official revision to skill challenge system

[Stalker0]

I like Obsidian a lot and I check my own numbers against it to see if I am in the right ballpark. It doesn't cover all the cases I want to include, though. The fixed-length challenges don't allow for shorter or longer challenges. Also, the system doesn't work well for including a challenge within a combat.

Paul, I am curious if you have tried the combat section of my system in play? I created rules specifically to tailor Obsidian to a combat encounter, and if people find these rules insufficient, its certainly something I can look at more closely.

 

[Jack Colby]

It's really disappointing to see WotC struggle with this. I agree the skill challenge concept is interesting, but how could this have gotten printed if it's so off? Why doesn't WotC have someone on staff who understands complex mathematics and probabilities, and whose job it is to go over all the systems and make sure they are sound?

Something tells me that when 5th edition is being hyped-up, they will joke (grapple style) about how bad the old, broken skill challenge system of 4E was...

 

[Paul Strack]

Paul, I am curious if you have tried the combat section of my system in play? I created rules specifically to tailor Obsidian to a combat encounter, and if people find these rules insufficient, its certainly something I can look at more closely.

I am embarrassed to admit that I completely missed that section. I looked it over today and it turns out to be very close to what I intended to (a "short" challenge involving a few of the players).

 

[Paul Strack]

Disagreed about the forced rolls. I mean, if it works for you and your players - more power to you. Glad that fixes it. I would never want to do that, though. To continue your analogy with the striker and minions, sure he isn't going to be as effective. But she's not going to hinder the party's progress and it's still fun. That's what a skill challenge should be as well.

I admit that "forced rolls" isn't the right way to do things. So far my players haven't figured out that this is what I am doing, so they don't mind so much.

Hindering the party's progress isn't much fun, but neither is sitting around twiddling your thumbs while somebody else does something cool. So, forced rolls may be bad, but full participation is good. What I am looking for is a system that supports full participation without punishing the players for participating.

 

[Anthony Jackson]

To be fair to WoTC, I've yet to see a game system with a robust, complete, and interesting resolution mechanic for non-combat skills. The vast majority of them boil down to "roll your skill, and the GM decides if your roll was good enough". If multiple people try, usually all that matters is the best roll/margin of success. The skill challenge system, even if poorly implemented, is a valiant attempt at solving this problem.

 

[RyvenCedrylle]

Anthony - go look up 'Dogs in the Vineyard' Sweet Mother Mary, now there's a non-combat skill resolution system, though it does handle combat as well. To put it shortly, you start out by rolling a boatload of dice based on your stats and skills and then play sort of a poker variant with the results, "seeing" and "raising" the other characters until only one is left standing (metaphorically). Depending on how many dice you have to use to "see" the last "raise" you either reverse, block or take the hit and then you get to raise for the next character.. it's quite the piece of work. And no, I didn't have a hand in it.

 

[Ferdil]

The DCs were GOOD (not too high), and the footnote was RIGHT. The only thing they had to change was the complexity table, and they did it well. But THEN THEY SCREWED UP THE SYSTEM.

I'll definitely use Stalker0's Obsidian system, with some modifications.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

skill challenge sytem was improved:

more complex challenges are now getting harder:

also yo ave to consider tht you nerly get no xp for a single complexity 0 challenge. A challenge where you should actually fail has to be either many levels higher or more complex.

The only change i would suggest is readding the +5 for all DCs... but then use easy checks as default and maybe allow taking 10...

just my 2 cents....