D&D 5E What's the rush? Has the "here and now" been replaced by the "next level" attitude?

[Nagol]

In the original presentation the number of failures allowed did increase: it was 2X successes before X failures, with X = complexity +1.

And moving from 4/2 to 6/3 means instead of spending no less than 2 and no more than 6 rolls, the group will spend no less than 3 and no more than 9 rolls -- hardly a lot of extra screen time.

If the desire was to increase group time dealing with the problem, it would have been better served moving the 4/2 to a 5/10 and upping the difficulty of each check slightly. This also allows more chances for consequence action and recovery.

This is dealt with in DMG2 and RC.

So can't be considered part of the DMG1 skill challenge you were defending.

 

[pemerton]

What is an appropriate result if there are 0 failures? 1 failure? 2 failures? All count as a successful result so the king's mind is changed, but what level of consequence is appropriate for the accumulated failures?

<snip>

On the reverse side, what happens if the PCs fail, but have achieved 5 successes? Should there be a difference compared to if they failed to achieve any successes at all?

The assumption (I think) is that this will be determined on an ad hoc basis from challenge to challnge. For instance, sometimes each failure causes damage/HS loss. But not always. In a social situation it is likely that each success will bring forth something of signficicance (eg information, or an offer or a threat). These changes in the fiction are what they are regardless of whether the challenge is a success.

In practice I find this can produce something like the compromise results of a BW Duel of Wits.

And moving from 4/2 to 6/3 means instead of spending no less than 2 and no more than 6 rolls, the group will spend no less than 3 and no more than 9 rolls -- hardly a lot of extra screen time.

In the original model, a complexity 1 (4/2) required at least 4 and up to 5 rolls - disregarding secondary checks, of which there probably won't be many in such a challenge. A complexity 5 (12/6) required at least 12 and up to 17 - disregarding secondary checks, of which there are likely to be more in such a challenge. That's more than a tripling of the expected screen time, which is not nothing.

In the new numbers, its 4/3 to 12/3, whch is 4 to 6 compared to 12 to 14, plus secondaries. That's more than a doubling, and in my experience noticeably more because the higher complexity brings in other features too, like more complex/subtle stakes, more advantages to be considered, more complex situation to be interpreted and responded too, etc.

So can't be considered part of the DMG1 skill challenge you were defending.

I didn't say it was. Though the DMG does have this to say (p 74):

It’s also a good idea to think about other options the characters might exercise and how these might influence the course of the challenge. Characters might have access to utility powers or rituals that can help them. These might allow special uses of skills, perhaps with a bonus. Rituals in particular might grant an automatic success or remove failures from the running total.​

But the absence of a very clear mechanic for removing failures doesn't mean that the DMG + PHB advice fails to set out a workable framework. I ran my first skill challenge in my 3rd session of GMing 4e, which would have been in Feb 2009. That's before DMG 2 came out. (For anyone who's interested: the flight from the forest to the homestead in the early part of the module Night's Dark Terror. It worked well. And I didn't have any trouble incorporating being cut off by goblin wolf-riders as a consequence for failure on a check.)

 

[Manbearcat]

That doesn't negate the Pyrrhic victory option though, does it? The price the PCs pay could be deemed "too high" for the results obtained. If the goal is getting to the hut, the PCs could achieve that whilst at the same losing something not mentioned in the premise -- such as the extra time taken by navigation means the crown prince is beyond salvation, an item more important to strategic success has been lost, or the failures raise the enmity level of the swamp denizens so much the medicine man will not truck with the party.

I recognize how failures can be used (though again my game style limits the type of failure from some that have appeared on the forums over time), what is unclear is the level of severity the players should expect from failure counts. This should of course be tied to the challenge, but appropriate determination depends on at what point the overall success becomes moot ("You saved the king! Unfortunately, your failures led to no one detecting the poison put into his wine. He died overnight" ) and when the party feels punished because there was no chance of getting through without at least one failure (you saved the king, but because Bob slipped up, you are under house arrest until he recovers sufficiently to clear you.")

I cut your post up to put these two together as they are married to the same answer. I hope you don't mind.

The reason why I stated that there is no "Pyrrhic Victory" is because I'm working off of three assumptions:

1) The investment of the PCs into the successful resolution of this conflict (the realization of their goals that they claimed at the outset) will never be outdone by whatever orthogonal setback/fallout that arises from micro-failure. Success will never be tantamount to defeat.

2) The PCs will telegraph their intentions (what victory they want earned) and/or the GM will perfectly understand it such that ultimate success or failure will assimilate those intentions into the overarching story in the form of realization or denial by way of narrative outcome.

3) Any orthogonal setback/fallout earned due to micro-failure will bring about "peripheral (but relevant) exposure" and not outright denial of the assets earned by successful victory. A GM subtly (or not subtly) later (perhaps sooner) denying the narrative fruits of the PCs' labored victory earned by successful conflict resolution is poor GMing. It will also negatively feedback upon future PC investment into people, places, things, and causes.

Moreover, fallout should provide immediate adversarial components that need to be dealt with (resource loss or obstacles to be overcome) or open up new conflicts that need to be resolved in the future. It shouldn't deny the PCs' earned victory by proxy. The captain of the guard dieing and the King despairing shouldn't deny the policy change but perhaps it could create the conflict where the king is now recklessly wanting vengeance, endangering himself and the stability of the kingdom. Perhaps he is immediately going to go on a (physical) crusade against the perpetrators. Perhaps it is one where he is sure to get himself killed and the PCs either have to talk him out of it (conflict) or see him through it to the end (conflict).

Ablation works in some specific challenges, such as escaping a burning building, but less so in others such as "Find the Island" -- there the only ablation is time wasted. The micro-failures affecting the effectiveness of the group inside the challenge is problematic as it will tend to lead to a failure spiral. The probabilities of the markov chains are murky enough without damaging the success chance of any individual or all subsequent checks. It can also lead to the Pyrrhic of Cadmean victories described above. "We made it to the hut, but we were so weakened that we died before the medicine man returned."

Additionally, forcing a PC into a sub-optimal check runs the risk of starting a failure spiral or at least being identified as the point the challenge was lost.

Again, I moved stuff around. I hope you don't mind.

I agree with the above. The mathematical framework and guidance on using the conflict resolution scheme needs to be robust. I think the 4e Skill Challenge conflict resolution scheme has become more and more robust to the point that, by RC, it is as good, or better, than others I have played with.

And that is where I feel some guidance is necessary. What level of stake is appropriate for a single failure level? What is the base expectation for number of failures in the challenge? If the odds say the party will succeed, but a typical party will suffer two failures then applying a substantial penalty at the first failure is uncalled for.

I agree that this is very important. While DMG1 was solid in many ways, it wasn't anywhere near the tome of DMG2. DMG2 very specifically, with precision, addressed the advice for micro-failures; both resource ablation and conflict/theme fallout. A series of successive Dungeon Articles improved the product (from a GMing principle and guidance perspective) as well.

Unfortunately, it has always struck me that the first run of books (PHB1 and DMG1 specifically) were either a bit concerned with being too strident (if you can believe that) in its advocating for certain GMing principles and techniques or there were too many editorial cooks in the kitchen. DMG2, less than a year after release, was quintessential 4e GMing (technique and advice). Although it provided some advice for things like perturbing the default pacing and genre conceits of the game (very good advice at that), it was definitely a more evolved, coherent product. It didn't seem like it was trying to play to multiple audiences (again, if you can believe that the initial run of books weren't intentionally trying to burn bridges).

 

[Celebrim]

Yet the background to that drama-genre-story has to be some sort of reality; and by far the simplest option for presenting this is to simply say "it's the same as the real world except where the game mechanics and-or the setting being played make it different". Which is to say, a rock in the game world behaves much like a rock on Earth; rivers flow downhill; light and sound behave like we're used to except when magic messes with them, etc.

To some extent I agree with you. But, to the extent that you mean that the game world works as a result of real physics, which you evidently do from the rest of your post, I completely disagree.

I mean, if a DM wants to have a world where gravity is only half as strong as Earth that's fine, but she has to then re-jig all the other bits of reality that would normally be affected by that change...either that, or throw believability out the window.

Not at all. You are working on the assumption that all the rules of physics are in effect, and so that if you change one, perforce it will have great consequences for how the rest behave. That assumption does not have to be true. Recall first that in the real world, for many thousands of years perceptions of the physics of the world held by mankind were false. Yet these perceptions withstood casual or even intence scrutiny. To the observers, the world very well could have been operating under the rules they thought it operated under, as they had no evidence to the contrary. So it's entirely possible that the game world has completely different and novel physics from the real world, and yet produces a result that on a superficial level resembles our own. Secondly, recall that in general we know that there are aspects of the world which entirely violate the physics of our own world. For example, in D&D it is generally held to be true that the fundamental chemistry of the world is based on the existance of 4 elements - fire, water, earth, and air. This literally makes no sense at all in terms of real world chemistry, as we now know that fire is not a particle element at all, but an exothermic release of energy. Yet, in the game world we are suggesting that since fire is an element, perhaps if you carefully grind a cannon at some point it stops releasing additional heat and becomes cold. Or perhaps not. Perhaps things heat up when you grind them because it opens up point sized diminsional gateways to the elemental plane of fire, resulting in the passing of more heat into the system and the eventual conjoining of earth and fire elements to form lava paraelements. In which case, we now live in a world that on inspection violates conservation of energy.

As such, if you alter the force of gravity there is no way to predict how it is going to effect any of the physics of the game world. For example, perhaps gravity isn't the result of an attraction between objects having mass, but rather the result of angry earth spirits pulling down to the earth those that though they are of the earth defy the earth by trying to depart from its embrace.

One example of such a change that I've already decided on, is that if you dropped stone balls into clay, you'd discover that kinetic energy was linear with velocity in my world. That is a private joke with myself on why PC's are often capable of surviving falls from great heights. It's practical effect on the game is nothing.

In short, its highly likely that we don't need to work out the physics of the game world in any great detail and perhaps never could, since in fact those physics would be at least as complicated as the physics of our own world in which many questions are still unresolved despite the work of 1000's or millions brilliant men and women for 1000's of years. We aren't of sufficiently high sophont class to derive a working set of physics for our game world, but fortunately we do not need to. We need only have a set of game rules that provide for resolutions to the situations that come up in the game that are plausible for the setting. These rules don't need to and shouldn't resemble a physics textbook.

Lan-"the key is to know just enough about geology, physics and geography to be able to believably make the rest of it up"-efan

The key is simply to make it plausible for the players and perhaps yourself.

 

[ForeverSlayer]

On the believability issue.

I can't speak for others so I will ne speaking on my behalf only. I am not looking for the game to completely simulate reality. What I am looking for, is a D&D that would allow me to actually picture it in my head and be able to tell myself that if it were real, I could completwly see it happening that way. For those of you who have read Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files, he explains fantasy in a way that makes it believable.

 

[Shayuri]

DnD has generally forced players to wait before they get to play the character they envision during chargen. If you want to be Conan you have to wait for several levels before you can really claim to be Conan.

Couple this with the huge number of games which fade and die long before player goals are realized, it's not surprising that players have a hurry up mentality.

This.

When I make a character, it's an embryonic form of the REAL character I'm imagining.

My true concepts aren't usually level 20+, but they're rarely 1st level either.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I reckon that what I've got in that paragprah sets out a pretty good system. It is one in which the players "figure out the best way to reach the objective with the party's skillset and minimal risk of failure and then execute said plan, adapting to failures on the fly." It is certainly not one in which players "repetitively rolling dice to gather enough points to proceed without any plan or intend to actually work towards the goal, with everyone rolling the highest skill s/he can get away with over and over, it doesn't matter what".

My experience with Skill Challenges from my discussion a the panel with WOTC R&D as well as the skill challenges that were approved by R&D during the first year of Living Forgotten Realms and a bunch of back and forth e-mails with Chris Tulach trying to get an idea of how to write them to make sure I wasn't doing it wrong amounted to this:

WOTC couldn't make up their mind exactly how they wanted Skill Challenges to work up to the very last minute. Some of the details changed in the very last draft of the rules.

Basically, they wanted a system that could fairly measure the "difficulty" of a skill encounter so you could give proper XP out for it in the same way you give out XP based on the difficulty of the monsters you face.

So, the idea was that knowing the PCs would have to roll 10 successes at DC 18, for instance means you can figure out the mathematical probability of rolling that many successes before failing 3 times.

That's the underlying structure to them. However, how exactly you could implement that and still be fun was kind of up in the air. Because at its core, the mechanic is "Keep choosing skills and rolling them until you either succeed or fail".

So, basically we were advised to use that as the structure of the skill challenge and then beef it up with flowery description to make it seem more than that.

There appeared to be a disagreement as to whether or not skill challenges should restrict skills very much or not. One group wanted skill challenges to be a large tree of expanding choices like a huge choose your own adventure. If you started at step A and chose to use Athletics as your first skill choice you'd end up at step B and you'd be in a different place with a different context for your next skill check. If you used Acrobatics, you'd instead proceed to step C and be at a different point in the skill challenge with entirely different options. Another group seemed to want to make it extremely open ended and really simple to write into adventures. So you could write it in a really short stat block and then leave it up to the DM to insert the flowery description to make it more interesting.

The second group mostly won out and there was some text left in the DMG from the old method of doing things because of how late it was changed. This meant that the DMG description of Skill Challenges kind of tells you to do BOTH of them.

Basically, the first way of structuring it is:
You need to escape from people. You reach a barrier. How do you get past it? Athletics to jump over it? Alright, you succeed. You are now running down a street and run into a crowd. How do you get past them? Diplomacy to convince them to move? Alright, you succeed....and so on.

The second method is:
There is a magical artifact that has gone haywire. It will explode unless you can turn it off. Thievery and Arcana are the only real skills that can turn it off. Keep making skill checks until you either turn it off or it explodes when you fail. It takes 10 successes to disable it.

Technically, there is a 3rd method as well that is the same thing just a bit more open:
You need to reach the end of the forest. There's nasty monsters, bogs, traps, horrible weather, and food and water issues. How do each of you contribute to the success of the party? You use Survival to gather food and water for the party? That's one success. You use Perception to keep your eye out for monsters and traps? That's 2 successes.....alright, after 10 successes you successfully leave the other side of the forest.

I've seen all 3 of these appear in Living Forgotten Realms adventures and official WOTC published adventures. R&D had the final say on all LFR adventures for the first year so they approved all of these as valid uses.

Most official skill challenges had primary skills that would always work and secondary skills which would have higher DCs or would provide bonuses without providing a success. There was a lot of debate amongst DMs as to whether or not you should allow skills that weren't on that list. The DMG says you shouldn't say no very often but you should say no if it is out of context. Some DMs would accept the flimsiest of excuses to use other skills for successes others would not allow any that weren't on the list.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

The key is simply to make it plausible for the players and perhaps yourself.

Here's the problem. As I said previously, plausibility is determined by players...mostly by their experiences in real life.

If someone jumps 200 feet off a cliff and lands on their feet without taking damage, most people are going to say "Yeah, that doesn't seem very plausible". What are they basing that on? Well, they know that people's legs can't withstand the kind of force that they would take when falling at the speed gravity causes someone to fall at over 200 ft.

That requires a lot of assumptions. It assumes gravity works at the same speed that air resistance applies the same way, that legs are made of the same stuff as they are in real life and have the same properties of how easily they are damaged.

Even rules don't necessarily help clarify this. Someone can have 200 hitpoints and take 20 damage from that fall. Which can seem implausible to people even though the rules tell you that should be possible. Mostly because people tend to fall back to their knowledge of the real world rather than their knowledge of the rules to see if something is plausible except for the most dedicated player who has ingrained the rules as a form of physics in their mind.

 

[Celebrim]

Here's the problem. As I said previously, plausibility is determined by players...mostly by their experiences in real life.

If someone jumps 200 feet off a cliff and lands on their feet without taking damage, most people are going to say "Yeah, that doesn't seem very plausible". What are they basing that on? Well, they know that people's legs can't withstand the kind of force that they would take when falling at the speed gravity causes someone to fall at over 200 ft.

Sure. But Batman can do it. Neo from the Matrix can do it. There are plenty of settings where it would be plausible. Once they understand that we are in that sort of reality, it gets more plausible.

But, if that means that you aren't playing in the setting you wanted to play in, then you'll have to make some changes in the rules.

Incidently, I do have modified rules for falling. Although the average damage from jumping off a 200 foot cliff is a paltry 68 or so, the maximum damage for doing so even if you land on ordinary turf is 400. This is because the RAW rules on falling, though they produced on average what I wanted, did not threaten the PC's enough to make jumping from a high place a sufficiently heroic risk. When they choose to do so, there is a tension there that wouldn't be if the damage was more predictable.

It just so happens that I feel these changes are also to a certain extent more realistic as well. People can fall off a 10' ladder and die. People can also jump out of an airplane at 10,000 feet, have their parachute fail to open, and yet live. It's fairly easy to generate both results under my rules, though in some cases they would be statistically improbable by those same rules. But then, it's statistically improbable that you jump out of an airplane at 10,000 feet, have your parachute fail to open, and yet live. Improbable isn't the same as implausible. Throw in that it is realistic for a mouse to jump from an 8 story building and walk away without injury or a cat to just suffer major but perhaps not lethal injury, and my system accounts for that too.

Of course, my rules aren't for everyone or every setting. Some people would have fewer plausability concerns and so want less fiddly rules. Some people would want more lethal rules. Some people would want less lethal rules.

Even rules don't necessarily help clarify this. Someone can have 200 hitpoints and take 20 damage from that fall. Which can seem implausible to people even though the rules tell you that should be possible. Mostly because people tend to fall back to their knowledge of the real world rather than their knowledge of the rules to see if something is plausible except for the most dedicated player who has ingrained the rules as a form of physics in their mind.

I understand the concern. Rules seldom explain themselves clearly. And, provided that it really is your intention that in the setting falls of a certain height aren't threatening to heroes with 200 hit points, then the problem is again that the DM needs to communicate the hows and whys of the setting to the player who is suffering from loss of suspension of belief. If that wasn't your intention and the loss of faith in the rules is justified, you should create some coherent rules expressing your intention regarding the setting.

I find that once you express to players the reasonings behind the rules so that they realize it isn't an oversight on your part, then some of that mistrust of the rules goes away.

 

[Nagol]

<snip>


I understand the concern. Rules seldom explain themselves clearly. And, provided that it really is your intention that in the setting falls of a certain height aren't threatening to heroes with 200 hit points, then the problem is again that the DM needs to communicate the hows and whys of the setting to the player who is suffering from loss of suspension of belief. If that wasn't your intention and the loss of faith in the rules is justified, you should create some coherent rules expressing your intention regarding the setting.

I find that once you express to players the reasonings behind the rules so that they realize it isn't an oversight on your part, then some of that mistrust of the rules goes away.

When I run Champions one of the things PCs discover is a "What to do in case of..." card in their hotel rooms and what not to clarify the level of environmental dangers in the system.

In case of smoke, if you are on the 10th floor or lower, jump out the window. In case you see an open flame Do Not Approach! Back away and leave the area as quickly as possible -- consider using the window unless over the 30th floor in which case use the stairs to get low enough to jump out the window.