Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5498982" data-attributes="member: 42582">How are DCs set? How does a player who is playing a ranger wilderness guide use his/her PC to help the other players? How do I work out the relevant circumstances that determine the relevant consequnces without knowing the terrain and map in detail?The difference I'm seeing here from a skill challenge is (i) 4e gives very strong support for DC setting, (ii) a skill challenge permits the player of a ranger to take the lead here ("heroic protagonism") and (iii) it doesn't require the detail. How do I resolve the river crossing without needing to know (eg) how wide and deep the river is? Or without having to engage in detail with the PCs' equipment lists? I know how 3E resolves the dealilngs with the hermit (Diplomacy and/or Charm Person). How does it resolve building the hut? How is caution and awareness resolved? Perception and Steath check? How many? At what DCs?The questions I'm asking aren't meant to be rhetorical, or pointless niggling. In practice, if I was to run your scenario, they are questions I would have to answer. The skill challenge structure provides answers to them.In playing a game with a detailed map in which the players engage with the minutiae of the terrain, I also know how to get answers (eg there will be rules for making stealth checks while moving through shrubbery of a certain density, or for throwing a rope and grapple across a river of a certain width).But I don't have a clear sense of how to answer them if I want to resolve a situation without the degree of minutiae described in the previous paragraph, and without the sort of structure provided by a mechanic like a skill challenge or a HeroQuest extended contest.How do you achieve this? For example, with crossing the river - you describe how wide and deep it is, the players start looking over their character sheets to see how much rope they have, who has the best STR/DEX for throwing a rope across, etc. You set DCs, rolls are made. It seems to me that this is going to take a certain amount of time to play out regardless of how much time those at the table want to spend on it. Of course the GM could just handwave it - but in my view this is not very conducive to the players driving the resolution of the situatoion ("heroic protagonism").Everyone? Just the player of the ranger? At what DC? These are the questions that I need to answer to resolve the situation. The skill challenge mechanic answers them.And a Survival check - either by one player, or by every player - doesn't seem to me to achieve the same pacing, and the same dramatic relationship between the activities of particular players and their PCs, and the final outcome, as does the skill challenge I described above.</blockquote>

Verification