Excerpt: skill challenges

[Plane Sailing]

If I either need 1 hard, 2 moderate or 6 easy rolls to make it, I would still select the 6 easy rolls.

Apart from how the maths works out, there might be a time limit consideration too.

 

[Simon Marks]

It's particularly amusing, considering all the doomsaying about people being able to use any skill, any time, anywhere, to achieve anything. Now, when we get shown that the DM can perfectly well rule that some skills aren't going to help in the challenge, people are screaming about that.

Different people, tho'

Meaning that you can't please all of the people, all of the time.

Or that moderates get the best deal.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

It's the problem of absolutes, again. You're telling me it is IMPOSSIBLE for my character to ever Intimidate the Duke?

Umm. Yeah. You are confusing successful use of intimidate with successful use of intimidate to reach a goal.

A single intimidate roll will make the Duke "feel Intimidated". His "feeling intimidated" will make it less likely to comply with your wishes. That's not unreasonable.

 

[ForbidenMaster]

I like how if you allow all the skills it becomes - "Oh I just pick my best skill all the time regardless" - ergo Skill Challenge system is Bad

and if you say a particular skill cannot ever work for this situation (may even be negative) then you are being railroaded and ergo Skill challenge system bad.

If any skill can work in any given situation then the game is broken and makes no sense what so ever. You should not be able to intimidate everyone in order to get what you want in every situation. If the above is not true, then the game makes no sense. Al you would ever have to do is use your best skill no matter what the situation is. Have to convince a duke to let you use his guards but have the most ranks in stealth, use stealth. Have to escape from the town without getting caught, but you have the most ranks in heal, use heal. Its simple, there are skills that can not be used in given situations, which is what defines skills in the first place. It just so happens that in the template given, intimidating the duke doesnt work in the PCs favor. Whats wrong with that? And you know what, saying that I have to let my Duke be intimidated by a bunch of PCs when he has legions of guards at his command is ridiculous and I find that to be a lot worse and more restrictive then the choice to have use of certaint skills go badly for the PCs.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

Umm. Yeah. You are confusing successful use of intimidate with successful use of intimidate to reach a goal.

This.

People are still, I guess, approaching this from 3.5 mindset.

 

[hcm]

I like how if you allow all the skills it becomes - "Oh I just pick my best skill all the time regardless" - ergo Skill Challenge system is Bad

and if you say a particular skill cannot ever work for this situation (may even be negative) then you are being railroaded and ergo Skill challenge system bad.

You seem to think that the alternatives are opposite, while in fact they do the same thing: they remove tactical choice. In the first case the choice gets too obvious, and in the second case the choice is invalidated by the DMs preparations.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

It's particularly amusing, considering all the doomsaying about people being able to use any skill, any time, anywhere, to achieve anything. Now, when we get shown that the DM can perfectly well rule that some skills aren't going to help in the challenge, people are screaming about that.

It might - as always - be different people that worried about the former the the ones that worried about the latter.
It might be a Fallacy (that is in desperate need of a name) to assume otherwise and use this to dismiss such opinions.

That said, I am not sure if it's the case here or not.

I don't like absolutes that much, which is why I am not sure if outright "impossibility to use Intimidate" in the presented scenario is a good approach. But I definitely agree that in some situations, it looks very inappropriate to use a specific skill.
But the "counter-examples" where Intimidate made sense so far did not fit the scenario described for the skill challenge (which makes the PCs clearly a petitioner, not an interrogator or an equal to the Duke).

 

[Voss]

A few things of note:

* Not every skill works in every challenge. Note how Intimidate is specifically barred from working in that particular challenge.

* Successful skill use opens up use of other skills. Diplomacy leads to History? Fantastic; if you try to Bluff your way through it doesn't happen.

Me like a lot.

Cheers!

Actually the example annoys me specifically for that Intimidate prohibition. Why? Why is this guy immune to getting leaned on? Offer to feed him to your pet demon and he just laughs? Threaten his family, and he just responds with 'Go ahead'?

It feels too artificial and just a quick band-aid replacement for actual role-playing.
'Come on guys, roll high 8 times, and we can just hand-wave the whole thing and get back to killing'.

I don't have a problem with 'find the temple in the jungle' example, because that makes sense- it isn't something the players and DM can actually do, so you game it out with dice rolls. But faking a role-playing session seems to defeat half the point of a game. Go down that road, and you really are playing a board game.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Threaten his family, and he just responds with 'Go ahead'?

No - instead he's sly and says "I comply with you", but since he and his family were threatened, he instead (secretly) doesn't comply and sends assassins after the PCs, because he was threatened.#

It's a part of his character - and proud nobility who is intimidated is perhaps more likely to kill such threats instead of giving in - out of fear - because only a dead bully cannot bully you any more.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

RESULT: The Duke refuses to be intimidated by the PCs. Each use of this skill earns a failure.and the PCs earn a failure. (WHAT?!?!)

That's not negotiating with the Duke, though, that's threatening/intimidating him, which I suspect will have its own template/entry.