KidSnide
Adventurer
This week, Mike Mearls discusses skills.
Interestingly, he focuses on the tension between providing a consistent mechanical system for resolving actions and requiring the player to describe (or roleplay) what the character does. It's the difference between "I search" and "I look under the bed... then under the desk... then in the drawers..."
I think that 4e doesn't provide enough weight to the player's role-playing or thought process in skill resolution. Typically, I give a +2, +5 or +10 bonus to the roll, which sometimes effectively generates an auto-success with a skilled character. I think the balance in a game like D&D should be to weight the player's actions (and skills) approximately equally to the character's abilities when determining success or failure.
The other interesting note from the article is that Mearls doesn't address what I see as a frequently raised point concerning skills - they allow players to play characters who are more persuasive or clever than the players themselves. (I disagree with this argument more often than I agree with it, but it's a curiously omitted part of the discussion.)
-KS
Interestingly, he focuses on the tension between providing a consistent mechanical system for resolving actions and requiring the player to describe (or roleplay) what the character does. It's the difference between "I search" and "I look under the bed... then under the desk... then in the drawers..."
I think that 4e doesn't provide enough weight to the player's role-playing or thought process in skill resolution. Typically, I give a +2, +5 or +10 bonus to the roll, which sometimes effectively generates an auto-success with a skilled character. I think the balance in a game like D&D should be to weight the player's actions (and skills) approximately equally to the character's abilities when determining success or failure.
The other interesting note from the article is that Mearls doesn't address what I see as a frequently raised point concerning skills - they allow players to play characters who are more persuasive or clever than the players themselves. (I disagree with this argument more often than I agree with it, but it's a curiously omitted part of the discussion.)
-KS