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What is the essence of 4E?
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<blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 7450566" data-attributes="member: 37579"><p>The skill system in 4e was haphazard at best. </p><p>They spent very minimal design time on the skills, the skill DCs, and the entire Skill Challenge system. That aspect of the game was broken at launch and did not work until it had been hastily errated, both the base DCs but even the number of successes/ failures. And the skill sections of the PHB included a lot of weird vestigial elements like set DCs. </p><p>The base math of the system was pulled right from Star Wars Saga, which was launched a year prior to 4e, showing very little work was done on skills in the intervening time. </p><p>And with all the powers in 4e, only a small fraction affect skills, and only one or two in the entire game actually impact Skill Challenges. </p><p></p><p>Skills and the skill system were simply not a priority for 4e. </p><p></p><p>As for "page 42", that was an example of how not to handle improvisation. </p><p>The rules there were effectively "make a skill check <em>and </em>an attack roll to deal damage by design less than your powers". So you were basically making an attack with disadvantage—and thus two points of failure—to deal average damage and not gain any of the baked-in mechanical bonuses of your powers. You were subtly incentivized NOT to make improvised actions.</p><p>It also gave no advice on handing out conditions, imposing improvised effects, or improvised actions that didn't deal damage.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jester David, post: 7450566, member: 37579"] The skill system in 4e was haphazard at best. They spent very minimal design time on the skills, the skill DCs, and the entire Skill Challenge system. That aspect of the game was broken at launch and did not work until it had been hastily errated, both the base DCs but even the number of successes/ failures. And the skill sections of the PHB included a lot of weird vestigial elements like set DCs. The base math of the system was pulled right from Star Wars Saga, which was launched a year prior to 4e, showing very little work was done on skills in the intervening time. And with all the powers in 4e, only a small fraction affect skills, and only one or two in the entire game actually impact Skill Challenges. Skills and the skill system were simply not a priority for 4e. As for "page 42", that was an example of how not to handle improvisation. The rules there were effectively "make a skill check [I]and [/I]an attack roll to deal damage by design less than your powers". So you were basically making an attack with disadvantage—and thus two points of failure—to deal average damage and not gain any of the baked-in mechanical bonuses of your powers. You were subtly incentivized NOT to make improvised actions. It also gave no advice on handing out conditions, imposing improvised effects, or improvised actions that didn't deal damage. [/QUOTE]
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