Okay friends, this is my first post, so if I screw something up please don't hold it against me.
I've been really disappointed, as I think a lot of people have, with 4e's skill challenge system. It really came to a head for me when I was lurking in Wizard's Character Optimization board and watched one guy's thread get torn apart for trying to make a skill-optimized character. They correctly argued that there is little optimization currently for skills, because it's a binary result: You succeed or fail. A steath roll of 45 and a role of 31 against a DC30 both result in the exact same outcome for many DM. This isn't the case in terms of dealing damage to enemies, however.
So below I've posted some thoughts on an alternate system to use to adjudicate skill challenges. There are a few problems with the current system I wanted to address, and two design goals I wanted to strive for.
Current Problems (lifted from Quickleaf's "Rethinking Skill Challenges" thread)
1. There's a disincentive to participate with low skills because failure is worse than inaction.
2. High number of successes required before failure (or time limit) encourages tactical player to spam their best skill. This problem is magnified if all skills are available.
3. Once the SC begins every character is converted into a striker trying to rack up successes (i.e. damage)
4. One size SC doesn't fit every situation. For example, a chase, an investigation, and a siege seem to have very different underlying structures. While DMG2 made headway in this regard, it seems like the community is pushing that envelope even more.
Design Goals
1. Provide a system that is modular, i.e. can allow additional rules and approaches such as the Obsidian skillcheck system to largely work unchanged.
2. Provide a system that makes makes sense to DMs without being overly complicated.
Littimer's Skill Challenge System v0.2
1. Instead of a success/failure framework, create skill challenges with hp. The hp in this instance represents the universal difficulty of the task the party is presented with. When a player uses a skill, the total of his skill roll is subtracted from the total hp the challenge has.
2. Instead of allowing a skill challenge to run until a certain number of successes or failures are accrued, set a finite number of rounds. The number of rounds can be entirely arbitrary, so long as the SC's hp is scaled to be appropriate. I would hesitate to make it only one round however, as I'm not sure there would be enough rolls there to really average out one disastrously bad roll.
3. To represent particularly relevant or effective skills, and likewise to represent skills that won't work or are not particularly effective, just treat them like resistances on monsters. A social Skill Challenge could be vulnerable diplomacy 5, resist intimidate 5. I would hesitate to generally make the SC have immunity to any skill, if only because that discourages the players from thinking up ingenious methods of relating their trained skills to the task before them. However, in my own DMing I'll let them know once they propose an idea whether it is relevant enough to be worth a roll or not, and whether that would be more or less difficult (without saying how much) than a more direct skill.
4. To discourage tactical players spamming their key skill, you could lift another ability from some monsters, which is a stacking resistance. So going back to that social skill challenge, maybe you want to reward a show of strength/skill (athletics or acrobatics), but for each "attack" the SC's resistance to that skill goes up by 5.
5. Because I loved the concept of "partial success" so much, that would occupy the same basic role as bloodied value, being an obvious indicator to the players that they are well on their way to conquering the challenge. Partial success would begin at a quarter of the SC's health.
So, an example skill challenge could look like this. A local band of heroes (5 pcs) recently eliminated a goblin tribe that was attacking trading caravans en route to their fiefdom. In doing so, they discovered evidence that the captain of the guard was being bribed to overlook the attacks, as well as plans that would suggest the goblins were taking orders from a larger orc tribe that had recently moved into the area. The heroes must bypass the captain and make it to the Lord directly, then convince him of their claims.
-----------------
Name: Audience with the Lord
Level 1 Skill Challenge (Moderate)
HP: 250 Partial Success: 62
Rounds: 3
Vulnerable: Diplomacy 5
Resist: Intimidate 5
Notes: Whenever a player uses a bluff check, the SC gains a stacking 5 resistance to further checks.
-----------------
I want to underscore that this is just a framework, and is meant to be as open as possible to allow for modifications and to not impede roleplay with overly rules-oriented structure. The above example could encapsulate just the meeting with the king, or it could even begin with them discovering a group of the captain's men waiting for them on path home, and they must reach the king without being detected by any of the corrupt soldiers, and then convince him in his chambers. As is everything with DnD, it's ultimately up to you.
This system allows for a lot of the really cool actions that the Obsidian Skill system sets up, or at least the spirit of those actions in the case of bonuses (would probably need to bump the +2's up a little bit). It still makes everybody strikers, but I'm not sure how to provide a real way for each role to represented in a skill challenge, especially when the skills that each of the classes in one role may qualify for are so varied.
The biggest thing, other than general comments about this, is that I need help figuring out the sweet spot in terms of numbers. I'm not sure what is an easy challenge, a moderate, and a difficult one. The above example assumes that the party will be averaging a little over a 16 per roll at level one. Taking into account the chance of a bad roll and using non-trained skills, I thought this was appropriate but it may be a bit low. Any number crunching I can get to assist with this would be much appreciated.
And thank you. I've been lurking these forums for a while now, and all of your information and advice has been incredibly informative for my own DMing.
I've been really disappointed, as I think a lot of people have, with 4e's skill challenge system. It really came to a head for me when I was lurking in Wizard's Character Optimization board and watched one guy's thread get torn apart for trying to make a skill-optimized character. They correctly argued that there is little optimization currently for skills, because it's a binary result: You succeed or fail. A steath roll of 45 and a role of 31 against a DC30 both result in the exact same outcome for many DM. This isn't the case in terms of dealing damage to enemies, however.
So below I've posted some thoughts on an alternate system to use to adjudicate skill challenges. There are a few problems with the current system I wanted to address, and two design goals I wanted to strive for.
Current Problems (lifted from Quickleaf's "Rethinking Skill Challenges" thread)
1. There's a disincentive to participate with low skills because failure is worse than inaction.
2. High number of successes required before failure (or time limit) encourages tactical player to spam their best skill. This problem is magnified if all skills are available.
3. Once the SC begins every character is converted into a striker trying to rack up successes (i.e. damage)
4. One size SC doesn't fit every situation. For example, a chase, an investigation, and a siege seem to have very different underlying structures. While DMG2 made headway in this regard, it seems like the community is pushing that envelope even more.
Design Goals
1. Provide a system that is modular, i.e. can allow additional rules and approaches such as the Obsidian skillcheck system to largely work unchanged.
2. Provide a system that makes makes sense to DMs without being overly complicated.
Littimer's Skill Challenge System v0.2
1. Instead of a success/failure framework, create skill challenges with hp. The hp in this instance represents the universal difficulty of the task the party is presented with. When a player uses a skill, the total of his skill roll is subtracted from the total hp the challenge has.
2. Instead of allowing a skill challenge to run until a certain number of successes or failures are accrued, set a finite number of rounds. The number of rounds can be entirely arbitrary, so long as the SC's hp is scaled to be appropriate. I would hesitate to make it only one round however, as I'm not sure there would be enough rolls there to really average out one disastrously bad roll.
3. To represent particularly relevant or effective skills, and likewise to represent skills that won't work or are not particularly effective, just treat them like resistances on monsters. A social Skill Challenge could be vulnerable diplomacy 5, resist intimidate 5. I would hesitate to generally make the SC have immunity to any skill, if only because that discourages the players from thinking up ingenious methods of relating their trained skills to the task before them. However, in my own DMing I'll let them know once they propose an idea whether it is relevant enough to be worth a roll or not, and whether that would be more or less difficult (without saying how much) than a more direct skill.
4. To discourage tactical players spamming their key skill, you could lift another ability from some monsters, which is a stacking resistance. So going back to that social skill challenge, maybe you want to reward a show of strength/skill (athletics or acrobatics), but for each "attack" the SC's resistance to that skill goes up by 5.
5. Because I loved the concept of "partial success" so much, that would occupy the same basic role as bloodied value, being an obvious indicator to the players that they are well on their way to conquering the challenge. Partial success would begin at a quarter of the SC's health.
So, an example skill challenge could look like this. A local band of heroes (5 pcs) recently eliminated a goblin tribe that was attacking trading caravans en route to their fiefdom. In doing so, they discovered evidence that the captain of the guard was being bribed to overlook the attacks, as well as plans that would suggest the goblins were taking orders from a larger orc tribe that had recently moved into the area. The heroes must bypass the captain and make it to the Lord directly, then convince him of their claims.
-----------------
Name: Audience with the Lord
Level 1 Skill Challenge (Moderate)
HP: 250 Partial Success: 62
Rounds: 3
Vulnerable: Diplomacy 5
Resist: Intimidate 5
Notes: Whenever a player uses a bluff check, the SC gains a stacking 5 resistance to further checks.
-----------------
I want to underscore that this is just a framework, and is meant to be as open as possible to allow for modifications and to not impede roleplay with overly rules-oriented structure. The above example could encapsulate just the meeting with the king, or it could even begin with them discovering a group of the captain's men waiting for them on path home, and they must reach the king without being detected by any of the corrupt soldiers, and then convince him in his chambers. As is everything with DnD, it's ultimately up to you.
This system allows for a lot of the really cool actions that the Obsidian Skill system sets up, or at least the spirit of those actions in the case of bonuses (would probably need to bump the +2's up a little bit). It still makes everybody strikers, but I'm not sure how to provide a real way for each role to represented in a skill challenge, especially when the skills that each of the classes in one role may qualify for are so varied.
The biggest thing, other than general comments about this, is that I need help figuring out the sweet spot in terms of numbers. I'm not sure what is an easy challenge, a moderate, and a difficult one. The above example assumes that the party will be averaging a little over a 16 per roll at level one. Taking into account the chance of a bad roll and using non-trained skills, I thought this was appropriate but it may be a bit low. Any number crunching I can get to assist with this would be much appreciated.
And thank you. I've been lurking these forums for a while now, and all of your information and advice has been incredibly informative for my own DMing.
