Which Skill Challenge System do you use?

[Akaiku]

I've used rules as written and stalker0's....

Both times its more or less spam your best skill, with occasional time-outs if you don't have a best skill that's applicable.

Oftentimes, people come with new and contrived reasons to spam their best skill.

Is there actually any way to prevent that?

 

[Saagael]

Maybe I've been lucky, but I try to let my players know that skills will mean something, and regardless of failure, their participation will ultimately lead to a more desirable result than not participating.

Maybe it's good players that don't mind trying to RP their lower skills (on that I suppose you need to have good players) that make the skill system work. I use the core system, but I do it with a lot more flavor added into the challenge than mechanics.

Most of the time the skill challenge is initiative by the player, and I have to build a challenge on the fly. That's the best situation I can think of: When a player says "I want do to X", because then the player wants to participate, and the other players (hopefully) want to help the group. The skills they can use are all dependent on their imagination of what their characters can do.

 

[RigaMortus2]

Can we get a link the Stalker's alternate SC system? I know I've seen it before, but never bothered to bookmark it.

 

[DragoonLance]

I use both the updated standard SC and stalker0's, it really depends on how I want the SC to go. Quick and dirty SC's gets the core rules, anything big and complex gets the Obsidian treatment.

@RigaMortus2: here's the link: http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan...skill-challenge-system-new-version-1-2-a.html

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I've used rules as written and stalker0's....

Both times its more or less spam your best skill, with occasional time-outs if you don't have a best skill that's applicable.

Oftentimes, people come with new and contrived reasons to spam their best skill.

Is there actually any way to prevent that?

Hmmm, there is no incentive in the Obsidian SC system for a player not to take a roll since there is no tally of fails. In fact you're just hurting your chances of success. I think that is the main mechanical benefit of that system. Even if you could make an Aid Another check instead it is generally preferable not to do that unless you have only really bad skill bonuses you could apply.

And that system already assumes the high bonus characters WILL spam their best skills. They better or else the chance of success is going to go down drastically. Given that a party of 5 PCs only makes 15 total die rolls in Obsidian I don't really see it as a problem either. Each player rolls 3 times. Its not like there's a real chance of it getting tedious before its over.

You COULD prevent it by restricting each character to a single roll on a given skill, or restricting the number of times a given skill can be used in each round of the challenge. I don't think it is usually necessary to do that. Another thing you can do is encourage people to use powers during the challenge. That tactic is pretty much naturally limited to one use per challenge unless its a very long challenge.

 

[BlightCrawler]

I use the RAW system and it's great (using it without the updates is not RAW, by the way).

Every player in the scene must participate, and I go around the table. Players often get to choose the goals, and have a lot of leeway in shaping the course of the SC. Sometimes it's more structured, but I'm influenced a lot by games such as Spirit of the Century and Houses of the Blooded. Although I haven't yet gone with a full house rule of letting the players narrate their own results based on a roll (using wagers from HotB), I'm considering that.

Also, since the players can be creative in what abilities they are going to use, it allows for a lot of creativity outide of roleplaying the actions themselves.

It's also important to set stakes for the SC that is exciting. Dead ends for failures are not good, but making it so failing creates more conflict and complication. Crossing a desert in 4 days instead of 5 is boring. If there's nothing exciting about the goal or failure for the players, then it shouldn't be a SC, in fact it should be glossed over as quickly as possible.

But I'm also with Saagael. Players have the power to basically invent their own skill challenges, too. Especially if we are in a scene that turns from something simple into something with some meaty conflict potential.

The biggest issue is the system dis-incentivises participation for non skill-focused characters. The fact that you can fail the challenge makes it so that players will not want to participate.

Does the fact that you can lose a combat make it so players don't want to participate? I don't think so. The possiblity of losing is what makes it exciting.

Players don't have a choice. If they are in the scene, they are participating in the SC. No one gets to sit out any more than they get to sit out of a combat. You go around the table, or whatever order works, and everyone must contribute. I suppose you could allow them to delay, but that only postpones things.

The updates makes the targets low enough that even unskilled characters have a decent chance to succeeed, and success is fun. Nearly every SC I've run, the players get two failures before succeeding. It's perfectly tense, but not so common that the players who might lack in a skill for the SC are being a real detriment. There's also a lot of room to get creative using aid a friend skills.

Failures are great complication additions. You can use them for a variety of things. In one clue searching SC, failures gave them false information (all the information was given at the end, so it wasn't clear what was linked to successes and what wasn't). In a chase to get away from a dragon, failures had NPCs with them get eaten (they had taken a couple of prisoners, so it wasn't a big deal, but BOY did it add to the tension of the chase).

Stalker's System puts the DCs way too high, it requires that players be skill monkeys to have a decent chance to succeed on a per person basis, coupled with the limits on what skills can be used, this makes that desire not to participate stronger - being forced to do something you don't want to do sucks. Sure, he balances that with partial victories, but that doesn't make it more fun for those players, just less sucky for the whole group when it's over. Also, physical skills get boned since they only can be used in one type of challenge. Outside of that, it would be a great alternative. There are some other good ideas there but very little of it you can't do by tweaking the RAW, if not by default. For example, his advice on not necessarily having SC generate more combat is a good thing to keep in mind.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Does the fact that you can lose a combat make it so players don't want to participate? I don't think so. The possiblity of losing is what makes it exciting.

No it doesn't, however in a RAW skill challenge the weight of 1 die roll is rather heavy. In combat you can miss.. like the Dragonborn Paladin did last session.. er, the entire session.. and still have the party be a succes. Albiet a slightly costlier in the way of lost hit points. You could say its a built in 'partial victory'.
In a SC, that die roll could fail for the entire party. With Obsideon, the failure puts you into the 'partial victory' zone as well.

Stalker0 posted a very solid 'why this rule works' post that addresses the issues with the RAW SC much more elequently than I can.

I agree that failures can be an excellent roleplaying point and provide tension, excitement, etc. And I also agree that I haven't weaned my group off the 'Skill Challenge = spam highest skill till win' approach. But then again, they haven't even used a combat stunt yet either. {I need to work on that..}

I don't agree that the physical skills get 'boned'. After all, how useful is doing a handstand when bargaining for the release of prisoners? {unless your Kronk's shoulder devil}

 

[RangerWickett]

After playing around, I decided against ever having a delineated skill challenge, though I do use Obsidian's skill challenge system as a guideline for keeping track in my head how hard I should make skill checks for dangerous or uncertain activities.

 

[Starfox]

I tried the original and obsidian, but finally found that what they rewarded were grind rather than excellence. That is, they penalized failure rather than rewarded success. Now I'm trying out a system that requires decidedly fewer successes at a much higher difficulty.

I'll post about it here once its starting to take firm shape.

 

[Paul Strack]

I use the RAW, with Errata, but add +5 DC and allow more failures. Basically I am splitting the difference between the pre-errata challenge difficulty (which was too hard) and the post-errata challenge difficulty (which is too easy).