of such a mechanic - which I think is at the heart of this conversation.
I suppose for me, the value of such a mechanic is that for certain types of encounters (specifically extended travelling, a difficult negotiation, prolonged breaking-and-entering scenarios, or attempting to diffuse a complex portal like spell in the middle of combat...etc) I as DM, am able to provide a greater degree of narration into the story using the mechanics.
For example a simple roll of the die for a week's journey just doesn't seem adequate enough to decide and describe the events of that transpired while we use 100's of die to describe and decide the outcome of a less than 2 minute combat.
Whether you use the SC mechanic in its entirety or utilise the guidelines more loosely, for myself, it can provide (assisted with mechanics) the level of input I would wish to generate with a specific non-combat encounter. Again, just for the sake of clarity, SC are not necessary for all non-combat scenarios. That would be subject to the DM.
I'm not saying I do this all the time, but it is not uncommon at my table.
Fair enough.
and
I see. My answer to your above queries and observations is that a SC mechanic need not be used for every non-combat encounter encountered.
One can then ask what is the value of such a mechanic - which I think is at the heart of this conversation.
I suppose for me, the value of such a mechanic is that for certain types of encounters (specifically extended travelling, a difficult negotiation, prolonged breaking-and-entering scenarios, or attempting to diffuse a complex portal like spell in the middle of combat...etc) I as DM, am able to provide a greater degree of narration into the story using the mechanics.
For example a simple roll of the die for a week's journey just doesn't seem adequate enough to decide and describe the events of that transpired while we use 100's of die to describe and decide the outcome of a less than 2 minute combat.
Whether you use the SC mechanic in its entirety or utilise the guidelines more loosely, for myself, it can provide (assisted with mechanics) the level of input I would wish to generate with a specific non-combat encounter. Again, just for the sake of clarity, SC are not necessary for all non-combat scenarios. That would be subject to the DM.
This might be a difference in playstyles, I could easily see myself as DM saying "Invigorated by the potion you just drank, you engage with the beast once more, but this time anticipating its attack as you deftly parry its claw with your longsword and find the gap to step close enough to bury your dagger in its throat...."
I'm not saying I do this all the time, but it is not uncommon at my table.
Fair enough.
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Sadras
Legend
No, but you described a SC as a die-rolling exercise - or that is what it appeared to you. I'm just replying the same can be said about combat. Do you have a valid response to this?
Cheated? Interesting choice of word.
If you have the fear of being cheated by your DM, then I suggest your problem is much larger than whether you will incorporate a SC mechanic at the table.
The 'encounter' could be a series of checks spaced within the DM's narration of the group traversing through the Spine of the World within a limited period of time or navigating the mind of a deranged mindflayer through careful interrogation for a piece of information. The trustworthy DM is well within his/her rights to disclose or keep hidden that they are part of a skill challenge.
You can certainly run the SC with the bare bones you have described above, it sounds unappealing to me to. BUT you can also run it as part of a story requiring much less overhead.
Yes, I'm afraid that feeling is all too familiar.
Again refer to the Rules Compendium.
Firstly, leaving aside your fear of the cheating and untrustworthy DM at your table which is a serious concern all unto itself, depending on the type of SC I wouldn't necessarily reveal the number of successes to the SC. I would reveal if it were for example the closing of a portal to the Dimension of Nightmares and there were 5 visible archaic incantations which were holding it in place and each incantation required a check to undo it...
But I wouldn't disclose the number of successes required for say the safe navigating of the PC vessel to the Isle of Dread.
Secondly successful infinitesimal actions means 0 successes. The DM through narration (usually) creates the decision making points in the story which call for the players to decide which/what skill to use. Lord McDco and co. of Basque Country carrying a log to fix the Wagon does not require a check at my table, unless they had to traverse some tricky terrain or if time was a critical concern and the forest where they cut the wood was quite a distance off...
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