Transparency in Skill Challenges

[keterys]

I guess what I'm saying is that it's still equivalent to 'before Y failures', but you're right... it also has the rule from the original skill challenge rules that forced people to participate, true. Or, at least, if you don't, you're effectively autogenerating failures by dint of _not_ generating successes.

I'm a fan of everyone participating, myself, so I see that as a plus, but enough people apparently saw it as a minus that they removed it from the original skill challenge rules, so eh.

 

[Ryujin]

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

Here's the sticking point:



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?

We've adopted a suggestion that someone made here, in another similar thread. We've added an increase in difficulty for aid another of +5 per tier. The difficulty to aid is 10 at Heroic, 15 at Paragon, and 20 at Epic. Add in your -2 for a failed support roll and I think that you're good to go.

 

[DNH]

That's not bad, and it's a fairly good compromise solution, but I still have a problem with Aid Another on the whole. The players really want me to include it RAW. They are saying that not knowing the DC of Aid Another, combined with a penalty for failure, is going to put them off trying it. And that will mean that Skill Challenges will end up excluding some players when they don't have relevant skills. My argument against that is that they will always have relevant skills (refer Ari Marmell's article on here) and so Aid Another is unlikely to be used. But they're not buying it.

I am *this* close (about an eighth of an inch!) from pulling the plug on Aid Another in Skill Challenges altogether.

 

[FireLance]

That's not bad, and it's a fairly good compromise solution, but I still have a problem with Aid Another on the whole. The players really want me to include it RAW. They are saying that not knowing the DC of Aid Another, combined with a penalty for failure, is going to put them off trying it. And that will mean that Skill Challenges will end up excluding some players when they don't have relevant skills. My argument against that is that they will always have relevant skills (refer Ari Marmell's article on here) and so Aid Another is unlikely to be used. But they're not buying it.

I am *this* close (about an eighth of an inch!) from pulling the plug on Aid Another in Skill Challenges altogether.

Frankly, this is one of the reasons why I don't like the "Three Failures" model, and I prefer to use other failure conditions, like the timed skill challenges I mentioned earlier.

With the "Three Failures" model, PCs will go all out to minimize the risk of failure, which encourages the use of Aid Another. With timed skill challenges, the trade-off for helping someone succeed at a skill check is that you don't score any successes yourself, so you will only try Aid Another if you think your chance of success is less than 10%.

If you still want to use the "Three Failures" model, perhaps you could have a house rule that the DC for Aid Another is 4 less than a Moderate skill check, and each successful Aid Another check increases the DC of subsequent Aid Another checks by 2 (diminishing returns).

 

[keterys]

Or just limit aid another to a single aid, which is perfectly reasonable by RAW.

Time-based instead of fail-based challenges really address the aid another problem best, though.

 

[Ryujin]

That's not bad, and it's a fairly good compromise solution, but I still have a problem with Aid Another on the whole. The players really want me to include it RAW. They are saying that not knowing the DC of Aid Another, combined with a penalty for failure, is going to put them off trying it. And that will mean that Skill Challenges will end up excluding some players when they don't have relevant skills. My argument against that is that they will always have relevant skills (refer Ari Marmell's article on here) and so Aid Another is unlikely to be used. But they're not buying it.

I am *this* close (about an eighth of an inch!) from pulling the plug on Aid Another in Skill Challenges altogether.

That's where my group's concept of describing how you assist comes in; it limits the number of people aiding, while enhancing role play over roll play.

If the task is to climb a 100 foot sheer wall and the party Rogue is 50 feet up, how is someone on the ground going to aid him?

The Eladrin Warlock is deep in negotiations with Drow prince over creating a temporary alliance. Is the fighter sticking his head in front of the Drow and saying, "You do it our way or I crush your skull." (his best Diplomacy gambit) going to help, or will the Drow's backstabbing come all the faster for it?

Tossing out dice isn't a description of how the aid is being provided. If you make the aid action contingent upon enhancing role play, then everyone benefits. Sometimes our negotiations fall apart because the Fighter gets bored and storms out, but that advances the plot too

 

[Skywalker]

One thing I will add here is that remember that just because a Skill Challenge has started does not mean that every Skill Check will have a bearing on it. Some Skill Checks will only an indirect bearing through the granting of bonuses i.e. Secondary Skills. However, some Skill Checks will have no bearing on the SC whatsoever.

Some players do tend to become suddenly super-focussed when a SC is announced, and expect that the SC will be resolved before the game moves on. This isn't the case.

I suggest running some session or multiple session long SC to try and help players get past this issue.

I think this also impacts on keterys issue with matching Complexity with the flow of RP. When setting up a SC, I generally come up with a number of "milestones" equal to the number of successes called for by the Complexity. These milestones are actions that significantly progress the PCs toward the success result of the SC and can be kept broad. For example in a Complexity 1 negotiation SC where the goal is "Win over an NPC", the milestones might be:

1. Overcome cultural differences.
2. Notice the powerplay behind the scenes.
3. Reveal the powerplay so as to neutralise it.
4. Win over the NPC.

What the PCs do to acheive each of the above is left to their own devising. However, if the PCs, go off on a tangent to win over another NPC or something else, then Skill Checks related that seperate goal will not add Successes or Failures to this SC. If the SC becomes redundant due to the PCs' tangent, then simply end the SC and create a new one or move one.

The question then becomes should a GM let a player know in advance when a Skill Check will impact a SC or not before the roll. IMO, the GM should. Not only will that add more tension to the roll as the player will have more invested in the outcome but I think that level of transparency is important as it ties together the previous revelations of the SC commencing and its Complexity.

 

[Skywalker]

Or just limit aid another to a single aid, which is perfectly reasonable by RAW.

Time-based instead of fail-based challenges really address the aid another problem best, though.

Aid Another is an easy issue to resolve. Just apply the same principles as you would normally.

When I began my group on SC, I said that I expected as many Aid Another's in a SC as I did in normal play, which was about 0. I said that if the PCs all suddenly became Voltrun during a SC, that I would take steps to limit it. The players understood the continuity and I haven't had an issue since.

 

[Skywalker]

They are saying that not knowing the DC of Aid Another, combined with a penalty for failure, is going to put them off trying it. And that will mean that Skill Challenges will end up excluding some players when they don't have relevant skills.

This is a misnomer created by having too much transparency in SC. If you reveal a SC in full, the only decision a player need make is matching their trained skills with the best DC. Its a purely mathematical exercise of obtaining the best chance of success.

Not only does this effectively remove all creativity from the SC but also the maths behind SC just can't handle that level of transparency and the DC prove pitifully low.

If you use less transparency (such as just revealing that a SC has commenced and Complexity) then it less of an issue. The reason is that the players are then trying to factor two things:

1. Trained Skill. They know they get a +5 to this roll, so they will gravitate towards them. This is a good thing.

2. Low DCs. An Easy DC is the equivalent of getting > a +5 over a Med DC and >+10 over a Hard DC. If you look at it like this, working out what's an Easy DC is actually more powerful than choosing a trained skill.

As such, a GM must really focus on presenting the second option as a viable and powerful one in a SC. The reason for this is that it is the second that changes a SC from a simple mathematical exercise to one of creativity.

As a GM, I tend to award narratively appropriate solutions with low DCs. That has the effect of focussing the players on listening and taking as much note to the narrative as their PC's skills.

But choosing a trained skill is much less risky than trying to determine what's a low DC, you say. Possibly true. However, it need not be so. Auto-failures on inapporpriate Skill use or other negative consequences add back an element of risk.

If you take this approach, your SC won't become about PCs just trying to use their best Skills whilst those with semingly inappropriate Skills are left on the sideline to Aid Another. Instead, every PC no matter what their Skills can have a decent chance of success if they listen to the narrative and come up with decent ways to resolve it. If they manage to do so, whilst sticking to the Trained Skills, good for them.

 

[keterys]

I think this also impacts on keterys issue with matching Complexity with the flow of RP. When setting up a SC, I generally come up with a number of "milestones" equal to the number of successes called for by the Complexity. These milestones are actions that significantly progress the PCs toward the success result of the SC and can be kept broad. For example in a Complexity 1 negotiation SC where the goal is "Win over an NPC", the milestones might be:

Yep, in a case like that I wouldn't change the complexity. It's entirely possible that someone else might write your skill challenge as a basic complexity 1 skill challenge primary Diplomacy, Insight with the goal of getting through those 4 things, but then allow players to just get 4 successes with diplomacy. And some players might try to just have one Face character make those 4 diplomacy checks in a row to brute force the talk without ever dealing with the powerplay, while the rest of the party idly watched. Which would be pretty awful, but by RAW follow the complexity and rules of the challenge in some cases.

And in a situation like that I'd rather make sure that I actually had them RP out and capture the actual goals of the skill challenge. Even if that meant that they ended up rolling 5 successes instead of 4, or whatever.

Like I said, it's more a problem in modules. I DM LFR often enough I have to care about such things, since I have less freedom (at least nowadays) to just completely redo the skill challenges.