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I still contend that you need Superior Cover or Total Concealment as well as a hidden status in order to be non-targetable (TWYCS or in your rules, the displacement option). If not, powers that grant ordinary Concealment, such as a Warlock's Shadow Walk, become nearly as good as invisibility to...

I am putting together a one-shot adventure for a convention with pre-generated 3rd level characters. They have 3 magic items each, per the recommendations under Starting at a Higher Level on DMG 143. That seems to be about right. I think the characters would also have some healing potions, but...

I think this is the kernel of what you are trying to get to: nerfing TWYCS with regards to Stealth in the RAW, something that I agree is necessary for Stealth to be balanced and playable. If so, I think there is more straightforward path to get to what you want. If you look at the Stealth...

That's easy. I let the "active" character roll and the "passive" character takes 10. If the Thug was Bluffing and the PC didn't know it, the PC takes 10. If the player say "there is something fishy about this guy; I want to make an Insight check to see if he is scamming us", then the player...

My basic suggestion is that a combined combat/challenge encounter is just too complicated to throw at players new to the game, especially if this is the very first encounter you are putting them through. I think you should pick one or the other. I think combat is a better kick-off than a skill...

I stand corrected. :) The rules on PHB25 only talk about check results, not rolls. It only indicates you are comparing one result to another, not one roll to another. On PH179, the rules state that the result of a passive check comes from taking 10 (10 + skill). So, passive checks have a...

I know you are asking for help with the skill challenge part, but my advice is not to use it at all. Just take the skill challenge out, keep the rest and the encounter should be fine. You have a party new to 4E. You are going to want them to focus on learning the combat rules. You already give...

Rather than defining a new class of spells, why don't you create a fast-cast system that applies to *all* rituals. That way you don't have to go through and cheery-pick which ones can and cannot be fast-cast. You also don't have to worry about rituals from new game books. I think it won't break...

It's not an unusual mechanic and not hard to add as a house rule. The new World of Darkness rules gives you XP for playing your flaws. I think the Shadows of Yesterday RPG has a similar mechanic. The 2nd edition of Spycraft gave you XP for playing out a personal subplot.

Some Comments #4: Several of the examples of "opposed checks" on PH25 involved a rolled value (an attack) against a fixed value (Reflex Defense). I think you can safely argue that the "opposed check" between Stealth and Perception on PH188 is an active Stealth check against a passive Perception...

Cover + Stealth is the best way to get CA at range. All but the most conservative interpretation of the Stealth rules makes it pretty easy to get ranged CA unless the battlefield is completely open. My rogue rarely has a problem with it. She does prefer to get in close, though, because her...

I know we see about two of these a week, but here is another attempt to house rule stealth to make it balanced and playable. I hope it is both simple and close to the RAI, but that's a judgement call. Here is a quick summary of the basics of you don't want to wade through the details: 1) I...

That's close to how I am running it at the moment as well. I think that applying TWYCS rule only for characters hidden behind Total Concealment/Superior Cover is both consistent with the RAW and eliminates a lot of the problems with Stealth. Letting stealthed characters behind normal...

Your number seem reasonably sound to me, but I think you are making things more complicated than you need to be. I think you can have a single chart with Easy/Moderate/Hard. If you have a check that specialist would face, make it Moderate or Hard. If you have a check that the whole party will...

I admit that "forced rolls" isn't the right way to do things. So far my players haven't figured out that this is what I am doing, so they don't mind so much. Hindering the party's progress isn't much fun, but neither is sitting around twiddling your thumbs while somebody else does something...

I am embarrassed to admit that I completely missed that section. I looked it over today and it turns out to be very close to what I intended to (a "short" challenge involving a few of the players).

This assumes the PCs get to pick their fights. If so, why not just have a single kobold minion walk up every 5 minutes and earn 2400 XP per day? The DM picks the players opponents and the XP budget for encounter creation does a reasonably good job at defining balanced fights.

I agree that Stealth is one of the most messed-up rule sets in 4E and needs fixing. It's nowhere near as bad as 3E grapple. I've been able to get Stealth to work with a couple house rules to tide me over until it gets an official fix. My house rules for 3E grapple were "You can't grapple; the...

I just realized I didn't respond to this more rules-oriented part of your post. You get all of your players to roll by requiring them all to roll. Just say any character that doesn't roll counts as an automatic failure. I don't have an issue with this: not everyone is going to be good at...

I guess your experience differs from mine. For my group, challenges have been working fairly well, more or less as written, once I massaged the numbers and added a few more options to give the party some choices. I think something like this could work just a well in the context of the existing...