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

[shadowguidex]

I ran a bunch of sample skill challenges straight room the book, but using easy difficulty numbers of 15 instead of 20. the heroes won two thirds of the challenges. Also, I tend to hand out +2 bonuses whenever I get a really good in depth description of what the PC is planning to do - the +2 bonus is the reward for good roleplaying and I'll gladly hand them out to allow better success and to reward good storytelling.

I always have an outlet for my skill challenges, where failure doesn't ruin the game - they usually just have a difficult challenge to face them if they fail, like my scenario where they need to use a stealthy approach to fix a lift in a mine. If they alert the goblins then they end up fighting double the normal number (which happens to give the same XP as the skill challenge).

 

[Gladius Legis]

Keith's points are all very good, and I think they will work well when combined with a 1:1 success/failure ratio for all challenges. But as things stand, there's too much work to do to even make challenges 50-50.

And this is pretty much my beef with the math inherent in the skill challenges. Heck, I'd be happy with 30-35% success rates, but success rates in the teens (or lower) for a "moderate" difficulty? Yeah, we've got problems.

 

[Lord Xtheth]

Today my characters ran through 5 skill challenges

4/2 DC 14
5/2 DC 10
6/3 DC 12
8/4 DC 15
10/5 DC 16

The only one they failed was the 5/2 skill challenge because they rolled 2 natural 1's and got 9.

I'm personally finding the skill chalenges a little easy for my players. Damn them and their lucky rolls!

 

[Gladius Legis]

Today my characters ran through 5 skill challenges

4/2 DC 14
5/2 DC 10
6/3 DC 12
8/4 DC 15
10/5 DC 16

The only one they failed was the 5/2 skill challenge because they rolled 2 natural 1's and got 9.

I'm personally finding the skill chalenges a little easy for my players. Damn them and their lucky rolls!

Those are also nonstandard (not RAW) DCs.

RAW Skill Challenges ARE broken. Sucks to say it, but they are. A pity, too, because I love the concept, as well as pretty much everything else about 4e.

 

[Tervin]

Keith Baker's blogpost told me the following: It is possible to get skill challenges to work if you add house rules, tweak the difficulties and make sure that all your players have exactly the skills that are needed.

Ok he also said that they are supposed to be challenging (which I really hope doesn't simply mean that the players have to roll real high on their skill checks - that kind of "challenging" is the sign of DM mistake), and gave some reasonable advice when it comes to "Aid Another".

What bugs me a little is that he says he has been using skill challenges for months and that he uses house rules and serious tweaking to make them work. If playtesters figured out that they should do those things, then why did the skill challenges in the DMG end up this way?

 

[Tervin]

I kinda dont get the problem.. The big complaint is that the medium dc of 20 is to high at level 1 or 2.. that would come with to much failures..

Just lower the dc an bit then.. to 15 or 17..

It all comes down to what are the main skills for the challenge, if you have an challenge with alot of bluff and intimidate, but dont have the players with that skill.. lower the dc an bit so it is still hard because they dont have the skill, but dont make it impossible..

The problem? That the DMG tells you to use those high DCs. And it is not only on level 1 and 2 that the DCs are too high. Problems stay around at least till the mid 20s.

The problem with your solution? That if you lower the DC to help PCs with low skills you make it so that having worked on a skill doesn't matter.

 

[Griogre]

I kinda dont get the problem.. The big complaint is that the medium dc of 20 is to high at level 1 or 2.. that would come with to much failures..

Just lower the dc an bit then.. to 15 or 17..

It all comes down to what are the main skills for the challenge, if you have an challenge with alot of bluff and intimidate, but dont have the players with that skill.. lower the dc an bit so it is still hard because they dont have the skill, but dont make it impossible..

Lower the DC probably is not enough help, actually. That’s because if you hit an unskilled guy who has to go - he will fail the skill roll on easy at best about 50% of the time and in some cases as much as 75% of the time. We are not talking just a few low rolls here (which you know you are going to get too). As one other poster has mentioned if you don't want to use Stalker0's numbers and stay close to RAW the best thing you can do is make the numbers of failures in a skill challenge = the number of successes. At least you won’t have the complex challenges be easier to pass that way.

Remember according to RAW you actually are suppose to roll initiative for the characters that means that if for some reason a character can’t delay (and I can think of quite a few situations where this will happen) there is little likelihood you best guy will go first. The party can easily fail a skill challenge before the skill mister can even go on a simple 4/2 challenge.

To my mind the DMG pretty much implies that you are *not* going to be able to assist a single leader for a fair amount of skill challenges.

 

[Wulfram]

Mike Mearls acknowledges that there are some issues with skill challenges in this post on the official forums

 

[Tervin]

Mike Mearls acknowledges that there are some issues with skill challenges in this post on the official forums

Thanks for the link. That post actually put me at ease, weird as it may seem.

At least temporarily.

 

[Gladius Legis]

A quick and dirty fix I've done is for the challenges to be x successes before (1/2)x +1 failures.

So 4 successes before 3 failures, for example, for a Complexity 1 SC. Hey, just like baseball.

Yes, math guys, I know the math isn't sound behind that solution, either. Hence why I said "quick and dirty." But for someone who really can't be arsed at the moment to write out/print out copies of a new skill challenge system, it's served its purpose.