Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alex319" data-source="post: 4464369" data-attributes="member: 45678">The idea of using a "skill challenge" type mechanic to simulate mass combat is an interesting one, although it seems to fall prey to many of the same problems that plagued the core 4e skill challenge system.For one thing, the mechanic where you lose by accumulating failures makes it so a character with a less-than-optimal bonus actually hurts their chances of winning, since the only way to lose is to roll failures. This would encourage such a character to stall for time - finding ways to avoid making checks (such as healing another player instead of making a check) so he won't get a failure - rather than actually trying to help the team.Each "mass combat round" presumably represents a lot more than six seconds of battle time, so it might not be a good idea to make using a single standard action (or even a minor action!) replace an entire skill check. One possibility is to say that in each mass combat round characters can spend, say, one round worth of actions to do non-combat things (like heal people) in addition to making the skill check.You should probably do something with action points and healing surges - like say that an action point can be used to reroll a check or that a player can burn a healing surge to get +2 to a roll. This would put mass combat encounters on a more even footing with normal combat encounters where players can spend resources to improve their chances, and would reduce situations where players feel they have no chance to win.One more thing to taken into account while running this is that players will likely try to spam their best skills, because unlike in regular combat encounters, there are no differing amounts of damage or different status effects that might otherwise lead players to choose different options depending on the tactical situation. Of course, this problem can be mitigated by good DMing - if you describe the scenario adequately and only let players use skills if they can describe how they are using them.It might be a good idea to take a look at Stalker0's Obsidian Skill Challenge System (it's just a couple pages down on this forum) and see how he dealt with the problems inherent in skill challenges, if you're designing your own skill challenge system.</blockquote>

Verification