D&D 5E So...Skill Challenges

[MechaPilot]

That certainly hasn't been my experience with non-4E editions.

In 3e, a wizard can cast a spell you have memorized as an action, no? That's a default rule of the game. You are assumed to be able to do that, because the rules say you can, unless your DM rules otherwise (because of circumstances).

So I mean, unless it's just universally agreed that every DM rules in the same way, which seems implausible, my general experience has been that other editions leaned in the direction of "you can do it if the DM lets you" as opposed to "You can do this" period.

You seem to be assuming that 4e flat out said you can do certain things regardless of DM opinion or disapproval. That is not at all the case, and it's not how 4e (or any other edition) has worked.

The distinction between "you can do it if the DM lets you" and "you can do what the rules say you can do, unless the DM rules otherwise" is so semantic and whisper-thin it's virtually non-existent. Both "DM, may I" and "DM judgement can override a written rule" require DM approval to do a thing, and the approval in both cases is going to be based on the DM's assessment of the situation at hand.

 

[Edwin Suijkerbuijk]

Is there a good way to use skill challenges while keeping the "just tell me what you want to do" aspect of playing D&D? I want my players to say "I swing my sword," not "I roll to hit." And I want them to say "I look around for clues," instead of "I use my perception skill."

I likes using them as montage scenes like you have in movies.

For example the players come back to the village knowing a orc raiding party will be there in about 2 hours.

nudge the players at this point hinting they can't do al things in sequence and might have to split up each taking charge of diferent parts of the preperations.
ask each player what they would do to get the town ready for the attack.

move quickly trough each player doing their part of the preperation and needed skill checks.
If checks fail they turn out not to help in the defence, the orcs easely scale the badly made barricade, and the towns people you riles up to defend the town break and flee as soon as the combat realy starts.

 

[77IM]

Don't think in terms of "skill" or "challenge." Instead, think in terms of progress and pacing -- how close are the PCs to overcoming the obstacle, and how close are they to facing failure consequences?

By far, the best example of this are the progress clocks from John Harper's excellent Blades in the Dark: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/170689/Blades-in-the-Dark-Digital-Edition-Early-Access (NOT an affiliate link )

Here is the page on progress clocks: View attachment BladesInTheDark_ProgressClocks.pdf

I'll translate some of the mechanical bits into D&D terms:

• When a PC succeeds on a skill check, tick 1, 2, or 3 segments on the clock, depending on how "effective" the PC's approach is. Default is 2. So a minimally effective action only ticks 1 segment, but highly effective action ticks 3. (This is what the page means about "Effect Level" -- it just means 1, 2, or 3 ticks for minor, standard, or major effect.)
• For bad clocks, when the PCs botch something up, you tick 1, 2, or 3 segments based on how badly they botch. Usually the PC can make a skill check to avoid this consequence.
• Often a single skill check could tick good clock on a success and a bad clock on a failure.

Basically, it is a MUCH more flexible approach to 4E-style skill challenges, while maintaining the pacing and participation benefits that skill challenges provide.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

You seem to be assuming that 4e flat out said you can do certain things regardless of DM opinion or disapproval. That is not at all the case, and it's not how 4e (or any other edition) has worked.

The distinction between "you can do it if the DM lets you" and "you can do what the rules say you can do, unless the DM rules otherwise" is so semantic and whisper-thin it's virtually non-existent. Both "DM, may I" and "DM judgement can override a written rule" require DM approval to do a thing, and the approval in both cases is going to be based on the DM's assessment of the situation at hand.

Presentation matters. It's harder for the DM to say you can't push a giant back or knock them prone when you have a power that explicitly knocks an enemy back or puts them prone, compared to when there are no rules for that sort of thing and it's all up to DM interpretation. Even if the in-game reality is the same, with a twenty-foot tall giant weighing eight-thousand pounds, the fighter with that explicit power in 4E has the expectation that this will work and the otherwise-identical fighter in 2E would not have that same expectation.

It requires more executive control for the DM to exert power in a vacuum of rules than for the DM to exert power in opposition to existing rules, even if they're making the exact same point for the exact same reasons.

 

[tomBitonti]

Hi,

As presented in 4E, skill challenges were an interesting idea for applying statistical techniques to story resolution. (They seem close to Markov Chains.) I've found them to be flawed in two particular ways: It's hard to get the numbers right. They tend to push too much into abstraction. They do seem to be a decent tool for behind the scenes decision making.

In their initial presentation in the 4E rules, they were quite broken (see "hard to get the numbers right").

Thx!
TomB

 

[Tony Vargas]

I skipped right over 3rd and 4th editions, but have just learned about skill challenges.

I've read the applicable section in the 4th edition DMG.

The early system - n successes before n failures - was broken, it actually got /easier/ to succeed at an SC the more 'complex' it got. The first errata changed it to a more fundamentally workable n successes before 3 failures, and the final version (Essentials Rule Compendium) was pretty decent. It could be easily adapted to any d20 game...

I have a bit of an idea how I might use them in my game. But they seem to rely on a player saying "I'll use diplomacy" or some such, instead of just telling the DM what he's going to do and letting the DM call for the specific Skill Check.

I've run SCs without even telling the players they were in one, and by coming out and telling them the key skills & how they might be used (but also pointing out they can try anything they can think of). Both can work, as can things in-between, it really depends on the challenge you have in mind. I've also had and seen some great successes when expanding a Skill Challenge into a sort of mini-game in itself, especially for more abstract things (one example was a political campaign), or where progress can be tracked visually (as in a race or chase scene).

That is, without the guidance from the DM saying "you need 6 successful skill checks among these three skills..." players may be floundering for what they should do.

Laying out the Challenge in the open could work quite well in 4e, with its greater player focus. In 5e, though, I'd tend to go to the first option I mentioned above, and not even revealing they're in one.

Is there a good way to use skill challenges while keeping the "just tell me what you want to do" aspect of playing D&D?

Yes! They make a fine behind-the-screen tool for the DM. Just describe the challenge that confronts the PCs, and let the players describe what they're doing to overcome it. Call for checks from each player and don't hesitate to use group checks when everyone's pitching in. Keep a tally of successes vs failures. Be sure to have in mind a minor consequence or setback for the first two failures, and think about what interesting forms failing the challenge might take.

One thing to note: 4E was huge on player empowerment.

It was, but 3e (and even late 2e) were too.

They wanted players to declare their action and do it. Not wait for the DM to give them permission to do it, or wait for the DM to resolve their action.

Not so much. 4e rules were written pretty clearly, so DM adjudication wasn't often necessary, and it did play well 'above board,' which allows the style you describe, but doesn't in any way require it. 3.x was prone to a similar phenomenon because of the general reverence for RAW. But in both cases the main impetus was just finally /having/ skills. You could actually decide what you PC would be good at, which was a huge step up from early D&D, when you had only random stats and DM judgement to go on.

"if it says you can do it, you can do it." with a DM taking a more reactionary posture to what the player just did, instead of a prescriptive posture in determining what was allowed to take place. I understand this is a big divergence from earlier editions.

It was not. There have always been rules lawyers who expect to be able to invoke a rule and have it work as written. 3e was a big step forward in that there were a lot more rules a player could specifically invoke, and that knowing them well (system mastery) could deliver a big advantage. If anything, 4e pulled back from that.

5e really pulled back from 'player empowerment' and 'returned' to DM Empowerment. But, it's one of those returns that's aiming for an idealized extreme of how a perceived golden age was, rather than for the muddier reality of 'early D&D' which was highly varied from DM to DM. FWIW.

You seem to be assuming that 4e flat out said you can do certain things regardless of DM opinion or disapproval. That is not at all the case, and it's not how 4e (or any other edition) has worked.

True. And it can't not be true, because nothing a rule book can saw or a designer can do could keep a given DM from changing things.
However, 3e & 4e created an expectation that the DM would respect the rules. Neither entirely on purpose, but both quite dramatically compared to older editions.
3.x came right out and articulated Rule 0 - then forgot about it, and presented bushels of player options. The result was a community that enshrined RAW and an attitude of entitlement that, if you got a supplement and picked an option, you should be allowed to have it, and it should work as written. Many of us resisted that (in the end, I only ran 3.0 for about six months and almost exclusively approached 3.x as a player thereafter), but it was the overriding climate at the time. One of my perennial frustrations with gaming in general became particularly pronounced in the 3.x era, IMHO: the player declaring a roll and calling out the result - with the expectation of a big number guaranteeing success.
4e was subtly different, in that system was better balanced & more clearly presented, so there wasn't this impetus to use the RAW because you could manipulate it for an extreme advantage, nor to have cutting debates about which interpretation was really As Written, but merely to use the rules as-is because they mostly worked.


5e gets completely away from both other modern editions in being strongly DM-focused. A player really shouldn't call out a skill and make a roll, because it's the DM's place to call for checks and rule what proficiency might apply and set the DC. There's very few tables of DCs for a player to familiarize himself with. No 3.5-style Diplomancer build, not because you can't optimize for a fairly high CHA check, but because there's no fixed DC for making an openly hostile gnoll into your helpful new friend.

 

[MechaPilot]

Presentation matters.

Of course presentation matters. Just look at the god-awful spell mess we have in 5e. No easy-reference stat block to consult during play. You want that? Shell out more money for spell cards and like it.

It's harder for the DM to say you can't push a giant back or knock them prone when you have a power that explicitly knocks an enemy back or puts them prone, compared to when there are no rules for that sort of thing and it's all up to DM interpretation.

It may encourage the player to ask why she can't use the ability or why it doesn't work as stated in that instance, which may therefore require the DM to actually explain herself a bit, but that should not be hard if the DM actually has a reason for the ruling. And, a DM generally should provide a very brief rationale for a ruling so as not to appear arbitrary or capricious. If the player is not satisfied with the DM's rationale, they can discuss it away from the table.

Even if the in-game reality is the same, with a twenty-foot tall giant weighing eight-thousand pounds, the fighter with that explicit power in 4E has the expectation that this will work and the otherwise-identical fighter in 2E would not have that same expectation.

If the player of that fighter has the expectation that all powers will always work as stated, the player is mistaken and clearly hasn't read the 4e PHB very well, because it explicitly states the DM can have powers not work or be unusable because of in-game circumstances.

It requires more executive control for the DM to exert power in a vacuum of rules than for the DM to exert power in opposition to existing rules, even if they're making the exact same point for the exact same reasons.

It requires the same amount of control: the control of the DM approving or disapproving the declared action for (presumably justifiable) reasons. Alternately, one could argue it requires more executive control to override a stated rule than to invent a rule in a vacuum.

 

[Jeffrey Malcolmson]

[...] 3e & 4e created an expectation that the DM would respect the rules. Neither entirely on purpose, but both quite dramatically compared to older editions.
3.x came right out and articulated Rule 0 - then forgot about it, and presented bushels of player options. The result was a community that enshrined RAW and an attitude of entitlement that, if you got a supplement and picked an option, you should be allowed to have it, and it should work as written. Many of us resisted that (in the end, I only ran 3.0 for about six months and almost exclusively approached 3.x as a player thereafter), but it was the overriding climate at the time. One of my perennial frustrations with gaming in general became particularly pronounced in the 3.x era, IMHO: the player declaring a roll and calling out the result - with the expectation of a big number guaranteeing success.
4e was subtly different, in that system was better balanced & more clearly presented, so there wasn't this impetus to use the RAW because you could manipulate it for an extreme advantage, nor to have cutting debates about which interpretation was really As Written, but merely to use the rules as-is because they mostly worked.


5e gets completely away from both other modern editions in being strongly DM-focused. A player really shouldn't call out a skill and make a roll, because it's the DM's place to call for checks and rule what proficiency might apply and set the DC. There's very few tables of DCs for a player to familiarize himself with. No 3.5-style Diplomancer build, not because you can't optimize for a fairly high CHA check, but because there's no fixed DC for making an openly hostile gnoll into your helpful new friend.

This is just a conflict of play style, and a really old one at that. D&D has seen debates of this flavor since it was first sold as pamphlets. Ultimately, none of us can really change the underlying attitudes which cause the disagreement.

Some people feel the game must be subject to its original form, and deviation from that form, even if self-justified, should be done only to preserve the spirit of its original form.

Others feel that a game can be shaped and molded at will and on a whim, original spirit and authorial intent be damned, specifically because such flexibility is self-justified by the form the game took.

D&D is neither extreme, it is somewhere in the limbo in between, and very few peoples attitudes line up perfectly with that ambiguity. In particular, people who dislike ambiguity tend to get the most upset by it on either side. But the ambiguity of the rules' authority as opposed to the DM's authority is simply the true nature of the game. It's supposed to be ambiguous, so that the people playing the game can adapt it to suit their collective values.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

It may encourage the player to ask why she can't use the ability or why it doesn't work as stated in that instance, which may therefore require the DM to actually explain herself a bit, but that should not be hard if the DM actually has a reason for the ruling. And, a DM generally should provide a very brief rationale for a ruling so as not to appear arbitrary or capricious. If the player is not satisfied with the DM's rationale, they can discuss it away from the table.

In my experience on both sides of the table, players become frustrated if they can't predict how the rules are going to be applied. Even if they respect the DM's right to adjudicate such situations, it affects their ability to engage with the game and the world, and a DM who needs to make such rulings frequently will adversely impact the enjoyment of the game for everyone at the table.

Both 3E and 4E are presented in such a way as to minimize the need for DM adjudication, as a means of empowering the players by letting them know (with reasonable certainty) how events are likely to play out. That's why fighters have codified powers in 4E - so the players can easily understand the mechanics associated with the narrative and don't have to guess about what unknown logic the DM is operating from. Even though the book explicitly acknowledges that everything is subject to DM adjudication, and may not always work as advertised, it still sets up the expectation that it will generally work unless the DM takes positive action to override it.

It requires the same amount of control: the control of the DM approving or disapproving the declared action for (presumably justifiable) reasons.

It always takes more effort to do something than to do nothing. It requires a greater amount of conviction to oppose the establishment than to go with the flow. You don't need a reason to follow the rules, but you need a reason to change the rules, and that reason needs to be strong enough to persuade you to put in the effort required to do so.

If they really expected the DM to invest a lot of effort into adjudicating every power at the table, to carefully weigh whether or not it really makes sense in any given situation, then they wouldn't have bothered codifying all of the powers in the first place. Instead, they created a bunch of unique powers, and stated that it's perfectly fine for you to change the narrative associated with them as long as you didn't change their mechanical functionality too much. (Presumably, the altered narrative would then be used as a basis for the DM's adjudication on whether or not it still worked as written in any given situation.)

 

[Uchawi]

A skill challenge a great DM tool to add another layer to the game that did not exist in the past. It makes you think beyond just monsters, traps and ad-hoc role playing. The hard part is making it transparent and placing it seamlessly into the setting, which is the same challenge when using monsters, traps, etc. It is just easier to work in with less dimensions, so it will add complexity. Good Luck.