D&D 4E 4e skill system -dont get it.

[Mallus]

I think it will require the DM to say, "This is a skill challenge" and "This is what your goal is".

I think it will require the DM and players to agree on the stakes/goal.

 

[LostSoul]

Doesn't that seem metagamey? As a DM I have no intention of communicating with my players on that level. As a player, I have no interest in playing a through scenario where the DM has selected how I will approach the scenario. I'd feel railroaded. My natural rebellious nature would tend to respond to any proclamation of "This is a skill challenge.", with, "I draw my sword." The notion of a 'skill challenge' works better I think in a system where everything that a player can do is just another skill and every event is just another scene.

I would also like my players to be able to create 'skill challenges' on the fly simply by approaching the problem as something to be overcome with skill.

Nope, it doesn't seem metagamey to me. I may have a high tolerance for that sort of thing, as long as it's backed up by description.

Anyway, I agree with you - I'd rather the players were able to initate skill challenges themselves, setting their own goals. As Mallus points out above, it will require agreement from the group. Players who are not interested in the goal of the challenge might just give it a pass (though, XP...). I also see a lot of groups allowing players to initiate skill challenges in most situations, with DM approval.

I think the text will say that the authority to initiate lies with the DM.

But that's just it. As a player I have no interest in how my 'skill check' is interacting with the situation. I only want to know how my character is interacting with the situation.

Maybe I should have said "resolves" instead of "interacts with". That is a difference between editions; skill checks in 3e don't resolve situations. They might, but they might not. It's not explicit.

Wow. So ill concieved plans should never be allowed to occur?

I think that ill-conceived plans will show up in two ways:

• Failure on a skill challenge - because of the difficulty of the challenge, or the PC's abilities are not suited to that challenge. The suitability of the plan is variable until success or failure is determined.
• Play developing into a situation where the skill challenge the PCs have to face isn't one the PCs are built to handle. e.g. A party with few or low social skills on a diplomatic mission; a party built for brute force and not stealth trying to sneak; a party with lots of street-smarts but little academic knowledge trying to research ancient secrets; etc.

This gets to be a problem when you combine highly descriptive language with non-abstract environments. The more specific your language, the more likely it is in an concrete environment that I know that the plan doesn't contribute to your success. I know that the murder weapon isn't in the pantry.

I think that telling the players "Searching in the pantry isn't going to help" is fine - otherwise you end up with "pixel bitching". (Hell, I'd say, "The murder weapon isn't in the pantry, it's in the kitchen. Want to search there?")

Or, you could use the results of the skill check to colour description. Success? "You search the pantry, and you don't find the murder weapon. Frustrated, you head to the kitchen to get a cold drink. When you open the freezer to get some ice, you spot a glint of steel. It's the murder weapon!"

Searching thier doesn't contribute to your success in finding out how killed Mr. Peabody except in the sense of being one of hundreds of places you can elimenate from consideration - the problem you are complaining about in 3rd edition.

That problem doesn't exist with the skill challenge in 4e; if Search isn't going to help, the DM will tell you Search is an inappropriate skill to use. Or so I imagine.

Wow. That is a very narrow and legalistic reading of the rules. So, you are saying that I can get them to stop fighting with Bluff, by getting them to believe that they are friends even though I don't myself believe it, but not by convincing them to be friends with Diplomacy?

That's what the rules say! Don't blame me, I didn't write them.

Not in my campaign.

That's cool. I don't think we're talking about personal home games, just what's in the rules. (i.e. That's not RAW but would make a good house rule)

But is this true in the general case, or is this just a problem with diplomacy (and specifically your interpretation of it). If for example, I roll a 100 on my climb check would I have no idea whether or not I could climb the roughened stone wall?

It's true in the general case. A Climb check will determine how well/how fast you climb the wall. If that's your goal, great, it will resolve that. What it won't resolve, however, is if you can Escape from Sembia by climbing the rooftops - the DM does that. Or if you pass the test of manhood of the Bear Tribe - the DM does that.

The skill challenge sets that explicit goal: Climb the rocky cliffs of doom and pass the Bear Tribe's test of manhood. Now we know, because it's explicit, that my Climb check is going to contribute to success in that goal.

Suppose the dungeon is a literal donjon, and the PC's are trying to escape. <snip> The PC decides to use his 'Theivery' to open the door, hoping to contribute to the parties success total. The DM knows that the door can be opened, but that it does nothing to advance the plan because as soon as the PC's are discovered missing, the whole complex will be searched. It's a 'wasted turn' unless the DM changes the description of the donjon to accomodate the turn of events - that is to say, he renders the concrete location abstract and morphable.

Ways to handle this that I can think of right now:

• The DM says that a Theivery check to pick the door is not going to contribute to success (because the party will be found missing), so he doesn't allow the roll.
• Whether or not the PCs are discovered missing in time is variable, and could be a result of success/failure on this single skill check. A success: the PCs slip out between guard breaks. A failure: they're spotted trying to open the door, and the alarm is raised. (Or, in a neat way to handle "PCs are cool even if their rolls suck", the door is picked but they are found missing and the alarm goes out.)
• The DM says, "You don't need to roll for that - you just pick the lock. It won't help, though, because you'll be discovered missing and the alarm will be raised. What are you going to try out now?"

I do think that, when you get down into the round-by-round grid level, the problems I'm talking about go away. I don't think skill challenges are meant to replace that kind of play; but I don't think a lot of situations can be resolved that way. Do you really want to track the init, movement, and action for each and every guard in the dunjon each round?

 

[Mallus]

Suppose the dungeon is a literal donjon, and the PC's are trying to escape. Seems like a decent oppurtunity for a 'skill challenge', as the PC's are presumably poorly armed to begin with.

It's a decent opportunity to use the skill challenge rules if the participants are okay with playing the encounter in the abstract.

If the DM is going to use a pre-drawn map, where the game space is analogous to real physical space, and not just a treated as a narrative construct, then the scene doesn't look suitable for the skill challenge mechanics.

A skill challenge donjon scenario would invert the order of events in your example. The PC's would only come to a locked door after failing a skill check. The dead end would represent a result.

 

[kennew142]

Campaigns should never end in TPK's either, but sometimes there has to be the risk of it. Failure can't always consist in 'not getting your reward'. I met play the game that way for 5 year olds, but this isn't 'Fluffy Bunnies & Lollipops'.

I agree 100%. Characters must risk the consequences of failure. I can't see the fun otherwise. I won't even run the game without risk of failure for my kids (they're 8).

I'm hoping what Andy Collins meant was that skill challenges shouldn't necessarily be designed in such a way that failure equals death or being thrown into an oubliette forever. In the case of the failed diplomacy with the king, the results can be pretty bad. Maybe you accidentally insulted or severely disrepected him. You could be thrown out of the palace and made persona non gratia. That avenue for solving the dilemma (whatever it is) is now closed, and you have to come up with a different approach.

If the situation were so bad that the characters would be killed, they should at least get a chance to fight their way out of the palace, possibly becoming outlaws as result. I don't think a skill challenge should result in death per se, but it could lead to combat that could lead to death.

 

[kennew142]

Why should there be a chance of something happening that you never want to happen?

Everyone's taste is different, but I don't enjoy playing (or GMing) a game where there is no risk of failure. If the PCs fail horribly, you end up with a TPK. I've never had one, but the possibility has always been there. It will be the same IMC in 4e.

 

[Mallus]

If the PCs fail horribly, you end up with a TPK.

Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before...

A TPK represents one kind of catastrophic failure. It is by no means the only kind.

 

[Celebrim]

It's a decent opportunity to use the skill challenge rules if the participants are okay with playing the encounter in the abstract.

If Lost Soul's description is accurate, that is my impression too. Which means that I'm wrong; the skill challenge rules really are narrativist constructs.

If the DM is going to use a pre-drawn map, where the game space is analogous to real physical space, and not just a treated as a narrative construct, then the scene doesn't look suitable for the skill challenge mechanics.

But obviously (well maybe not, but so far no one has suggested otherwise) traditional style dungeon crawls are going to be a major element of D&D play. (If they aren't, then I think the last people claiming that 4e isn't the largest rules change in D&D's history will be won over.) This means that the 'skill challenge' mechanics will constitute a wholly independent subsystem which isn't particularly relevant to the core experience of play, especially given how the designers are pushing '4dventure', the battle grid, every player effective in combat at all times, ect. and actually creating a core experience of play by design.

A skill challenge donjon scenario would invert the order of events in your example. The PC's would only come to a locked door after failing a skill check. The dead end would represent a result.

This pushes D&D's of action resolution almost all the way to fortune at the beginning. Since D&D normally has been resolved closer to fortune at the end, this is pretty jarring.

 

[Celebrim]

I think that telling the players "Searching in the pantry isn't going to help" is fine - otherwise you end up with "pixel bitching". (Hell, I'd say, "The murder weapon isn't in the pantry, it's in the kitchen. Want to search there?")

I don't see a major difference mechanically between "Searching in the panty isn't going to help.", and "You search the pantry thuroughly but don't find anything." except in cases where the PC's have extremely limited time. And if they do have extremely limited time, "Searching in the pantry isn't going to help" is jarring as a response. It renders the challenge rather pointless. It's not my story at that point, its the narrators and I'm barely along for the ride just so I can pick up the dice. In fact, I'm barely narrating my own character at that point. I might as well let the dice pick my dialogue.

Or, you could use the results of the skill check to colour description. Success? "You search the pantry, and you don't find the murder weapon. Frustrated, you head to the kitchen to get a cold drink. When you open the freezer to get some ice, you spot a glint of steel. It's the murder weapon!"

In that case, I barely see why I'm making choices. None of my choices as a player are particularly meaningful. Either the murder weapon appears in the pantry as soon as I search there, or else I don't actually search the pantry and end up in the freezer instead. Meanwhile, presumably the monster is whereever I didn't search waiting for its appropriate moment on stage. As a player, I'd wonder what the narrator needed me for.

That problem doesn't exist with the skill challenge in 4e; if Search isn't going to help, the DM will tell you Search is an inappropriate skill to use. Or so I imagine.

Well, not my DM. After about two sessions of that, I'd stop showing up.

That's what the rules say! Don't blame me, I didn't write them.

I'm not sure that's exactly what the rules say though. Not as much time is spent on diplomacy as persuasion as I'd like, but explicitly the srd says:

"In negotiations, participants roll opposed Diplomacy checks, and the winner gains the advantage. Opposed checks also resolve situations when two advocates or diplomats plead opposite cases in a hearing before a third party."

It's not perfectly clear what this means, but it would seem like resolving a dispute amongst two NPC's was 'negotiations'. It is also implicit in the notion of influencing NPC attitudes that NPC inclined favorably to you will act in a helpful manner. So, it would seem like if both NPC's are friendly to you, that you could persuade them not to fight. It would be extremely wierd to allow intimidate and bluff to allow persuasion (which both explicitly do through different mechanisms), but not diplomacy.

It's true in the general case.

While I agree that the diplomacy rules are badly written, I don't agree that that is true in the general case that the skill rules don't tell you what the outcome of a skill check is. A climb check tells you whether you can climb the wall. A wilderness lore check tells you if you can find food, or track an outlaw. Properly written a diplomacy check ought to be able to tell you whether you can persuade two combatants not to fight (at least for the time being).

What it won't resolve, however, is if you can Escape from Sembia by climbing the rooftops - the DM does that.

Agreed, but I'm not entirely sure that has changed. A climb check can help you climb a wall; it can't tell you whether climbing the wall is useful. You are claiming however that if a climb check can't help you 'Escape from Sembia', that the DM will tell you before hand, and that is indeed new.

Or if you pass the test of manhood of the Bear Tribe - the DM does that.

What is the test of manhood of the Bear Tribe?

The skill challenge sets that explicit goal: Climb the rocky cliffs of doom and pass the Bear Tribe's test of manhood. Now we know, because it's explicit, that my Climb check is going to contribute to success in that goal.

Right, but that is true of both 3rd and 4th edition. Nothing new in that.

Do you really want to track the init, movement, and action for each and every guard in the dunjon each round?

Not particularly, but I'm not sure that I have too in order to run the encounter in the more 'traditional' fashion.

 

[kennew142]

Stop me if you think that you've heard this one before...

A TPK represents one kind of catastrophic failure. It is by no means the only kind.

I'm not claiming that a TPK is the only bad outcome that can result from catastrophic failure. In all fairness to Celebrim, it's pretty clear that he isn't making that claim either. What I'm saying is that I do not enjoy games that do not have a possibility for TPK. I don't want the GM to change things behind the scenes to change the story to invalidate the results of my failures. It may not be true for every player, but I don't want my failures undermined any more than I want my successes undermined.

I have no problem with a lesser failure, if the story will logically allow it. Just because the ice monster knocks you out, it doesn't mean that it kills you while you're down. It is just as reasonable for you to wake up later in its frozen larder.

However, some stories don't lend themselves to this sort of outcome. If you have to stop the insane cultists before they can cause the volcano you're in to explode, it makes very little sense for you to wake up. The same occurs if you are trying to stop the manifestation of Azathoth and you fail.

As far as my gaming tastes go, softballing a scenario is just as bad as being a killer GM. That's why I've expressed my opinion as just that - opinion. I've never claimed that it's wrong if other folks enjoy a different style of play - just that its not the sort of game I enjoy.

 

[Mallus]

IWhich means that I'm wrong; the skill challenge rules really are narrativist constructs.

I think so. But don't quote me on that. I always lose when I play 'pin the meaning on the Forge-ism'. I believe I understand what a 'narrativist construct' is, but I could be wrong...

But obviously (well maybe not, but so far no one has suggested otherwise) traditional style dungeon crawls are going to be a major element of D&D play.

Yeah, I'm not sure where the designers are going with the skill challenge mechanic. I like it, but I don't run dungeon crawls. Skills challenges look like they'll be a perfect fit for the more open genre-blending action-lit emulation that makes up the bulk of my games. Whether the inclusion of the skill challenge framework implies a move away from the dungeon crawls, who knows? About all we can say is that the new mechanic isn't suited for them, or at least produces a radically different result.

Since D&D normally has been resolved closer to fortune at the end, this is pretty jarring.

It is. I think you're on to something when you talk call the new skill stuff a 'wholly independent subsystem', one that most user won't apply to the core gameplay experience, which, when you think about it, puts it on par with skill systems of every prior edition, when you think about it.