D&D 4E Are easy checks....easy? (4e spoliers)

[Stalker0]

25% failure rate at low levels sounds fine to me.
It makes things interesting and unpredictable, which, from a game standpoint, is entertaining at the table. Give it a go, hero!

Here's the thing, DCs scale with level. So that 25% failure doesn't change, an epic character with epic skill challenges will have the same failure chance.

And for unpredictable, what I'm saying is when it comes to skill challenges its NOT unpredictable, in fact mathematically its quite predictable...your going to fail. If I take PCs and give them the least complex challenge of their level, they are still going to fail the vast vast majority of the time.

Let's say I put in a combat challenge into the game where I felt the players only had about a 20% chance of beating the monsters. That would be fine right....once in a while. Now imagine if I did that every single time. How would your players feel? Because that seems to be just how tough skill challenges are.

Alright, I'd done some more math. First off, my math was a little off in my first statement, and I must apologize for it. Instead of about 15%,
a 1st level party facing a standard complexity 1 level 1 skill challenge has an 18.75% chance of succeeding. That is still extremely low, and I believe my initial conclusions still stand, but its important to remedy my error.

 

[Mengu]

I think this is one of those cases where we need to hear more about the intent with which skill challenges were designed. I agree that mathematically, a moderate skill challenge with 4 successes before 2 failures will fail more often than not. Basically out of 5 rolls, you must get 4 successes. That's rather difficult. As designed I don't think I'll be using many skill challenges.

It's almost like they designed the skill challenges so they could tell the players *how* they fail. It's the wizard's fault, he told me the sulfur dust was nothing to worry about.

If I do create skill challenges, they won't be in the form of X successes before Y failures. They will be more like a time sensitive series of checks, with a bit more tolerance to recover from failures, and some form of scaled consequences based on the degree of success or failure. So, basically I make it up as I go, just like I did in 3.x.

 

[Kraydak]

There are magic items that affect skills, enough to swing Skill Challenges at high levels. Of course, there aren't magic items for every skill (nothing for History that I saw).

I really want to know what "sample" parties they ran through skill challenges, and what assumptions about the PCs were made, because the statistics look wonky.

 

[hong]

So, I now have the books. There were more people at Tin Soldier at lunchtime than I've ever seen there.

Anyway, I can't find where it says that you can't take 10 in a skill challenge. Is there a page reference for that?

 

[AtomicPope]

Here's the thing, DCs scale with level. So that 25% failure doesn't change, an epic character with epic skill challenges will have the same failure chance.

And for unpredictable, what I'm saying is when it comes to skill challenges its NOT unpredictable, in fact mathematically its quite predictable...your going to fail. If I take PCs and give them the least complex challenge of their level, they are still going to fail the vast vast majority of the time.

Not true. You're thinking in 3e mechanics - one roll = one success. This is not 3e.

4e isn't about a single character doing all of the work, it's about teamwork. In a single roll (i.e. not a skill challenge) a 75% chance of success is pretty darn easy when you consider you're in combat or there is a grave risk of failure (which is why you cannot take 10). But in a skill challenge PC's must help each other out - by design. If PC's fail to help each other they fail as a team. I think that's a good lesson for any cooperative game system.

Skill challenges have consequences beyond the 3e OOPS! the trap blew up - everyone make a fort save. They affect the party by causing their daily hp to diminish. When you look at skill challenges as "taxing" it then becomes important to use those oh-so-overlooked utilities. Yeah, 3e didn't have much in the way of Utilities. Factor in all of the classes Utilities that give bonuses, rerolls, and double rolls (picking the highest) and the PC's as a team can make it through their challenges.

 

[hong]

So, I now have the books. There were more people at Tin Soldier at lunchtime than I've ever seen there.

Anyway, I can't find where it says that you can't take 10 in a skill challenge. Is there a page reference for that?

WHY DOES NOONE LISTEN TO ME or something

 

[Echohawk]

WHY DOES NOONE LISTEN TO ME or something

p179

Edit: Specifically the bit that says "[...] when you're outside an encounter [...] you can choose to take 10".

 

[hong]

Right, but I don't see how that rules out taking 10 in a skill challenge.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Right, but I don't see how that rules out taking 10 in a skill challenge.

I think skill challenges (as opposed to just using the skill) are encounters of the non-combat variety and thus you can't take 10.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Right, but I don't see how that rules out taking 10 in a skill challenge.

Probably because a skill challenge is an encounter?
(Can't tell you if that's true without the books)