NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6039813" data-attributes="member: 2067">So...I'm gonna get all hyper-analytical on those SC's for a minute. Don't take this the wrong way, I basically agree that the core concept of SC's is solid, but these examples give me a chance to say why SC's alone don't work to address my concerns:[sblock=Stormonu]So, a few things jump out at me there.The first is that there's no real tactical thought involved. Pick a skill, run with it, see what happens. Any skill could work for any reason. You even have Character 2 effectively "stealthed for free," since he chose to roll other checks instead. This boils down mechanically to a problem of repetition: "I roll a skill check....I roll a skill check....I roll a skill check." Sure, you've got interesting fluff padding it out, but that fluff doesn't have any real bearing on the mechanics. The second is that adding some sort of turn or initiative cycle seems to impose a narrative on the scene fairly well. That's a good idea that I think is adaptable: exploration should use defined units of time. Maybe bring back the old 1e "turn." <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />The third is that there's little room for believable error, here. If the guy fails to stealth, or fails to climb, or fails to charm the guards, the challenge remains static, since they aren't "out of the challenge" yet, but they also haven't succeeded. I can't have the guards just notice the first character on a failed check, because the party hasn't failed the SC yet. I can't have the guy who fails an Athletics check fall off the wall and sustain damage, since the SC is still going on (and anyway the damage wouldn't likely matter). The fourth is, even if they fail entirely...then what? Do they just wait the next night to try again? Do they just get a "bonus fight" with the guards?The fifth is that they aren't using their class abilities to do anything, here. There's no distinction between the characters aside from the skills they are using (and even those are mostly about how the DM fluffs it). I can't be a sneaky thief that gets in the tower in my own special way, I just roll Stealth, which is also what the Warlock and the Ranger do. Or I roll Bluff, which is also what the Warlock and the Bard do.[/sblock][sblock=Quickleaf]First, I notice that there's degrees of success, which is cool. That's something that SC's could use more of, it helps give it that sense of time passing that I noted above as a good thing.Second, I notice that there's no "real" penalty for failure. The worst that could happen is that the party gets into a fight, which isn't much of a penalty, especially given 4e's high survival rate. The penalties for failing a check just encourage the party to rest more often, and there's nothing preventing them from resting after every check if they want to play it safe. I'm not sure what the Kobold Threat Rating is, so that may address this point. I like the use of random tables, and linking them to making a check, but I also think that this would take me about 2-4 months of actual gameplay to make it into the "deep level" like that, using 4e style combats. I also notice that this doesn't allow for skipping encounters or using any tactics to avoid them. I'm also noticing that the "passageways" and (to a lesser degree) the "traps" don't do much if you're not in a fight when you "encounter" them. There's nothing inherently interesting beyond fights here. It also shares some of the problems with Stornomu's SC in that it doesn't use class abilities, it doesn't involve strategic thinking, and it generally just involves choosing whatever skills make sense and using them over and over again until you have what you want. [/sblock]A far sight better than most SC's I've seen, but still....too fluffy, too fighty, too vaporous, not crunchy, not engaging, not solid and tangible. Steps in the right direction, but we need moar.</blockquote>

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