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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Plane Sailing" data-source="post: 1337038" data-attributes="member: 114">Not answering your immediate question, but following up on thoughts of mine from further up the thread...I think that one of the problem areas (or holes) in the existing D&D system is a means for making skill based contests as meaningful and dynamic as combat is.Combat involves many attacks, manouevres, degradation of hit points, spells, boosts to offensive or defensive stats etc. 4 rounds of melee can easily last an hour (it did in our game last Sunday!).By the book there is no comprehensive guidance or support for making skill use as meaningful and dynamic. To take Henrys example... making a peace treaty between two nations - how do you arrange that as a scenario? Is it a single DC35 diplomacy check (I would hope not, but *higher DC's is the only way that core D&D handles increased difficulty* as far as I can see). Now perhaps solving that scenario would need a combination of gather information, diplomacy, bluff, sense motive and knowledge(history) amongst others.... but it still is hampered by the "make or fail a DC check" rule which is standard for most skills. Ideally the system would benefit from some variation or derivation of the craft skill, to enable PC's to "craft" their diplomacy, or research or gathering of information. Those with good skill ranks will complete their objective more quickly, those without will be more slow and with false starts.You may be thinking "why is Plane going on about this kind of variant? Too complicated! Leave it like it is!".The reason is this. As a DM I find that I baulk at the idea of giving the PC's full experience for making a single move silently check and bypassing the minotaur, since so much has depended upon the roll of a single die. If skill based solutions to problems involved more interaction and sense of gathering victory/doom then I'd be much happier with it. I have to wonder whether there might be other DM's who feel the same way...Cheers(thinks: I wonder if it would be worth turning the above principle into a fully developed article for one magazine or another?)</blockquote>

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