support for out of combat events is severly lacking in 4E and most of the time requires the DM to make stuff up
Huh? We are debating how skill challenges work.
That's the support! If by "the DM make stuff up" you mean the GM deciding on elements of the fiction, and possible consequences, that is what some of us call "playing the game". It's what GM's have been doing since RPGing was invented. Deciding that the consequence of failing a Nature check is that the party gets lost? That's the GM's job! Just like deciding whether the invisible assassin will attack the dwarf fighter or the elf ranger is the GM's job.
In White Plume Mountain, who decides that the corridor is frictionless? That there is no chance of surviving the super-tetanus? How much damage is required to shatter the tanks and flood the ziggurat room? In each case, it's the GM. And obviously so.
This doesn't change if the rules say that thin glass has 5 hp per square metre and thick glass has 15 hp per square metre, either, because it's
still the GM who decides whether the glass in the ziggurat room is thick or thin.
Maybe you are intending to push a different point - to do with the point in time at which the players know the consequences of failed resolution. I regard the default in a skill challenge as being like Burning Wheel: the players know what will happen if they fail a check before rolling, and hence can bring to bear whatever resources they have and want to use to buff the roll. (The rules as written seem to leave this issue open; in practice, for the same reasons as Luke Crane gives in the Burning Wheel Adventure Burner, I don't always explicitly state the stakes before the check is made, because it is obvious from the fiction and the dynamics of play what will happen if a roll fails.)
My idea of fairness is that there is a structured way how to get results the players are aware of right at the beginning of the game which does not change according to the DMs whim nor require handwaving or second guessing.
Situation: A storm is raging and the fighter has fallen into water
You: Make a level appropriate 3-1 skill challenge with swim. As you wear armor I make this a hard DC.
I: Stormy water is a DC 25 swim check, you encumbrance means a -4 to swim rolls.
I don't see the contrast. You are using "objective" DCs. (As is typical for 3E. For comparison's sake, some non-D&D games that are built around objective DCs include Burning Wheel, Runequest, Rolemaster, Traveller, Marvel Heroic RP (somewhat), etc. A game like this can still use skill-challenge-style resolution: eg Burning Wheel, MHRP (again, somewhat)). When running 4e I use "level appropriate" DCs. (As is typical for 4e. For comparison's sake, HeroWars/Quest and Maelstrom Storytelling, and arguably Tunnels & Trolls though that's less clear cut, are non-D&D games that exemplify this.)
Both are "structured ways to get results the players are aware of right at the beginning of the game". Neither changes due to "GM whim or handwaving or second guessing".
Its basically the same as Combat as Sport (4E) and Combat as War (3E), just applied to out of combat situations.
That distinction is in my view spurious - but even if I agree to work within it, no such distinction applies, at least in what you've said so far. For instance, jumping during 4e combat uses "objective" DCs ("You want to jump X feet? That's an Athletics check with a DC of 2X"). But I'm pretty sure you'd still classify 4e combat as "sport" rather than "war".
Burning Wheel uses objective DCs, as I noted, but between "fail forward" plus its advice on opponent building in the Adventure Burner (which includes advice like not to stat up major opponents until the latest feasible moment, because you don't want them to fall flat in play relative to the PCs' abilities), I think you'd probably characterise it also as "sport" rather than "war".
To persuade me that your swimming challenge is genuinely "combat as war", you have to explain to me what the resources are that your players can use to boost those DCs, and what play activities they have to engage in to obtain those resources. After all, the players in my 4e game can do things to improve their ability in skill challenges, and have done so. The player of the ranger, for instance, trained away Stealth for Diplomacy. The invoker/wizard has multiple Skill Training and Skill Focus feats and is a Sage of Ages (+6 to all knowledge skill checks). They use Endure Primordial Elements when they travel through the Abyss or the Shadowdark. Etc.
Also I would need to know how you, as GM, reframe challenges in response to the players' acquisition of those resources. (Eg maybe the storm is particular fierce, requiring a DC 30 swim check?). Also, whether you fudge rolls or not. Also, what techniques you use to resolve a TPK. For instance, if all the players are allowed to bring in new PCs of the same level to pick up where the former group left off, where's the "war"?
There's a bunch of other stuff I'd want to know too. "Objective" vs "level appropriate" DCs, in the absence of that additional information, is irrelevant.
Blue Dragons can summon storms? For how long? How large? What intensity? How often can they do it? Can a ritual counter it? Even when the PCs can't get all those informations, they need to be fixed before the out of combat event starts as otherwise they can't get "legitimately lucky" and I have too much respect for my players to pull a Deus Ex Machina to decide that the storm subsides just as they are about to drown, nor do I see it as fair to let them drown just so I do not do a DEM.
I don't understand what you mean by "legitimately lucky". I'm certainly not familiar with that concept as part of the apparatus for adjudicating so-called "combat as war".
But the notion that you can't adjudicate a dragon's summoning of a storm, and that the players can't rationally respond to that threat via resource deployment, unless we know how long, how large and what intensity is nonsense. It's a prejudice born from the D&D style of spell description. For instance, the game doesn't tell us how fast an ogre can swing a club, but we can still adjudicate an attempt by a halfling rogue to duck a giant's club (using the AC and to-hit mechanics) or to roll with the blow (using the Defensive Roll ability). It doesn't tell us how big the hail stones are in an ice storm, but we can still work out whether or not they kill those within it (by rolling the 5d6 of damage).
If the GM narrates a fierce storm summoned by the dragon, of course the PCs can do a ritual to counter it. That's what certain rituals are for (eg Control Weather, PHB 2), as well as the Arcana skill ("Control a phenomenon by manipulating its magical energy": Rules Compendium, p 136"). The skill challenge rules incorporate this sort of thing (DMG p 74, DMG 2, p 86):
Characters might have access to utility powers or rituals that can help them. These might allow special uses of skills, perhaps with a bonus. Rituals in particular might grant an automatic success or remove failures from the running total.
Characters can use powers and sometimes rituals in the midst of a skill challenge . . . A character who performs a relevant ritual or uses a daily power deserves to notch at least 1 success toward the party's goal.
Part of what is at issue here is nothing to do with whether or not skill challenges provide support for non-combat interaction with dragons. It's about what counts as a good RPGing session. For instance, the implication of your emphasis on duration plus uses per day is that you think it would be clever play for the PCs to trick the dragon into using all its storm summoning abilities while the PCs are hiding in a Rope Trick, so that the PCs can then pop out and take advantage of the fact that the dragon can't summon any more storms. My own view is that leads to somewhat boring play, for much the same reasons that SoD leads to boring play. It is scene-reframing rather than scene-resolution. (The boundary there is admittedly a bit blurred, but I think the example I've given clearly crosses it.)
In skill challenge resolution, I'd be perfectly happy for the PCs to sit out the storm in a Rope Trick and thereby notch up one success. But when they come out the storm is still there, though perhaps somewhat abated as the power of the dragon fades with the passage of time (maybe it's gone to sleep and so can't maintain such a strong storm). The players would know that the PCs' ritual helped, because they would see the success count go up. And they would know that they still had to engage in further play, because (unless that was the final success, in which case the storm would be narrated as having stopped) there would still be a storm to deal with.
would you allow the skill challenge to TPK the party (or just kill several PCs)?
If damage is a consequence of failure, then yes. Why not? I don't see how this is a measure of anything. It's like asking "would I allow a combat to TPK the party"?
It also depends on what you mean by "TPK". The only time, in my 4e game, that all the PCs were dropped to 0 hp or below at the same time, only one was actually dead: the paladin of the Raven Queen, dropped below negative bloodied by friendly fire. The other PCs were knocked below 0 hp by undead under the command of a goblin shaman. I asked each of the players whether they wanted to keep going with their existing PCs, or wanted to change. Only one wanted to change. So 3 of the PCs recover consciousness in the goblin cells, with a new cellmate (the new PC). They can smell the roasting flesh of a half-elf (the PC abandoned by its player, now being cooked by the goblins). The body of the dead paladin, meanwhile, was laid out on an altar by the goblin shaman, who was using the paladin as a channel to summon the spirit of the paladin's dead nemesis, in the form of a wraith. The summoning was successful (by way of GM fiat), but the paladin was also sent back by the Raven Queen to stop the summoned spirit going wild in the world. Which he and his friends, in due course, did. (Mechanically this was handled as Raise Dead, including an appropriate deduction from the treasure parcels for that level).
I would use "fail forward" in adjudicating the skill challenge the same as I did for this combat.
Using 3E Blue dragons in the desert who have the ability to destroy water, how would you handle the situation of the party going after it without their normal water reserves. Would the blue dragon be able to destroy their reserves? Under which circumstances? Can the PCs prevent it? And what happens when they run out of water? Would you kill characters through thirst?
The difference is that in 3E all of those questions were answered by the rules while 4E ignores that completely.
Actually, 4e has rules for dying from thirst, though (i) you seem unaware of them, and (ii) in my view they're not very good, and are probably better ignored in favour of skill challenge resolution.
The last (and only) time I ran a desert trek in my 4e game - across an Abyssal desert - the PCs had to make Endurance checks as secondary checks between each primary check made to see how well they actually progressed through the wasteland. A failure cost 4d8+8 hp (a fairly standard amount of damage for level 24 PCs). The PCs didn't die from that, because they have ways of restoring lost hp. But damage is damage.
Here is some relevant commentary on hit point and healing surge loss as a consequence of failures in a skill challenge (DMG p 76):
Sometimes the penalty for failing a skill check is the cost of a healing surge. That can mean that a gruelling trek across hostile terrain is sapping the characters’ overall vitality, in which case the healing surges don’t return until the group gets back to a more hospitable environment. Other times, the cost of a healing surge is just a shorthand method for taking damage. A character injures himself, but he’s not in combat, so he can spend a healing surge to restore the lost hit points. If the encounter shifts quickly into combat with no time for a short rest in between, you can give out actual hit point damage instead.
As to how to adjudicate the dragon destroying the PCs' water reserves, that would depend on what the relevant fiction is. The easiest thing, it seems to me, would be to simply declare that the dragon has done so - the challenge for the players would then be to have their PCs find more water (Nature checks to find an oasis!) or to survive without it (Endurance checks!). But if this is a magical struggle, then perhaps a PC can make an Arcana check or a Nature check to protect the PCs' water for a certain period of time (mechanically a cycle of checks) from the dragon's destructive magic. (As I said, not knowing the fiction means I don't have a view on the best way to handle this.)
In other words, the things you're saying 4e can't do and can do, and has rules and guidelines (including standards for damage-by-level) to support those things.
Would you make it unwinnable?
No. What is the point of that? If I want to declare that the PCs are all dead, I can just do that - though I don't see why I would unless I was ending the campaign. Otherwise, I play by the motto "Say yes or roll the dice" - which means that the players are always entitled to a dice roll if I don't accept their contention as to how the fiction unfolds. [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] elaborates this matter in his point number 4 a few posts above this one.
unless the DM provides the answer to all those questions and makes them known to the players before they embark on this journey (if the PCs make enough inquiries to warrant such informations) the outcome, likely death, can hardly be called fair.
I don't understand your obsession with TPKing. For me, that is not the measure of a good RPG experience.
I don't also see why the outcome in 3E would be likely death - is it typical in most of your 3E games for players stalking through deserts hunting blue dragons to die of thirst? A young blue dragon is CR 6, and has a Destroy Water spell of a range of 85', which frankly is not all that threatening or scary given the range of many spells and missile weapons in 3E. But even if the dragon destroys the PCs' water, why can't they just create more using Create Water (a 0th level Cleric or Druid spell), which a 1st level cater can memorise 3 times per day - once per dragon use of Destroy Water - or 5 times per day at 5th level; or using instead Create Food and Water, if the cleric is 5th or higher level.
But putting all this strange TPK stuff to one side, as a 4e GM I can tell the players that their PCs learn that blue dragons can summon storms, or destroy water, or whatever else is appropriate. And they can then take appropriate steps, like learning the Control Weather ritual (discussed above), or packing extra water (for a +2 on those Nature or Endurance checks), etc. The methods of adjudication in 4e are a little different, but it's not like it doesn't have any.
If those elements could be distilled down to a few lines on a stat block, I'd be into it.
