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

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

One of the important things on skill challenges seem to be that the scenario you use them on must be "open-ended". There is not a single, straight path that leads to success or failure.

A negotation is the prime example. There are countless of ways where such a negotiation can go, and nobody (except maybe Lord Vetinari) knows beforehand how the final agreement is reached (and what it looks like).

A typical chase scene is also a good example. You don't have to know beforehand what the people do to catch their target or how to elude the pursuer.

If you're just looking for the poison needle on the chest, I guess there isn't really room for a skill challenge. If you're trying to climb a specific wall, there is no skill challenge involved.

Each of these skill challenges benefit from some preperation - for a social encounter, you would want the general (initial) goals of the NPCs involved, the likely goals of the PCs, and you might even have some counter-offers and counter-arguments in mind.

In a chase scene, you might want to know the general terrain, and possibly even some interesting locations to give your players some pointers what they could try. You could go without a lot less information, but this means the players will find it harder to find something appropriate to do - or the DM just has to allow anything.

 

[Benimoto]

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.

Listening to the Tome podcast mentioned earlier, confirms my suspicions about why Andy Collins mentioned that you shouldn't tie a TPK type situation to a skill check. In the podcast, Andy says that the general assumption in adventure design is that the PCs are going to win most challenges you set them up against. If you want the game to last, the chance of catastrophic failure has to be "really really rare."

Due to the way the skill checks are set up, failure is not going to be "really really rare" unless the DCs are so low that the PCs just steamroll all of them. If you want the skill challenges to matter, then the chances of failure have to be reasonably high. I would say that to keep me interested, the chances of failure might have to be 25% or higher. But of course that's way too high of a chance of failure to bet the whole campaign on.

So of course you have to keep the possibility of failure there, but because of the relatively high variability of skill challenges, you have to keep the stakes relatively low.

 

[Ahglock]

I don't think I'll like skill challenges but at the same time they seem to fit my style of GMing perfectly. I may come up with problems, but I usually don't have the solutions I kind of wait to hear what the players say and come up with a reasonable challenge for there ideas.

My basic idea is in the few hours I'm spending writing the adventure during the week, I wont come up with all the ways the world would have designed there security or whatever, so I wait I hear they plan on scaling the wall to take out the tractor beam, and I say OK what kind of security would i have for something like that, the tractor beam should be guarded but its a really tough climb so I doubt the climb would be watched to heavily, OK guards at the top of the climb at the tractor beam easy to avoid perception checks for the random guard looking over the edge scenario.

So if they come up with good rules for this style, hey great I probably can use the help, but in the back of my mind I will be screaming when i play in this style of game.

 

[Ahglock]

Listening to the Tome podcast mentioned earlier, confirms my suspicions about why Andy Collins mentioned that you shouldn't tie a TPK type situation to a skill check. In the podcast, Andy says that the general assumption in adventure design is that the PCs are going to win most challenges you set them up against. If you want the game to last, the chance of catastrophic failure has to be "really really rare."

Due to the way the skill checks are set up, failure is not going to be "really really rare" unless the DCs are so low that the PCs just steamroll all of them. If you want the skill challenges to matter, then the chances of failure have to be reasonably high. I would say that to keep me interested, the chances of failure might have to be 25% or higher. But of course that's way too high of a chance of failure to bet the whole campaign on.

So of course you have to keep the possibility of failure there, but because of the relatively high variability of skill challenges, you have to keep the stakes relatively low.

Way I figure I'd run it if I made the rules chance of failing to convince the King to help 25%, chance you fail to recognize his daughter as the princess and instead think she is a serving girl and you slap her butt while flirting with her, really, really low. Sure you can get a TPK out of it, but really you almost have to try for it.

On the other hand if the skill challenge is mountain climbing or some other inherently dangerous task I might bump the chance of a TPK up a bit, still low like two natural ones in a row low. But still possible enough I might see it, when people aren't trying to suicide themselves.

 

[Hussar]

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.

Isn't it simply bringing skill checks in line with combat though? We roll initiative when combat starts and go into combat sequence. Why not do the same thing for skill checks?

What makes skill challenges, which will net you xp, so different from combat challenges that they cannot use similar mechanics?

 

[Campbell]

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 find metagaming to be a problematic term, largely due to the value judgment usually inherit in its use and the implication that metagaming is not in fact gaming. I think we can discuss this matter without using less nuanced language.

This type of out of character communication is immensely valuable to people like me who place other priorities above immersion and it is a central tenant of a number of role playing games that I enjoy. The basic concession is that high fidelity to established characters and setting does not allows result in the most enjoyable play experience. Rather than depending on accidental enjoyment we take a more proactive approach that involves communication and spreading narrative control. This is obviously not going to be a satisfactory approach for those who prefer more immersion oriented gaming. I would advise such people to avoid skill challenges and to rely on task resolution as they previously did.

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.

I don't see why on the fly skill challenges would not be possible. I plan on using them in just such a manner on a fairly regular basis. I imagine a situation to work like this ...

• Players declare goal
• GM judges how difficult the task should be and sets the success threshold.
• Run skill challenge is normal.

That doesn't seem so difficult to me.

 

[Hussar]

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.

Just to add an additional thought - Do you declare that you will use a skill when the DM calls for initiative? Do you feel railroaded at that point in time, since trying to use a skill instead of attacking will likely be a bad idea?

 

[Celebrim]

What makes skill challenges, which will net you xp, so different from combat challenges that they cannot use similar mechanics?

'Cannot' is a very strong word. Nothing prevents you from using similar mechanics for anything at all.

I would argue that 3E is the closest D&D has ever had to a unified combat and skill resolution system. Virtually everything could be concieved as a skill with a bonus and a target difficulty and you rolled a d20 to provide the fortune mechanic. All the mechanics had the sequence, 'Proposition->Fortune->Resolution', with D&D's resolution being somewhat closer to fortune at the end in that the players described a specific action and the after fortune resolution could be as simple 'yes-no'. Third party games extended this concept further to make combat more skill like (M&M) or the notoriously independent spell subsystem more skill like (Elements of Magic).

Fortune at the end tends to support simulationism. For example, games we consider more realistic tend to let you make more concrete propositions - 'I strike at the dragon's head' rather than simply 'I attack the dragon'. The closer you get to fortune at the beginning, the closer you are getting to classic nar-play, where what the fortune is really determining is how much narrative authority you have in the scene and not what is going to happen. In narrative play, the person who gains narrative authority gets to decide what is going to happen and the players cooperate to fulfill that vision.

Superficially, this isn't going to change. In fact, its so fundamental to D&D's core gameplay that I thought it inconceivable that it would change. Everything we've heard so far would still allow you to do classic dungeon crawling where in theory you could go for hours without ever leaving a round by round simulation, mixing combat actions or skill actions as required (sometimes in the same turn) and spending concrete resources like actions, powers, and hit points to achieve goals.

But it seems that they are going to drop in a new subsystem for resolving abstract challenges using skill checks to determine something like narrative authority. In this system:

1) The NPC's don't get a turn. They are opposing the players actions with rolls of thier own. The players succeed or fail regardless of what the NPC's do because the NPC's don't do anything until we know whether the PC's succeed or fail.
2) Narrative success allows the PC's to determine the shape of the map. The secret door comes into being because you successfully made a search check. The building has a basement because you successfully made a history check. The cart pulls into the alley and blocks pursuit because you successfully made an atheletics check. This happens instead of there is a secret door you can find because you successfully made a search check.
3) There doesn't at this time appear to be unity between the skill system and the combat system. For example, it doesn't appear that the orc gaurds appear and are convienently slaughtered because you successfully made an attack check (although they could, it would be wierd). Likewise, it doesn't appear that the 'skill challenge' system is unified with the magic system (now largely unified with the combat system). You don't 'Escape Sembia' by putting the guards to sleep with a sleep spell, or at least it doesn't appear that way at this time. So unlike the traditional dungeon play, it doesn't look like a formal 'skill challenge' can alternate or combine combat and skill checks from round to round - at least not in a free form manner according to player choice. (I could design a skill challenge where say the 5th, 6th, and 8th interval of play where combat rounds, but it would be me making the choices.)

For me, I can see playing 'D&D' with nothing but skill challenges if that was your thing. I think it would feel incredibly cludgy compared to a system actually designed for that sort of thing, but I can see how it would be done and that some people would enjoy it. But I seriously doubt there is this huge untapped market of narrativist players that are suddenly going to convert to D&D. In my experience, very few players and referees can pull off this sort of thing in a sustained fashion, and my feeling is that narrativist play typically fails at either creating a story or being a good game. In some ways it is true that it is purer roleplaying than other styles of RPGs, but then so is 'playing house' and 'cops and robbers' - and I graduated from that because of the same sort of limitations I find in nar play.

 

[Celebrim]

Just to add an additional thought - Do you declare that you will use a skill when the DM calls for initiative?

No, because all that means is an NPC has decided to initiate combat. I don't have to participate, and I can respond to the NPC in the manner of my choosing. Often I am choosing to participate because, "I came to kick 'butt' and chew bubblegum, and I'm all out of bubble gum', but nothing stops me from trying to use diplomacy on my turn to talk the NPC out of it (as a player, I've done this before), using a spell to get out of the combat (ditto), or using my climb ability to evade the monster (ditto), or using my tumble skill to go by the monster to get at the treasure (one of my players).

Do you feel railroaded at that point in time, since trying to use a skill instead of attacking will likely be a bad idea?

As long as I have the freedom to make sub-optimal choices, I'm not being railroaded. If the DM can overrule my right to make what seems to him sub-optimal choices, and if I'm required in each interval of play to use a skill even though my character has other resources, then I'll feel railroaded.

 

[LostSoul]

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.

So: unless the players are challenged, instead of the characters being challenged, there's no point? (The players are being challenged in a skill challenge, just in a different way - they have to 1) have a good build, and 2) have enough creativity to apply their good skills to different situations. They are not challenged in the puzzle-solving sense, though.)

I also have no idea why you think "It's not my story at that point".

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.

The choices you made led to the skill challenge. Now we need to resolve the conflict.

The choices you made when you built your PC gave you skills of varying levels. Now you have to decide which one you are going to use.

The choice of an Easy, Normal, or Hard check is another one you have to make.

You can't make things in the game world appear where they aren't though. D&D doesn't have that sort of narrative control. Maybe Prime Time Adventures would be a better game for you, if that's what you're looking for.

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

You can't have any skill apply to all skill challenges.

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."

And "advantage" means what?

How do checks resolve situations? Does the character with the higher check convince the third party to see things his way or does the DM still decide how he sees things? Does the player need to state how he wants his successful check resolve the situation, or does the DM decide that?

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).

It tells you the outcome. It does not resolve any conflict or player goal.

[re: DM resolves conflicts, not dice]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.

It has changed. If you get a success, it is going to bring you closer to your goal; if a failure, away.

In 3e, I can climb all the walls I want, make successful checks each time, but unless I climb the right wall (as deemed by the DM), I'm not making it out of Sembia.

[re: explicitly resolving goals with skill checks]Right, but that is true of both 3rd and 4th edition. Nothing new in that.

No, it's definiately not true in 3e that the result of a skill check will resolve a goal. Look at what you wrote above: "A climb check can help you climb a wall; it can't tell you whether climbing the wall is useful."

In 4e, it is explicit that the skill check is useful. In 3e, it is not.

[re: rolling init for every thing in the dungeon]Not particularly, but I'm not sure that I have too in order to run the encounter in the more 'traditional' fashion.

If you want to have the dice and rules resolve conflicts instead of DM fiat, you'll need to do that.