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

[Nagol]

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".

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.

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

The first two cannot end in failure, thus the problem with designing a skill challenge as such because your challenge could stop the game, when you have living healthy characters to continue it.

So they fail to gather information due to the skill challenge, and jsut decide to leave the town cause the Duke must be an upstanding guy and there is nothing left to do here.

That Is where using it as a resolution works better, when needed. Still the last one I wouldn't use a skill challenge, it is likely just going to be a pass fail. Get noticed once and the alarms have gone off and no more sneaking its battle to battle until you achieve your objective.

Best leave me with the previous information before you turn my opinion on skill challenges fully negative again, such as your example is startign to do.

The game won't end if the PCs don't find evidence during the challenge -- the demon possession will simply continue and depending on purpose will commit an atrocity or two before the behaviour will lead to eventual discovery.

The game's direction will change based upon success or failure, but the world and the characters within will continue regardless.

Now if the DM has absolutely nothing else prepared for the session and was depending on PC success to lead to the adventure then yes, he screwed himself over nicely.

 

[shadzar]

Shadzar, despite many years of practice I sometimes trip over a gutter while walking down the street. But the only game system I know that comes close to incorproating this sort of possibility into its action resolution mechanics is Rolemaster.

3E has no fumble rules. I don't think it's a very big problem with 4e that it lacks them also.

In all of our interactions you have mentioned Person X from Game Y or something else along those lines that does not have to do with D&D. I have ignored all of it, because I frankly could care les about those games. If I was interested in them, I would be playing them not D&D.

Hopefully that that is understood, and possibly even a point about the popularity of D&D is that it is trying to take bits and pieces form other les popular games and bring it in now, could be cause of its lack of popularity with people who weren't interested in those games, but liked the way D&D did it.....

4e, not previous editions are those "others games", THANK GOD!; that said, was 3rd and 4th the only editions of D&D you played?

Having Dexterity as a stat, EVERY edition has had "fumble" rules. 3rd even gave them DCs, Icy +5 to difficulty or some such.

Sometimes you have to stop trying to create some complex system for things and rely on the core of the game. Those 6 stats exist for a reason. Everything is built off of them for a reason. Try to figure out what that reason is, within D&D, and MANY people might gain a better understanding of it, without needing to add 400 subsystems by way of skills and feats to accomplish the same thing.

You are the one telling me your linked combats are pieced together with JIT story elements right? Likewise skills can be done the same way. You don't need complex narrative system to let you create a working world under your JIT setting design, so why do you need some advanced complex system to use skills?

Seems counterproductive to me.

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.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I guess it just seems odd to me that any tactic will have the same basic difficulty regardless of the surrounding circumstance and players' choice of approach. To my mind it reverses my natural thought process from "What weakness can I exploit here?" into "What tactic plays to my stength here?" I much prefer the former approach since it strongly encourages engagement with the game world as opposed to engagement with the PC.

The system as presented doesn't appear to encourage strategic weakness in the challenge design. A DM can compensate on his own, for example, only allowing the challenge to occur once the external circumstances are brought into alignment or awarding automatic successes if a weakness is noticed and exploited, I suppose.

I think Neo Chameleon probably answered your last question directed at me. So I'll pick up here. Please clarify if you want me to go back to earlier.

I largely agree to pemerton's answer to the above quote. I will say that you'll get some variety on this depending on the players. I'd be strongly inclined to play to my strengths with the 4E raw, but it doesn't seem to affect the players that way. Partly, it's because I'm not overt that we are even in a skill challenge, and sometimes switching in and out of skill challenges on the fly based on player behavior. As far as they are concerned, they are just using skills to try accomplish their goals. They've always had a mix of reaction to the situation and trying to leverage high skills. That mix hasn't changed with 4E.

I'm also pretty mean with my difficulties, and am always perfectly willing for the group to fall on their face if they go in half-cocked and have a bad string of luck. And I'll definitely set initial difficulties harder than RAW recommends, but include ways that characters can use information to lower them. So in your terms, that information is found, and then a character is using that information to exploit a weakness, via a lowered DC. They still need someone with that skill reasonably high, but with a large group, you always have that.

That's probably another reason why we get somewhat different play. As a group, every skill is reasonably covered, many redundantly. I set up situations with this as the assumed state. Things become hard or easy depending on how much information the group can ferret out. So it is not so much "exploit a weakness" or "play to a strength" as it is, "find an edge, any edge, then determine how to best use it."

 

[Umbran]

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.

If you're serious... well, I'll just say that isn't true, that they are there to be as much a challenge as combats are, just in a different manner, and leave it at that.

If you're being sarcastic - please stop. Much as it may be fun, sarcasm is a barrier to communication in such discussions, not an aid to one.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

4e, not previous editions are those "others games", THANK GOD!; that said, was 3rd and 4th the only editions of D&D you played?

...

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.

You seem on the one hand to think that experience with a system is a valuable prequisite to informed commentary on it, and then seem on the other hand to negate that sentiment. Do you really want to understand how 4E works, or do you just want to snark about it? I'd like to know before I spend more time replying.

 

[Nagol]

<snip>

I largely agree to pemerton's answer to the above quote. I will say that you'll get some variety on this depending on the players. I'd be strongly inclined to play to my strengths with the 4E raw, but it doesn't seem to affect the players that way. Partly, it's because I'm not overt that we are even in a skill challenge, and sometimes switching in and out of skill challenges on the fly based on player behavior. As far as they are concerned, they are just using skills to try accomplish their goals. They've always had a mix of reaction to the situation and trying to leverage high skills. That mix hasn't changed with 4E.

I'm also pretty mean with my difficulties, and am always perfectly willing for the group to fall on their face if they go in half-cocked and have a bad string of luck. And I'll definitely set initial difficulties harder than RAW recommends, but include ways that characters can use information to lower them. So in your terms, that information is found, and then a character is using that information to exploit a weakness, via a lowered DC. They still need someone with that skill reasonably high, but with a large group, you always have that.

That's probably another reason why we get somewhat different play. As a group, every skill is reasonably covered, many redundantly. I set up situations with this as the assumed state. Things become hard or easy depending on how much information the group can ferret out. So it is not so much "exploit a weakness" or "play to a strength" as it is, "find an edge, any edge, then determine how to best use it."

Nice explanation.

How do you switch out of a skill challenge on the fly? Wopuldn't that leave the situation partially resolved? Are there repercussions?

 

[Crazy Jerome]

How do you switch out of a skill challenge on the fly? Wopuldn't that leave the situation partially resolved? Are there repercussions?

The players are only in a skill challenge because they initiated actions or reacted to same that put them in a situation where several players are making skill checks, these skill checks are sufficiently varied to be interesting, there is a real chance of failure and subsequent consequences, and thus the whole thing is worth some XP.

If I find this to be the case, I'm recording successes and failures. If it stops being the case, I stop recording successes and failures. The players only vaguely sense when this occurs, though some of the more mechanically savvy ones can probably guess.

They get a big lump of XP at the end of the session--and it's the same for the whole group, and not infrequently rounded off to make our leveling hit a good time in the story. (I'm really only using XP as a rough guide for leveling to keep from being too stingy or generous.) So there is nothing there to clue them in on whether they finished one or not.

As far as I'm concerned, written skill challenges (in a module or in my notes) are similar to those boxed flavor text capsule that were so popular in 2E adventures, or incomplete monster stat blocks, or the like. They are a convenient way to quickly convey the salient points of what the writer had in mind. That is, a skill challenge is more or less an outline of how things might go. I would no more stick to one when the situation changes enough to invalidate part of it, than I would read the flavor text straight as opposed to using it as a guide to roleplaying an NPC, or would force a combat to go another 5 rounds when it is clear that the monsters are beaten and should start running.

As a strict rules procedure, to be used or not used in a situation, I find skill challenges lacking. As a note taking device and general statement of intent, I find them highly useful. YMMV.

Edit: I realize that failed to directly answer your question. I see some repercussions to doing things this way, but none that trouble me much.

 

[pawsplay]

No, it isn't. You said that in 3rd Edition combat, you know with a high-degree of confidence your own [combat] capabilities, with reference only to your own character sheet.

So, tell me - what are your odds to beat the orc I'm about to set in front of you? If, instead, you're arguing that no, you don't know with a high degree of confidence what your chances are to beat the orc, referencing only your own character sheet, and that you need more information about the orc, then, well ... Yay, you agree with my original point?

My original point is that, while there is some understood scaling of difficulty in the task DCs in 4Ed (modified, of course, by what others have said, in that a lock is a lock is a lock, and at some point picking the lock of the mayor's mansion is eventually not worth the resolution time of the 15th-level lockpicker), this is no different from the way combat works in 3.XE. So why is one lauded, while the other is denigrated?

You're begging the question. I do not accept that these two things are equivalent and it is up to you to persuade me, if you are so inclined.

I am observing that in 3e, I can know my character's capability of defeating a 1st level orc warrior, or picking a secure but basically ordinary lock. In 4e, I know none of these things. An "ordinary orc" is probably scaled to my level. A secure but ordinary lock probably doesn't have a suggested DC; if it does, that's somewhat useful in an ordinary situation, but becomes irrelevant if the GM frames the scene as a skill challenge involving lock picking.

In 3e, my character's capabilities, at some level, relate to the imaginary world. In 4e, they primarily relate to the GM's chosen difficulty level.

Just as an example, upthread, I mentioned a balance check as part of getting into a castle, and gave an example of someone using an older version of D&D improvising an ability check. In 3e, most characters will face a somewhat quantifiable level of difficulty. Some characters would make such a Balance check each and every time. In 4e, the DC could vary wildly from a (shall we say) pedestrian difficulty to a fairly formidable difficulty if the GM decides it's part of a skill challenge.

Skill challenges are supposed to add drama, but since the GM sets every aspect of the difficulty, and the base DCs generally scale to level, it's actually a routlette game in disguise, with the GM setting house odds.

 

[pemerton]

Pawsplay, is your claim that a skill challenge is "a roulette game in disguise" based on actual play experience (whether with 4e, or similar systems like HeroWars/Quest)? Or
is it a theoretical intuition?

And I'm not meaning this as a rhetorical question - I'm genuinely curious.

I've got another thread going discussing actual play examples of two skill challenges from my own game. I'd be interested to see what you think.

 

[pemerton]

As far as I'm concerned, written skill challenges (in a module or in my notes) are similar to those boxed flavor text capsule that were so popular in 2E adventures, or incomplete monster stat blocks, or the like. They are a convenient way to quickly convey the salient points of what the writer had in mind. That is, a skill challenge is more or less an outline of how things might go. I would no more stick to one when the situation changes enough to invalidate part of it, than I would read the flavor text straight as opposed to using it as a guide to roleplaying an NPC, or would force a combat to go another 5 rounds when it is clear that the monsters are beaten and should start running.

I'm glad someone else agrees with me on this! And you've put it very clearly. (And I'm still not allowed to XP you.)

I think one of the flaws in the presentation of the example skill challenges in the DMG is that it doesn't make clear enough that these are analgous to GM prep notes.