Every group is different. And everyone takes home a different impression of each edition.
Of course.
In my group, this would be considered metagaming, and I would ask the party to keep it in character. Even if they persist in metagaming though, you need to spice it up. Sometimes the guy with the highest rank in diplomacy, isn't the person the NPC wants to address. Maybe the mayor of the town, refuses to deal with someone who appears too manipulative, or has a "roguish" manner about them. They might single out the most dim-witted looking member of the party in order to take advantage of them.
All this is certainly true. But I'd say this sort of thing is rare at best. And should be. It's rather unfair of the DM to continually ruin the player's fun and character concept by forcing them to do things they didn't want to do. I figure if someone puts max ranks in Diplomacy, it's because they want to talk to NPCs and be the friendly one. The entire point of having max ranks in Diplomacy is that people can't help but trust you. They WANT to get along with you. Even if they initially have a problem with you for one reason or another, you can make a Diplomacy check and change their mind.
I certainly, would never have an NPC want to talk to the Half-Orc when the Half-Elf Bard makes a DC 50 Diplomacy check(which according to the rules in 3.5 edition now makes him want to lay down his life in order to protect the Half-Elf). Players smell this thing a mile away. I could just hear my players complaining now: "What? I made a DC 50 Diplomacy check!?!? With that check I can get entire villages worth of people to jump in front of Dragons for me and the Bartender says he'd rather deal with the Half-Orc? You just want us to fail! This game is no fun!"
This is normally true in combat adventures, but in investigations splitting up usually speeds things up a lot. It is much easier if people pair up and follow different leads.
If there is any combat involved ever, then it's a bad idea to split up. You never know when a combat is going to happen. When a combat happens, you want everyone there. You don't want the situation where half the group is gathering information in the inn while the other half follows the mysterious cloaked stranger to the other side of town. It normally ends with half the party being ambushed in an alley somewhere and doing an hour and a half battle while the other players complain that they showed up for a session in order to watch other people play.
No adventure should hinge on a single roll of the dice. There should always be alternatives to jumping the pit. In these circumstances, different levels of skill in different things, allow characters to shine in different ways. A good way to solve this, is to have failure result in making things harder, but not impossible. Think of it like a movie, maybe the guy falls onto a small ledge fifteen to twenty feet down. Sure he takes some damage as punishment, but now the party has to figure out a way to rescue him. In my mind this is more exciting anyways.
I agree. Nothing should ever hinge on one roll of the dice. Which is why I don't call for skill checks at all if I want the party to succeed. I don't put pits that the party needs to cross in an adventure, because I don't know what their jump checks or spells are. They might not be able to pass it. I don't record anything at all about the characters in my games. I don't even know what their names are most of the time. I let them keep track of their characters and I keep track of my adventures.
If I did plan on their being a pit there, it would be planned in advance. Exactly how deep it was, whether there were any ledges, and so on. If someone failed and I had figured out there were no ledges, they fall to their death.
These sort of things aren't all that exciting though...at least not in 3.5e. Someone falls X feet, a rope is lowered, they climb up, they get healed by the Wand of Cure Light Wounds. Everyone groans, makes fun of the Wizard for not being strong enough to jump over the pit, and the game continues. There's no real tension.
Even if the party leaves him, he can still try to figure his own way out and catch up later (and hey that makes for a great little side trek--plus it is an opportunity to do a split party which is often fun if done well)
There's that splitting up thing again. The bane of all games. I've played in games where the DM did this, so I know from experience. I remember when me and one other person had something similar happen. 6 party members, 2 of us down a pit finding a different way to go, the other 4 were the bigger group, they run into a combat encounter and fight. Me and the other person sit down on the couch nearby in order to watch a movie. They finish the encounter, walk into another room and fight another encounter. We watch another movie. They fight another encounter, we eat supper. Then they walk through another corridor and run into us. We finally join them back at the table.
Again this is adventure design. If failure of one roll means the adventure stops, then it is bad no matter what skill system you use, because you either let them fail and everything comes to an end, or you make it a cake walk. You need to be creative with failures, and understand there is always more than one way to overcome a challenge. Okay, so maybe they didn't impress the king. But maybe the king's uncle saw an opportunity, and offers to get them on the king's good side in exchange for a favor. Or maybe they have to deal with the theives guild instead of the king.
I agree. But, generally succeeding gives them more advantages than failing. They want to succeed. Failing shouldn't be the end of things, but it should end up being harder to solve the mystery. Which is what the OP was asking about. When the group fails the Search/Perception check to find the murder weapon, they now have to figure out the mystery without that information. Not impossible, but harder. If they fail to convince the passerby on the street to tell them what he saw, it should become even harder. If they also fail the Heal check to figure out how the victim died, it becomes even harder. Maybe they never solve the crime and they find a different body and move on to a different mystery. Maybe, when they fail to catch the killer more people end up dead, but it gives them more chances to get clues.
I think we're in full agreement here. My point is that in these situations you either succeed or you don't. The group is working together, so any successes get them closer to their goals, any failures get them further away.
Still, you were saying that individual failures mattered. You were saying that you wanted to throw in a lot of skill checks where if the Half-Orc failed his Diplomacy then he wasn't favored by the King, while everyone else was. It just doesn't seem to matter. Skills are rolled for a benefit or a disadvantage. The question is: what happens if you gain the favor of the King vs what happens if you don't. If the point of gaining his favor is that the party gets to investigate the Vault in the castle for clues, then you gain the benefit if he lets even one party member in there. Individual failures don't matter except maybe that the King glares at you and you have to wait outside the castle while the rest of the party gets the information you wanted. I suppose it might cost you a reward or something, if the King decides to be petty and reward only the people who made their Diplomacy check or something. Still, if the game is a cooperative game(which it is in the vast number of cases), then if the group succeeds, all the individuals succeed.
Sure. In near impossible situations, people will seek alternate paths. I would argue a clever party can use the theives high rank to get everyone across (maybe he jumps and then throws a rope back for everyone else). In this case, he shines, but the others still get across.
As was said elsewhere, if an individual fails a jump over the pit challenge, then either his failure is negated(by the use of rope, a fly spell or whatever) and the group succeeds in getting over the pit OR there is no way to negate the failure and the entire group turns back and finds another way(perhaps with a penalty).
Although this is far away from the original topic. The point I was making was that by setting the DC at 25 at level 10, you are saying that all those who have NOT put all (or most) of their ranks into the skill will fail while all those who HAVE put all their ranks into their skill and have skill focus or a really good related stat will succeed nearly 100% of the time. Which means you are deciding in advance that you are going to punish those who didn't take max ranks in that skill. The person who put only 2 ranks in the skill for a total bonus of +4 is still going to fail 100% of the time. He'll fall down the pit and take damage. And you are telling him he might as well have spent no ranks in it, because 2 ranks are useless in this situation. On the other hand, if you set the DC at 10, you are saying that you don't need more than 8 or so ranks, because anything beyond that won't matter.
The difference between skills is so great that by setting any DC, you are purposefully punishing one player OR the entire group.
They aren't rare at all in my games. Especially if you are playing a non-combat heavy adventure, where skills keep coming up.
So don't plan around who succeeds. Just make sure there are different paths to success. and that these different paths yield different results.
I was saying that skill checks that have an effect on one member of the group for failing while giving everyone else a benefit for succeeding don't happen that often. I seriously can't think of any that I'd ever use. You'd have to give me some examples. All of my planning goes into branching trees of yes or no. If the PCs find the murder weapon then they likely will track down the shop that sold the dagger. If they make the Diplomacy check on the merchant than he will tell them about the symbol on the man's cloak who bought it. If not, he falsely sends them into an ambush. And so on.
I've never planned a skill check that gave a specific individual a penalty for failure. Most of the time it doesn't make any sense. For instance, there is no penalty for failure on a Search check if someone else succeeds. You either find what you were looking for or you don't. If someone succeeds on the Diplomacy check and convinces the NPC to give you the clue, it doesn't matter if the NPC ends up disliking the Half-Orc. You still get the information.
I'm just looking for some examples of these checks that have a penalty to one person for failing without affecting the rest of the group that come up on a regular basis.
