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

[The Grackle]

Not neccesarily.

Example from a real game last year: Kidnap/assassination attempt on the queen and princess of the country. The party survived the combat with no losses, but the queen was assassinated when the kidnapper decided there was no chance for him to accomplish his primary mission (kidnap the queen).

That's a failure in combat that had nothing to do with a TPK.

"I magic missile the hostage."

"You what?"

"I magic missile the hostage!"

 

[DM_Blake]

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.

Oh, no no no, comerade.

4e is all about fun and fair. Everyone plays. All are equal. Nobody is allowed to rise above the others. Nobody is elevated. Nobody is left behind.

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

 

[DM_Blake]

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.

An excellent suggestion.

This bears some thought, and is worthy of a thread on its own merit.

At first, however, I have to point out that not all skill challenges lend themselves readily to time pressure.

And a second consideration is that, in your example, with a 5-person (default size for 4e) group, that would allow for 15 skill rolls, requiring 6 successes with a possible 9 failures (a 10th failure in 3 rounds means there's not enough people left to get 6 successes before time runs out). So, this could simply be restructured as "Hurry, you need 6 successes before 10 failures, and you have to move quickly, no time for sititng around, because of the following reason..." But, if a couple of players don't show up that session, it quickly becomes 6 successes before 4 failures, or if someone new joins the group, it's now 6 successes before 13 failures - this would need to careful control by the DM or it could get too hard or too easy based on who shows up that day.

 

[DM_Blake]

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.

This is a great ides.

It might be hard to equate a resource penalty for every roll of every skill challenge, though.

What if we tweak the skill challenge system so that some failures deplete a resource, but when a resource is depleted, that failure doesn't count against the total failures required to fail the challenge.

So it might still be 6 successes before 3 failures, but when you try to use diplomacy to charm your way past the guard and fail, you end up bribing the guard for 10gp, but since you got past, it doesn't count as one of the 3 failures to fail the challenge.

This idea alone could save the RAW skill challenge system.

 

[WyzardWhately]

Oh, no no no, comerade.

4e is all about fun and fair. Everyone plays. All are equal. Nobody is allowed to rise above the others. Nobody is elevated. Nobody is left behind.

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

Oh, come on. I'm asking someone to use aid another instead of trying to use their pitiful skills. From each according to their abilities, eh? They have to do this for the good of the collective. Besides, it's a five-minute skill challenge. It's not like they're being sent to the gulag.

 

[gamesmeister]

The example challenges I've seen so far are far too simplistic, I think it'll behove most DMs to tailor challenges to his players more than we're used to with combat.

I thought the example in the DMG where the players are requesting help from the Duke was actually pretty good, and demonstrated how different skills could be used in different ways, including the automatic failure.

 

[DM_Blake]

As long as the consequences for failure are felt by the group in a real tangible way, I don't see any problem with difficult challenges that may result in failure. DMs just have to avoid having no consequences for failure, or having the adventure grind to a halt because of failure. As long as the DM straddles those two extremes, then failure isn't a bas thing, and can even advance the storyline well in many cases.

I am not sure I like this.

If we play all skill challenges directly by RAW, we will fail about 80% of the time, more or less (see the other skill challenge threads for the math behind that assumption).

Not very heroic. Not at all.

Imagine if combat results went like that:

OK, guys, the kobolds have beaten you. You're all unconscious and they leave you for dead, after taking a few of your weapons.

OK, your second battle results in you all being unconscious again, robbed of your coin as this second group of kobolds scurries off into the forest to brag of their victory.

OK, for the third time, you've been clobbered into unconsciousness by some kobolds. Come on, guys, you really need to win a battle sometime.

OK, unconscious again. Somewhere out there in the kobold lair, there are four groups of kobolds, sitting around a campfire, regaling each other with their descriptions of their victory over some adventuring group - and they're all bragging about beating you!

OK, yay, you guys finally won a fight, putting you at 1 victory and 4 defeats. Feeling heroic yet?

Yeah, skill challenges don't have the usually dire consequences that combat has, but still, walking around, trying to catch fleeing bad guys, put out fires, sway the hearts of noblemen, etc., and failing 4 times out of 5, can't leave a very heroic self-image, even if you always achieve partial success when you fail.

 

[hamishspence]

roleplaying encouragement

Whenever someone says: I Aid Another, ask them what it is they are doing. Aid another Diplomacy check: lead chracter pauses while support character whispers good advice. Aid Another climb check: braced character puts hands under precariously supported lead climbers foot and gives them a boost. And so on.

Makes them feel like their contribution is meaningful.

 

[Drammattex]

The way I understood skill challenges was that the DM designs the encounter using skills that the party has a reasonable chance of making. I'm pretty sure that's explicitly stated in the DMG.

So if I were to design a skill challenge I expected the heroes to overcome, I'd set it up so that everyone had a way to participate (if they thought to try that skill).

But this is the same thing you'd do when designing a combat encounter. In 2e, I once locked the party in a room with a flesh golem before I realized they had no weapons that could damage it. That's bad DMing. Same goes for a skill challenge: it requires design work on the part of the DM in order to make it workable. There's no real reason a PC should have to sit out if the DM has designed the encounter well.

 

[The Grackle]

guess it turned into a mini-rant

Yeah, I would hate playing with skill challenges (even if the math did work out.) I despise being forced to come up with "creative uses" of skills, b/c usually it's not creative at all; it's either corny or all the player's ability to BS.

"Oh, god. I have to think of some way to use my Religion skill in a chase scene? Now I have to use Religion to interrogate a guy? blech." I'd rather just have my characters use their skills for the intended purposes, and when my skills aren't relevant, sit it out and let someone else shine.

I have similar problems with trying to get bonuses for creative descriptions of skill-use. DM: "Describe how you climb the wall." Me: "Well, I climbed it so well that on a scale of one to twenty, I'd call it a twelve."

***

Plus, in a skill challenge -- let's say investigating a crime scene -- the player's main thought will be, "If we get X success, we'll win the challenge. How can I use my highest ranked skills here?" Instead of, you know, thinking about the crime scene, asking the DM relevant questions, making appropriate skill checks, discussing things that happened last adventure and how it all might tie together, etc.

I prefer the actual critical thinking and problem-solving to the impromptu theater.

***

I don't get why people want to make skill-challenges like combat. "Combat is fun b/c everyone's involved, so for skill-challenges to be fun, everyone needs to be involved." But they're just not the same. They have different dynamics. There's no need to add initiative rolls and rounds.