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

[Stalker0]

Yes, its me writing another post about skill challenges, but I promise there's no math

What I wanted to talk with the community about was the general concept behind the skill challenge, and get some general feedback.

While skill challenges and combats are presented in similar ways, at their core, there's a big fundamental difference.

In combat, generally the worst thing a player can do is....do nothing. Sure a wizard could fireball the whole party, but in general a person's biggest failure is missing their attack roll, and not contributing to the eventual defeat of the monsters. However, most of the time other players aren't angry when you miss a roll, they feel the pain with you, and everyone continues to work hard to beat a challenge.

However, in a skill challenge there's a difference. In a skill challenge, a player can do worse than nothing, he can get a failure. He can actually provide a penalty, a drawback, to the entire party. The most obvious example is a one person (with high skills) in a skill challenge. With his high skill, he would normally succeed easily. Now add a second person with weaker skills. If that person tries to participate and make skill rolls, he's actually hurting the group's chance.

I thought about this after Sunday's playtest of my current skill challenge system, and my dm agreed with me. Further, I asked some of the players what they thought, and people mentioned they were scared to fail. They wanted to make sure they found a way to use their best skills, and one openly admitted he would have felt better if he could have "bowed out" of the challenge instead of roll his lower skills and possibly create failures.


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?

 

[Boarstorm]

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.

 

[Zurai]

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.

I agree. This was one of the first things that occurred to me when I actually sat down and parsed through the skill challenges. Especially in their current official incarnation, where you need twice as many successes to win as failures to lose, there's a heavy disincentive to participating unless you have the highest skill rank in the party for the needed skill(s). And yeah, Aid Another isn't participating, especially once you get into paragon and it's essentially a sure thing.

 

[hcm]

Like Boarstorm said, I think it's important that everyone should be involved. But I also think that there is a need to emphasize that no matter what the outcome of the challenge, it should drive story. That way, failing isn't catastrophic but rather a choice of story path. It could even be announced to the players at the beginning of the challenge, or the win--loose options could be decided by the group. "If you fail the challenge, you will still obtain the info but the syndicate will be aware of your doings. If you win, you will have the info and still the advantage of surprise." It's too early for me to come up with good examples, but I think the point is made -- both results drive story.

Like in the other threads, I also think that true, tactical options in a skill challenge involve players more, even if they don't make the most important rolls. Maybe there is a way to come up with a few options for those with lower skills too?

 

[Hussar]

That's actually a fair criticism I think.

As a player, I'd be a bit annoyed if Bloggins used his crappy skill roll, just to have something to do.

To be fair, I think this can be mitigated a few ways:

• Design challenges to meet as broad of a selection of skills as reasonably possible. That way everyone gets to participate.
• Enforce and reinforce the idea that failing a challenge isn't going to screw you too badly. Yes, something bad will happen, but, no, you won't die. Having played a Binder for the past year and a half, I can honestly say that failing binding checks can be just as fun as succeeding.
• Ensure that skill checks contain enough "extra" options - using X skill provides a bonus but failing doesn't contribute to overall pass/fail. That's better, IMO, than simply Aid Another.

Just as a question though, Aid Another is not tied to your action no? You can still make a skill check AND Aid Another on your turn?

 

[WyzardWhately]

You're absolutely correct. I'd be pissed at a player who insisted on racking up failures rather than sitting it out. Sometimes you have to step out of the spotlight, and put the team ahead of your own interests. Life's tough that way. Same way that sometimes you need to cast an area-effect spell that includes your buddy, but usually you shy far away from that, even if it means you don't get to do much. To my mind, these are nearly equivalent behaviors. You're sabotaging the group in an attempt to show off at others' expense.

See, here's where the comparison between combat and skill challenges breaks down. In combat, you have several different options. Most characters are going to have several different things they can do in a round, with different cost-benefits. There might not be choices that are strictly better than others. Do I use Ray of Frost and try to slow the elite brute down, or do I use thunderwave to push his minions off a cliff? See, there's not necessarily a clearly superior choice.

In a skill challenge, the problem is that your options are mechanically fungible. It all comes down to a die roll with a certain percentage: the difference between rolling +9 arcana and +7 religion has a clearly and strictly better option. There are not nearly enough "special effects" attached to different skill uses for one to not be generally strictly better. You look at the list of skills you have, and you hammer on the one with the best chance of success. So, if you don't have a very high chance of success, your strictly best option is to try and aid another.

I have trouble conceiving of a way to fix this without making the system heinous.

However, the best I can think of is to set up parallel interlinked skill challenges. In essentially the same way that different types of combat encounters are set up (the dragon's den, wolf pack, etc.), there would be multiple different tracks with effects on each other. In essence, you'd be running two or three skill challenges at once, all of which lead to the same goal, and each having milestones that contribute or detract from progress on the others. An example might be two PCs using social skills at court to delay proceedings, while two others go wild on investigation trying to find the necessary dirt to put a stop to the scheme permanently. If they can communicate new information to each other, they can give each other bonuses...

...as you can see, that's too complex and requires a convoluted setup, so it's not suited to starting one on the fly when the players want to do something and you need to make a big deal out of it.

I suppose another option might be that a skill challenge could require certain "keys." That is, a very complex one might require 10 overall, but there could also be certain minimums in there. So, you might require two of those successes be from skill A, two from skill B, and either three from skill C or one from skill D which can only be unlocked by a hard test with skill E that counts as two successes if made.

Clearly, there's room for permutation here. Sorry for the lengthy and possibly out-of-place rant.

 

[Warbringer]

Don't give them the option...

While Gandalf and Gimli considered the significance of the dwarven tome, Merry got curious about a skelton sitting on the edge of the well...

Whta would happen if the fighter stood around scratching his butt while the party's bard (yeah, we wish) convinced the King to do whatever...

In social encounters make everyone participate... the heroes will have intended and unintended contributions to make. Choose a skill if you must, but make everyone contribute at least one roll

 

[dragon_eater]

When I began thinking about skill challenges I wondered how you could make the worst thing a player could do the same as in combat, to do nothing. If the system was changed from say 6 success before 3 failures to 6 successes within 3 rounds then that would happen.

This way each player would be able to roll without having to fear ruining the challenge because they aren't good enough. People who are bad could at least try and contribute, while those who are good can reliably get successes.

 

[yarael]

I think you have hit on the fundamental flaw in the skill challenge system (regardless of math). Skill challenges should be a game of resource management (get a failure, lose a healing surge as you loose grasp of the rope and fall, lose 10 gold as you find you cannot charm your way pass, but must bribe, etc....). In this way failures are not limited to a certain number (4 or 6 or whatever) but are instead determined by how much the party is willing to lose, give up, sacrfice or otherwise spend to try again to achieve sucess.

This also models skill challenges more closely to combat. Combat is very rarely a matter of complete sucess or complete failure, and rather a measure of how many resoures the party had to or wanted to expend in order to succeed.

 

[Twinbladez]

((This post is my attempt to relate my thoughts on Sklill challenges to people of greater intelligence than I, so I apologise if this makes no sense ))

I think this idea of No action bieng better than a failure stems from the skill challenges base premise:

To me that is to: Create a non combat encoutner than can be tuned like a combat encounter, thereby LOot and experience can be easially assigned in a logical fasion for the challenge the players face.

The problem is that a great Part of the challenge of combat is intellectual, wheras skill challenges cannot have that.

What I mean by this is bext explained by a combat analogue to skill challanges

"Roll to hit If you beat the AC of the monster you deal X damage, if you miss it counters dealing X damage, It has Y HP, you have Y/2"

That is on the most basic a skill challenge, whereby you have to gain twice the amount of sucesses before failures"

The problem that Is faced by Wizards is based on their intention to make skill challenges just as challenged, in my opinion.

In Combat you have to factor:
Position of all forces, abilities available, Terrain, distribution of actions, Force's current Defences and HP.

This puts most of the challenge on thinking and application of the tools, as for a given level the Rolling should balance out.

In a Skill challnge you have to factor
"Current number of Sucesses Vs Failures, Skills available and applicable to the encounter, ability to aid another"

All of the true challenge in the Skill challenge is weighted towards Rolling, and therefore if numbers are not on your side, clever application does not matter.

Now what Did I spend the last 10 minutes of writing trying to prove, Simply this:

Skill challenges by defenition are too simple for their intended purpose, and will in their current form be heavially weighted towards bonus' and ability to roll, making the fear of failure greater than the fear of inaction.

Beaten to the punch by WyzardWhately