New errata for core books, dated 7/2/2008

[MarkB]

The odds of overcoming a skil challenge seem to have turned in the PCs' favor. Some might say too much - but then, we're notoriously hard to please, aren't we?

I certainly hope this is true. It means DMs can start using skill challenges that provide a significant obstacle to PCs' progress, rather than building in extensive 'failure insurance' around each one.

 

[Paul Strack]

Foo. Regarding DMG 42 and Skill Challenges in general, they went too far in the direction of making things easy. Knocking 5 off the skill DCs would have been about right. Knocking 10 off is too much. They just switched it from "usually fail" to "almost always succeed", at least with single skill checks. I still am digesting skill challenges.

Guh. All they need to do was to remove the footnote.

 

[Zsig]

I find it quite interesting...

It's obvious that a character that devoted himself to be good at something will have a marginal chance of failure.

The others are still pretty much capable at succeeding, even though, Failures are now set to 3, regardless of complexity.

EDIT:
I hope this is still in time to fix the soon to be DM's Screen.

 

[Mr. Greengoat]

At complexity 1 (equal to a standard monster), the character has a 98.4% chance to succeed, and a 1.6% chance to fail.

At complexity 5 (equal to a solo monster), the character has a 84.2% chance to succeed, and a 15.2% chance to fail.

The odds of overcoming a skil challenge seem to have turned in the PCs' favor. Some might say too much - but then, we're notoriously hard to please, aren't we?

Yes but isn't the point of the skill challenge to involve the party in a group contest where not all of the party can bring their optimum skills to bear. It isn't really a group challenge if you have a thief open five locks in a row, surely the odds get worse as you throw in these mediocre checks.

 

[Paul Strack]

I've looked over the Skill Challenges fixes and am not particularly happy with it. The system is "better" in the sense that having the PCs almost always succeed rather than almost always fail is an improvement for moving the game/story forward. As others pointed out, though, losing after three failures makes it very sensitive to tiny changes in skill levels.

IMO they should have reduced the difficulties by 5 instead of 10, and made the success/failure ratios closer rather than farther apart. My Skill Challenge house rule uses the table on DMG 72 but subtracts 1 from the required successes and adds 1 to the allowed failures. Stalker's rules also puts the success/failures closer together.

Also, I am unhappy that they no longer require the whole group to participate in the challenge. I think that was one of the best features of the original system. It meant the whole party was involved in the challenge. Now we are back to watching the best skilled guy doing all the negotiations while everyone else twiddles their thumbs.

I do like that the nerfed Aid Another, though.

 

[Stalker0]

I expect Stalker0 to come around and let us know how they messed up this time in less than 10 posts.

Hehe, I appreciate the confidence, but my analysis take a bit of time and work has been draining my life lately.

I will say I am very happy WOTC has taken note of some of the major issues with the challenges, those being that the DCs for each check are too high, aid another is too powerful, allowing off skills at a hard DC actually hurts the party, and that the success/failure ratios don't work well.

There are still inherent problems such as the sensitivity, I'll have to see how that pans out.

For those saying the challenge is now too easy, bear in mind that you can always make it harder. Perhaps similar to a normal combat, the players are supposed to nearly always win those basic challenges. But a DM can always bump the DC up a notch.

Its always easier for a DM to run an easy challenge that the party laughs through and increases the next run, then run a brutal challenge that has the player complaining about unfairness.

I have no plans to abandon my own system, but for those who like the layout of the original, I'm glad to see official changes made.


As for the other changes, I will say that while I appreciate the quick errata, I am disappointed with how much errata is in the monsters manual. There are some serious changes in there, often nearly halving a creature's hitpoints or nearly doubling its damage. Its one thing to change something in the phb that everyone knows and can remember. But often times I'll just grab something out of the MM for fun, and having to go and look up some errata is pretty annoying.

 

[amysrevenge]

As for the other changes, I will say that while I appreciate the quick errata, I am disappointed with how much errata is in the monsters manual. There are some serious changes in there, often nearly halving a creature's hitpoints or nearly doubling its damage. Its one thing to change something in the phb that everyone knows and can remember. But often times I'll just grab something out of the MM for fun, and having to go and look up some errata is pretty annoying.

I am similarly of two minds about this. I think that what I will do is get some small, brightly coloured stickers and stick them in the books wherever errata has been released. That way I know there is something to check.

 

[FireLance]

Yes but isn't the point of the skill challenge to involve the party in a group contest where not all of the party can bring their optimum skills to bear. It isn't really a group challenge if you have a thief open five locks in a row, surely the odds get worse as you throw in these mediocre checks.

I agree, but unfortunately, the text of the errata implies that a character can "opt out" of making a skill check in the skill challenge, so tactically-minded parties will just send out their "best" member to deal with the skill challenge by himself.

I think it all goes back to what I see as the main flaw of skill challenges: a skill check that doesn't succeed counts as a failure. In order to encourage all the PCs to participate meaningfully in a skill challenge, each character should be able to make at least one skill check per "round" which does not penalize the party on a failure (apart from the lack of progress).

 

[FadedC]

I've seen a number of adventures where you don't have the option to opt out of challenges for one of many possible reasons.

For example in the new adventure path adventure there are challenges where there are certain skills that at least one player needs to roll every "round" and certain other skills that everyone has to roll on.

So you still have the option to force participation, it's just no the default. You just have to justify why people can't just sit back and let more skilled people participate (for example you can't exactly opt out of the endurance challenge to endure traveling in the wilderness).

 

[Nikosandros]

The changes to the skill challenge system look pretty radical. It looks like they didn't playtest the old version too much and now I wonder if the new version has been tested thoroughly or not...