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!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6243672" data-attributes="member: 42582">Not only that, Imaro's statement of the original skill challenge rules is incomplete. He's leaving out these bits, for instance (pp 73-74):Certain skills lead to the natural solutions to the problem the challenge presents. These should serve as the primary skills in the challenge. . . Start with a list of the challenge’s primary skills, then give some thought to what a character might do when using that skill. You don’t need to make an exhaustive list, but try to define categories of actions the characters might take. Sometimes characters might decide to do exactly what you anticipate, but often you need to take what a player wants to do and find the closest match to the actions you’ve outlined. When a player’s turn comes up in a skill challenge, let that player’s character use any skill the player wants. As long as the player or you can come up with a way to let this secondary skill play a part in the challenge, go for it. . . Always keep in mind that players can and will come up with ways to use skills you do not expect. Stay on your toes, and let whatever improvised skill uses they come up with guide the rewards and penalties you apply afterward. . . In a skill challenge encounter, every player character must make skill checks to contribute to the success or failure of the encounter. Characters must make a check on their turn using one of the identified primary skills . . . or they must use a different skill, if they can come up with a way to use it to contribute to the challenge . . .Making sense of this is not trivially easy - but it is crystal clear that it is not the case that players are expected to use only the skills on the GM's list. As best I can interpret it (and there may be no single, fully coherent interpretation) the GM's list of primary skills is (i) a type of preparation by the GM for improvising, a bit like mapping out likely NPC tactics in advance of a combat encounter, (ii) is part of the process of sketching out the fiction of the skill challenge, thinking of it not only in story terms but connecting those story elements to the mechanical resources for resolution that the players have available, and (iii) provides a source of hints or cribs if the players can't think of anything to do in order to have their PCs engage the challenge.Another thing which is made quite clear by the reference to rewards and penalties is that the consequences of a skill challenge are intended to turn on the actions actually taken by the PCs in its resolution. (And if there is any doubt that "rewards" in this terminology can go beyond treasure and XP to include changes in the fiction that advantage the PCs, that doubt is resolved by p 122 of the DMG, which observes that "quests can also have less concrete rewards. Perhaps someone owes them a favor, they’ve earned the respect of an organization that might give them future quests, or they’ve established a contact who can provide them with important information or access.")There is also this interesting remark (on p 73), which reminds me of "quick takes" within the scene resolution mechanics for Maelstrom Storytelling:Remember that not everything has to be directly tied to the challenge. Tangential or unrelated benefits, such as making unexpected allies from among the duke’s court or finding a small, forgotten treasure, can also be fun.This is another way in which 4e GMs are expressly told by their DMG to be flexible, responsive and dynamic in their adjudication and resolution of skill challenges.So while I agree that the original presentation was not ideal, it certainly did not say what Imaro says it did, and certainly does not provide any licence for the "mere series of dice rolls" which I see as reports and characterisations of skill challenges from time to time. If players didn't in fact read the manual - perhaps because they mistook skill challenges for complex skill checks from Unearthed Arcana - that is not WotC's fault. If they failed to understand the manual, that is getting closer to the author's responsibility, but it still doesn't license the drawing of inferences about intended play which are expressly contradicted, in multiple places, by the statement that players can use whatever skill they like provided that the action they are declaring makes sense within the fiction framed by the GM.</blockquote>

Verification