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Stalker's Obsidian Skill Challenge rules have something like that. Roughly speaking, a basic number of successes gives a partial victory and two extra successes gives you a total victory (with something extra).

An example challenge, based on the above: RESCUE FROM A BURNING INN Setup: The villains have barred the doors to the inn and set it on fire! The party has to rescue the other people trapped in the inn and break free. Complexity: 3 (balanced options) Level: Party level Primary Skills...

Tactical Options for skill challenges. Here is a dump of some of the tactical options I am considering for skill challenges (draft only). To balance them, I give them complexity adjustments. This is what I meant when I said "making challenge options more rigorously defined as part of the...

This does seem like it is a workable system. I agree that it is less swingy. I have a couple complaints about it, though: 1) It doesn't scale by party size. Larger parties have a better chance of winning against the same DC. It means you have to factor in party size when you pick the DC. 2)...

The big problem with the skill challenge mechanic is that it is very "swishy" (sensitive to small changes in skill level). But any multi-roll system is going to have that problem to some extent. Any small percentage advantage or penalty in a single roll will grow in significance as you make more...

Since you are looking for feedback, you probably want to add a bit to rule #7 to clarify what you mean by "alert". This is what I think you mean: 7. Enemies who aren't alert to your presence can't attack or try to spot you. At the beginning of combat, most enemies will not be alert unless they...

That's the main rationale for my "stealthy attack" rule. It is a DM's bargain between me and my rogue player. I make it easy for her to get the CA for her attacks, but more costly for her to get the defensive benefits of hiding. As a result, she uses the "stealthy attack" in almost every combat...

I'm not convinced of that. I think if you adjust the success/failure ratio for challenges to make them closer to even, you can use the same DCs for both. I agree with that. I plan to stick to and keep refining my own house rules until they get the numbers right. There are plenty of good ideas...

I've been following your work on Stealth pretty closely and like the results of what you've done so far. This is very close to what I am doing, and I plan on adopting your rules wholesale. The idea of using Displacement instead of "Pick a Square and Attack" is brilliant. I am definitely stealing...

After the errata, it seems like easy/medium/hard are relative to a completely unskilled individual. I am of the opinion that easy/medium/hard should refer to skilled but not maxed out character. In particular, one that is trained in the skill and has a decent ability bonus but not a huge number...

I agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment. Also, I think even in its broken form, the 4E challenge system has ideas in it that are quite innovative. I've looked at a lot of games, and I've found very few that included a successful non-combat system that will engage the whole group and still be...

I think folks are being a bit unfair to WotC with regards to their level of playtesting. WotC is way ahead of most of the RPG industry here. There are plenty of games that are almost unplayable as published. There are plenty of companies that pay only lip service to balance, ignore player...

Following the RAW, I think you are right. There is nothing in there that requires you to be able to see the target. I think it is an oversight, though. All the other PC abilities like this (Combat Challenge, Hunter's Quarry, Warlock Curse, etc.) require that you either hit or are able to see...

They effectively dropped the DCs by 10 when they should have only dropped them by 5. I think they fixed the DC progression, though. The increase between levels feels right to me now (+2 per 3 levels). At the moment I am planning on using the errata charts but adding +5 to all the DC.

They did lower the skill DCs, but they lowered them too much. They dropped the footnote from DMG and slashed 5 off the DCs. The net effect for skill checks is 10 off the DCs, at low levels (higher levels are about the same as they used to be). IMO, that's much too easy. Now that I've looked it...

I've looked over the Skill Challenges fixes and am not particularly happy with it. The system is "better" in the sense that having the PCs almost always succeed rather than almost always fail is an improvement for moving the game/story forward. As others pointed out, though, losing after three...

Foo. Regarding DMG 42 and Skill Challenges in general, they went too far in the direction of making things easy. Knocking 5 off the skill DCs would have been about right. Knocking 10 off is too much. They just switched it from "usually fail" to "almost always succeed", at least with single skill...

Yeah, DC-5 is better. Aid Another should be a bit easier than the base check, but DC-5 would still scale by level.

I agree with Luke. Also, I am considering creating a house rule that Aid Another for skill checks goes against the same DC as the skill check rather than DC 10. That should help keep Aid Another from being over powering.

I think you are over thinking things. I use Perception checks in one of three ways: 1) Stealth-busting (as per the rules). 2) "Are you Surprised?": Perception checks against a fixed DC to determine who can't act in the Surprise round of an ambush. 3) "Who spots the clue": Perception checks to...