A talk on the concept of "failures" in a skill challenge (no math, comments welcome)

[Drammattex]

This idea breaks down somewhat when you take published adventures into consideration.

Those of us who like to buy modules, like H1, or who like to run adventures from Dungeon magazine (whatever its current incarnation may be), or who even download adventures from various websites.

In those cases, we can't just comfortably play the skill challenges as written - we will have to modify most of them to accomodate our party.

Which defeats the intent, a little, of using pre-made adventures.

Heh. Oh yeah. That's a good point.

They're so little a part of my world, I forget to consider them. But yeah, that would certainly be problematic.

 

[Harr]

I would vote that it definitely IS one problem of current skill challenges in that it heavily promotes an automatic "Who has the lowest allowed skill so that they can Aid Another" reaction among the players.

It's fine to talk about creative skill use and stimulating imagination (and that is exactly what I did) for the first twenty or so challenges, but you do eventually reach a point where players get their act together and start to routinize and quantify everything, once you reach that point, all the creativeness and the all wonderful action-description goes out the window.

Where I see my group unavoidably heading as we get more and more comfortable with skill challenges is into a freeform round-by-round thing where the allowed skills are simply the ones which are logically relevant to the situation as decribed, and where the situation just improves or deteriorates depending on high or low checks until it has been logically concluded in either success of failure.

In the end the scenes and situations that skill challenges try to tackle are fundamentally subjective in nature, and after a lot of experience and experiments I finally think that any attempt to systematize that into math and numbers is just going to fall short.

 

[Shabe]

opps

 

[mmadsen]

So it would anger your character (and add to the drama of the scene)? But not you the player, right?

It would anger me, the player, to the same extent that, say, getting hit with a lightning bolt or having my magic widget stolen would anger me, the player. It's a good kind of angry, like from any challenge to be overcome.

 

[Pseudopsyche]

So I wanted to open this up to the community at large and get your opinions on that. When your in a skill challenge, as a player, do you worry that if you roll a "weaker" skill that you are actively hurting the party's chances? Would it (or has it) anger you if a fellow player with a "weak" skill decided to roll instead of aiding another?

My understanding of RAW skill challenges is that individual players can't opt out. ("In a skill challenge encounter, every player character must make skill checks to contribute to the success or failure of the encounter." DMG 74) The Aid Another action only applies to group skill checks (DMG 75), which I would insert in between rounds (after the pitcher's spot in the batting order). At his or her turn in the initiative order, every player must make a skill check against an appropriate DC for his or her level (not a measly Aid Another DC 10). If any attempted skill check is not part of the solution (contributes a success), then it is part of the problem (contributes a failure).

Once you have a system where every player is forced to participate, for better or for worse, the fear of failure you mention is simply a motivation to think creatively about what skill might apply to a given challenge. If a given PC routinely contributes to the failure tally instead of the success tally, then either 1) the player needs better dice, 2) the players needs to retrain to better match the campaign, or 3) the DM needs to build skill challenges that don't screw one of the players.

 

[dasheiff]

My players felt they weren't doing anything. It was just pick the best skill and roll it. I fixed this but making all of the feats and spells that change up skills more common and at lower level. (The rogue should always have a power to help their own skill rolls, the leader should always have a party buff for skills, etc)

 

[Starfox]

The reputed design principle behind skill challenges is that everyone should be involved.

If a player feels like he's actually a detriment to the party in a skill challenge and would rather sit around and do nothing than attempt a roll, then I think the system has failed.

Hate to say it, but there it is. "Aid Another" is not participating in a meaningful way, in my opinion.

QFT

My understanding of RAW skill challenges is that individual players can't opt out. ("In a skill challenge encounter, every player character must make skill checks to contribute to the success or failure of the encounter." DMG 74) The Aid Another action only applies to group skill checks (DMG 75), which I would insert in between rounds (after the pitcher's spot in the batting order). At his or her turn in the initiative order, every player must make a skill check against an appropriate DC for his or her level (not a measly Aid Another DC 10). If any attempted skill check is not part of the solution (contributes a success), then it is part of the problem (contributes a failure).

Once you have a system where every player is forced to participate, for better or for worse, the fear of failure you mention is simply a motivation to think creatively about what skill might apply to a given challenge. If a given PC routinely contributes to the failure tally instead of the success tally, then either 1) the player needs better dice, 2) the players needs to retrain to better match the campaign, or 3) the DM needs to build skill challenges that don't screw one of the players.

We will find a lot of players who suddenly have to go the the bathroom, call their sick mom, or otherwise makes themselves scarce. This is not how to get people involved!

Fighter get 3 trained skills from a short list. One is very likely to be athletics. The man who will face a dragon will run screaming from a skill challenge. Or maybe solve it with a sword, like Alexander and the Godrian Knot. "Lets not even try to talk to them, lets kill them. That way we have a better chance."

A skill challenge can be expected to take about an hour of play. If the expected outcome is a failure, why invest an hour of your time? "Lets just ignore the king and go kill goblins" is the other answer to skill challenges once players have tired of hiding.

 

[Rick Danger]

The concept of "failure" is important - not only because it has a different significance for either combat encounters or skill challenges (as many have said) - but also because it moderates how many times the players want to face that type of encounter. If skill challenges had something like a 50% chance of success, "powergamers" (I don't like this term, but it is used in the DMG) would want to skill challenge all day. "Easy xp without taking damage? Sign me up for the grind!"

Therefore, skill challenges have a built-in tendency towards failure and that is not necessarily a bad thing, it is indeed a part of what makes a good story.

On the other hand, my interpretation of the RAW is that skills challenges are designed by the DM with the objective of involving every member of the party - which means that, as much as possible, all characters should find one of their trained skills among the list of primary skills (and that the DM should also take in account any powers/rituals that may take part in the challenge). Players can get creative with unusual and even weird use of skills, but those secondary skills can only be used once in the skill challenge.

From what I have read, I also think that not every action has to be a moderate DC skill check to add a sucess or a failure. Certain actions, as described by the player, may involve easy/hard DCs or even automatic successes. Also, for some actions, a failure only means nothing happens, so they should not count directly to the s/f count - they should simply grant a +2 bonus (eventually a -2 penalty) to other checks. A character may also choose to cooperate with an ally, so the DM should also determine when aiding another is appropriate and exactly how many people may help. Finally, as the players narrate their actions and the encounter evolves, each individual success should grant more information/resources for the players to work with and each individual failure may constitute a drain on the character's resources (ex: in healing surges or gps).

You may be surprised that this is all indicated - albeit a bit obscurely - in the DMG.

 

[Drammattex]

Also...

The DMG says to use the moderate DCs on pg 42 for skill challenges.
At first level, that's DC 15.

While it says at the bottom of that chart to add +5 for skill checks, I think the intent may have been that that footnote text was intended solely for isolated skill checks, not when doing a skill challenge.

A (moderate) DC 15 for a 1st level character doesn't seem too bad, especially considering circumstance modifiers and possible "Aid" checks.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I think there are some elements that should be drawn from combat to skill challenges.

1. The players are against someone or something, not their own failures. Randomness + the oppositions unique abilities heavily flavour each combat.
2. The environment affects the effectiveness of abilities on both sides of the fence.
3. There are multiple levels of resource management. Only one of these is a direct metric for failure (ie - hitpoints). Management of dailies and encounter powers contribute to the usefulness of tactics and strategy, but having zero encounter powers doesn't mean that you automatically lose.
4. The metric for failure (hitpoints) is primarily manipulated by the enemy, not the players. The players CAN change the effectiveness of the enemy however.

On the most basic level, a skill challenge system that mirrored these elements would be:

Players each roll.
Foes each roll.
Players win if they accumulate X successes before foes accumulate Y successes.

Obviously to make a system capable of more engageing challenges there should be some mechanisms for "roll reduces foes roll", "roll increases ally's roll" and also some sort of secondary resource management.

The DMG says to use the moderate DCs on pg 42 for skill challenges.
At first level, that's DC 15....
...

This argument has been pretty thoroughly covered in the math heavy threads, so we should avoid bringing it up here.