A discussion of Keith Baker's post regarding the Skill Challenge system

[Lord Zardoz]

Ok, I just read the article.

On the one hand, I understand the reasoning that Skill Challenges are meant to be at least as hard as combat. I can also buy into the reasoning that the DC's assume the players have Utility powers and feats selected specifically to help with skill challenges.

On the other hand, I find it to be a very worrying thing that someone who worked on the 4th edition of the game feels the need to add house rules to his game aimed at making such challenges easier to accomplish.

Now, at the core of it, I like the system. And unlike a other things that may have been broken, the easiest fix is one that does not cause problems for the rest of the game. It is neither hard nor especially intrusive to use lower skill DC's in a skill challenge.

In any case, the suggestion that the skill challenges should be difficult enough for the players to make them dedicate feat and power selections towards making them easier is perfectly valid and one that must be considered in any criticism of the system.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Mouseferatu]

On the other hand, I find it to be a very worrying thing that someone who worked on the 4th edition of the game feels the need to add house rules to his game aimed at making such challenges easier to accomplish.

Why does this keep coming up, even though it's been debunked both in the journal and earlier in the thread.

Keith Baker did not work on the 4E core books.

 

[xechnao]

This is the thread I am talking about here that got posted here at enworld:

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=222372&page=1&pp=15

 

[Hellcow]

If Mr. Baker is not a 4e designer, why are we debating his post?

I have to admit, I was wondering the same thing. It's always fun to see my name in thread titles, but the fact of the matter is that I'm not any sort of authority on the subject. The intention of my post was NOT "You're all wrong! Skill challenges are perfect!" - but rather, "I've been having a great time with skill challenges, my players haven't been failing 85% of the time, and this might explain why." If anyone finds the journal entry useful, that's great... but it's not supposed to wipe away the controversy, and hardly seems worthy of debate on its own.

With that said, two things.

Basically when the DM is saying you can use aid another or not he's telling you if you can beat this challenge or not.

Actually, I usually don't have people use Aid Another as part of a challenge. There's lots of situations where it doesn't make sense. We're in a chase scene, and for my action, I'll... Aid your Athletics check? Am I getting up behind you and pushing? In general I prefer to make people do their own actions as opposed to just helping, among reasons because I prefer to encourage the party where three people have some skill at Diplomacy instead of having the one uber-diplomat who makes all of the actual rolls. But I like having a game where skill challenges do play an important role, and where the rogue may be better off taking Master of Deceit than just jumping for Tumble.

Second, on regarding the idea that I'm saying it doesn't work without house rules and serious tweaking... well, I'm guilty on the house rules, because I've ALWAYS used the action point rule. I'm an Eberron DM. In Eberron, action points allowed you to get that extra push to hit a hard target number. Furthermore, the point of skill challenges is that they should feel like encounters in their own right - so reserving action points for combat seems like a real waste. So yes, I've always used that rule and there's no doubt in my mind that it's made a huge impact on things. I ran a game today involving two important skill challenges, and action points were the key to one of them.

So the house rules I agree with. But "Serious Tweaking"? Not so much. Everything else I mention is simply about designing interesting elements into an encounter. As it stands, the examples skill challenges include examples of actions that can be taken - both secondary and primary - hitting the full range of target DCs, and actions that change the target DCs or open up new options. The idea of saying that a successful Nature check drops Intimidate DCs to Easy isn't "serious tweaking" - it's just the reverse of the Interrogation example where an Intimidate failure raises other DCs to hard. And as I say in the post, I view skill challenges like combat. If you don't add in interesting terrain, hazards, a range of monster roles, things will get boring. What makes a skill challenge interesting to me IS the fact that every Diplomacy challenge is not identical. I don't view that as "serious tweaking" any more than deciding to use kobolds instead of goblins in a fight; it's me as a DM changing things around to make the encounter different from the one that came before, and to make the players think things through. But hey, just my opinion.

I DO think that partial success is a vital element to skill challenges - that as long as you don't HAVE to win to achieve something, the difficulty isn't insurmountable. An adventure I've run about 10 times now has a skill challenge at the end, and it's probably been something like a 20/50/30 split on full failure/partial success/full success. But the story is designed with that in mind, and even full failure is something with interesting dramatic consequences. While the DMG doesn't actually spell out partial success as an option, I never saw it as a house rule or something I was changing; to me it just seems like a logical part of the system.

In any case, just to say once and for all, I'm not MR. Baker, I'm Keith Baker. I'm not a 4E designer. I'm not CHALLENGING people's mathematical breakdowns or saying that the problems are all in your mind; I'm just saying what I've done, and that my groups' have been having fun with it so far (and hey, full success on the challenges today... albeit with the action point rule). People have posted interesting ideas on the LJ, and I may adopt some of them (though I played today the same way I always have). And I'm certainly interested in seeing what changes WotC makes.

 

[Andur]

Always nice to have the word from the cow's mouth, Mr. Keith.

Nice post btw, with nice "explanation" of your views and DM fiats.

 

[fanboy2000]

I've taken a long look at the skill challenge system recently, and I think that easiest way to adjust the difficulty of a skill challenge isn't, ironically, to adjust the Difficulty Class, but to adjust the ration of failures to successes. Unfortunately, all the complexities on listed on page 72 have a success/failure ration of 2:1. But sense you have an approximately 50% chance of succeeding on any individual check most levels with a skill your good at, most players will see the few failures they are allowed before they see the many successes they have to get.

Adjusting DCs doesn't do as much as it intuitively should because the players are rolling the die more times. The more times a player rolls a die, the close the results move towards the average.

At the heart of the skill challenge design seems to be a middle ground where failure has consequences, but isn't the end of story. Consider, if a player can't fail at all the player only rolls the die once, a single skill check. If the player can fail lots of times, no skill check is needed, the player simply takes 10. If the player can only fail small number of times, then a skill challenge is, I think, in order.

The skill challenge complexities, as suggested, are highly failure intolerant. Fortunately, the DMG addresses this:

You can also adjust the level of the challenge by reducing the number of failures needed in half, and increase the level of the challenge by two.

Now, the DMG doesn't say that you can make a challenge easier by increasing the number of failures allowed by the challenge, but that seems to be implied. I would imagine that say, multiplying the number of failures allowed in the skill challenge by 1.5 would get the system closer to the 50%-80% win rate some people desire.

 

[Dave Turner]

In any case, just to say once and for all, I'm not MR. Baker, I'm Keith Baker. I'm not a 4E designer. I'm not CHALLENGING people's mathematical breakdowns or saying that the problems are all in your mind; I'm just saying what I've done, and that my groups' have been having fun with it so far (and hey, full success on the challenges today... albeit with the action point rule). People have posted interesting ideas on the LJ, and I may adopt some of them (though I played today the same way I always have). And I'm certainly interested in seeing what changes WotC makes.

Frankly, Keith, your response (which I've only excerpted here) doesn't really address the substance of the criticism against the skill challenge system. I saw in your journal post that you include the +5 DC to skill challenges which is the heart of Stalker0's mathematical analysis and the major sticking point between proponents and critics of the RAW. You write that you aren't challenging the mathematics presented by Stalker0 and others against the RAW skill challenge. I can only assume, based on your comments, that you haven't understood it.

I'd be much more impressed or convinced by a response of yours that substantively grappled with the core of Stalker0's analysis. Relying on your experience as a DM and some house rules can't paper over the flaws in the RAW system as it's presented in the DMG. Newbie DMs who don't happen to stumble upon your blog aren't going to be able to incorporate your house rules to make a functional skill challenge system.

 

[WhatGravitas]

I'd be much more impressed or convinced by a response of yours that substantively grappled with the core of Stalker0's analysis. Relying on your experience as a DM and some house rules can't paper over the flaws in the RAW system as it's presented in the DMG. Newbie DMs who don't happen to stumble upon your blog aren't going to be able to incorporate your house rules to make a functional skill challenge system.

Huh? I think you missed his point: He was not trying to defend the system as given or challenge Stalker0's analysis, but only to relay his own experiences. Which he did.

Cheers, LT.

 

[webrunner]

I have to admit, I was wondering the same thing. It's always fun to see my name in thread titles, but the fact of the matter is that I'm not any sort of authority on the subject. The intention of my post was NOT "You're all wrong! Skill challenges are perfect!" - but rather, "I've been having a great time with skill challenges, my players haven't been failing 85% of the time, and this might explain why." If anyone finds the journal entry useful, that's great... but it's not supposed to wipe away the controversy, and hardly seems worthy of debate on its own.

With that said, two things.


Actually, I usually don't have people use Aid Another as part of a challenge. There's lots of situations where it doesn't make sense. We're in a chase scene, and for my action, I'll... Aid your Athletics check? Am I getting up behind you and pushing? In general I prefer to make people do their own actions as opposed to just helping, among reasons because I prefer to encourage the party where three people have some skill at Diplomacy instead of having the one uber-diplomat who makes all of the actual rolls. But I like having a game where skill challenges do play an important role, and where the rogue may be better off taking Master of Deceit than just jumping for Tumble.

Second, on regarding the idea that I'm saying it doesn't work without house rules and serious tweaking... well, I'm guilty on the house rules, because I've ALWAYS used the action point rule. I'm an Eberron DM. In Eberron, action points allowed you to get that extra push to hit a hard target number. Furthermore, the point of skill challenges is that they should feel like encounters in their own right - so reserving action points for combat seems like a real waste. So yes, I've always used that rule and there's no doubt in my mind that it's made a huge impact on things. I ran a game today involving two important skill challenges, and action points were the key to one of them.

So the house rules I agree with. But "Serious Tweaking"? Not so much. Everything else I mention is simply about designing interesting elements into an encounter. As it stands, the examples skill challenges include examples of actions that can be taken - both secondary and primary - hitting the full range of target DCs, and actions that change the target DCs or open up new options. The idea of saying that a successful Nature check drops Intimidate DCs to Easy isn't "serious tweaking" - it's just the reverse of the Interrogation example where an Intimidate failure raises other DCs to hard. And as I say in the post, I view skill challenges like combat. If you don't add in interesting terrain, hazards, a range of monster roles, things will get boring. What makes a skill challenge interesting to me IS the fact that every Diplomacy challenge is not identical. I don't view that as "serious tweaking" any more than deciding to use kobolds instead of goblins in a fight; it's me as a DM changing things around to make the encounter different from the one that came before, and to make the players think things through. But hey, just my opinion.

I DO think that partial success is a vital element to skill challenges - that as long as you don't HAVE to win to achieve something, the difficulty isn't insurmountable. An adventure I've run about 10 times now has a skill challenge at the end, and it's probably been something like a 20/50/30 split on full failure/partial success/full success. But the story is designed with that in mind, and even full failure is something with interesting dramatic consequences. While the DMG doesn't actually spell out partial success as an option, I never saw it as a house rule or something I was changing; to me it just seems like a logical part of the system.

In any case, just to say once and for all, I'm not MR. Baker, I'm Keith Baker. I'm not a 4E designer. I'm not CHALLENGING people's mathematical breakdowns or saying that the problems are all in your mind; I'm just saying what I've done, and that my groups' have been having fun with it so far (and hey, full success on the challenges today... albeit with the action point rule). People have posted interesting ideas on the LJ, and I may adopt some of them (though I played today the same way I always have). And I'm certainly interested in seeing what changes WotC makes.

I think The Other Mister Baker here is addressing what I think is the main problem with both the RAW Skill Challenge System, and the probability calculations:

Namely, the RAW Skill Challenge system says "these are the skills, and how, your players can beat the challenge. Anything else just adds to rolls"

When what it should be is that "Anything can count as a success, as long as it makes sense."

In the 'convince the lord' type examples, if you can come up with a reason why acrobatics would help (Perhaps to entertain him, or something) then I'd let you roll that as a success. Perhaps theivery would actually open up "intimidate" if you steal something from him valuable and hold it hostage.

The reason this helps the numbers is that you dont end up in situations where only one person has a reasonable chance to succeed.. if everyone is good at something, then they can try to do that something if it isn't outrageously difficult, thereby minimizing the number of failures.

The PLAYERS should be choosing what skills are being used, not the DM. The DM should just decide how hard a given use it.

In a chase scene, use Religion to shortcut through a temple. If you're trying to disable a trap, then diplomacy won't help, but bluff might (think of it as jumping in and out of range to keep the trap 'busy', possibly damaging the system)

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Actually, I usually don't have people use Aid Another as part of a challenge. There's lots of situations where it doesn't make sense. We're in a chase scene, and for my action, I'll... Aid your Athletics check? Am I getting up behind you and pushing?

Well... Yes. I have no problem with this at all!

Of course it makes a little more sense in the context of 3e than it does in 4e, where, lacking the 1/2 level bonus to skills, it's a much more significant scene: the feeble wizard struggling to boost the armor-clad paladin over a wall. I love it.

I definitely prefer a much more free-form and roleplay intensive skill challenge system where the players are encouraged to dream up, and describe for everyone, how they are trying to contribute to the encounter. If the wizard has Knowledge: Engineering and can convincingly describe to me how that qualifies him to identify and remove the weak mortar from the bricks in the wall to create handholds, I'm going to count that as Aid Another at least and possibly even a qualified success for the entire Escape challenge.

Frankly, Keith, your response (which I've only excerpted here) doesn't really address the substance of the criticism against the skill challenge system.

Not to put words in Keith's mouth, but I don't think he cares to address the substance of anything. Lighten up. He doesn't have any obligation here.