I'm not sure how clear 4E is on the resolution of a single check during a skill challenge. Can that single Intimidate check success introduce a complication or generally make things more troublesome for the PCs?
I think the answer is yes.
The reason why is one that I learned from you in some of your early actual play 4e threads (before you started working on your hack)!: a skill challenge has no active opposition; hence, the opposition has to come from the GM's narration. Because the fictional situation will be changed by the consequences of the players' successful checks, this means that - at least in a challenge of complexity greater than 1 or 2 - some of that GM narration of opposition is going to have to build on that new fictional situation created by those successful checks.
A simple example: the PCs are caught in a rockslide. One player makes an Athletics check to have his/her PC jump up onto a sheltered ledge: success! But now the PC is stuck on a ledge behind a wall of rocks, and so has to find a way out. (STR for pushing, Acro for squeezing or Perception to find a secret door Tintin-style are the options that come immediately to my mind.) I think it was the failure to factor in these sorts of changes in fictional situation that led to some of the WotC examples seeming so static, and amounting to nothing but a series of dice rolls.
I think that if you've got Intimidate as a primary skill (or even secondary) in the skill challenge, and you succeed on the check, then it'll get you closer to success in that skill challenge.
How do the PC's know what check has or hasn't been framed in the context of the skill challenge... or are you saying that the DM should tell the PC's what skills are primary, secondary, etc.?
I think one thing worth noting is that "primary skill checks" and "secondary skill checks" are not canonical terms in 4e, although I have used them as if they are.
The 4e DMG (p 73) defines "primary skill" and "secondary skill" as follows:
Certain skills lead to the natural solutions to the problem the challenge presents. These should serve as the primary skills in the challenge. . . Start with a list of the challenge's primary skills . . . When a player’s turn comes up in a skill challenge, let that player’s character use any skill the player wants. As long as the player or you can come up with a way to let this secondary skill play a part in the challenge, go for it.
This suggests that the main difference between primary and secondary skills is who selects them: player or GM. But by p 75 of the DMG we see language somewhat at odds with this: "In skill challenges, players will come up with uses for skills that you didn’t expect to play a role. Try not to say no." And the PHB (p 179) tells players that "It’s up to you to think of ways you can use your skills to meet the challenges you face."
The DMG2 (p 85) explains the difference between "primary" and "secondary" skills a bit differently:
Primary skills give the characters successes (and failures) toward the ultimate goal of the challenge. Secondary skills don't always directly contribute to the group's success, but they can have other important effects [eg cancelling a failure, granting a bonus, allowing a reroll, opening up the use of a new skill, or allowing additional successes from a given primary skill].
And unlike in the DMG examples, several of the DMG2 examples specifically call out secondary skill possibilities. Some of these are like primary skills but with special conditions or constraints applying; but several are about conferring some ancilliary benefit of the sort described above.
The Rules Compendium (pp 160-61) combines both the DMG and the DMG2 approach to "primary" and "secondary" skills in a skill challenge:
The use of certain skills naturally leds to the solution of the problem presented in a skill challenge. These skills serve as the primary skills in the challenge. The DM usually picks the primary skills before a challenge begins and often tells them to the players. . .
The DM might limit the number of successes that a particular skill can contribute . . .
A secondary skill is tangentially related to a skill challenge and can usually contribute only one success. When players improvise creative uses for skills that weren't on the DM's list of skills for the challenge, the DM typically treats them as secondary skills for the challenge.
The DM might decide that a particular secondary skill can't contribute any successes to a challenge but instead provides some other benefit as a result of a successful check: a bonus to a check with a primary skill, a reroll of a different skill check, the addition of a skill to the list of primary skills, and so on.
I personally prefer to follow the indication of the PHB and DMG2 that it is up to players to choose skills to use to resolve a challenge. Hence I depart from what the Rules Compendium describes as "typical" and "usual". And I think of primary and secondary skill
checks in this way: a skill check that aims at directly progessing the problem presented in the skill challenge is a primary check; a skill check aimed at assisting in some ancilliary way (typically by changing the fictional positioning in some way that doesn't itself tend to solve the problem, but might make it easier for someone else to solve it) is a secondary check, which - if successful - contributes the sort of bonuses described above.
Whether a check is primary or secondary is therefore a function of player intention plus the PC's fictional positioning. If, in play, this is unclear, then clarification can be sought from the player or suggestions made by the GM. (I like the discussion of this in the Burning Wheel Adventure Burner, in relation to that game's similar approach of "intent and task".)
In the DMG example on p 77, the player has his PC say "Enough of this talking! It’s time for action! . . . Look, Duke, the goblins are the least of your worries. Agree to our demands, or we might have to take what we want." And the player describes the PC's action in this way: "I try to intimidate the Duke into helping us." That is clearly an attempt to "solve the problem" of the skill challenge (getting the Duke to provide assistance); hence it is a primary skill check, and failure on the check (autofailure, as it happens) counts towards the total number of accrued failures.
However, if Intimidate is not a skill indicated for use by the skill challenge, or if the use of Intimidate indicates an automatic failure, I think you could still have the player roll the check, succeed by overcoming the DC, but rack up a failure. I'm not sure what the procedure is, though - do you roll or not? (Does that matter?)
The example in the book has the player rolling the skill before being told it is a failure... how else do you keep the fact that the Insight check reveals this a secret (which is also strongly implied if not outright stated in the example)
Imaro is right about how the example in the DMG is presented: the player rolls and the GM narrates a failure. Only when a successful Insight check is subsequently made does the GM explain the Intimidate is an auto-fail.
As to whether it is better to do it this way, or rather for the GM to dispense the metagame information once the first Intimidate check fails: this is a dispute practically as old as the hobby! For instance, is it funny, or just a waste of everyone's time, for the players to Intimidate themselves into failure in this challenge? For some players, discovering this sort of thing in play is a big part of the point of RPGing; for others it is just a pointless GM trap. Compare attitudes to Tomb of Horrors as a module; or the differing essays from Tweet (favours ingame) and Laws (favours metagame) in the GM advice chapter of Over the Edge.
So I would expect a lot of table divergence, despite the fact that the rulebook clearly expresses a preference.
No one is disputing whether the situation is or isn't due to "GM's secret backstory"
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However don't actions still map to fiction in "indie" play? so doesn't there have to be fiction around the intimidation check against the king and thus I have a hard time understanding why this isn't an example of the PC trying to intimidate the king as a fictional positioning step towards winning the SC?
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Wait so is this or is this not an example of the PC's trying to intimidate the duke... because now you are saying that it should be possible to change the fictional positioning such that Intimidate would become possible... but earlier you said this is not an example of trying to intimidate the duke.
You seem to have been confused by my remark (which you bolded) that "The Intimidate example isn't an example of intimidating the NPC but not getting closer to overall success." What I meant by that was that the Intimidate example isn't an example of
successfully intimidating the NPC but not getting closer to overall success in the skill challenge.
Rather, it is an example of
attempting but failing to intimidate the NPC, and hence of getting closer to
failure in the skill challenge. That is, it is a failed primary skill check.
The sort of example that I think [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION] had in mind, to which I was responding, was one in which the player
succeeds on a primary skill check, yet that success does not count towards overall skill challenge success. An example (to return to our friend the chamberlain) would be success on an Intimidate check against the chamberlain which results in him running away, and hence does not get the players any closer to their goal of having the chamberlain introduce them to the king.
From what he has said, I gather that LostSoul will adjudicate things this way in his hack. But I think that this sort of adjudication would not be consistent with default 4e.
There is also a SC example called "The Dead Witness" in the 4e DMG... where the Religion skill can only be used if the players first make a successful Insight check, otherwise the skill is unavailable for use, which seems especially odd given the nature of the skill challenge (Getting a corpse to answer questions after invoking the speak with dead ritual. This is something I would think creative players could definitely come up with numerous uses for religion for in these circumstances).
I think this is where some of the weaknesses and tensions in the DMG's presentation of skill challenges shine through.
My take on the example is that it is trying to illustrate two things. First, it is showing how a player's declared action of "I try to connect with the corpse, working out what it is thinking/feeling" can be mechanically framed (ie as an Insight check). And second, it is trying to show how a successful check of this sort might be narrated (ie the corpse complains that it never received the last rites - and this is something that can be done easily by those with religious knowledge).
I agree with you that it is easy to envisgae other primary uses of Religion. (But unlike the last rites, they would probably be Medium or Hard rather than Easy checks.) It is also possible to envisage other ways of getting the information that the last rites were never peformed (eg via Streetwise, perhaps, depending on other details of the scenario). And it is also possible to envisage other uses and consequences of Insight: for instance, if the scenario is a "police procedural" style and the corpse is of a murder victim, then Insight might be used to divine something about the motives or psychological state of the killer - this would be a secondary check intended to give some sort of advantage to a subsequent primary check used to interact with the corpse.
What makes this example especially weird given the claims of 4e's indie philosophy is that this SC takes place after a player has used the "Speak with the Dead" ritual... but my understanding on indie play says this type of SC shouldn't happen, if the player spent the resources (necessary cost, religion roll and casting of ritual) he shouldn't also be further forced to "negotiate" with the dead (ie DM's NPC) he cast the ritual on in order to get answers to his questions
I think the point of the example is to show the GM that s/he shouldn't be afraid to mix things up a bit. But in order to avoid hosing the player in the way you describe, the GM should inform the player
before the resources are spent that the ritual will require a skill challenge. (And there are other examples in the rituals which model this approach of "warn player in advance of possible waste of resources".)
The GM should also inform the player of the benefit of the skill challenge, namely that "If the PCs are successful, the corpse answers the questions placed before it as usual, even going so far as to answer an extra question." (DMG p 78)
Given that the PCs are extremely likely, if not certain, to succeed at a complexity 2 skill challenge (which is how this is framed) what the GM is really doing is not making it mechanically harder for the players to get the information they want (particularly once you factor in the bonus question); rather the GM is making the Speak With Dead ritual a bigger focus of play, and of time spent at the table, than it otherwise would be. (In HeroWars/Quest terms this is like going for an extended rather than a simple contest; in Burning Wheel it's like opting for Fight! over Bloody Versus to resolve a duel.) If the GM has misjudged things - ie the players really aren't interested in making Speak With Dead a big deal - then the challenge is likely to fall flat. A sensible GM who sensed this before launching into the challenge would probably relent - "OK, no challenge required, but you're not getting any bonus questions!" Slightly more punitive would be to also impose a -2 circumstance penalty to the Religion check for the ritual due to the corpse being resentful.
