Skill Challenges and Action Points

[darkbard]

[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] 's Skill Utility thread and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's posts of his group's implementation of frequent skill challenges in their play have got me thinking: In the "standard," out-of-the-box 4E, the encounters/level breakdown, unless I'm mistaken, goes something like this: 7-8 combat encounters, 2-3 skill challenges. But from what I've seen of many recent contributors to this forum, to say nothing of the aforementioned posters, this clearly does not always hold true: many games split their encounters/level "budget" fairly evenly between the two types of encounter scenes, sometimes even leaning more heavily towards skill challenges over combat.

If the AP mechanic is awarded after each milestone (defined as "two consecutive encounters without stopping for an extended rest," which certainly implies that skill challenges count as encounters, and this is the way I've always played), how have those of you who include far more skill challenges than the baseline assumption dealt with APs and milestones? Awarded them after every two encounters, combat or otherwise? Limited their award to after two combat encounters only?

How have you found the use of APs in your group's skill challenge impacted by your decision on this matter, if at all?

 

[Manbearcat]

[MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION]

- Milestones are achieved at the completion of 2 consecutive Encounters without taking an Extended Rest.

- Skill Challenges are definitely Encounters.

- Hence, Skill Challenges count toward the Action Point refresh due to Milestone achievement.

---

Neither DMG1 nor DMG 2 nor RC canvass options for the deployment of Action Points in Skill Challenges. I've read all of Dragon and Dungeon and I can't recall any such article in UA or anything. I also don't recall there being anything on any of the design/hacking articles. Now that doesn't mean there aren't any, it just means that I don't recall (but my recall is rather good so I'm pretty confident).

I know [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] (and I believe [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION] may as well?) allows the deployment of APs for a myriad of effects; up front +2 (like a deployed SS), an interrupt to make an SS to add +2 or to cancel a failure.

I think that usage is a house rule or perhaps something pulled from a module (or again, an article I'm unaware of)? I neither run modules nor pick them apart/use them for inspiration so I'm not aware of the content therein.

While I don't use any AP Skill Challenge house rule. However, the Milestone Reward Cycle is still extremely coherent even if you don't use APs in SCs. This is because APs are meant to supplement the loss of Dailies, incentivizing the players to push on rather than turning back or attempting to make camp for a refresh. Dailies are meant to be deployed in Skill Challenges, earning at least 1 auto-success (DMG2 86). I universally give PCs 2 auto-successes for the savvy deployment of a Daily which is a thematic/mechanical match for the present fictional positioning of the unfolding situation. My players build toward a suite of Dailies for this and deploy them in SCs regularly. Further, as you know, my ratio of SCs to combat is probably 3:2. Consequently, there is nary a battle (unless it is the stray combat which is nested in a SC) where the players don't have APs refreshed. As a knock-on effect to this paradigm, while they have less aggregate Dailies for combat, they also never horde their APs for future use (combat is always assumed to have APs).

 

[Tony Vargas]

I never thought to count skill challenges as anything but encounters with regards to milestones.

I feel like I've allowed APs to be used in SCs before - for a re-roll or to enable a less- applicable skill or the like but I don't recall specific incidents.

I would have said I run more combats than SCs (though I have run some combats, like naval engagements, mopping up operations, battles, or systematically clearing a dungeon, as SCs, interspersed with small combats on failures, or leading into a combat, like a boarding action, so the line isn't always clear), but since my campaign's hit Epic, there have been a lot more SCs. The last 7 sessions have had 1 combat, I think - and 1 combat completely bypassed with a couple of rituals and successfully taking down a trap. It's suddenly gotten a bit CaW, I suppose.

 

[pemerton]

DMG 2 talks about using APs in skill challenges - though the suggestions are pretty sketchy.
[MENTION=15800]Hellcow[/MENTION] also talked about it in some threads/posts I read back in 2008/9.

In combat, an AP is - in effect - a retry. So that's more-or-less how we use it in our game. Here are the details:

A player who fails a skill check in a skill challenge may spend an action point:

*to add +2 to the skill check result;
*to reroll the skill check;
*if an advantage is used, to step down the difficulty of the check (extreme to hard, hard to moderate, or moderate to easy);
*if an advantage is used, to cancel the failure.​

If another PC fails a skill check, a player may spend an action point to make a secondary skill check as an immediate interrupt:

*to add +2 to the skill check result: moderate DC;
*to reroll the skill check: moderate DC;
*if an advantage is used, to step down the difficulty of the check (extreme to hard, hard to moderate, or moderate to easy): moderate DC;
*if an advantage is used, to cancel the failure: hard DC.​

The rule that no more than 1 action point may be spent in an encounter applies.​

On number/ratio of encounters - overall I would say we have more combat than SC (so different from [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]). But it depends a bit on the dynamics of the ingame situation. In the current "adventuring day", there was a SC (dealing with Yan-C-Bin), then a combined combat (with the tarrasque)/SC (dealing with Maruts), then a SC (dealing with devils et al at the gates of Carceri) then a combat (which is still going, and involves lots of elemental/primordial creatures).

The PCs used lots of APs in those first two skill challenges, to try and make their skill checks land!

 

[darkbard]

Great replies, gents! I must have missed that section in the DMG2 about utilizing powers in Skill Challenges, for I always assumed such usage was house ruled when I saw posts about it! Some points of clarification on terminology, if you would:

(like a deployed SS), an interrupt to make an SS

It's suddenly gotten a bit CaW, I suppose.

(extreme to hard, hard to moderate, or moderate to easy)

 

[Manbearcat]

Great replies, gents! I must have missed that section in the DMG2 about utilizing powers in Skill Challenges, for I always assumed such usage was house ruled when I saw posts about it! Some points of clarification on terminology, if you would:

Sorry.

1) SS = Secondary Skill.

2) CAW = Combat As War. Emphasizing strategic over tactical play (abridged version).

3) Extreme DC I believe is Hard DC +5.

 

[darkbard]

Aha! Thanks for the quick response. And no need to apologize: experts regularly deploy jargon, often unconsciously, and, like it or not, you three are experts when it comes to gameplay theory. (It's only when jargon is applied forcefully to declare superiority and shut down dialogue that I find it offputting, and you guys certainly are not doing that here!)

Is the extreme DC a house rule element from pemerton's game? I've seen similar usage (sometimes called a critical success), where high skill rolls will carry an additional benefit (e.g., count as two successes). I can't recall it being used in the RAW in that way, though.

 

[Garthanos]

DMG 2 talks about using APs in skill challenges - though the suggestions are pretty sketchy.

[MENTION=15800]Hellcow[/MENTION] also talked about it in some threads/posts I read back in 2008/9.

In combat, an AP is - in effect - a retry. So that's more-or-less how we use it in our game. Here are the details:

A player who fails a skill check in a skill challenge may spend an action point:

*to add +2 to the skill check result;
*to reroll the skill check;
*if an advantage is used, to step down the difficulty of the check (extreme to hard, hard to moderate, or moderate to easy);
*if an advantage is used, to cancel the failure.​

If another PC fails a skill check, a player may spend an action point to make a secondary skill check as an immediate interrupt:

*to add +2 to the skill check result: moderate DC;
*to reroll the skill check: moderate DC;
*if an advantage is used, to step down the difficulty of the check (extreme to hard, hard to moderate, or moderate to easy): moderate DC;
*if an advantage is used, to cancel the failure: hard DC.​

The rule that no more than 1 action point may be spent in an encounter applies.​

Sounds like some of the pure mechanical usages of a Fate Point... though a full reroll when you dislike the results is basically more like a +4 almost 5 to effective skill...

The highly detailed character design of D&D is the only deterrent to incorporating Aspects as a straight up adoption.

 

[MwaO]

I'd be careful about awarding APs in skill challenges unless you plan to have 4 combats in a day and the PCs are not strongly optimized. That then gives 3 APs for 4 combats.

If you have less combats than that or the PCs are optimized to gain APs elsewhere, then you can easily end up having APs for every combat. Which is not really an intended result.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I always assumed such usage was house ruled when I saw posts about it! Some points of clarification on terminology, if you would:

"Combat as War," similar to Gygaxian 'skilled play' the idea that player decisions and strategems and even (too put too fine a point on it) meta-gaming, should be able to swing the results of a challenge (especially a combat) to an extreme degree, possibly rendering the system itself (and certainly an encounter guidelines) moot.

My party had a grudge match set up with an ancient (elder wyrm? whatever it's been since they changed it from 1e's 'Ancient' - oldest age class) Mercury Dragon. Without getting into too much backstory....

...no, nevermind, here goes:

Back in mid-late Paragon, they were on an involved quest for a never-opened Pandora's-Box-like artifact. It led them through spelljammer space to remote crystal spheres, including one inhabited by Mercury Dragons (as in, how many Dragons could a world support if they and their Arkhosian-remnant-population Dragonborn servants were the only things living there more intelligent/powerful than tasty mammoths), and blockaded by a Neogi-led fleet (because the answer is /way too many to ever be allowed to leave the planet/). So the Dragons rule the world, eldest/most-cunning on top, and, in ancient days, 'The Great One,' most powerful of their race ever to exist, withdrew into his ziggurat (with the clue the PCs needed to find the artifact) because, quote "He was not accepting of Death." So the PCs dungeon-crawl the ziggurat, expecting to have a boss-fight with a Dracolich well above their paygrade, and, instead, find, after much foreshadowing that could go either undeath or apotheosis depending on how you looked at them, including elaborate animate bass-relief traps and the like, they find The Great One, alive (surprise!), and in Temporal Stasis (a spell that, like Wish, has not been possible to cast since the Dawn War, yet, here's someone who cast it), rampant as in mid-battle above his hoard, which is secured by a possible-in-this-Age 'Stasis Vault.' The party extract the clue (and an astral diamond, and a magic 'grace ring' or two, I think it was) from the hoard and continue on their quest. But a couple of the players are just itching to take on that Dragon and claim the horde - a classic, pile-of-treasure hoard (though light on gold, because Mercury Dragons, I figure, feel like it clashes with their scales, plenty of silver and platinum, though).

So, they finish that quest and - in a n-way battle amongst the 8 4e players who showed up that week, a crew of 2-bit-arch-mage(they could all cast freak'n Chain Lightning, 'kay) spelljammer elves, an elemental-chaos-raider Hellship, a /second/ factions of Devils ("Under the Terms of the Secret Alliance between our respective Lords Mammon and Belial, I invoke the clause of mutual aid! ...to the precise degrees therein delineated, etc, etc...") who had been, well, bedeviling the players at my wife's homebrew 5e table, Her table's players, playing their 5e characters in their native system), and, oh, several of the Arch-fey of the Shadow Court, on the top branches of Sinhalese, on a night when the entire Court of Stars was in session down'stairs.' We ran it in both systems simultaneously, on a 4'x8' chessex mega-mat, that required tree of the FLGS's tables. We called it "D&D 9th edition."

OK, technically no PC was higher than 20th, but it was Epic.

And, of course, one of my PCS opened The Box.

Point is, there was this uberDragon. And, 3 or 4 levels after encountering it, they're in a more sandboxey kind of period, and deciding what to do... "hey, remember that Dragon...?"

So they return to the world full of Mercury Dragons and find a trio of dragonborn 'archaeologists' (actually a non-combatant Librarian, a Mercurial Assassin, and a Dungeoneer) representing a truce among the three most powerful modern dragons, who have cleared the Pyramid of undead and are cataloging (without touching, because that gets you trapped in Stasis) The Great One and His Hoard, and after a little negotiation, the Dragonborn, on behalf of their Draconic masters, agree to stand by while the party take on The Great One and try to claim it's hoard.

Now, the Great One is in temporal stasis in the last moments of life, having exceeded the greatest possible age even for dragons, and cannot possibly live more than a few minutes (that's a lotta ongoing damage). So the party get too clever by half, and scribe a circle of protection (worth noting: I'd years ago ruled that any attack across a circle of protection breaks it, seems obvious to me) around The Great One keyed to natural creatures (they're all fey), and a dragondaunt-shield Ward next to it, as a fall-back position. They've crafted a special magic weapon, too. The plan is to take down the Stasis Vault (an encounter-worthy challenge in itself), wait for the Great One to mostly succumb to his great age (ie Bloodied by the ongoing damage), then jump in and try to strike a killing blow with the special weapon (which'll set up something else that I can't ever recall right now).

They do, with much effort take down the Stasis Vault, releasing both hoard and dragon. However, 5 rounds (and 200 hps of unavoidable last-moments-of-life-damage later, The Great One has put itself back in stasis - but not the Hoard, the matrix of high-epic magic items that anchor it were tampered with).

So the walk off, or, actually, transport via multiple trips walking a portable hole through a teleport circle, with a dragon horde. A little over a hundred tons of it, nearly the cargo capacity of their ship, after replacing their ballast with it, as well!

That 'we made off with a Dragon's Hoard without having to fight the Dragon because we were just too clever by half' bit, that's CaW. (Really, the plan to kill it like that was CaW, but even CaW plans don't survive contact with a high-Epic caster.)

CaW is, of course, completely unsupported by 4e.