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

[Echohawk]

As I understand it, 4ed views skill challenges as a type of "encounter", so if you are busy with a skill challenge, you are inside an encounter, and thus you can't take 10.

 

[hong]

You can't take 10 when in a rush, threatened or distracted. None of these would apply (necessarily) if, for example, you're hobnobbing with a baron or climbing a cliff. The comment about encounters is in parentheses, indicating it's a clarifying statement, not a definitional one; and there's no good reason to suppose that noncombat interaction suddenly becomes more difficult when it's dressed up as an "encounter".

 

[hong]

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

I see no reason to suppose that 4E assumes all encounters must be rushed, threatening or distracting.

An encounter is a scene. It's a sequence of events that is of interest. While most of the time (combat) those events will involve physical risk, that doesn't mean it must hold for all encounters -- specifically, the noncombat ones.

 

[neoweasel]

Let's talk skill challenges for a moment.

At 1st level, an "easy" skill DC is 15. Well...how easy is that.

Let's pick our best guy for the job. We'll give him a +4 from his primary stat, and +5 for being trained, a pretty reasonable assumption. So he has a +9 to the roll, meaning if he can't take 10, then he will fail the check 25% of the time.

25% failure doesn't sound easy to me. Now let's take a guy with training but not the best at the skill, he only has a +2 from his stat. That's a 35% failure. I succeed only 2 out of every 3 times, doesn't sound very easy.

I'd say that a task that a minimally talented (non negative stat mod) trained person can succeed 100% of the time when they're not in significantly stressful situations (i.e. not in an encounter) *IS* easy.

Now let's look at a moderate DC, which at level 1 is a 20. With our +9 guy, he needs an 11 or better, a straight up 50/50 chance to make a check. Let's also not forget that with this DC, you can't take 10, as it wouldn't be enough. Well...personally if I'm walking a tightrope and I have a 50/50 chance of falling off, I would consider that pretty hard.


How this really effects the players is with skill challenges. For the most part, skill challenges have moderate DCs for the challenge, and you cannot take 10. That means with every check you have a 50/50 shot at making it. This is assuming of course you are using one of your absolute best skills. Considering that you need twice the number of successes as you need failures....that means MOST skill challenges will statistically end in failure!!

For example, let's say you have a complexity 1, level 1 skill challenge for level 1 PC. About as straight forward as you can get right?

Let's assume moderate skill challenges for the board, and assume every player is rolling with a +9. Aka, everyone is got a good skill to roll on this one. The players chance of winning the challenge is....15.6%.

That's right, about a 1 in 6 chance for the most basic of challenges.

Your DCs are wrong across the board. You're talking about level 1 skill difficulties and using ones from... well I don't know where. The chart for the DCs for skill challenges is on page 42. Under that chart, a Medium DC for 1st level characters is 15, which means that if you're not going for Easy (which would mean your competent characters have a 100% chance of success) you've got a 31.6% chance of succeeding in the first 4 rolls and a 63.3% chance of succeeding overall. That's at level 1, where the chance of success is LOWEST overall. The DCs don't scale up at the same rate as the 1/2 lvl mod and stat mods combined do.

 

[Cadfan]

The skill challenge preview specifically talked about how the challenge with the baron could potentially take days or weeks, if the party had to do research or politicking in town.

I see no reason that you couldn't take 10 on a Streetwise check or something if you had a week to do it. Whatever the wording, I doubt the intent was to forbid that.

 

[Stalker0]

Your DCs are wrong across the board. You're talking about level 1 skill difficulties and using ones from... well I don't know where. The chart for the DCs for skill challenges is on page 42.

Read the chart again, pay careful attention to the footnote.

 

[neoweasel]

Read the chart again, pay careful attention to the footnote.

Whoops! Well, color *me* embarrassed.

 

[wedgeski]

It seems clear to me that the 4th Edition Skills rules take better account of the Aid Another equivalent, which made many many skill checks in 3ed absolutely trivial.

 

[Aristeas]

The Skill Challenge mechanics in the DMG do not seem to allow Aid Another by default. What the skill challenge section says (DMG 74) is that you roll initiative, and then you go through the initiative, with everybody rolling against the listed Easy,Moderate,Hard DCs and stacking up successes or failures. This process is described with the word "must" several times, suggesting that there isn't any time for Aid Another actions.

The DMG goes on to note that, "if appropriate", you can use the the "Group Skill Checks" subsystem(DMG 75) to add Aid Another. The example is the entire group climbing a cliff. But in many (most) situations this is not an appropriate model.

And most skill challenges already take cooperation into account in their structure. Look at the Lost in the Wilderness example: Three characters make endurance or nature checks that count for the whole group, and any character can make an easy DC perception check to grant another character a +2 on the next check. This would be a pretty stupid option if Aid Another were intended to be available in this situation, since it would generally be much better to make an untrained Nature DC 10 than a trained Perception DC 15+(lvl/2), which is about what an Easy DC is.

Most skill challenges also don't seem to be places where you can take 10. Interrogation, maybe, or Discovering Secret Lore. But there's nothing mundane or calm about Urban Chase, Interrogation, or the Combat Encounter with the poison gas. I don't think that's the intended solution here either.

 

[DM_Blake]

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?

I read that to mean that, at moderate difficulty, your bonus is only +9. if you Take 10, you only get a 19. Since you need a 20, then in this case Take 10 is guaranteed failure.

Ergo, you can't Take 10.

Technically, you can, but your success chance goes from 50% to 0%.

Of course, if you have some other bonus, or some way to add at least +10 to your roll, and there are no external factors forcing you to rush your check, then you probably can Take 10 with a 100% chance to succeed.