SamuraiJackJr
First Post
Agreed - sounds interesting! Please let us know how this works out - thanks!
Crazy Idea: Using the Disease Track for Skill Challenges
Using the disease track has another hidden advantage over the official skill challenge system. It creates a successive sense of progression which allow you to better narrate the story.
In the regular skill challenge lets say you need 5 sucesses prior to 3 failures. If your players get 2 failures first and then things start to turn around and they get 4 sucesses in a row. Now the narration leads to a natural sense of progession. However if they then get another failure, bam they loose the challenge and this creates a disconnect between the first 2 failures and the last one.
With the disease track system, there is a clear sense of flow. If you fail at first, the situation gets worse, but then if you start having sucesses it gradually improves and if you then fail again, you dont automatically fail the challenge as above, you just start moving down again towards the bad side.
It really helps for challenges such as negotiations or a chase I believe as these should have such a sense of flow or progression.
I am not sure I expressed the idea properly but hopefully you will understand what I mean....
In the regular skill challenge lets say you need 5 sucesses prior to 3 failures. If your players get 2 failures first and then things start to turn around and they get 4 sucesses in a row. Now the narration leads to a natural sense of progession. However if they then get another failure, bam they loose the challenge and this creates a disconnect between the first 2 failures and the last one.
With the disease track system, there is a clear sense of flow. If you fail at first, the situation gets worse, but then if you start having sucesses it gradually improves and if you then fail again, you dont automatically fail the challenge as above, you just start moving down again towards the bad side.
It really helps for challenges such as negotiations or a chase I believe as these should have such a sense of flow or progression.
I am not sure I expressed the idea properly but hopefully you will understand what I mean....
Talaeden_Denthiir
Explorer
Morandir Nailo,
How's it going? That's such an awesome idea!! I love how you use the existing 4E rules to make the skill challenges better and elegant as well as streamlined and realistic!!! Mad Props!!!!!
How's it going? That's such an awesome idea!! I love how you use the existing 4E rules to make the skill challenges better and elegant as well as streamlined and realistic!!! Mad Props!!!!!
This does have a certain elegance and flow. I do have a series of thoughts:
How many people have to 'actively' participate and how many can Aid Other?
How does one 'dig out of a hole'? I think someone else mentioned this. If the first three people fail, the last two people can't really recover, the best they can do is a partial failure. Perhaps that is though realistic if the dwarf insults the king and pisses off the viceroy, it's unlikely the party is going to be able to convince him to not throw them in the dungeon much less give them support in their quest.
So there should be some mechanism for 'pulling victory from the jaws of defeat".
Thinking off the top of my head.
To create the skill challenge, define the possible outcome steps, They don't have to be balanced, there could be more steps to complete failure than complete victory, that's an inherent way to make it tougher or easier. Or there are simply more steps that equate to the same thing. Fewer steps to victory could mean easier challenge.
Example: Total Failure | Partial Failure 2 | Partial Failure 1 | No Change | Partial Success 1 | Partial Success 1 | Total Success
Both partial successes have the same results but the two partial failures have different results.
Define the number of 'rounds' the skill challenge can be allowed to take.
Define the ranges for sustain and success. Perhaps just use the 'recommended' DC's there for success and subtract 5 for sustain level? i.e. DC 20 for success, DC 15 for sustain, anything else is failure.
Allow last ditch effort round to avoid total failure, DC's go up by 5.
Critical fail (natural 1) or success (natural 20) moves the marker on the scale two spaces. Or maybe Critical Success counts as three steps foward which gives us room to have a Major Success which is success DC +5 to move it two spaces. We do tend to want our players to succeed don't we rather than fail?
Define the type of skillsets, physical, mental, social, that determines the primary skills usable for the challenge (idea straight from Obsidian).
How many 'Aid Others' are allowed during the challenge? Perhaps define Primary skills which are normal DC rolls and Secondary skills which can be used as Aid Other which are also made at the normal DC but are used to add +2 to others rolls. And a Major Success on Aid Other grants +4 on the Aid Other roll.
What about Action Point? Perhaps spend an action point to turn a failure into a sustain roll?
Taking a recent sample question on Chase Scene from the gleemax forums:
The Chase Sequence:
Party has gotten in over its head and needs to run away. The setting is an orc warcamp set in rolling hills and forests. They attempt to break off combat and run away.
This we determine is a primarily physical skill challenge but with mental or specific knowledge skills helpful. Because the entire party is trying to run away we decide that only one aid other can be done per round, one character spots a way to gain some ground, or knows to use rocky gound, or figures out a way to mislead the pursuit or whatever. The rest of it is going to be a lot of running, sneaking, climbing etc.
Duration: The challenge lasts two rounds.
Participation: One player may use Secondary Skills per round to Aid Other. All others must use Primary Skills.
Primary Skills: Acrobatics, Athletics, Endurance, Stealth
Secondary Skills: Dungeoneering, Nature, Perception, Insight
The DC to sustain is 15, success is 20, major success is 25.
Possible Outcomes:
Thoughts? Frankly at first glance, without doing the math, its easy to understand, it has ebb and flow, two steps forward, one step back etc., it lets everyone participate and should generally have enough skills that everyone can primary skill it or the worst one could secondary skill someone else up or it could be opened to allow two aid others.
It has a way to 'dig out' by rolling major or critical successes. They can buy their way out of failure by spending Action Points if they have them to make it not purely random but a minor tactical decision.
It can have a definite time limit or it can be open ended and only a total failure or victory will finish the challenge.
You could make one leg longer than the other so there are more failure options or victory options and adjust the difficulty that way as well.
It has easy ways to have partial success or failures and you could make two or more of either side be the same. As in either (or any) of the partial failures has the same result.
D
How many people have to 'actively' participate and how many can Aid Other?
How does one 'dig out of a hole'? I think someone else mentioned this. If the first three people fail, the last two people can't really recover, the best they can do is a partial failure. Perhaps that is though realistic if the dwarf insults the king and pisses off the viceroy, it's unlikely the party is going to be able to convince him to not throw them in the dungeon much less give them support in their quest.
So there should be some mechanism for 'pulling victory from the jaws of defeat".
Thinking off the top of my head.
To create the skill challenge, define the possible outcome steps, They don't have to be balanced, there could be more steps to complete failure than complete victory, that's an inherent way to make it tougher or easier. Or there are simply more steps that equate to the same thing. Fewer steps to victory could mean easier challenge.
Example: Total Failure | Partial Failure 2 | Partial Failure 1 | No Change | Partial Success 1 | Partial Success 1 | Total Success
Both partial successes have the same results but the two partial failures have different results.
Define the number of 'rounds' the skill challenge can be allowed to take.
Define the ranges for sustain and success. Perhaps just use the 'recommended' DC's there for success and subtract 5 for sustain level? i.e. DC 20 for success, DC 15 for sustain, anything else is failure.
Allow last ditch effort round to avoid total failure, DC's go up by 5.
Critical fail (natural 1) or success (natural 20) moves the marker on the scale two spaces. Or maybe Critical Success counts as three steps foward which gives us room to have a Major Success which is success DC +5 to move it two spaces. We do tend to want our players to succeed don't we rather than fail?
Define the type of skillsets, physical, mental, social, that determines the primary skills usable for the challenge (idea straight from Obsidian).
How many 'Aid Others' are allowed during the challenge? Perhaps define Primary skills which are normal DC rolls and Secondary skills which can be used as Aid Other which are also made at the normal DC but are used to add +2 to others rolls. And a Major Success on Aid Other grants +4 on the Aid Other roll.
What about Action Point? Perhaps spend an action point to turn a failure into a sustain roll?
Taking a recent sample question on Chase Scene from the gleemax forums:
The Chase Sequence:
Party has gotten in over its head and needs to run away. The setting is an orc warcamp set in rolling hills and forests. They attempt to break off combat and run away.
This we determine is a primarily physical skill challenge but with mental or specific knowledge skills helpful. Because the entire party is trying to run away we decide that only one aid other can be done per round, one character spots a way to gain some ground, or knows to use rocky gound, or figures out a way to mislead the pursuit or whatever. The rest of it is going to be a lot of running, sneaking, climbing etc.
Duration: The challenge lasts two rounds.
Participation: One player may use Secondary Skills per round to Aid Other. All others must use Primary Skills.
Primary Skills: Acrobatics, Athletics, Endurance, Stealth
Secondary Skills: Dungeoneering, Nature, Perception, Insight
The DC to sustain is 15, success is 20, major success is 25.
Possible Outcomes:
- Complete Failure: They can't disengage and opponents get surprise round and combat advantage against them and have simply moved the fight a quarter mile down the road.
- Partial Failure: They disengage but run into another danger (tribe of goblins).
- Partial Failure: They disengage but the orcs catch them, roll for surprise. The orcs though come at them in waves rather than all at once.
- Neutral: Must complete another round of combat before they can attempt again.
- Partial Success: They disengage and run into a source of help, friendly border patrol, passing rangers on their way to a bow convention, whatever and must still fight the orcs.
- Partial Success: They disengage but are now lost in the woods.
- Total Success: They've slipped their pursuit and know where the orcs are and their relative numbers and can plan accordingly. They could escape the area completely, or set up an ambush for a small search party or something similar per the DM's discretion.
Thoughts? Frankly at first glance, without doing the math, its easy to understand, it has ebb and flow, two steps forward, one step back etc., it lets everyone participate and should generally have enough skills that everyone can primary skill it or the worst one could secondary skill someone else up or it could be opened to allow two aid others.
It has a way to 'dig out' by rolling major or critical successes. They can buy their way out of failure by spending Action Points if they have them to make it not purely random but a minor tactical decision.
It can have a definite time limit or it can be open ended and only a total failure or victory will finish the challenge.
You could make one leg longer than the other so there are more failure options or victory options and adjust the difficulty that way as well.
It has easy ways to have partial success or failures and you could make two or more of either side be the same. As in either (or any) of the partial failures has the same result.
D
Last edited:
Nifft
Penguin Herder
Hmm. Similar to something I did regarding a trap / skill challenge, but it wasn't on a linear track.
Each successful check did fix something with the environment (remove difficult terrain, stop lightning attacks, etc.), but several changes could have been done in any order.
Cheers, -- N
Each successful check did fix something with the environment (remove difficult terrain, stop lightning attacks, etc.), but several changes could have been done in any order.
Cheers, -- N
Morandir Nailo
First Post
Sorry I haven't updated guys, been busy (heading into grad school in a few weeks, lots to be done)! The game actually got derailed on Thursday, we didn't get to play long enough for the PCs to reach this portion of the dungeon. Hopefully next week!
Danmar: that's an excellent write-up of a skill challenge - exactly the sort of thing I had in mind! I had originally written a "critical success/failure" system in, but it somehow got erased; if you beat/fail the DC by a large enough amount, you move two steps. This helps prevent the "digging yourself into a hole" problem.
It's really cool to see all these great ideas, keep it up guys! I'll be sure to post a playtest report once we play this Thursday (we're playing this time, dammit...I don't spend hours on those dungeons for nothing!)
Mor
Danmar: that's an excellent write-up of a skill challenge - exactly the sort of thing I had in mind! I had originally written a "critical success/failure" system in, but it somehow got erased; if you beat/fail the DC by a large enough amount, you move two steps. This helps prevent the "digging yourself into a hole" problem.
It's really cool to see all these great ideas, keep it up guys! I'll be sure to post a playtest report once we play this Thursday (we're playing this time, dammit...I don't spend hours on those dungeons for nothing!)
Mor
Okay I've been considering this this evening http://www.keyourcars.com/2008/08/02/yet-another-skill-challenge-system/ and in my putting details to paper this has some points for consideration.
With a limited ebb and flow on the challenge track more than a couple of rounds become pointless or rather meaningless as it's only the last one or two rounds that really decide the outcome.
In my initial write up for my own testing I'm going to add in Inertia so that the last round of the challenge the track can only shift one position up or down. My own incarnation of this idea has three possible shifts, Roll a 1 and it counts as two failures, failure counts as 1, sustain no movement, success counts as 1, major success (5 over the success DC)counts as 2, natural 20 counts as 2.
But what can easily happen with even a 5 placement track (failure, partial failure, neutral, partial success, success) is that the last round can easily shift that from total failure to total success if all 5 players participate and all 5 roll a success.
And the last player could conceivably turn a string of successes into a not success by failing on the last roll. At the least he'll turn a total into a partial. So one failure can negate 10 successes at that point.
I added in a offsetting mechanism to try and balance that, the Inertia rule so that the last round success and failure can only swing it one position.
And once per round one player can spend an action point to shift a failure up one spot, critical failure into failure, failure into sustain. So that can offset the last guy in the chain ruining all the success of his predecessors. I also assign a +2 bonus if the track is already on total success (and -2 for total failure) for the next person to roll.
I ran a simple playtest and that's when some of these concerns came out. The more than two rounds negates the effects of earlier rounds issue. The last man standing can decide the fate of the challenge issue.
So these are something to think about as people work with this type of track system.
With a limited ebb and flow on the challenge track more than a couple of rounds become pointless or rather meaningless as it's only the last one or two rounds that really decide the outcome.
In my initial write up for my own testing I'm going to add in Inertia so that the last round of the challenge the track can only shift one position up or down. My own incarnation of this idea has three possible shifts, Roll a 1 and it counts as two failures, failure counts as 1, sustain no movement, success counts as 1, major success (5 over the success DC)counts as 2, natural 20 counts as 2.
But what can easily happen with even a 5 placement track (failure, partial failure, neutral, partial success, success) is that the last round can easily shift that from total failure to total success if all 5 players participate and all 5 roll a success.
And the last player could conceivably turn a string of successes into a not success by failing on the last roll. At the least he'll turn a total into a partial. So one failure can negate 10 successes at that point.
I added in a offsetting mechanism to try and balance that, the Inertia rule so that the last round success and failure can only swing it one position.
And once per round one player can spend an action point to shift a failure up one spot, critical failure into failure, failure into sustain. So that can offset the last guy in the chain ruining all the success of his predecessors. I also assign a +2 bonus if the track is already on total success (and -2 for total failure) for the next person to roll.
I ran a simple playtest and that's when some of these concerns came out. The more than two rounds negates the effects of earlier rounds issue. The last man standing can decide the fate of the challenge issue.
So these are something to think about as people work with this type of track system.
Good setup DanmarLOK, but should't the challenge end automatically when the party reaches either total success or total failure ?
This would be the equivalent of the current system and makes more narrative sense and removes the need for your inertia mechanics. If you feel the end of the track can be reached too quickly (even before the end of single round.. which is the case also with the official skill challenge system BTW), just increase the number of intermediate steps , which as you say do no need to be a different kind of partial success, but just a repetition of the same a few times.
To simulate a complexity 1 Skill challenge which currently is 4 successes before 3 failures, you jusst need to make sure your track has at least 7 positions and so on (perhaps 2 less if we figure in the sustain mechanism).
This would be the equivalent of the current system and makes more narrative sense and removes the need for your inertia mechanics. If you feel the end of the track can be reached too quickly (even before the end of single round.. which is the case also with the official skill challenge system BTW), just increase the number of intermediate steps , which as you say do no need to be a different kind of partial success, but just a repetition of the same a few times.
To simulate a complexity 1 Skill challenge which currently is 4 successes before 3 failures, you jusst need to make sure your track has at least 7 positions and so on (perhaps 2 less if we figure in the sustain mechanism).
Morandir Nailo
First Post
I'll read over that link later, Danmar (have to go to work soon); it's really cool to see this idea taking off like this!
Taralan: That's not a bad idea, and I think it makes good sense, as well as keeping the skill challenge from taking too long IRL. So basically the skill challenge ends after either A: complete success or failure is reached or B: all the players have had a chance to contribute. I would refine things further and say that in a B situation, if the result is neutral, the PCs would have the option to continue trying, or just give up.
In certain situations, the skill challenge will stop once complete success/failure is reached, regardless. F'rex with a trap, it either goes off or is disarmed; there's no need to keep going then, obviously.
Mor
Taralan: That's not a bad idea, and I think it makes good sense, as well as keeping the skill challenge from taking too long IRL. So basically the skill challenge ends after either A: complete success or failure is reached or B: all the players have had a chance to contribute. I would refine things further and say that in a B situation, if the result is neutral, the PCs would have the option to continue trying, or just give up.
In certain situations, the skill challenge will stop once complete success/failure is reached, regardless. F'rex with a trap, it either goes off or is disarmed; there's no need to keep going then, obviously.
Mor
*smacks forehead*
For some reason I was stuck with the idea that the challenge HAD to go the full time limit and must end on a full round. Most likely it was because of the example scenario I came up with which I envisioned as simply requiring X amount of time to either succeed or fail.
Indeed, so we dump inertia as it becomes moot with that kind of change. We go to either Total Success or Total Failure. Make the recommended minimum number of steps on each arm equal to... 4? So it becomes a 9 position track and requires four standard successes to 'succeed'. A party of 5 with 1 abstention could conceivably do it in one round, especially if one or more has a reasonable shot at a major success check result.
We can then balance the difficulty still two ways, via DC and making the failure arm longer or shorter than the success arm and by limiting the number of rounds longer rounds at better than even chances to succeed = easier challenge.
For some reason I was stuck with the idea that the challenge HAD to go the full time limit and must end on a full round. Most likely it was because of the example scenario I came up with which I envisioned as simply requiring X amount of time to either succeed or fail.
Indeed, so we dump inertia as it becomes moot with that kind of change. We go to either Total Success or Total Failure. Make the recommended minimum number of steps on each arm equal to... 4? So it becomes a 9 position track and requires four standard successes to 'succeed'. A party of 5 with 1 abstention could conceivably do it in one round, especially if one or more has a reasonable shot at a major success check result.
We can then balance the difficulty still two ways, via DC and making the failure arm longer or shorter than the success arm and by limiting the number of rounds longer rounds at better than even chances to succeed = easier challenge.
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