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<blockquote data-quote="VinylTap" data-source="post: 6039721" data-attributes="member: 6697217"><p>This thread is a great idea. You're completely correct in skill checks being a lame mechanic. </p><p></p><p>The old school solution is to just role play these situations through, but that's not very gamey. A crunchy system is still a good idea, but it needs to change a bit. </p><p></p><p>What about a mix of the two systems? Dice modifiers for good role-playing? This is a much better idea when you're trying to push your PCs to get into character more. </p><p></p><p>Another idea i was always playing around with was soft failures and critical successes, basically a scale of success/failure, again this is a bit of a mix between role-playing and crunch. The idea is not to punish the player for a failure, but to reward a lucky roll. Another idea would be offer softer failures for people with the trained skill-- so a fail on a skill check would force the rogue to look for another path, not make him be spotted. This could lead to more roleplaying, or maybe a completely new strategy if all pathways had been exhausted. </p><p></p><p>The DND 4th solution was basically a modification of soft failures, you only really fail after a number of failures. Its a little better, but just basically smooths out the math so its not as swingy. There's still nothing terribly rewarding about it, you're just basing success on a random roll. I'm not super familar with it, but I can total see why they went down that road. I've read its not as successful a mechanic as it could be but its not a bad "idea" in general. One of the biggest problem with the skill system is the swing. </p><p></p><p>How do you offer choices and reward characters for good decisions in a skill check situation? The only thing I can think of is a flowchart with maybe a mix of soft-failure skill checks and RP decisions, but you'd really have to be snazzy about the presentation and keep it flexible for different details. You could make templates for different common skill check situations, but this would be tougher to do the more simple the task was.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="VinylTap, post: 6039721, member: 6697217"] This thread is a great idea. You're completely correct in skill checks being a lame mechanic. The old school solution is to just role play these situations through, but that's not very gamey. A crunchy system is still a good idea, but it needs to change a bit. What about a mix of the two systems? Dice modifiers for good role-playing? This is a much better idea when you're trying to push your PCs to get into character more. Another idea i was always playing around with was soft failures and critical successes, basically a scale of success/failure, again this is a bit of a mix between role-playing and crunch. The idea is not to punish the player for a failure, but to reward a lucky roll. Another idea would be offer softer failures for people with the trained skill-- so a fail on a skill check would force the rogue to look for another path, not make him be spotted. This could lead to more roleplaying, or maybe a completely new strategy if all pathways had been exhausted. The DND 4th solution was basically a modification of soft failures, you only really fail after a number of failures. Its a little better, but just basically smooths out the math so its not as swingy. There's still nothing terribly rewarding about it, you're just basing success on a random roll. I'm not super familar with it, but I can total see why they went down that road. I've read its not as successful a mechanic as it could be but its not a bad "idea" in general. One of the biggest problem with the skill system is the swing. How do you offer choices and reward characters for good decisions in a skill check situation? The only thing I can think of is a flowchart with maybe a mix of soft-failure skill checks and RP decisions, but you'd really have to be snazzy about the presentation and keep it flexible for different details. You could make templates for different common skill check situations, but this would be tougher to do the more simple the task was. [/QUOTE]
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