A reason why 4E is not as popular as it could have been

[MrMyth]

No, it isn't. You said that in 3rd Edition combat, you know with a high-degree of confidence your own [combat] capabilities, with reference only to your own character sheet.

I think his argument is that he knows a bit more about his enemy than that. That by looking at his character sheet, he would know his chances against an "average orc". Whereas in 4E, the "average orc" covers a broad range of enemies spread over a number of levels.

Of course, I'm not sure I buy that as a reasonable comparison. For one thing, it is a complaint about the monster design system in 4E, not the information presented on the character sheet. For another, I don't even think it holds true - if a DM presents me with an orc in 3rd edition, I don't know if there is any guarantee as to whether it is an average orc or a levelled orc barbarian. And not knowing that, I don't know what my chances are against it.

Same holds true with skills. I can imagine that my character, decently-trained in Bluff, will be able to fool the average commoner, but might have some issues when trying to lie to the High Priest of Pelor. This is true regardless of which edition I'm playing. If I run into some rival adventurers, on the other hand, I have no idea how good they might be at seeing through my lies - I might be able to make some conjectures, but there is no real way to know my odds from my character sheet alone.

 

[Nagol]

The skill challenge is 6 successes, 3 failures to remove the mayor. The PCs pick the skills. That they have gone this route allows them to play to different strengths (i.e. use different skills - for instance thievery is not terribly likely to be useful in the straight interpersonal route (stealth will at most be a supporting skill) and they'd have to work hard to get me to ask them to roll history) and means that the mayor will be removed in a different manner at the end of the skill challenge. But when you are setting the skill challenge, you are setting the goal and the difficulty. Setting the how is not necessary and I wouldn't have told the PCs they had to or even were expected to take the interpersonal route.

I get the concept, but by taking the smear approach, the lockpicking skill can't be used as one of the attempts, because it's too easy to count as a success. So perhaps a generalised thievery to account for the whole office infiltration would be a single success. The rest of the successes would be encouraging the accidental discovery of the documents and persuading the populace that it isn't a frame.

I guess it just seems odd to me that any tactic will have the same basic difficulty regardless of the surrounding circumstance and players' choice of approach. To my mind it reverses my natural thought process from "What weakness can I exploit here?" into "What tactic plays to my stength here?" I much prefer the former approach since it strongly encourages engagement with the game world as opposed to engagement with the PC.

The system as presented doesn't appear to encourage strategic weakness in the challenge design. A DM can compensate on his own, for example, only allowing the challenge to occur once the external circumstances are brought into alignment or awarding automatic successes if a weakness is noticed and exploited, I suppose.

 

[billd91]

I can somewhat understand it, but I think a good part of the problem may be an issue with how 4E presents it.

<snip>

At its heart, that really isn't any different then what we had before. In 3rd Edition, it tells us we have four types of locks: Simple, Average, Good, and Superior, with scaling DCs from the easiest to the hardest. In 4E, we have a broader scale of DCs, abstracted a bit to represent not just the lock itself but also the circumstances around it, thus justifying the broader range of DCs.

I've heard this defense before and I find it unconvincing, and I'd point back at the comment I quoted by Pemerton. The difference is in how the game has changed its approach to the issue of building in situations for PCs to encounter. The problem that I see is that, in Pemerton's quote, the implication is that the DM didn't describe up the lock to match the selected difficulty. That's putting the cart in front of the horse as far as I'm concerned. I'd rather the game encourage DMs to decide what sort of lock was appropriate for the situation and have the DC determined from there.

Now, all that said, yeah, we are still deciding elements of the game based on how challenging we want the lock to be, rather than other elements. But aren't those other elements arbitrary anyway?

Not really. Sure, any campaign I, as DM, devise is ultimately arbitrary in what I choose to develop, what sort of dynamics to build into it. But once ground assumptions are in place, players know how they fit in, select the places they want to go, and all that, what follows should be anything but arbitrary. Is the rogue breaking into a wealthy merchant's home, a fire giant's fortress, a thieves guildmasters hideaway, or a random apartment in a tenement? What follows from the PC's choice should not be arbitrary but should make sense given the internal logic of the situation.

Is that any different from declaring that the commoner has a level 1 lock, the noble has a level 10 lock, and the wizard has a level 20 lock? Or whatever else the DM feels is appropriate for that figure?

You're right, it's not. But notice we're getting there from the situation and not from picking the right difficulty for the PC rogue. If we happen to assign them a level from the DC the lock may be, then we're moving in the right direction. But that's not what I think 4e is conditioning people to do and it's not the impression I got from Pemerton's post.

Honestly, I find that more robust way of being able to determine details. Because if we actually look at the 3rd Edition locks, probably the biggest "in game mechanic" to them is their price. And the best lock is, what, 150gp? That's... relatively cheap, in terms of the money these games throw around. Which means that past the first few levels, shouldn't most every lock the PCs run into be a Superior lock?

It's not relatively cheap for a hireling who makes 2-3 silver pieces a day, nor even for the professional who may make about 10 gp a week. Is he really going to save 15 weeks of wages for a lock?
For successful adventurers and other powerful people, sure, they'll have the better locks. They can easily afford it. But again, this is about looking at the context in which that lock will appear and not looking at the context of the person who will be trying to pick it.

I'll admit there's always been a bit of the tail wagging the dog in RPGs. Any time you tailor your encounter to the PCs, you're doing some of what I see 4e really pushing with the whole DC for various situations to provide a challenge for the PCs. There's a balance to be struck between letting the difficulty flow the situation and tailoring the situation to the difficulty. 4e has taken whatever balance D&D had between tailored and status quo situations (to borrow terms in the 3e DMG) that helped to keep a game reasonable for player characters while also adding to the immersiveness of the world and tossed it firmly in the direction of tailored. The game, as I see it, is utterly unbalanced at its heart, in its design principles, despite its much ballyhooed mechanical balance. And while I may play it every 2 weeks as part of a friend's campaign and even have some fun in the skirmishing, it's definitely not what I'm looking for in an RPG that I'm going to play for many years to come.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

I guess it just seems odd to me that any tactic will have the same basic difficulty regardless of the surrounding circumstance and players' choice of approach.

Why would you say that?

In the specific case, let's say that planting the evidence successfully will count as one of the successes needed to successfully smear the Mayor.

Given that the players have, previously, infiltrated the Mayor's mansion, let the "Thievery Check to plant the evidence" roll be done at one-step easier difficulty (e.g., it's an easy task instead of a moderate one) - voila!

Alternatively, maybe the mayor's heard rumors about his swiss-cheese home security (and maybe he's been burglarized a few times by rogues and ne'erdowells who heard of the PCs' initial successes) and, in the interim, has stepped up his protections. Now, instead of a moderate challenge, it's a hard one - or, it's a sub-skill challeng in its own regard for the overall meta-skill challenge.

E.g., consider a skill challenge made up of skill challenges: the smear campaign involves convincing at least 4 power groups (out of 6 identified) in the city that the Mayor is dirty and needs to be removed. Convincing each group could be its own skill challenge - and successfully infiltrating the mayor's house and planting evidence might count as a success for one or more of them.

 

[pemerton]

I guess it just seems odd to me that any tactic will have the same basic difficulty regardless of the surrounding circumstance and players' choice of approach. To my mind it reverses my natural thought process from "What weakness can I exploit here?" into "What tactic plays to my stength here?"

Nagol, interesting posts!

I agree with what Crazy Jerome has said. On this point, though, I would add, that you can use secondary skills in the challenge to exploit weaknesses - mechanically, these give a +2 to the next check, but in terms of the narrative if you can't find a way to bring one to bear you can't get the bonus. And one way to bring them to bear is by identifying weaknesss.

Also, different approaches will have different consequences for failure, and set up different opportunties for future checks.

A DM can compensate on his own, for example, only allowing the challenge to occur once the external circumstances are brought into alignment or awarding automatic successes if a weakness is noticed and exploited, I suppose.

So I think this is on the right track, although the way you put it sounds like the GM deciding this in advance and behind the screen. whereas I think this is the sort of thing the GM can be working out with the players as part of the unfolding challenge.

 

[shadzar]

Note also that the game doesn't preclude high level PCs encountering mundane locks. It's just that such locks are scenery, not challenges, and wouldn't engage the action resolution mechanics (as I said upthread, the precise point at which this happens is left as an exercise for the individual group).

I guess we should redesign all the real world locks to scale to level of the locksmith/picker. That would then work so its a good challenge.

Really a lock not being a challenge is a bad thing? Sooner or later someone is going to get so good at it, that no locks are very challenging, yet somehow they will screw up opening the simplest locks.

Locked my keys in my car, and the person supposed to be able to get them out brought the wrong tool for the make/model of my car. Seems to prove higher level skills can easily be twarted by mundane locks to me.

 

[pemerton]

I'd rather the game encourage DMs to decide what sort of lock was appropriate for the situation and have the DC determined from there.

Taking this back to the OP: this is why I think 4e is not "setting details focused" - because the game tends to assume the setting is built around the metagame in the way Bill91 is critiquing.

I don't think this means that the game has no flavour/colour. But it means that more of that is constructed by GM and players on the fly than might happen in a simulationist game.

 

[pemerton]

Shadzar, despite many years of practice I sometimes trip over a gutter while walking down the street. But the only game system I know that comes close to incorproating this sort of possibility into its action resolution mechanics is Rolemaster.

3E has no fumble rules. I don't think it's a very big problem with 4e that it lacks them also.

 

[shadzar]

Is the party trying to uncover proof that the local Duke is possessed by a Demon, and find a way to break that possession? Maybe they should undertake a skill challenge

Or maybe you don't let some convoluted system ruin your game, when they fail the "challenge".

Upon suspecting the Duke to be a demon, if there were clues being led to it, the party has already passed the challenge. Why then force them to backtrack to failure? Why not let them just go around asking and let them find the info needed to "prove it".

If you don't want to RP it, then ak the DM for a summary of things found over searching, people met etc. You get the same result of the skill challenge which is contacts and info, without the needless chance of failure.

Possibly your example is just a VERY bad one, as it would leave failure as a chance that could completely screw the game up because of the mechanics.

-gather information (Endurance, Diplomacy, Streetwise)
failure here means the game is over
-find a way to break the curse (Arcana, History, Religion)
failure here means the game is over
-get to the Duke without being noticed (Athletics, Acrobatics, Stealth)
failure here means combat at least

The first two cannot end in failure, thus the problem with designing a skill challenge as such because your challenge could stop the game, when you have living healthy characters to continue it.

So they fail to gather information due to the skill challenge, and jsut decide to leave the town cause the Duke must be an upstanding guy and there is nothing left to do here.

That Is where using it as a resolution works better, when needed. Still the last one I wouldn't use a skill challenge, it is likely just going to be a pass fail. Get noticed once and the alarms have gone off and no more sneaking its battle to battle until you achieve your objective.

Best leave me with the previous information before you turn my opinion on skill challenges fully negative again, such as your example is startign to do.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

The first two cannot end in failure, thus the problem with designing a skill challenge as such because your challenge could stop the game, when you have living healthy characters to continue it.

Full stop. If it cannot end in failure, then it is not a skill challenge. You won't understand skill challenges until you understand this. If it cannot end in failure, then it is a plot point.

Now, you may very well have a skill challenge going on in and around the events of a plot point that cannot afford to end in failure. I use them a lot that way, as "degree of success or degree of failure" challenges. But they are conceptually separate things, with different consequences.