A reason why 4E is not as popular as it could have been

[MrMyth]

Or maybe you don't let some convoluted system ruin your game, when they fail the "challenge".

Upon suspecting the Duke to be a demon, if there were clues being led to it, the party has already passed the challenge. Why then force them to backtrack to failure? Why not let them just go around asking and let them find the info needed to "prove it".

Why do we have skills at all?

Keep in mind, skills shouldn't replace RP, they should support it. Yes, the PCs go around town asking questions and searching for info. Their Streetwise checks (or whatever is appropriate) determine if they find stories that lead them to definite proof, or simply rumor and conjecture.

I'm honestly puzzled here. Are you suggesting that a skill like Gather Information or Streetwise shouldn't exist in the game? That if the PCs have some hints about something and want to learn more, they should always have it revealed to him?

If you don't want to RP it, then ak the DM for a summary of things found over searching, people met etc. You get the same result of the skill challenge which is contacts and info, without the needless chance of failure.

Why is the chance of failure "needless"? This is a dice based game, and part of the core philosophy is that not everything you do will automatically succeed. Even the way you describe this feels uncomfortable to me - rather than have the players dynamically explore the town and learn bits of knowledge, just handing them a summary of what there is to learn...

...I mean, I've done it myself, in situations where the info is relatively mundane or of little importance. ("Here are some basic facts about the town!") But it seems to otherwise be skipping past an opportunity for both RP and for some characters to demonstrate their strengths.

Possibly your example is just a VERY bad one, as it would leave failure as a chance that could completely screw the game up because of the mechanics.

-gather information (Endurance, Diplomacy, Streetwise)
failure here means the game is over
-find a way to break the curse (Arcana, History, Religion)
failure here means the game is over
-get to the Duke without being noticed (Athletics, Acrobatics, Stealth)
failure here means combat at least

Where are you getting "the game is over" from?

First scenario: The players have suspicions that the Duke is possessed, but can't find any proof. Do they start to doubt their own suspicions? Maybe they try to appeal to other authorities - or seek alternate ways to learn the truth. A sage might cast a divination for them if they perform a task. Or darker sorts might answer their questions for a price...

Or maybe they turn away from the area and investigate other possible suspects - until the situation in the Duchy grows worse, and they find themselves having to fight off a full demon invasion.

Second scenario: They've got proof but no way to cure the possession. Do they try and deal with it anyway? Sneaking into the castle to kill the Duke, even though that would cause great political chaos and leave them villified for their actions? Do they try and bring the proof to others, the chancellor or a high priest, and see if they can maybe imprison the Duke until a cure can be found? At the risk, of course, that instead the Duke finds out and they are on the run from his men?

Third scenario: They have the proof and the cure, but are caught breaking into the castle. Do they fight their way out, striking down innocent guards? Try to reason with them and present their proof? Surrender and demand a trial where they can reveal what they know? Have some PCs lead guards away so another can get to the Duke and perform the ritual alone?

Failures in skill challenges - in any obstacle in an RPG - should never* lead to a complete end of the game. They should just provide opportunities for new developments. Those developments might involve going into another challenge with fewer resources, or might involve having to deal with entirely new challenges.

(*Save perhaps in very rare situations - a TPK, or failing to stop some world-ending ritual, or the like.)

Nothing in the skill challenge rules says that failure should end the game, as you are suggesting. Indeed, the advice given regarding skill challenges often says the opposite.

Only in the most tightly-scripted plot-based games do you have a situation where something must happen in a specific fashion or the game ends - and honestly, in those situations, you shouldn't using a skill challenge anyway.

 

[MrMyth]

Again, thanks in part to MrMyth, I am now seeing skill challenges as just a means to power level. They don't exist to pose a challenge/obstacle, or resolve one, they exist only to offer more XP.

I won't fall back into and make the mistake again of thinking them as something worthwhile, but view them flatly as the excuse to give more XP that they are, with no other redeeming qualities.

I'd say you are about.. half right. Yes, they exist to give xp. That doesn't have anything to do with power-levelling, though.

The goal is to, yeah, have a way to reward the PCs for accomplishing some task - even if that task doesn't involve punching someone in the face. In what way is rewarding non-combat accomplishments a bad thing for the game, or power-levelling?

And even once you acknowledge that part of the goal is to present guidelines for giving out non-combat xp... that doesn't mean there are no other goals, as well. The rest of the point is to present PCs with non-combat challenges that are rewarding to overcome. To provide DMs with a framework to measure success and failure in complex situations.

Those seem like decent goals to me.

 

[Aldarc]

Another reason not yet mentioed why 4E is not as popular as it could have been: The designers gave up on some efforts as a lost cause. This managed to annoy all the people who didn't agree that the cause was lost, had another dog in the fight which this giving up undermined, or didn't understand the problem in the first place. And of course, when you give up a lost cause, you don't always have a clever solution that satisfies all the competing concerns, either. Major annoyance thus results.

See, for example, "People think of wizards as Gandalf or Merlin. They are supposed to be better than everyone else. But Arthur and Aragon and Frodo and the young Galahad have to matter. So we'll make wizardry have a steep learning curve! Oops, tried that, some issues arose. We'll make Frodo critical to the story! Oops, tried that, some other issues arose. I know, we'll give Frodo and Aragon some equipment! Dang it, you guessed it! Aw hell, let's just chuck the whole problem. If someone wants Gandalf, they can give the wizard an extra 5 or 10 levels and be done with it."

What was it Einstein said? That for every problem, there is a solution that is obvious, simple, and wrong. All of those prior efforts met that criteria. Finally, someone comes up with a solution that is rather simple, but not so obvious and certainly effective. But it takes guts to make it.

Because you've just united in their cheezed off state everyone who liked wizards being overpowered at high levels, everyone who liked them being weak at low levels, who liked it being built into the rules that Frodo had to carve out a story niche to matter and that Aragon needed to be the king, and so forth and so on. These people don't even necessarily like or agree with each other, but they are all in agreement that your decision sucks. Note that there is nothing in the rules that says their group can't run the game to suit their preferences. But now they will have to ask for it, because there is nothing in the rules that validates their preferences, either. If they think that perhaps their group will not want to give them their desires, they are doubly cheesed.

Making hard choices always makes you unpopular with some people.

Doesn't this assume that Gandalf was the same level as Frodo and Aragorn in their adventures? I think most would agree that Gandalf was higher level than the rest of his party, as well as being a supernatural being. So it should be of no surprise that Gandalf dwarfed in power over Frodo and Aragorn. Therefore the argument of the imbalanced powerscaling of wizards seems quite misguided.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Doesn't this assume that Gandalf was the same level as Frodo and Aragorn in their adventures? I think most would agree that Gandalf was higher level than the rest of his party, as well as being a supernatural being. So it should be of no surprise that Gandalf dwarfed in power over Frodo and Aragorn. Therefore the argument of the imbalanced powerscaling of wizards seems quite misguided.

That is one way to get to the problem, but it wasn't what I had in mind. I think historically it is more a case of people trying to navigate the issue that roleplaying games are not novels. Lots of things got tried, and some of them resonated. In the meantime, game writers are trying to cater to rules mavens, Jane Austen wannabees, and a host of others. So they try to make compromises. Sometimes, those compromises caused more trouble than they were worth. When they even cared or knew about those issues--see below.

That is, I think the line of thought went something like this: "I like LotR. But this is a group game and wizards shouldn't have all the fun. OTOH, I should be able to get something analogous to the fellowship and play an adventure with them."

In retrospect, it is easy to see that making wizards about the same moxie as other classes, most power levels, would have been just fine, and then Gandalf could have been higher. But at the time, the designers didn't care about that at all. They just wanted to make stuff up that would let them do their strange mix of wargaming and quasi-Vancian exploration, and the rules were working fine for that.

It was 3E before this issue in the fan base even registered strongly enough on the designers for them to put it on the list of things to be solved.

Edit: Also please note that the LotR issue is one example of the larger problem. It is not the only one by any means. Also, despite the tenor of this example, it is not a given that the 4E designers always chose wisely in their things to make hard decisions upon, or in their solutions. (And really, batting .300 on that kind of thing would be pretty amazing.)

 

[Herremann the Wise]

...Because you've just united in their cheezed off state everyone who liked wizards being overpowered at high levels, everyone who liked them being weak at low levels, who liked it being built into the rules that Frodo had to carve out a story niche to matter and that Aragon needed to be the king, and so forth and so on. These people don't even necessarily like or agree with each other, but they are all in agreement that your decision sucks...

Doesn't this assume that Gandalf was the same level as Frodo and Aragorn in their adventures? I think most would agree that Gandalf was higher level than the rest of his party, as well as being a supernatural being. So it should be of no surprise that Gandalf dwarfed in power over Frodo and Aragorn. Therefore the argument of the imbalanced powerscaling of wizards seems quite misguided.

Of interest way back when in The Dragon, I think (please someone correct me if my wonky memory is being wonky) somebody showed that Gandalf could be represented by a 5th level AD&D wizard. Regardless, the point still stands that 4e "fixed" the wizard but into a form that many people grumbled about. Yes the 4e wizard is balanced within the framework but at the expense of many of the wizard tropes many of us had grown up with. YMMV.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[MerricB]

Of interest way back when in The Dragon, I think (please someone correct me if my wonky memory is being wonky) somebody showed that Gandalf could be represented by a 5th level AD&D wizard.

Somebody argued that Gandalf could be represented by a 5th level AD&D magic-user. It wasn't a very successful argument from my point of view. A 5th level AD&D magic-user does not have the resources to battle the Balrog for two days and night (in addition to chasing it for eight days).

The article appeared in The Dragon #5 - you can find it reposted here.

(There is some truth in the assumption that Gandalf's spells weren't represented by high-level spells in D&D, but there are holes there too).

Cheers!

 

[pawsplay]

False. The probability of success is very much dependent on the skills chosen because the characters have different modifiers in different skills.
...
So wait a second. First your complaint was that you couldn't have an idea of the chance of success and now your complaint is that the chance of success is set in stone. Both of which are clearly and demonstrably false.

No, I'm saying the chance of success is essentially set by the GM.

Resolution of any skill check is a matter of chance. Are you arguing for a diceless checkless system out of combat? In which case why are you arguing against skill challenges rather than the entire skill system?

No, I am not arguing for that.

You mean things that are actually in the skill challenge guidelines? Or otherwise in the 4e rules? You no more have to give level 5 skill challenges to level 5 PCs than you have to make them meet level 5 monsters just because they are level 5. Special modifiers are provided for within the framework and suggestions are made within the DMG2. And of course PC abilities vary.

If you give them a level 6 skill challene, you just change G to G - H, where H is the decrease in the chance of success.

If I am going to use ad hoc modifiers, really I am just performing a series of skill checks, and the skill challenge structure becomes an artificiality. I'm not trying to create a false dilemma, but I'm having difficulty discerning where between:

A. independent skill checks based on the situation as narrated by the GM, and
B. a skill challenge tailored to a specific probability of success

you can fit something that is more interesting than B yet more codified than A. I think at some point you have to decide whether you are scaling or not, and if so, by how much. If you absolutely scale, then the skill challenge devolves to G as a percentage of success, possibly modified by ad hoc modifiers. In that case, the only "winning" strategy is to acquire ad hoc modifiers. If you absolutely do not scale, then some checks will be trivial, others deadly.

 

[pemerton]

I think the intent is clear to those who are already somewhat familiar with the techniques

<snip>

For most everyone else, I believe it is like reading one of those assembly directions loosely translated from Chinese

You're right about this. And this fits with what I said in one of my first posts on this thread - that 4e might have increased its popularity if it had given a clearer statement of how it was to be played.

You missed one huge one. They can find a way to play to their strengths.

Agreed. That's what I meant when I said "They can take steps to use skills in which they have bigger bonuses".

 

[pemerton]

Pawsplay, I'm not going to address all your questions in this post. Others have already tackled some of them. And I've already linked upthred to the Actual Play thread where some of these issues are being discussed also.

But one answer to your question about A versus B. (An answer, by the way, which has nothing to do with scaling. I think you're somewhat jumping at shadow with the scaling, for the reasons I've set out in other posts upthread.)

A skill challenge structure more-or-less obliges the GM to introduce complications at various points - both in response to failed checks, and in order to establish the situation with which the players are engaging via more checks.

In this respect, the structure serves a metagame purpose - by mandating repeated points of engagement with an evolving ingame situation by both the GM and the players, it forces a certain dynamism into the resolution of that situation. In my view this is similar, in general outline, to the extended contest mechanics of HeroWars/Quest.

Now, you may ask "what is the attraction of a structure that mandates this dynamism?" My answer - and it is an answer I have seen from others in relation to HW/Q, in relation to Duel of Wits in BW, etc - is that this sort of structure makes unexpected developments in the narrative more likely. How does it do this? Because the mutual engagment at multiple points of an unfolding situation makes both players and GM think of things that otherwise they would not.

One example - in a skill challenge negotiation between my PCs and some slavers, the PCs ended up contracting with the slavers to redeem the slaves using the treasure that the slavers told them where to find in the dungeon. This solution emerged gradually, as the players had some successes, then some failures, and were looking for ways to build on their successes while working around their failures. The offer of a contract was the way that they settled on, and that ended up resolving the challenge.

Do some groups achieve this sort of dynamism without structured mechanics to support it? Well, for all I know, everyone else has been doing it for years! But for my group - and for others whom I have seen post in relation to other games like HW/Q and BW - it makes a real difference.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

If you give them a level 6 skill challene, you just change G to G - H, where H is the decrease in the chance of success.

I think you're getting too caught up in the term "level-appropriate." A good level 6 skill challenge will include tasks challenging to 6th-level PCs, not set the DCs of all tasks to those appropriate for 6th-level characters.

Using the locks as an example. A standard heroic-tier lock (DC 20) is a hard level-appropriate challenge for 4th-9th level characters (assuming that any rogue worthy of being called such will have the thieves' tools that give him a +2 bonus to his check). This lock corresponds to a basic lock in 3E. As DM, you would not describe the lock in a similar skill challenge for 19th-level characters as a basic lock, you would need to choose a tougher lock. Just like you did as a 3E DM by choosing a harder lock as the PCs explored better protected areas in 3E.

If you decide that the locks in the area of the 19th-level skill challenge are mundane, then the checks to get through them should not change. Instead the check becomes easy-moderate in difficulty. And at even higher levels the same mundane lock should not even be considered part of the skill challenge.

The difficulty is not set by the DM any more than it was in previous editions. In 3E it was the choice of equipment (like the locks) or the choice of opponent (for opposed rolls) that set the DCs.