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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5632698" data-attributes="member: 54877">Think of the skills in 4E as a primitive dial.  They are practically a binary choice (and thus not a dial), but are edging into being a real complexity dial.  You can easily play 4E, using the skills alone, ignoring skill challenges altogether, and if your style fits that, it will work.  If that sounds good to you, then you might also be tempted to expand the skills themselves somewhat (dial up the skill list, instead of the skill system).   OTOH, you could (if you really inclined to pushing heavy narrative), run nothing but skill challenges.  That is, every time an isolated skill use came up in story, you "Say Yes" and grant success.  Only when something is seriously enough at stake to justify running a skill challege do you even roll.  If inclined to run this style, you are probably going to want to expand the options in the skill challenges, since by definition so much is riding on them. Of course, most people playing 4E are going to mix and match. It's just too much in the tradition of D&D play to, say, forgo a Stealth check when the rogue wants to scout out the opposition.  And to the extent that the existing 4E skill rules are a dial, it is mainly because of something rather murky in the middle where you run "kind of" a skill challenge.  I do this a lot--straight skill rolls that turn into skill challenges because of heightened interest from the players or skill challenges that morph into a few skill checks because of lessened interest.  There is absolutely nothing in the rules or guidelines to explicitly call out this option. But unlike the two purist approaches outlined above, everything you need is right there in the mechanics. So to go the long way around to answer your question, the characters put the farmers at risk because the GM pushed situation hard throughout the campaign.  That is, they can't spend "Fate" on everything, and they know it.  They gamble that this time, they can get away with the basics.  Narratively, it can probably best be explained by some kind of karma, fate, or the like (i.e. what the characters believe).  You may be a big hero, but when it comes to stopping the zombie hoard, there are tricks to be used, and you can only draw from that well so many times, before it comes up dry.  So assuming that both skills and skill challenges are expanded to handle their respective jobs, any "Fate" or other resource added to support this kind of "pushed to the limit" feel should be unavailable or at least not very productive to use in regular skill checks. Or, alternately, you explicitly call out regular skill checks with sufficient things at risk to deserve using the resources and gaining them.  The normal Stealth scout check doesn't count.  A really difficult Stealth check when failing means that the rogue is caught by trolls that will rip him apart instantly, does.  And then their might be guidelines to push more towards the skill challenge side during such a check. That is, there can be skill checks (and ability checks, and even in touranments and the like, weapon use checks) that are mainly done to complicate things.  You shoot the arrow into the target, you move onto the next round, but Prince John may now suspect your disguise.  There is too much of a tradition in D&D of using these kind of things to ever want to get rid of it, as BW does. Then there are skill checks (and ability checks, and most combat checks) where something serious enough is riding on the checks as a whole that you get XP for dealing with it.   For these, you always must push situation hard.  If engaged in that kind of enterprise, you need decision points. An easy way to have decision points is to include resources to manipulate.  They aren't the only way.  You could also have, for example, a more robust verison of "Aid Another", where the people aiding you are not only gambling their actions but taking more risks.  This is seldom true in 3E/4E except by GM thoughtfulness or happy circumstance.  (E.g. the two brutes aiding the rogue to pick the lock are close enough to suffer from the trap exploding.)   I believe this latter style is the kind that KM, others, and myself would like to see more explicitly and mechanically supported via options.</blockquote>

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