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

[osmanb]

I'm glad I'm not the only one... I'm in the middle of running KotS for my players, and once I saw the books, I figured I'd add a skill challenge to the middle of the adventure. (The one posted on the WotC site is just lame, and even more stupidly hard...). I started doing math on how hard I could make the skill challenge, and it quickly became apparent that there was no way the players could succeed, even if I left the level and complexity low. It does sound (from some of the text) like they expect lots of aid-another actions, but the examples don't all support that. And it's going to make skill challenges much less interesting than they're supposed to be. (Every round would be N-1 players aiding one person that has whatever skill they vote on using next, and then the person with the best base check making a boosted roll. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.)

[sblock]
As for the KotS challenge, I figured that Ninaran could hang out in town a little longer around the 2nd visit to town (the PCs have discovered the existence of a spy). This gives them quite a few skill options for identifying and arresting the spy. Success would prevent the graveyard encounter, and probably gain even more favor with Padraig. Failure would basically lead to the original adventure, and might even lead to some beefed up combats as a failed investigation will tip-off (and anger) Ninaran.
[/sblock]

 

[hong]

Okay, I think I figured it out.

The text in the PHB p.179 says that you can take 10 when "you're not in a rush, not being threatened or distracted (when you're outside an encounter) ...". The thing is that in 4E, "encounter" is almost a term of art. It means about 5 minutes. That's the duration for encounter-long powers, and the period it takes for per-encounter powers to recharge. So if the skill challenge is being used in the context of a scene that takes a very short amount of time (ie, not days or weeks), you can't take 10.

However, you can certainly have skill challenges that do take days or weeks, such as the example in the DMG. In this case, it would not be an "encounter" as such; among other things, this means that you could use per-encounter powers multiple times as circumstances dictate, or even per-day powers if the challenge is long enough. In this case, you are certainly not rushed (and presumably not being threatened/distracted), and you are not in an "encounter" (at least, not in a _single_ encounter) so there should be nothing prohibiting you taking 10.

 

[Harr]

As much as I want to support the rules as written I have to agree that the numbers are very weird and wonky.

What I did was go through my party's trained skills and calculate the average, from 19 skills I got an average of a +8 bonus. Then I decided (out of the blue pretty much) that each single skill check in a challenge should have an average chance of maybe 60% to succeed before adding cooperation, situational bonuses, utility powers etc. 60% means rolling a 9 on a d20, +8 which equals a moderate average DC 17 for level 1 party. Changing the footnote on the DC from "skill challenges add 5" to "skill challenges add 2". Which became so for my games.

It's literally the only way I've been able to reconcile my challenges with the written rules. A pity, since this is the first real "change" to the RAW I've had to make so far in 5 successful sessions of 4e.

As for the other subdiscussion in the thread, for some reason my players hold the opinion that Taking 10 constitutes the height of mockable lameness, so I guess I lucked out on that one