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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Beginning of the End" data-source="post: 5498048" data-attributes="member: 55271">I'm straining to find any interpretation of Mearls' column that suggests Pathfinder should be recognized as part of the D&D tent. I have to admit that I'm not really finding it.I wouldn't. I think Mearls' attempt to claim the current generation of gamers by fiat is exactly the sort of hubris that people have been objecting to.If you're playing RAW, that's only true for successes. And for successes it's only true if the skill challenge has a complexity of 3+ and only if the check had a hard DC.This is one of the major problems I have with the "system": Whenever it's discussed, the advocates inevitably start claiming that in order for skill challenges to really work right the first thing you need to do is ignore the rules for skill challenges.(Assuming, of course, that you can even figure out what the current system for skill challenges is supposed to be given the dozen different systems WotC has published in the last two years. In this case I'm basing my statement on the rules as they appear in the Rules Compendium.)"Everything is roughly the same length" is a really awful methodology for pacing, though.Which is my second major problem with skill challenges: Taking pacing out of the hands of the GM and the players in order to turn it over to a simplistic mechanic is, IMO, ridiculous. I can sort of vaguely see how they might be useful as a set of training wheels for complete newbies; but they don't seem particularly effective at the training part of that equation. They also seem to be welded on.My third major problem is that no one has shown me a single example of play using skill challenges which can in any way be differentiated from not counting successes and instead simply adjudicating logical results from the game world.So it's a system where you gain nothing, lose much, and usually (according to its own advocates) need to ignore it in any case.</blockquote>

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