So its all about combat again?

[I'm A Banana]

What you calle "narrative razzle-dazzle" I call "running the skill challenge system as intended.

I don't disagree. The SC system requires narrative razzle-dazzle to gloss over the fact that it's a fairly dull mechanical framework.

Assistance is the aid other action and has been there from the get go.

Sure, but if that's all you mean, that's still not very mechanically interesting. It just adds a way for people whose skill bonuses suck to still contribute by making a coin flip to see if they can't add something to the checks of those who suck less. In turn, the DC inflation that comes from making those with a +4-6 on their check still have a decent risk of failure runs the risk of making this the ONLY valid choice for someone with a lower skill bonus.

Resolving complications is also in the Rules Compendium Skill Challenge rules as one of the listed options under Advantages

Sure, if you're doing a Complexity 3 or higher, but that seems more a way to reduce tedium of "roll...roll...roll...roll..." than anything integral to the design of the thing.

And not telling the players which skills to use (as I don't) is also skill challenges RAW (Rules Compendium p158)

Actually, Page 160 indicates that you probably SHOULD tell them which skills are Primary Skills.

So tell me. What is your problem with skill challenges? Given that everything I'm doing is part of the RAW.

Same thing Dausuul pointed out. Things that indicate it needs at least some active opposition and some player-resource-management.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The only way it's like hit points is if you institute a rule that every time you miss with an attack, you hit an ally.

That's not necessary. Everytime you fail to deliver a killing blow, you give the enemy another chance to hit you. Hit points and attack/defense/save mechanics are more granular then just success vs failure, but it still boils down to the fact that you ahve only a limited amount of time to beat your opponent before he beats you. There is more randomization at work, but every miss can mean one more hit the enemy can land.

"Party Size" in terms of non-combat encounters may be a more interesting task - if someone does not participate in a combat, that's a net loss. If someone does not participate in a skill challenge, that may be for the best in the 4E approach, if the character doesn't have a viable set of skills. That is were pemerton's multi-dimensional skill challenge concept sets in, I think - a system where everyone is participated and there is more at stake than mere success or failure, you can avoid such situations. (In combat, there is more at stake than just success or failure as well - it's not enough to kill every single enemy. You also want to have all your team mates alive and resources saved. So even if heightened extended empowered maximized fireball is really ultra-devestating, you may not want to use it in a combat against 5 bog-standard 1 hp kobolds.

 

[Fenes]

The problem with skill challenges is that they are better done without using a skill challenge mechanic. Simply describing the situation, the adjucating the plans the players start to put into action works far better than trying to cram any situation into the corset of a skill challenge, only to break that corset up anyway first time the players do something major.

Skill challenges as they are presented are unneeded limits on social interaction. They do not add anything to the game, but provide ample opportunities to reduce a virbrant roleplaying scene to an excercise in mechanics and dice rolling.

 

[I'm A Banana]

So, here we have a LOT more combat encounters. 4,5,8 and 19 and possibly 1 are likely not combat but the rest are. So, I'm not totally far off saying that wandering monster tables are pretty darn combat oriented.

It depends, really. 1 (as long as it's not an Evil Acolyte!) probably isn't. 2 doesn't have to be (a party could pay up, or try to talk them out of it). 3, 9, 11, 13, 15, and 20 are all just dumb animals (not likely to be MUCH of a combat). And 17 almost definitely isn't (fighting sprites is not a great tactic).

There's a flexibility here. Combat is something you can do when you hit a random monster, but it's not your only option, or your best option, or even necessarily the option you're the best equipped for.

Don't get me wrong, I still believe that early D&D (as I mentioned above) wanted you to fight things more often than not. But there was certainly support for the idea that fighting things wasn't the only valid track to take.

Part of what encouraged this, I think, was system simplicity. If it takes the DM 15-20 minutes to design a combat encounter, the paths running into it are going to be more important than the paths that mean those minutes were wasted. If the DM took less than a minute to design the encounter (because he pulled up the statblock and rolled for quantity and called it a day), it's much more disposable.

 

[pemerton]

Going into a session, I only have a vague idea where the skill challenges will occur or what they will be about.

I would say I have about the same idea as I do about combat encounters - that is, I have some general ideas for situations/encounters that I'm expecting to run, but how they play out and what the players do with them is up to the players.

Just in my last session I had statted up the wererats who had taken over a former temple of Erathis that the PCs wanted to repossess. The players decided to have their PCs bring a legal action rather than exercising self-help. That was resolved as a quick complexity 1 (4/3) skill challenge.

It was pretty clear that the PCs would win the court case - they'd already undertaken legal research, and the wizard/invoker had rolled 44 for the History check to draft the pleadings - but resolving the challenge was still quite interesting. The players had to make some choices about how their PCs argued the matter, and there was one failure (maybe 2? I can't remember) resulting in an interesting complication - the Patriach of Bahamut hearing the matter decided to set aside the transfer of title to the wererats (on grounds that the Baronial advisor who had authorised it was a traitor at the time, and therefore his administrative actions were legal nullities) - which was what the players and their PCs wanted - but he also explained his reasoning in these terms, that he was sure the Baron would not have agreed to the transfer, had he known that his advisor was duping him, and was in fact a traitor building up a subversive nest of wererats.

Given that there was already an undercurrent of power struggle between Baron and Patriarch in which the PCs have been caught up, and give that the Baron is currently in a state of collapse from nervous exhaustion, and given that at least until now the PCs have been more closely associated with the Baron than the Patriarch, this way of framing the resolution of the legal matter had political implications that they didn't like.

This is part of the point, as I see it, of a resolution structure. Because it obliges the fiction to be extended beyond a simple "Yep, you win the court case", it creates a space into which complications can be inserted, in which the players can exhibit their concerns and have those concerns responded to within the fiction, etc.

If the party has to infiltrate a costume ball at a noble's mansion I'd not frame that as a skill challenge, but simply let the players act out their plan, and see if it succeeds, reacting to every action according to its outcome.

<snip>

How many different tasks they need to complete is something even the GM cannot say in advance so how could he/she set a given number of successes in advance?

Well, part of the logic of an extended contest mechanic is that you (the GM) have already decided, in advance, about how much heft this is going to have in the course of play, and you narrate the outcomes of successful checks in a fashion that is consistent with that. That's part of the idea of using metagame considerations to shape the adjudication.

So if the costume ball is being run as a 6/3 challenge, bribing the major domo might be run as a single check leading (on success) straight into the ballroom, and on a failure to him insisting on a larger amount of money (or, perhaps agreeing, but warning his employer to be on the lookout for these suspicious characters). Whereas if it's being run as a 12/3 challenge, then bribing the major domo might itself be played out as a mini-scene.

Upthread, [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] said he doesn't tell his players when they're in a skill challenge. I often do let them know, and give them a general indication of how serious it is (much as one might in a combat, letting them know how many foes there are, how big they look, when they are bloodied etc). This is because I think the players have to have at least some indication as to how many resources they need to devote - a 12/3 challenge is probably going to require more resources to be consumed for success than a 6/3 challenge.

If you can leave a SC early you don't need the framework at all, but can stick to individual tasks and encounters.

I'm not sure why this would follow.

The PCs can abandon their efforts in combat, lie down and let the enemies slaughter them. It doesn't follow from this being a possibility that there is no need for the combat resolution mechanism.

So, likewise, if the PCs abandon their efforts in a skill challenge, they fail to get whatever they were hoping to achieve.

 

[Fenes]

I'm not sure why this would follow.

The PCs can abandon their efforts in combat, lie down and let the enemies slaughter them. It doesn't follow from this being a possibility that there is no need for the combat resolution mechanism.

So, likewise, if the PCs abandon their efforts in a skill challenge, they fail to get whatever they were hoping to achieve.

What does a skill challenge do that you can't do without it? Assume the party needs to sneak into a town undetected. What does the skill challenge add to the game that a simpler and more flexible "What do you do?", followed by adjucating actions and reactions, doesn't?

 

[Hussar]

What does a skill challenge do that you can't do without it? Assume the party needs to sneak into a town undetected. What does the skill challenge add to the game that a simpler and more flexible "What do you do?", followed by adjucating actions and reactions, doesn't?

Absolutely nothing. A skill challenge does not do anything that you couldn't do without.

What it does do though, is provide a nice neat framework from which you can work instead of trying to play amateur game designer all day long. Is it a panacea that cures all ills? Nope. Is it the best way to do things? Certainly not.

But, having that framework makes the job of the DM SOOO much easier. Sure, I could stumble my way through, chucking up skill check after skill check. Only problem is, most people have a very poor grasp of math and don't realize that the more checks you chuck in, the greater the chance of failure.

Which generally means, that in many extended skill tests, without a framework, players will fail more often than succeed. Which, in turn, leads players to adopt a "Kill everything" approach because it has a higher chance of success than trying to beat the rigged game that the DM is unwittingly presenting.

Then the DM comes on En World and bitches about how his players always try to kill everything and they won't role play. And a bunch of other En World DM's pat him on the head, tell him that his players suck, and he should keep doing what he's doing.

 

[Blackwarder]

SC are the kind of mechanic that you either love or hate, I think it boils down to how it was presented.

I do believe that SC is a bland mechanic that rely heavily on DM fiat to succeed which is exactly the opposite of the rest of 4e and IMO that was its biggest failing.

That being said I would like the entire concept of non combat task resolutions to get a throughout revaluation in DnDnext, I believe that it's an important part of the game that should get a seriousart of design time from the dev.

I don't mean that there should be a one system to rule them all for non combat task resolutions like the SC, my first leaning is that at the least there should be different systems for social and exploration.

Warder

 

[Fenes]

Absolutely nothing. A skill challenge does not do anything that you couldn't do without.

What it does do though, is provide a nice neat framework from which you can work instead of trying to play amateur game designer all day long. Is it a panacea that cures all ills? Nope. Is it the best way to do things? Certainly not.

But, having that framework makes the job of the DM SOOO much easier. Sure, I could stumble my way through, chucking up skill check after skill check. Only problem is, most people have a very poor grasp of math and don't realize that the more checks you chuck in, the greater the chance of failure.

Skill checks are not the goal, skill checks are the tool. They should originate from actions stated by the players, not from a framework. The amount of skill checks needed follows the situation, not the other way around. Their DCs too should vary according to the specific check and situation, not the over all difficulty. Sneaking past an oblivious guard at the city gate shouldn't become hard just because the GM decided sneaking into the princess' bedroom is a hard challenge.

If the players find a way to achieve something without a skill check needed, good! Spells, plans, and even violence can help there - knocking a guard out under the effect of a silence spell doesn't need a stealth skill check added.

Again, what does a frame help me, unless I plan to press and railroad the players into it? Maybe they find a way to achieve their goal without my planned framework even coming up? Say I planned an insertion into the royal castle, but they simply contact the king when he is hunting?

Skill challenges are far too rigid, and do not add anything but traps that turn the game into a dice rolling exercise.

 

[Herschel]

The problem with skill challenges is that they are better done without using a skill challenge mechanic. Simply describing the situation, the adjucating the plans the players start to put into action works far better than trying to cram any situation into the corset of a skill challenge, only to break that corset up anyway first time the players do something major.

Skill challenges as they are presented are unneeded limits on social interaction. They do not add anything to the game, but provide ample opportunities to reduce a virbrant roleplaying scene to an excercise in mechanics and dice rolling.

BS, the Skill Challenge system is just a framework for providing XP for social situations. "Simply describing the situation, the adjucating the plans the players start to put into action " is all a Skill Challenge is. Some times they're planned (and aren't always followed through with), some times they just happen. They'll give the pedantic issues, but so do rules frameworks is general. If you actually approach and use them as intended they work extremely well.