Any New Info on Skill Encounters?

[Seule]

Well, we've seen people here saying that they would use the skill challenges in various ways, and indeed they seem to have been run a couple different ways at DDXP. I can't imagine that the 4e designers didn't explore this design space reasonably well, putting various options into the rulebooks.
I for one am quite curious to see what they thought of that we haven't, and what twists they suggest.

--Penn

 

[FabioMilitoPagliara]

i don't think ANY role has EVER helped me defend myself from bad convention players. usually, if they don't like a rule, they play it bad running the game for everyone, or start complaining.

they kind of people i like to play with, even at conventions, won't need any protection rules. sules should provoke play, non protect it...

well met

 

[UngeheuerLich]

What i heard about the skill checks is quite nice. I like the structuring of those checks. In 3d edition i always told my players to be creative, which means: tell me what you try and make a suggestion which skill is appropriate. Then i can make offers as a DM what can actually be managed:

P: I try to get on the roof.
DM: there are different roofs here. You can climb wall, or you can break in a house, jump on sth etc.
P: I try to climb.
DM: you see a ladder on wall which is easy to climb, but you have to go a bit back, or you can try to climb up that high house in front of you.
P: I try the house in front of me, but i will do it carefully.
DM: (secretly thinks that his was the medium challenge): make your climb roll.
P: 16
DM: success (secretly notes a success)

If the player tried the hard way: I try to get up the house in front of me very fast, he could fail more easily, but on a success you could let him do an acrobtics check to increase his speed.

If the player decides to use the ladder, on a success he loses some time to get to the ladder, but makes up for it, because it is much faster to climb the ladder. On a failed check, he only loses time.

So actually that skill system seems great.
The number of successes needed to escape should usually not been told to the players. This would take away lot of the tension.
And this will be the way I use it.

Edit: and this is how i used it in my best 3.x games... the trick is: don´t let your players know tht they altered reality. (who cares if the robbers have their base in the nearest wood or in the sewers...)

 

[D'karr]

What i heard about the skill checks is quite nice. I like the structuring of those checks. In 3d edition i always told my players to be creative, which means: tell me what you try and make a suggestion which skill is appropriate. Then i can make offers as a DM what can actually be managed:

P: I try to get on the roof.
DM: there are different roofs here. You can climb wall, or you can break in a house, jump on sth etc.
P: I try to climb.
DM: you see a ladder on wall which is easy to climb, but you have to go a bit back, or you can try to climb up that high house in front of you.
P: I try the house in front of me, but i will do it carefully.
DM: (secretly thinks that his was the medium challenge): make your climb roll.
P: 16
DM: success (secretly notes a success)

If the player tried the hard way: I try to get up the house in front of me very fast, he could fail more easily, but on a success you could let him do an acrobtics check to increase his speed.

If the player decides to use the ladder, on a success he loses some time to get to the ladder, but makes up for it, because it is much faster to climb the ladder. On a failed check, he only loses time.

So actually that skill system seems great.
The number of successes needed to escape should usually not been told to the players. This would take away lot of the tension.
And this will be the way I use it.

Edit: and this is how i used it in my best 3.x games... the trick is: don´t let your players know tht they altered reality. (who cares if the robbers have their base in the nearest wood or in the sewers...)

From what you've described there, you will surely enjoy the skill challenges system. And yes, keeping the number of successes needed a secret, is probably the best way to keep the players on their toes and increase the suspense.

 

[pemerton]

A "I want to make an easy diplomacy check...what happens?" approach is definitely a lot more than I want to deal with because I need to come up with the scenerio that creates the easy DC, describe what the PC is doing, and the end results of the failed or successful attempt. That's more than I want to deal with on every skill check!

Is there a reason why one cannot have the player do that work?

 

[UngeheuerLich]

From what you've described there, you will surely enjoy the skill challenges system. And yes, keeping the number of successes needed a secret, is probably the best way to keep the players on their toes and increase the suspense.

you summed that up quite well

although i don´t think it is a big change for me, since i´ve learned to allow players to "change the world" the hard way...

and just as a reminder: the change from 3.5 is not very big.

The skill system in 3.5 worked very well when you reminded everybody that maxing out skills leads only to power creep

beating following DCs with "take ten" is:

DC 0-5: very easy, (climbing a ladder)
DC 10: nothing special, (climbing a slope)
DC 15: proficiency, (climbing up a wall with windows as holds)
DC 20: expertise, (climbing a rough wall)
DC 25: mastery,
DC 30: grandmastery

the standard procedure for opening locks, finding and disarming traps should be "take 20". (disarming a trap in 6 seconds... 2 mins sounds better to me)

with that in mind, usually everybody can participate in many different tasks... and don´t forget the DM´s friend (+2/-2 modifiers)

Its just, that you have to constantly watch over your players skills and you needed to constantly ensure them that using non maxed skills and taking 10 and taking 20 is worthwhile. So yes, 4e skill system seems to make my life much easier...

 

[habaal]

wow. Just got to this thread now. First impressions:
seems pretty easy to write chase scenes. The whole "we succeeded six checks! we won!" won't be an issue 'cos the PC's dont know how many successes they need or how many losses thay got till thay're cought/dead.... maybe the pursuer is a dragon? in that case the DM may decide that three failiurs is enough to make the pc's stand and fight a couple of rounds before attempting to escape again. even then you'll need a pretty difficult skill checks to convince a townsfolk to hide you. It'd be easy to combine attacks against the PC's (acid breathing and such) and vise versa (the paladin might want to wait for the wyrm behind the corner just to buy som time, even by risk of death) just to add action. What i'm claiming is that the chase system MAKES the players take some blessed control over the nerrative, not changing the world but rether describing they're characters' choices and place in the world the DM creates.
Don't know about you, but as a player, I'd love to have those oppertunities to make my PC shine in the story the way I want him to.

As a DM i find it pretty easy to comgine successes storywise ("Managed a hard climb check? You now have an opportunity to drop a stone Gargoyle on the wyrm to slow it down, or if you want to warn another PC that his running towards a dead end, you may." I'd let the player come up with something himself if he wants.)

 

[william_nova]

Yes, Derren seems to run his game with an ironclad focus on realism. The city has a map. That street is a dead end. Running into it will get you nowhere.
[...]
The city has no detailed map. I'm not going to work out every street and alley, the entire sewer network, the exact height of every wall and roof. They don't do this in books or movies either.

I find parallels here with the Cinematic Unisystem, used in the Buffy and Angel RPGs. Wonderful systems that allow player interaction with the story in novel ways via semi narrativist mechanics.

I see this parallel in the healing surge mechanic, where hit points are more abstracted. In 4e D&D, as in a cinematic game, you can simply say "I think I'm Ok," or "It looked worse than it was" or any other explanation as to why Xander Harris or your Elf could get knocked 30 feet and thru a wall by a demon and be simply dazed one scene, and mortally wounded in another. How? Because it was interesting for the story! And for the simulationists out there, how many people get shot in the shoulder and die of shock, while others can take 5 bullets to the chest and survive? It happens all the time. Hate to tell you, but life really can be that random sometimes. So can your game.

Absolute old school insistence on Simulationist rules is not fun. It's frustrating. How many folks here ran 1e D&D and had a character die every other session? If you had a "realistic" DM, this happened all the time. Face it, 2e lessened the realism, as did 3e. In each iteration of the rules, the standards of Simulationism have been relaxed. I think that in 4e there's been a larger than normal leap, which is what seems to be upsetting people. It's the amount of change so suddenly.

Another parallel area where you can see this greater player control in the new skill resolution. PCs have more control over what happens, in this new world where 'what's behind the door' depends on how you rolled. To compare, in a cinematic unisystem game, you can spend points to nudge the plot in certain directions, and having played that extensively, I can say, it's a blast.

Once you get beyond the min/max numbers game, and the concept of what's "real," and of winning vs losing, you can feel free to nudge rolls (or scenes) you failed to succeed using a more narrativist influenced system. You can also nudge rolls (or scenes) to *fail* if you so wish. Why would you want to fail a roll (or a scene)? If it makes for a more interesting story, you absolutely should.

To sum up, the fascinating thing I see about 4e is on one hand you have the obvious borrowing from the minis game and the warlord class for example to accommodate those of us who like math and complexity, while at the same time making the rules set friendly enough that I, an unapologetic 3e hater, can feel good about it. At that same time, while some folks are wondering if their RPG has turned into Warhammer, we have some new, more narrativist style rules, and an obvious focus on setting and roleplay. I find this to be a very exciting blend of styles, personally. One I can't wait to play.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

[...]

To sum up, the fascinating thing I see about 4e is on one hand you have the obvious borrowing from the minis game and the warlord class for example to accommodate those of us who like math and complexity, while at the same time making the rules set friendly enough that I, an unapologetic 3e hater, can feel good about it. At that same time, while some folks are wondering if their RPG has turned into Warhammer, we have some new, more narrativist style rules, and an obvious focus on setting and roleplay. I find this to be a very exciting blend of styles, personally. One I can't wait to play.

I can see the concerns of certain people, that giving narrative control to players is death to their campaigns... but everytime i played or DMed a game where EVERYTHING was completely drawn out, noone had a good time. The best storys evolve in a DIALOGUE between DM and players. It is possible with 3rd edition to play that way, but having a ruleset with that in mind is a great thing.

 

[Ximenes088]

I can only speak to my own experience in using the system in my own 3.5-based game, but it's working splendidly. The PC tells me what they want to do, I tell them the skill to roll, they pick easy/medium/hard and roll it. If what they're trying to do is naturally Hard, then I just tell them that easy or medium aren't options, but the vast majority of times so far I've been able to easily work in their choice of difficulty.

Easy checks simply mean they're playing it safe and going for the main chance in a situation. Failing a check like that means that not only do they fail to advance their cause, some sort of additional gritty complication arises. More difficult checks mean they're taking bigger, more heroic risks, and the game rewards such cinematic efforts by limiting failure consequences to simple lack of progress and giving hard checks a chance for additional goodness. Want a grittier campaign feel? Just add ascending bad side-effects for failing medium and hard checks.

So far the system really is working well for my game.