The DC's make a difference, though untrained checks are still hideously prone to failure. Online dice "feel" more fickle to me, though intellectually I doubt that it's true. Plus, six successes to 3 fails means just three bad rolls...just three!...and it's over. That just seems monstrously intimidating to me.
Honestly though, it's not so much the reality of failure that makes me think of it as a problem. It's the threat. I don't want to be the goof that rolls a 1 and muffs things up. Combat is different; there's no set number of rolls that mean you lose the fight. There's a give and take, and things work themselves out. And, most importantly, it's really hard to mess things up for -others- even if your combat stats are bad. I might fail to contribute much, but I won't make things WORSE.
I assume however that failed 'aid' rolls don't count as fails, which would help the situation. That at least gives unskilled characters some possibility of contributing in a harmless way.
The only other pitfall I can see is more stylistic. Skill challenges seem (maybe not so much in this game yet) to devolve an exchange into summaries.
"Nurkle the Purple tells Hob the Goatherd about the grand and illustrious history of goatherding, to try to ingratiate himself." (History check)
This instead of actually posting what Nurkle said in detail. And yes, summaries happen even outside of skill challenges. I'm just concerned that having a skill challenge -encourages- summarization, by causing a roleplaying encounter to take place on an abstract level.
Honestly though, it's not so much the reality of failure that makes me think of it as a problem. It's the threat. I don't want to be the goof that rolls a 1 and muffs things up. Combat is different; there's no set number of rolls that mean you lose the fight. There's a give and take, and things work themselves out. And, most importantly, it's really hard to mess things up for -others- even if your combat stats are bad. I might fail to contribute much, but I won't make things WORSE.
I assume however that failed 'aid' rolls don't count as fails, which would help the situation. That at least gives unskilled characters some possibility of contributing in a harmless way.
The only other pitfall I can see is more stylistic. Skill challenges seem (maybe not so much in this game yet) to devolve an exchange into summaries.
"Nurkle the Purple tells Hob the Goatherd about the grand and illustrious history of goatherding, to try to ingratiate himself." (History check)
This instead of actually posting what Nurkle said in detail. And yes, summaries happen even outside of skill challenges. I'm just concerned that having a skill challenge -encourages- summarization, by causing a roleplaying encounter to take place on an abstract level.
