Transparency in Skill Challenges

[keterys]

If your players would really go through each person's roll and take out the parts that each person contributed based on their roll, then you might need to take a more strict view on it.

That said, I still advocate not making knowledge checks at all. Use passive results, and use the checks for when actual research is done or when their expertise must be called into question on a task, or they need to do something proactive. Ie, don't roll knowledge checks except for skill challenge type things. It even talks about doing so in the PHB and DMG, if you think your players would be resistant. There's a lot to be said for being able to prepare information ahead of time.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Another way to deal with the knowledge meta-information issue is to give the players a bunch of information and THEN have them roll to see if they can figure out which parts of it are nonsense and which parts are true. Now they won't really know for sure just exactly which information is good and which is not. Granted they'll have an idea overall how well they rolled, but that isn't really so unrealistic. The group talks about Vampires and debates each point and draws on their overall understanding and which items they seem to all agree on and comes to the best conclusion they can. A real world group of people doing that will probably have some reasonable sense of how confident to be in their understanding.

As far as skill challenge transparency goes I think I'm fairly close to where Keterys is on that. I'll tell the players its a challenge, though usually just by saying something like "in order to climb down the shaft you'll have to use your climbing skills and find the best path. Additionally there are terrifying haunts floating around in the shaft and it would be easier if you could get them to go away or stop bothering you."

We play on a VTT as well. Our play style seems to have naturally evolved to the players talking about what they want to do, describing it to me, then I ask for a roll and tell them what happened. Each action a character takes advances the situation, may introduce new factors, etc. I don't really seem to need to tell them the complexity explicitly or how well they're doing except by description. Things seem to work out pretty naturally that way. We haven't really run into the "everyone starts rolling dice" thing. Once in a while a player will spontaneously toss out a skill check roll and once in a great while its not one that was really appropriate, but in that case I'll just describe it as they tried to do something or thought about doing it and it didn't seem to make sense, or I'll just tell them to make a different roll and ignore the spurious one.

I guess I wouldn't be opposed to telling them a complexity value for the SC if someone really insisted on it. If there are special rules for certain skills I'll explain what those are when they ask, but again usually describing the situation well gives the players a pretty good idea of what sort of result they'll get from a given action.

 

[Skywalker]

*shrug* A lot of skill challenges don't end when they would naturally do so in the natural course of RP.

I disagree. A well designed Skill Challenge should match the natural course of RP.

I think the general approach with a SCs is that it should be used only on those occassions where everyone at the table has a good handle on the problem at hand and how they intend to go about resolving it. There is some reference to this in the DMG2 about only calling for a SC when everyone wants one.

I don't think SC should be called for until that point to model the free form process of formulating that narrative.

Sure sometimes unexpected things happen and its cool for the SC to be dropped, altered to replaced as a result. However, that would be the exception not the rule IME

*I've never gotten a complaint for concealing it, but I have gotten several compliments for the skill challenge and the RP dovetailing more smoothly.

That's cool. Do what works for you.

My main point is that IMO one of the big advantages of SC is to set forth a group agreed process for resolving non-combat challenges. If the GM continues to modify things behind the scenes once that agreement has been made, it can neuter player decisions and undermine this advantage to the point where you may as well just be calling for Skill Checks.

IMO changing Complexity is akin to calling for a Skill Check and changing the DC after the roll is made.

 

[keterys]

If you run many official skill challenges or much LFR, you'd probably know what I mean about skill challenges not necessarily matching the natural course of RP.

Or any number of skill challenges that are pure Diplomacy/Bluff types but require 10 successes or a similar number.

Skill challenges that have scenes, that flow like a story, where every check matters and advances - great. But sometimes you aren't handed those.

 

[Skywalker]

If you run many official skill challenges or much LFR, you'd probably know what I mean about skill challenges not necessarily matching the natural course of RP.

Yeah. I know what you mean. Many official SC are still lacking.

 

[Starfox]

Of course, they started grabbing for the dice. One player said "I will look for a path" (they were trying to locate a remote mountain monastery ... yeah, okay, it's Siege of Bordrin's Watch) so I called for a Perception check - done, one success. What else? Erm, someone asked if the monastery might have some cultivated land nearby for food. Good, says I, roll a Nature check ... everyone rolls a Nature check. Then everyone rolls a Religion check, a History check, an Endurance check (although I actually called for this last one). Things had pretty much fallen apart by that point. With five characters each rolling every single check, we ended up with about 20 successes and 8 or 9 failures at the end (not technically possible, I know, but you see what I mean).

The direct and easy approach here is to treat these checks as Aid Other checks. The player that took the initiative is the main player, the others are supporting him (unless play at the table makes it clear this is the wring approach). Since a regular skill challenge has no time pressure, this works out if you allow it. It does, however, make skill challenges a lot easier. Basically, if this method is allowed, it should always be used. On the other hand, your players don't seem to be optimizing these checks, so I think it will be fine. Then again, there will be a LOT of dice rolling in a typical skill challenge if each roll is made five times.

For a version using less rolls, check out the Sudden Death Skill Challenge System.

 

[DNH]

A conclusion

Lots of good stuff/advice on here - thanks to everyone. I have long been a passive member of ENWorld forums, a "grazer"; I really ought to change that.

I have taken on board a lot of the stuff I have read on this thread and spoken with my players again and we have reached the following conclusions ...

1. My players *do* want to be told that a Skill Challenge is commencing. Fair enough, then I shall do so. As I said to them, I realise I am not the only person at the (virtual) table.
2. My players have been asked (told) NOT to make any skill check rolls until it is agreed that they need to.
3. If I see any skill check rolls that were not called for, I will be taking that skill check as a group check. The overall result will be given to the majority result (or the original roll, in the event of a tie).
4. Aid Another is being house-ruled. Firstly, the DC for it will be the same as the main protagonist's DC, less 5 points. Secondly, a failed Aid Another check will apply a -2 penalty to the main protagonist's roll (the idea being that a character making a low roll doesn't just "not know" but actually "knows the wrong thing" and confuses the issue).
5. I will undertake to give useful feedback for every skill check, such that they should be able to understand, without it being made explicit, whether their skill check was a success or a failure. Further feedback at the end of the Skill Challenge will show what the overall result was.
6. Finally, I have made it clear that I will *not* be divulging the likes of Complexity or the current numbers of successes/failures or the DCs for any skill checks.

Put down here in bullet points, it all looks a bit like I am laying down the law (and I suppose I am to a certain extent) but this has all been agreed with the players. It turns out the chief complaint was the first one, that they didn't realise they were in a Skill Challenge. If we resolve that, it seems (and we have, because I will be telling them as much each time), all the other issues resolve themselves, or at least partly.

It's the best solution in the sense that Skill Challenges will at least now work, but I will say that it's not the best solution for me. I had wanted to be able to run Skill Challenges without breaking the fourth wall, as it were, but I suppose you can't have everything. In the end, saying "This is a Skill Challenge" is not really any different to saying "Roll of initiative" (Or "Snish!" as we say in our group!).

Thanks again to everyone who posted. I'll be back with more of my niggling issues ... like Surprise.

 

[DNH]

Uhm, no, the debate continues ...

Should've put a question mark next to the word "conclusion" in my previous post.

Here's the sticking point:

Aid Another is being house-ruled. Firstly, the DC for it will be the same as the main protagonist's DC, less 5 points. Secondly, a failed Aid Another check will apply a -2 penalty to the main protagonist's roll (the idea being that a character making a low roll doesn't just "not know" but actually "knows the wrong thing" and confuses the issue).

They don't like that. They say that people will only use Aid Another when their skill bonus is up there with that of the main protagonist because otherwise the consequence of failure is too great.

I won't beat about the bush - I don't like Aid Another. All it takes is for anyone and everyone to roll 10 or higher (not including bonuses) and the skill check gets a +2 bonus. The worst case scenario has four out of five players all succeeding and the main protagonist now has a +8 bonus to his skill check. If he is the main protagonist, chances are he is trained and has a decent stat bonus, so he has probably already succeeded without yet touching the dice, even on a difficult DC (15 at Level 1).

The idea with the house-ruling is to discourage that kind of behaviour. Yes, use Aid Another if you think you will help, but don't if you're not sure as you may make things worse.

Any thoughts?

 

[Blackbrrd]

I think the suggestion of allowing everybody to roll is fine, BUT, then you have to have more successes than failures to actually succeed at the task. This can be explained as the failures actually getting in the way of the people that should have succeded.

For instance: you have 5 characters that all want to search for tracks. They wander around searching and you get 3 failures and 2 successes. Since there are more failures than successes, you can explain to one of the character with a success that he saw some clues, but when he got to the muddy ground all he found was the other PC's tracks.

A religion check: you have 1 success and 4 failures. This can be explained as the successful one getting persuaded that his theory was wrong, and that the other theory was right, even though it wasn't.

It really reminds me of how it is at work (a software company), where you just waste time and cloud the issue if you get into a discussion without relevant knowledge or skill.

This would encourage the players to only have to top 1 - 3 players roll. If you get an even number of successes and failures, I would have them re-roll.

 

[eamon]

Obsidian has a lot going for it... but it may be worth noting that 'X successes over 3N rolls' is pretty much equivalent to 'Y (defined as 3N+1-X) failures to fail the whole thing'. So it doesn't completely dodge that bullet. It does have a lot going for it, though, but trying to explain it for something like an LFR game with rotating players, meh.

Not quite (and the difference is relevant). In a normal skill challenge, if you don't have much to contribute you're either encouraged to not participate at all or only to use "helper" skills or aid anothers - after all, if you participate but can't contribute much, mechanically, you're not just failing to contribute, but actually undermining the outcome since you're causing failures. With an "at least X successes in limited time" approach, you're encouraged to do as much as you can. Sure, you don't want to hinder the real expert, but if you have a long shot that might help, you'll do it - after all, successes help and failures don't matter (or are only rarely any worse than doing nothing).

You could argue that for some skills, like diplomacy, it's perfectly reasonable to be so harsh on failures. But, mechanically, this is problematic: players will learn that they should do everything to roll an aid another rather than a standalone diplomacy (leading to DHN' dislike of aid another). And if you effectively remove the aid another option, the wisest choice is just to sit this one out. And if that happens, why are you running a skill challenge rather than a skill check? Basically, if group help has a high chance of undermining success, the group should not help, and just the experts should try it - and then it's no fun to run a "challenge" vs. trivial (for the experts) DC's whereby everyone else is sitting twiddling their thumbs. So don't: don't use a skill challenge where a group effort isn't required, or where it's likely that group participation will actually be counter-productive.

There's no point in running a skill challenge (or any encounter) when its a solo job. It just takes too long out-of-game, so people (DM's + players alike) will try to be inclusive, leading to ridiculous RP "excuses" being made to try rolls that happen to be least-bad rather than actually making any sense.