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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6275897" data-attributes="member: 42582">Thanks. In these actual play posts I try to give a feel for how play actually unfolded, as well as what the ingame story was.In this case, framing the skill challenge was collaborative between players and GM. I use a technique I learned from  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], of setting out a die to represent successes required (in this case, a d12) and a die for failures (I don't have a d6 marked 1 to 3 twice, so I use a d4 and tell them when it gets to 3 it's game over).I described the geography of the ingame situation, and then we started talking about options. The idea of using Waterwall to dam the souls came completely from the players; the idea that the fighter would hack his way through the scrivers to destroy the machines came from that player, but I was the one who told him that he could buff his roll with an encounter power (from my point of view as GM, I know, and from his position he suspects, that there may be a combat coming without a short rest where he would miss that power if he used it now, so there is a resource management aspect to the choice). When it came time to escape, I called for the checks needed to escape without taking damage (Aths, or Acro for those airborne ones). But it was the fighter player who wanted to stay behind to protect the invoker-wizard, which I then called as an Endurance check, and then he was the one who wanted to shield him by making an Aths roll good enough to both get himself out and provide a bonus to the check for the frail PC.I liked the feel of it in play. For me it's got the right mixing of tactical/resource-style play and working within and building on the fiction. I also like that the players and GM can work together on framing the mechanics of the check without it feeling like "cheating", because the d20 still has to actually be rolled, and then if it fails the player still has to make mechanically meaningful choices about how to cope with the failure (eg we have a rule that if you fail you can spend an action point to add +2 or take a reroll). In that respect it's like combat mechanics, I guess - cooperation in framing up to the point of resolution doesn't blunt the actual force of the attack and damage roll, and the consequences that flow from those.Hmm. I anticipate battles with at least Lolth and Orcus in the party's future. Orcus obviously needs a lot of work from his MM version! But I will definitely be looking at Lolth too, in light of the Torog experience.I think the biggest thing was Torog's lack of a recovery mechanic; he wasn't flexible enough. I think some sort of flexible recovery mechanic would have worked better than just finding more ways to nerf the stun - even though that stun definitely helped kill him, it was actually a lot of fun at the table. So rather than condition nerf, for future design of these sorts of solos I'm looking at ways of regaining some momentum. (Eg ways of generating additional action points.)I've heard people complain that epic in 4e is just dungeon crawls with bigger numbers. Personally I'm not a big fan of dungeon crawls even when the numbers aren't big! The story is what makes it interesting.I think part of why the story is especially important at epic is that the conflicts have to get mechanically bigger in scope, or otherwise the players will just coast through on their "1x/day when you die  . . ." abilities and their largely unlimited supply of encounter powers. And conflicts that are mechanically bigger in scope I think need more story momentum too to keep them going.Also, without story killing Torog is kind of cheesy. Whereas with story it can also be kind of awesome.</blockquote>

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