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One of the basic design objectives of the skill challenge system, as described in designers notes, is that everyone should be involved. This is manifestly not true in the current rules: having anyone but your best problem-solver involved in a challenge is actively harmful. In addition, skill...

It lets you use marking with ranged attacks, reach attacks, and charges.

This came up Keep on the Shadowfell (I may have made other errors, but it's irrelevant to the question at hand): I was playing the dragonborn paladin and hit the gnome sneak, who vanished. I then said I was going to use paladin's challenge to mark him, which got me a funny look from the DM, but...

Yes (and I agree with others that they overcorrected), but you're missing a point: those skill DCs are not for static tasks. Those skill DCs are the DCs you should use when you design a task you expect to be difficult for the PCs, not the DCs you should use when the PCs decide to do something...

Another thread gave me this idea, which I tried to polish for a bit before writing up. It has been mentioned that you can do D&D 4th edition without merchants; just use found items, residuum, and enchant item. This still, however, requires characters to get a fair amount of cash, and sometimes...

The hard part about duration tracking is effects that end on the turn of someone other than the target of the effect. Possibly assign each character his own chit color, so at the end of a character's turn go around and remove any markers with that chit color that weren't placed this turn. Or...

A lot of the problems with skill challenges don't have anything to do with the DCs; they have to do with the actual mechanic being somewhat dull. What makes combat mechanically interesting (as opposed to interesting from a roleplaying standpoint) is the existence of relevant choices (do I try...

Combat challenges aren't very variable -- one that's 3 levels too low (-2 DC) is a walkover, one that's 3 levels too high (+2 DC) is very hard, one that's 6 levels too high (+4 DC) is a party wipe. However, a PC party is unlikely to have a lot of variance in its ability to beat a combat...

Hm. I feel a temptation to have condition counters rather than having to write down and erase conditions.

The difficulty increase is actually +2 per 3 levels, which is somewhat closer to the real curve (without spending any feats or powers, going from 1-30 gets you +16 on a skill linked to a secondary stat, +19 on a skill linked to a primary), though skill enhancement items are a rather obvious...

While there is a special move, crawl, for moving while prone, I can't find any evidence that you can't take a standard move or shift while prone. Am I missing something? One offhand thought is to add to the description of Prone: "+1 per square to movement costs while prone".

Oddly enough, if you look at things like attribute bonuses, zombie rotters appear to be level 1. The easiest fix is to ignore the "level 3" statement and call them level 1, at which point they're at least competitive with decrepit skeletons, though skeletons probably still win because of the...

Well, not all square contain ground. Also, some powers can only target unoccupied squares, and in some cases it may be worth emphasizing the fact that you can target an unoccupied square.

Is it all adjacent enemies, or all adjacent targets? Because your friend is still adjacent to the pebble. Assuming it reads enemies, sure, targeting the ground is legal.

Remember, a staff counts as a melee weapon in hand, and thus allows opportunity attacks and flanking. This is not an enormously potent benefit, but it's non-zero. For a wand or orb wizard to do the same thing, they would need to wield a weapon in their primary hand and an implement in their off...

I would allow any PC to take a feat to get a +1 shield bonus to AC with a staff, and I would rule that a staff wizard has that feat. I can't see any easy abuses for that rule (in fact, I can't see anyone ever bothering to take the feat). The encounter power, however, I would call magical.

Nah. Sacrifices aren't for battle magic, they're for ritual magic. Consider this house rule: Sacrifices and Creatures as Components Certain creatures are valuable as sacrifices, or have components that are magically useful, and can be used to power ritual magic. A creature usable as a general...

If you're willing to look at longer duration effects: Wall of Ice can be made to surround someone, damaging them every turn; at least one square must be destroyed (two squares if Large) to get out. If it takes, say, 3 melee attacks to do 50 damage, that's a total of 12d6 + 3*Int +...

Aside from the complexity, you're likely to get a very swingy fight, because PC attacks are extremely front loaded, and NPCs, as they don't have multiple encounters per day, don't need to conserve dailies. Thus, initiative becomes critical, and you're likely to see: Round 1: fire off daily...

NPCs don't get healing surges and action points, and also aren't statted up quite like PCs (they don't get as many powers).