Skill Challenges for Dummies

[IceBear]

As a DM, I tend to know what my players' skills are and what I want to accomplish in any encounter. If I were placing a skill challenge for my group I'd start with the suggested DCs, but I'd then tweak them (if necessary) to make sure that what I wanted to accomplish got accomplished.

 

[Vempyre]

To go a bit further, do you agree that WotC should not have included rules for DMs to create their own monsters? After all, the rules there explicitly lay out the mathematics used to create monsters. Will a DM be better off ignoring those rules and mathematics and using her native cunning when designing custom monsters? Perhaps your DMing skills are up to the task. But since the DMG seems to be aimed for the newbie DM, your advice is hardly of much help.

I guess your perception of maths and mine is different. For me the above is implied knowledge, not maths. To me 4*8 isn't maths it's basic stuff everybody knows. To me it's obvious that in an upward and simple scaling system as DnD, the numbers aren't maths, there are a scale of reference. Like the magic items table for example.

To me maths are the complex formulas you learn and use in the advanced fields of study like physics, mathematics (doh), engineering and more. Calling the tables used to create NPCs a maths formula is to me .. like calling a small compact economic car a ferrarri.

I am sorry if all of this sounds high and mighty, but it is truly how I feel right now and I am not sure I can find the words to explain it in a more soft way.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Good God.

 

[Dave Turner]

When the math thread is 4 months old and almost all of the context have been accounted for in the calculations (making the calculation itself incredibly complex, mind you), maybe the result (if it's condensed into an useful single post) will be worth reading, analyzing and thinking about. Until then, it's not. My experience with maths tells me that until it's been analyzed over n over again for months by dozens of different ppl, that thread doesn't prove that complexity does affect difficulty in an average DnD game's skill challenge, considering the hundreds of variables it can entail.

But this argument cuts against the RAW skill challenge just as easily. Has the RAW skill challenge been analyzed over “months by dozens of different ppl”? It hardly seems likely that WotC had a dozens of mathematicians crunching numbers over months. I have no first-hand knowledge of how the RAW skill challenge system was designed. This might be how they did it. But I think it’s fair to say that most would be surprised if this were the case.

You shouldn’t be placing your confidence in your “gut”. Your gut, in this case, is the RAW skill challenge. The mathematicians in the math thread have repeatedly stated that they’re using approximations in their calculations. More importantly, they are using approximations which favor the characters. The analysis goes out of its way to assume that there might be a few positive modifiers out there that the author hasn’t thought of, but will extend to the characters for the sake of being fair to the RAW. The numbers still don’t seem to work. I agree with you that there’s no reason to declare a final victory for the RAW’s critics, but it’s foolish to dismiss them out of hand simply because they haven’t had a few months to nail down all the details. The preliminary general conclusion, to a reasonable first degree of approximation, indicates a serious mathematical problem. It strikes me as needlessly closed-minded to discount it for the reasons you state.

Eldorian supports the notion that the math thread’s analysis was bending over backwards to accommodate its lack of rigorous analysis of the RAW:

For the OP of this thread. You're wrong. The OP of the other thread gave every roll a +10 at first level. That is a corner case favoring the players. Your typical PC party isn't going to have every character having a +10 in a relevant skill to the challenge.

Even after building in a significant advantage for the characters, the math still seems flawed. Reflexively dismissing their results seems short-sighted.

 

[Eldorian]

Btw, I'd just like to point out that I really like 4e, and I'm not terribly surprised that the skill challenge system doesn't work. Sure, WotC have some good people, but people are people.

Edit: for example, in response to the OP. If I give one character an auto success, any everyone else a +10 (which I reiterate is far better than you can expect a typical party to have, even with +2 situational stuff) to the roll, at first level I still only have a 39% chance to beat a complexity 1 challenge. I don't know about you, but if one out of 5 characters has an ability that lets him auto succeed on a roll, I'd expect average rolls from the rest of the party to win.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

I'm gonna skip the math stuff and talk to some of the comments that hit me, like "how many ways can you say 'I roll Diplomacy'" and "If I hold my breath maybe he'll be convinced."

For me personally, the example in the DMG was pretty clear, and it matched the give-and-take of a lot of games I've played and run.

You're in a social skill challenge. You want your character to do something. So you describe it, and then roll.

How you describe it is pretty open. Could you say "Uh... I roll Diplomacy"? Not according to the DMG example. You've got to actually have some intent to do something, after all. So okay, you describe the thing your character is doing. Maybe you just describe it, maybe you Get Into Character and method act it out, whatever. What's appropriate depends on your table.

At bare minimum, I'd give circumstance bonuses for the description, both in terms of how good the idea is and how well it's delivered. Heck, most games I run you'd get a circumstance bonus if anyone said "Oh man, that's awesome" or just laughed -- yes its metagame-y, but I find encouraging things you want to have happen isn't a bad policy.

I dunno, I've run games in systems where someone's wanted to roll Alcoholic as a combat trait, and heck, sometimes there wasn't even an improvisational penalty, their description of what they were doing just *fit*.

I could totally see a persuasion scene where the fighter goes "And when he says that, I just lean on the hilt of my sword and just *stare*. Don't say a word." Dude, that is totally Aid Another.

The way I see it, those circumstance bonuses for good ideas, creativity, and coming up with stuff to make the scene more fun are just as necessary in a noncombat scene as sound tactical play is in a combat scene. If the folks at the table are talking back and forth, kicking around ideas, and rolling the dice all the while, that just sounds like a typical night of roleplaying.

Again, I know, for the method action immersion types who really don't want any mechanics involved in their social scenes, that doesn't sound like fun. Okay, so don't use 'em. Just "roleplay it out" the way you always have, and use DM Fiat for determining the results if you want.

 

[Dave Turner]

I guess your perception of maths and mine is different. For me the above is implied knowledge, not maths. To me 4*8 isn't maths it's basic stuff everybody knows. To me it's obvious that in an upward and simple scaling system as DnD, the numbers aren't maths, there are a scale of reference. Like the magic items table for example.

To me maths are the complex formulas you learn and use in the advanced fields of study like physics, mathematics (doh), engineering and more. Calling the tables used to create NPCs a maths formula is to me .. like calling a small compact economic car a ferrarri.

I am sorry if all of this sounds high and mighty, but it is truly how I feel right now and I am not sure I can find the words to explain it in a more soft way.

Don't worry about the tone; I'm thick-skinned.

I hear what you're saying. Ultimately, we can all just follow the IceBear solution:

As a DM, I tend to know what my players' skills are and what I want to accomplish in any encounter. If I were placing a skill challenge for my group I'd start with the suggested DCs, but I'd then tweak them (if necessary) to make sure that what I wanted to accomplish got accomplished.

The mathematical analysis helps identify the problems and, if need be, provide the better suggested DCs that are the starting point for Icebear. Most of us posting to this thread can use enough duct tape to make a skill challenge work. At worst, we can just fudge the DCs after the player rolls to ensure success. I consider that approach as closer to Cowboys-and-Indians than I expect from 4e. There are plenty of fantasy RPGs on the market that provide more leeway in "skill challenges". If I'm picking up 4e, I'm making a decision not to play rules-light and to instead pick a more rigorous system. When the game fails to deliver the rigorous system I expected, it partially invalidates my decision to choose 4e over, say, Clint Nixon's Donjon.

Btw, I'd just like to point out that I really like 4e, and I'm not terribly surprised that the skill challenge system doesn't work. Sure, WotC have some good people, but people are people.

I echo this sentiment.

 

[Nail]

Good God.

True. People will say the darnedest things.

.....so, what's bad Axe Games gonna do about the Skill Challenge System?

 

[Tervin]

Was the possibility of one or more people having under/over 50 % chance of succeeding in each group taken into account in the math solution? I noticed that odds of completing a task were greater with the increased complexity. But there are so many variables that it can't accurately be determined.

First of all, if the chance of success is around 50% for a single attempt, the chances for success for the whole challenge are very low. That is actually exactly where the other thread started.

But if I instead consider that we have a more useful example where there are significant differences between the PCs' usable skills, your question is more relevant. And I think I should confess one thing - I think running a skill challenge through initiative and every player needing to choose a skill and try for a success in turn feels very construed. I cannot see myself forcing people to use skills just because it is their turn. Is that really roleplaying? To keep a skill challenge interesting I plan instead to use the following rules:
1. A player cannot make two success attempts in a row - another player must make an attempt in between.
2. If one player keeps using the same skill, it will be increasingly harder to get bonuses for good ideas.
I might try out using initiative, but then people who feel that they have little chance to contribute can instead choose the Aid Another action on their turns.

Talking about my houserules is not how to answer the question, so I will ignore my own feelings about it and look at the system as written. It is true that one or two people having a lot lower chance of success will change the probabilities quite a bit. In fact, if you run the system as written it is extra important to keep the DCs low, so that the PCs have a chance for success even if they have party members with no really good skill to choose. It can also be a good idea to give the players a hint that they should make sure to have more than one skill that they are optimized in, just like it is a good idea to make sure they have something useful to offer in a combat.

Having a quick look at what a diverse party's chances would be at different complexities it seems to me that the problems will be the same whichever complexity you use. Initiative will matter slightly more for low complexity attempts, but the general feel is that it will be even harder to get the right DCs, considering that the rolls need to be reasonable for the weaker skill users (never getting lower than 50%) and still not laughably easy for the skill experts.

As I don't plan to play like that I don't feel motivated to set up the math for it - but I think it might be a good thing to use oen of the simulation tools for.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

.....so, what's bad Axe Games gonna do about the Skill Challenge System?

Make some changes to my notes, and thank the heavens for an open design process yet again.