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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5631329" data-attributes="member: 82106">Here, I think we are on different pages. My interpretation of the SC rules must differ from yours because I don't see anything that indicates I would anticipate every single check being made by the most optimized character, any more than I would expect every monster to only be meleeing nothing but the highest AC toughest character either. My interpretation of SCs is that there's a narrative in which the conflict is playing out and in the course of that narrative opportunities will come up for specific characters to exercise control of the narrative, by making a skill check (usually). In some cases the party may be able to decide who is going to make that check, in others they may not. Sometimes the situation may be "you see an opportunity to do something, do you want to take it?" and in other cases the situation will be "X comes up, make a Y check to deal with it." So I always anticipate a mixture of checks with different skill bonuses. Likewise there are going to be situations where a character can 'sit out' but that may in and of itself have other knock-on effects. If the character with the good Athletics doesn't accept the Princess's offer to chat about history, he may not be in the right place at the right time to stop the kidnapper. The wizard might have taken up the offer to talk to the Princess instead, now he's going to just have to try for a good Athletics check (or several). Perhaps he can pop off a utility power and cover for his weakness, or maybe he just loses the Princess and the negotiations with the King get a whole lot more complicated.Well, I don't know about 'force', players ALWAYS have choices, even if they're not always GOOD choices. And I think there are plenty of DMs who just have situations come up. I don't make a list of every possible way in which the party might not be able to conveniently deal with every situation. Maybe they just have to cast a ritual! OTOH if they don't have a ritual caster then maybe they took up the elf's offer to sell them a Phantom Steed scroll...In other words I expect the players to do some planning. I may be old school but that was the beating heart of succeeding in AD&D for sure. It was a very 'boy scout' kind of game, "be prepared". Of course it makes sense to give the players ways to anticipate specific needs and opportunities to fill in where they genuinely lack a capability. Rituals are a fairly significant part of that. Especially considering there are some pretty nice divinations that wise parties will keep on hand in order to suss out what is going on. And if I'm going to make say a ritual REQUIRED in order to negotiate some aspect of an adventure then I'll provide the party with the resources to use it outside of parcels. Treasure is after all intended to be what you GET. If a character chooses to use a ritual to make the odds better, that's their business, but if teleporting to the floating castle is the only way to get there I'm not going to make them pay a toll to do it. In that case a ritual is just a plot device.Eh, I'm trying to dig deeper. I mean if there are reasons why one conflict resolution system creates tension and another one isn't, I'd be interested in knowing the details because it certainly can be applicable to amping up those aspects of the game. Yeah, I really am trying to dig into the nuts and bolts of that. Not that you're under any obligation to assist that any more than it amuses you. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />The one thing that comes to mind about 'detail' relates to some things that were said a ways back about prescriptive and proscriptive. Taking skill systems as the clearest example:The 3.5 and 4e skill systems are mechanically pretty similar. There are a few differences, but they really aren't fundamental. The one area where they obviously differ is in the number and consequent breadth of the skills. 4e skills being very broad prescribe, and I would argue that 3.5 ones proscribe.Take Athletics as an example. A 4e character with Athletics can presumably swim. A 4e character without Athletics may or may not be able to swim. One will do it better than the other, but being a broad category of things and Athletics being more of an 'aptitude' than a specific skill having it says "you're better than normal at these kinds of things."A 3.5 character without the swim skill logically can't swim, else why would there be this one very specific skill at all? He may well still pass checks related to swimming but there's no "hey I jumped into some water for the first time and whatta you know, it wasn't so bad.". So it ends up being a proscriptive system in effect, even though the actual mechanics of the checks are virtually identical to the prescriptive 4e skill system.This is an example of how a single system both may be able to meet the needs of multiple styles of play easily, but also how it may be impossible to meet them all even though everyone is using the same core mechanics if specific design decisions are made. 4e CONSCIOUSLY chose a specific design on this point very deliberately (which is why BTW a lot of people who like 4e get annoyed at the "it has a crappy skill system" meme, it ain't crappy, it is specifically designed to work as it does).</blockquote>

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