A discussion of Keith Baker's post regarding the Skill Challenge system

[Stalker0]

I have to admit, I was wondering the same thing. It's always fun to see my name in thread titles, but the fact of the matter is that I'm not any sort of authority on the subject.

I'll be honest, I thought you were a designer when I created the post. Regardless, I attempted to simply counteract your points in a logical and thoughtful manner, so I hope I have not caused any enmity by doing so.

People have mentioned the danger of using math to invalidate a system, and I agree with them that playtesting is always an important point. The reason is that when you sit in a room doing math, you make assumptions about the way players will use mechanics, and how they will understand your system. And as often seen at the gaming table, those assumptions are wrong.

However, there is a limit to the usefulness of playtesting as well. In my opinion, once playtesting gives you an idea of how players will use a system, math must be used to tell you if a system is good or not. With math, I can run 50,000 skill challenges in the span of 10 seconds, more than any group will likely ever run. In playtesting you hit the problem with perception after only a few die rolls. One group runs several challenges, rolls well, and thinks the challenges work great. Another runs several, rolls badly, and thinks the system is crap. Only math can tell you whether it was bad dice or a bad system.

That is the main reason I responded to your post. When people talk about a playtest they've run, I think its always important to hear how the people in that group ran the system. But 1 group saying the system works great for them means little, just as 1 group saying its crap means little.

 

[grymckr]

I DO think that partial success is a vital element to skill challenges - that as long as you don't HAVE to win to achieve something, the difficulty isn't insurmountable. An adventure I've run about 10 times now has a skill challenge at the end, and it's probably been something like a 20/50/30 split on full failure/partial success/full success.

(emphasis mine)
As I mentioned a page or two back, I think this is the key "tweak" making the entire system work, and even making it a lot of fun. Based on those numbers, Keith Baker's parties aren't succeeding on skill challenges much more than the math would indicate. It's just that failure isn't always failure, sometimes they get a "partial failure" - or "partial success" depending on how you look at it.

It doesn't matter if the parties always "fail" as long as they feel like they've achieved something in the process. In other words, "failing" the skill challenges only really means that it's over, and that you no longer can gain any benefits from any more successful checks in the challenge.

 

[Tervin]

(emphasis mine)
As I mentioned a page or two back, I think this is the key "tweak" making the entire system work, and even making it a lot of fun. Based on those numbers, Keith Baker's parties aren't succeeding on skill challenges much more than the math would indicate. It's just that failure isn't always failure, sometimes they get a "partial failure" - or "partial success" depending on how you look at it.

It doesn't matter if the parties always "fail" as long as they feel like they've achieved something in the process. In other words, "failing" the skill challenges only really means that it's over, and that you no longer can gain any benefits from any more successful checks in the challenge.

Agreed. That is a very good tweak, and something I am sure going to use whenever it fits into any skill challenge I run. I hope that it somehow gets added to the rules.

 

[Mallus]

I definitely prefer a much more free-form and roleplay intensive skill challenge system where the players are encouraged to dream up, and describe for everyone, how they are trying to contribute to the encounter. If the wizard has Knowledge: Engineering and can convincingly describe to me how that qualifies him to identify and remove the weak mortar from the bricks in the wall to create handholds, I'm going to count that as Aid Another at least and possibly even a qualified success for the entire Escape challenge.

This is the way my group is going to use Skill Challenges...

edit: also, I'm thinking using an 'auto-win but no auto-fail' system. If you describe/justify the skill use well enough --like Wulf's engineer wizard-- you automatically gain a success. If someone else tries to bully the King, roll for it (but the DC will be just this side of mathematically possible).

I want to encourage players to brainstorm up ingenious and/or wacky solutions to problems and at the same time remain open to solutions and/or story directions that I didn't occur to me or, even, that I don't like (that keeps me on my toes).

 

[drothgery]

I'll be honest, I thought you were a designer when I created the post.

He is, just not of 4e. He's the guy behind Eberron (though lots of others at WotC worked on it after he won the setting search contest).

 

[Pseudopsyche]

binary outcomes versus graded performance

(emphasis mine)
As I mentioned a page or two back, I think this is the key "tweak" making the entire system work, and even making it a lot of fun. Based on those numbers, Keith Baker's parties aren't succeeding on skill challenges much more than the math would indicate. It's just that failure isn't always failure, sometimes they get a "partial failure" - or "partial success" depending on how you look at it.

It doesn't matter if the parties always "fail" as long as they feel like they've achieved something in the process. In other words, "failing" the skill challenges only really means that it's over, and that you no longer can gain any benefits from any more successful checks in the challenge.

This. I trust the OP's math, but I wonder if the key problem is the DMG's fixation on skill challenge encounters as having a binary outcome: success or failure. This fixation seems to stem in part from categorizing them as just another kind of encounter, which are either beaten (XP and other rewards gained) or failed. IME, combat encounters, the kind most familiar to us, are designed to be beaten. (The TPK rate should be low, and in practice many players retreat rarely, although arguably retreat should be more common in 4e.) From a game mechanics perspective the key question for an encounter (outside of the fun the group has) is how much of the group's daily resources it costs to beat: daily powers and healing surges. The key problem with skill challenges as written is that they don't consume appreciable resources, outside of the odd utility power.

In my group, instead of changing the mechanics of the challenge, I will try redefining what it means to succeed. Just as my players would receive XP for the monsters slain before retreating from combat, they will receive XP and other rewards for the successes earned before reaching the threshold number of failures. (In the full spirit of the negative binomial distribution!) So perhaps in a complexity-5 challenge, they will earn x/12 of the possible XP for earning x successes before 6 failures.

Actually "beating" the skill challenge will be akin to rolling a natural 20 on a simple skill check and playing with a house rule granting some kind of critical success. The Duke doesn't just agree to help, he sends his entire army. You don't just catch the fleeing thief, you begin the ensuing encounter with her completely surrounded. The corpse doesn't just answer your questions, he tells you everything he knows. You don't just figure out where you are in the jungle, you either come out exactly where you want to go or you stumble across some magnificent find. In other words, "success" in the old system becomes "resounding success", and many "failures" become normal "success."

Note that many of the published skill challenges already have elements of this design. In "Heathen," the party learns something useful with every success, regardless of whether they "beat" the challenge. In the tidbit about adapting old modules, the alertness of the giants in the fortress grows with the number of failures (instead of being binary). And of course we have anecdotal evidence from people, such as Keith Baker, who actually manage to enjoy running skill challenges without changing the mechanics of running one.

 

[Gradine]

This DMG seems to spend more time than ever talking about the joys of improvisation, and rewording your players for being clever or creative. My biggest issue with the skill challenge section as far as intent goes (I wont even pretend I have a grasp on the math or statistics of the issue) is that it seems to want you to squash creativity where-ever possible. How in the same type of encounter the book tells you to give a +2 bonus for creative use of skills but at the same time make the skill check Hard is entirely antithetical. That skill challenges are meant to be on the same level as combats means that being clever and inventive with skills is just as important as using good tactics in battle, so that +2 should be the rule and not the exception.

 

[Spatula]

So the house rules I agree with. But "Serious Tweaking"? Not so much. Everything else I mention is simply about designing interesting elements into an encounter...

I DO think that partial success is a vital element to skill challenges...

Adding in partial successes is a rather serious tweaking of the binary pass/fail system in the DMG.

 

[Spatula]

This DMG seems to spend more time than ever talking about the joys of improvisation, and rewording your players for being clever or creative. My biggest issue with the skill challenge section as far as intent goes (I wont even pretend I have a grasp on the math or statistics of the issue) is that it seems to want you to squash creativity where-ever possible. How in the same type of encounter the book tells you to give a +2 bonus for creative use of skills but at the same time make the skill check Hard is entirely antithetical. That skill challenges are meant to be on the same level as combats means that being clever and inventive with skills is just as important as using good tactics in battle, so that +2 should be the rule and not the exception.

Depends on where you set the threshold for "creative enough to warrant a +2." Some people want to apply it to every skill check the players make (as you note), some will be stingier. And you're supposed to hand out -2 penalties as well, according to the DMG.

 

[gonesailing]

My basic problem with the Skill challenges (which are a good idea) isn't the pass/fail nature or using partial success/failure. I can do that with any system. It is the fact that the guidelines for DCs are off (or obscure) and the mechanics of "Aid Another" are completely crazy when you compare them to the DCs:

Sometimes a DM might allow up to a +8 bonus...C'mon how is that supposed to work with set DCs? +1 or +2 here and there as rewards, OK and Very Good. Am I supposed to set the DCs here if they come up with a way to Aid and there if they don't? +8 is a big number when you are talking about DCs in the 20's that is why that mechanic is far too swingy for me.

Give me a system with predictable maths behind it and tell me what the results of my design, Player, and DM decisions will be ahead of time. Oh and give good recommended DCs while you're at it.