This has almost never been the mood in the games I have played in. Typically our players want a more cinematic style of play, and don't mind cut scenes (it really isn't boring if you know how to manage them). You are still working toward the same goal, but when it makes sense, you split up to pursue different leads. Again, if you are doing a city adventure that is really just a cleverly disguised dungeon crawl, this probably wont work. But for most city adventures I have played in (and I have played in at least ten gaming groups for extended periods), splitting up on city adventures was the norm.
Yeah, I got the impression this was the case for your group. Our groups have split up when it made sense to do so, but that was very rare. I'm guessing it is very rare for your group to run into fights in a city, then.
I wouldn't classify our city adventures as a cleverly disguised dungeon crawl. I would classify them as D&D adventures. Even though they take place in a city, there is still 2-4 combat encounters in a 5 hour long session. I purposefully plan things like "After the PCs ask the innkeeper about the cultists, he'll get word to them the next chance he gets. In an effort to stop their questions, the cultists send assassins to kill the party. They attack about 30 minutes after they leave the inn" into the adventure in order to add some excitement and curveballs to the investigation. As well, it gives the players an excuse to use all those cool combat powers they have(and players just love to use).
When I write this in advance and the party decides to send JUST the Bard to go talk to the innkeeper, then I need to run a combat(designed to challenge the whole party) for just a Bard, likely killing him. It also takes nearly an hour to finish the battle. It only happens once before all the players tend to learn their lesson: Don't split up the party. Either that or they just send the fighter to talk to the innkeeper and he keeps failing all his Diplomacy checks and gets nothing, only to walk back to the party and ask the Bard to go try asking the questions, realizing he got nowhere.
We'll split up if there is a REALLY good reason to. But the danger of splitting up often outweighs any reason we might have. If told "You have 15 minutes to collect these 6 items from all corners of the city"...well, sure, we'll split up. If it's something like "We need to solve this murder by tomorrow", we just have confidence that we can better solve it as a group than alone.
This is not how you run a game where the party has split (remember they are touching base and pairing and grouping as the adventure unfolds). You can't let anyone sit there doing nothing for more than 10-15 minutes. Otherwise, people get bored. What is great about cut scenes is you can shift to the other scene just as this start taking an interesting turn. Think of any great mini series or movie. The groups split up all the time, and the shift in point of view keeps things interesting.
I certainly try to do that whenever a split party happens(which is rare, but it still does). It's just that sometimes you get really involved in a conversation you are having between an NPC and a PC and it goes on for 20 minutes or 30 minutes without even noticing. Sometimes a battle happens because of choices the PCs make, even if you aren't planning on it. Plus, most of the people I've played with just have a short attention span. Even 5 minutes of the game not being about them and they start to wander away from the table or talk over me about out of game stuff.
1) No. But that seems like a high DC for a party whose cross class skills are maxed at 7. But a +7 still has value when the DC is 20.
True. But here's the situation. You want there to be a negotiation between the King and the players. They will all be summoned by him and asked into his antechambers where they have the chance to ask him for help. He doesn't care which one of them he negotiates with, as far as he is concerned whichever one they claim is their leader can speak for them.
You want them to have a chance to succeed, but not guarantee it(otherwise, you don't need to make a skill check, you could just tell them the King agrees). You'll give them +2 or -2 based on their role playing. The party is 16th level and has a Half-Elf Bard with +33 to Diplomacy. It also has a Druid with half ranks in Diplomacy for a total of +11. What do you set the DC at?
It has to be above 34 for there to be any chance of failure. But if the Half-Elf doesn't talk to the King for some reason or another(he doesn't show up for the session, he tells the rest of the group he doesn't feel like going, etc) then the Druid has no chance of success unless you lower the DC on the fly in order to make it easier.
To make the scenario even harder, as a secondary exercise, assume you are writing the adventure for a group that doesn't even have characters yet or you will have no idea what those characters are(you are writing a published adventure or writing one in preparation of finding players). You only know that they will be making 16th level characters from the PHB. What DC do you set the Diplomacy check at so that the "average" group only has a 25% chance of success? Or do you simply say that they need to get the DC 30 listed in the PHB to take an Indifferent person to Helpful? Of course, a DC 30 check makes it near impossible for the group whose highest Diplomacy is only half ranks like the above.
2) Sure. But he can't jump across the chasm for your, or down into the pit for you. Some skills you will have to make. And in a skill heavy game, it is still likely you will need to make your own check. This depends on what the obstacle is. Just having someone there willing to make a check on the party's behalf, doesn't mean he is always able to do so.
True. This does contain some skill checks where less ranks are useful. Especially if your goal is just to hurt those who fail slightly. Someone falls into a pit and take 2d6 damage only to walk across and have someone lower a rope to him on the other side. But there are so many different ways for a party to even avoid making this check after 10th level that it likely will never happen.
In the pit situation, it normally involves one teleport-like spell or fly like spell. Or, when all else fails, jump across, throw a rope back to the other side, have them climb the rope across. But, if any of those things are done, then the half-ranks in jump were not helpful.
3) If someone has a spell that can do that, then the skill is worthless in that situation no matter how many skill ranks you took.
Yep, and this is one of my big beefs about the supposedly extensive non-combat features of 3e. No matter how many skill ranks you have, you are outmatched by one spell, making skill ranks near useless after a certain level.
4) I never do that. If someone fails, they fail. As I pointed out, this doesn't mean the party fails the adventures. A failed skill check should just introduce a complication to the plot.
Me neither. As I said before, most of the time failed skill checks just give you less information or less help. Don't make the search check, don't find the dust on the ground or the bits of decaying flesh near the body. Don't make the diplomacy check, don't get the beggar's help. Don't make the Spellcraft check, don't know that the powder on the ground is a necromantic spell component. Don't make the Sense Motive check, don't know that the shop keeper is lying. But good luck figuring out that a zombie walked through the back door and killed the man and that he was hired by a shopkeeper to kill him due to a disagreement they had over money if you fail ALL the checks.
No ONE check fails adventures. However, lots of them in a row can. After a certain number of complications, you just have to fail. And sometimes one check and still be the difference between something really good and something really bad. As an example, there was on
DCs are frequently lower than 28.
They can be. Depends on what you are trying to do. Once you are level 16+, you should assume that any group can make any DC 20 check without rolling and have a reasonable chance of passing most DC 30 checks. If they can't, than they won't be able to finish most published adventures/Living Greyhawk adventures. LG adventures frequently had DC 20+Average Party Level checks in them. Which means DC 36 at 16th level. The EASY ones were 10+APL, and those would have been 26. Any group with entirely half rank skills would start failing ALL adventures
I have been playing for over fifteen years and in a number of different groups. It is the style have seen a lot of.
I've run into this playstyle a couple of times as well. But it isn't nearly as common as you think. The DM I knew who used to run games this way would get complaints from his players on a regular basis that all their cool combat powers were useless and the game was no fun for them. Mostly he told them to stop complaining about his game and leave if they didn't like it. That pretty much shut them up...at least, while he was around.
Again. My issue with the 4E skill system isn't the numbers, which I agree work fine. It is the lack of ranks, the consolidation and the fact that it makes characters pretty similar when it comes to skills. A character who doesn't take any ranks in something, should fail at it most of the time in my view.
I think this view is mostly due to the numbers being different. Most people don't realize that a +1 vs a +9 in a skill is a fairly huge difference. If you set the DCs at 20 in order to give the +9 guy a 50% chance of success, then the +1 only has a 10% chance of success. He DOES fail most of the time, even though he got the +1 for being level 2. Since DCs in 4e should scale with level, at level 30, he should still only have a 10% of succeeding. He'll fail most of the time.
I think this is still a fairly large difference in characters. But the difference is supposed to be in WHAT people do, not how good they are at it. As a Wizard, I'm the one who has studied magic and knows about it. As a Rogue, you are good at sneaking around and opening locks. As a Fighter, you are tough and strong. We are all good at what we do. It allows us to avoid stepping on each other's toes(much).
I know one of the most annoying moments for me when playing D&D was when my 15th level Cleric who put max ranks in Diplomacy(my highest skill) for +20 was forced to play second fiddle to the Bard/Marshal with the +35. My character is supposed to be charismatic, and here is this guy who is SO charismatic that I might as well not bother. My non-combat role(the guy who talks to people nicely) was completely usurped by someone who just was better at my role than I was. This was during a Living Greyhawk adventure, so luckily, I didn't have to play with him again. But during that 5 hour long game, I felt like I might as well not be at the table, because I didn't have any usefulness to the group except when combat started.
I don't really have a problem with skill disparity in a party.
You should let me play. I can create one pretty quickly.
*grin*
Nothing makes people feel better when they say, "I try to convince him to tell us what we need to know, I get 15 on my Diplomacy check" and someone else in the group says, "15? That's pretty good. That's what I'd get if I rolled a 1.....and had -15 to my roll. Maybe you should just let me talk to him and you can go back to doing what you do best...which is apparently nothing, based on the skill ranks listed on your character sheet."
And we've had this conversation in our group before.
