Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="ltbaxter" data-source="post: 4206665" data-attributes="member: 60472">The more I see on these skill challenges, the more confused I am. I think what you did is interesting, and would work fine, but there's a few aspects to this challenge - and to the one presented recently by Wizards, that bother me.First and foremost, there's the use of a skill that there is *no* reason to presuppose would cause any problem, and the party gets smacked down even for trying it. I don't like auto-fail in these skill challenges.Second, I thought the design philosophy of the new system was to allow *every* player to participate, not just the one(s) with the &quot;needed&quot; skills. That was a perceived big shortcoming of 3.5. Your skill challenge seems very 3.5 to me - in the sense that this is almost exactly how I would run such a challenge in 3.5. (I used multiple rolls for success/fail in 3.5)&nbsp; It's easy to imagine several party members having none of the &quot;primary&quot; skills needed for this challenge. Third, where does player skill come into play? They have no way of knowing which skills are &quot;trapped&quot; - also, there is no direct benefit whatsover to good roleplaying or to creative explanation for use of skills. How might that work? If a player did a particularly good job in roleplaying the diplomacy, I would knock down the DC a notch. If he came up with a use for a skill I had not imagined (say History here) and explained it well, I would likewise give it a decent chance of success. If they can't say &quot;why&quot; they're using a skill other than &quot;it's my highest skill&quot;, I would make the success DC harder. Again, creative post, I'm not picking on the example, but am thinking out loud about what's the best way to create a skill challenge in 4e.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="ltbaxter, post: 4206665, member: 60472"] The more I see on these skill challenges, the more confused I am. I think what you did is interesting, and would work fine, but there's a few aspects to this challenge - and to the one presented recently by Wizards, that bother me. First and foremost, there's the use of a skill that there is *no* reason to presuppose would cause any problem, and the party gets smacked down even for trying it. I don't like auto-fail in these skill challenges. Second, I thought the design philosophy of the new system was to allow *every* player to participate, not just the one(s) with the "needed" skills. That was a perceived big shortcoming of 3.5. Your skill challenge seems very 3.5 to me - in the sense that this is almost exactly how I would run such a challenge in 3.5. (I used multiple rolls for success/fail in 3.5) It's easy to imagine several party members having none of the "primary" skills needed for this challenge. Third, where does player skill come into play? They have no way of knowing which skills are "trapped" - also, there is no direct benefit whatsover to good roleplaying or to creative explanation for use of skills. How might that work? If a player did a particularly good job in roleplaying the diplomacy, I would knock down the DC a notch. If he came up with a use for a skill I had not imagined (say History here) and explained it well, I would likewise give it a decent chance of success. If they can't say "why" they're using a skill other than "it's my highest skill", I would make the success DC harder. Again, creative post, I'm not picking on the example, but am thinking out loud about what's the best way to create a skill challenge in 4e. [/QUOTE]

Verification