D&D 5E (2014) Out of Combat Woes

[SirAntoine]

Using skill checks can feel very gamey. I'd recommend just letting players talk things out. This should help them get into character, too.

 

[Pvt. Winslow]

I'd love to quote individual posters right now but my phone has informed me that it loathes being used for such a task, so I apologize if I miss a few comments.

I want to preface by saying I really appreciate everyone that's stopped in to offer some advice. I've seen suggestions from most spectrums from "don't roll them dice, use yer words son" (said comically, though I respect that style just as much) to "make those rolls mean something, don't just toss dice".

I really liked what Tony Vargas said about skill challenges potentially turning into "Combat where all you do is make attack rolls, nothing else". I had never thought of it that way before, but maybe that might explain some of the boredom in running them. It's great food for thought.

Sword of Spirit brought up the other side of the coin I had been considering, wherein not all players like everything that happens out of combat to be plot related. It's good to see different viewpoints.

I'm not sure I could ever do away with the skill checks completely. I feel like they're a big part of customizing your character, and if they were to never come up, it would be like removing a portion of the game. Then again, I'll admit my bias freely, I like numbers and stats. Not to the level of 3.X anymore, but I still like being able to reflect a characters prowess through demonstrable means in the system. For me, that's having a high bonus on a skill I chose to invest in. If those skills never came up, I'd feel cheated. I DM from a position of assuming my players would feel the same way. I admit, that's still a discussion I need to have with them soon.

When I get home tonight I'll reply to individual comments. Thanks again for the input fellow forumites.

 

[Celebrim]

Try rolling most of the non-combat skill checks yourself in secret.

This is a good point that didn't come up before, but which I concur with. In general, many information providing rolls should be rolled in secret - Search and Sense Motive type checks in particular. Most of the social rolls can be rolled in the open, because the player may not know the DC they are targeting.

Then let me dissent from the consensus.

I don't know if you are dissenting from the consensus so much as you are dissenting from your interpretation of a novice DMs brief summary of some of the advice he's been given.

You are as far as I can tell actually part of the more simulationist old school consensus currently holding sway in the thread. You dislike the same things I dislike, and are even using the language I've promoted here to describe the problem. I think we can mark you down for team "stop running the artificial "skill challenge" mechanics".

 

[LostSoul]

Agreed; not a plot hook. I don't want to get distracted critiquing styles of DMs that are happy with their campaign, so I'm going to try to avoid responding to your examples in detail. Instead, I'll just talk about why you'd use the technique of writing plot hooks in the first place.

The purpose of plot hooks is to avoid the problem of the PC's being lost in the sandbox and unable to figure out what will be interesting an engaging.

<snip snip>

Detailing out a setting and brain storming ahead of time and crafting plot hooks to offer to the players will avoid this problem.

I'd be interested in hearing your critique if you have the time and desire.

Anyway, I agree with what you've written about plot hooks. I was under the (mistaken) impression that you were saying every encounter in the game should be or lead to a plot hook.

 

[Pvt. Winslow]

I hate skill challenges like 4e. Do your players a favor and ditch them. Rolling dice to see if you succeed "in entirety" at something is just gambling on your stats. Roll means either of two things: success or failure. It just isn't engaging. Combat is technically gambling but players influence the situation without knowing the outcome. This makes it more exciting.

Well, I think this depends on how the skill challenge is designed. A skill challenge can change based on PC actions, or even the amount of successes gained for each round. They don't always have to be black and white, success or failure. Say the challenge is to flee from a dragon that is chasing them through town. The PC's take some actions to run and hide inside an abandoned building. Now, all but 3 PC's make their rolls, one PC fails. Maybe you narrate that the final PC doesn't make it inside, and instead must keep running. The dragon lands on top of the building, and makes to breath fire down into it. On the second round, the 3 PC's inside the building feel an intense surge of heat moments before the breath, and this influences what kind of skills they're going to use. The PC outside the building might use other skills to help out, like become a big noisy distraction to try and get the dragon to leave his friends alone, or maybe just stealthily hide in a pile of trash.

The successes or failures can change the nature of the challenge. If they don't, then that would be a pretty boring skill challenge.

Example:
Lets assume your party has a Lawful Good person with the Background of Folk Hero. They ignore an old man's cabbage problem. You put effort into describing this. Make it matter! Bring it up later during a combat situation:

You're running from the angry mob and spy a nearby cart full of cabbages that would make an ideal spot to hide and catch your breath! An old man who looks vaguely familiar sits atop the cart. As you draw near he looks over and squints. He stands up and shakes his fist at you. This gives you pause and he snarls "You good for nothing whelps! Kids these days! I tell you they got no respect!". As the mob rounds the corner and spots you comprehension dawns and he cackles gleefully. The old fart jumps up and down while waving his arms to draw their attention. As you speed past the cart the old man's voice trails in the distance, "You're bad seeds! I knew it! You deserve whatever that mob is about to dish! Karma's a bitch!"

Now, you tell them that since they didn't get to take a breather they have to make a Con roll to see if anyone has exhaustion for this fight!

Or

Maybe failing to help a wagon fix its wheel delayed supplies to a magic shop in Baldur's gate. Word came that it was raided by Orcs that night and the components the wizard/artificer had ordered were destroyed and it would take another 6 weeks to get a new order in...


Try these out and I guarantee your party will be much more engaged in the non-combat situations you pour your time into.

This part I really like. It makes what started as a colorful scene into something that impacts the PC's later. I could even see that vice versa, if the PC's had helped the cabbage seller, when they're running from their pursuers and near the cart, the old man might wave them over quickly to hide inside, which could allow the PC's to make Stealth checks with Advantage. Good stuff.

 

[Pvt. Winslow]

Try rolling most of the non-combat skill checks yourself in secret. It can improve the experience for the players when they don't know how well they did on certain rolls. It also can help keep immersion for them, because they can just describe what they're doing, while at the same time knowing that their skills are coming into play. You might even want to throw in some references to that so they don't have to just take your word for it.

I'm not sure about this. In general, I avoid making rolls for my players. I feel like they sit down around the table to roll some dice, and the less dice they roll for themselves, the less D&D we're playing, and the more freeform RP we're doing. There's situations where rolling for a PC might benefit the scene, such as with Stealth checks or even Insight checks, where you don't want the PC's to know how high or low they rolled, but for the vast majority of gameplay, I think it's more fun for players to roll their own skills. At least, I think it would be for me.

I guess there's a few camps on that. Some players can have a total blast with a session that involves not even a single die roll, and is entirely RP. Other players only really get engaged when the dice come out, and would quickly grow bored of a game where they never roll a d20 and add their bonus. This is probably something that needs to be hashed out at the table before the game starts. So far, from my observations and from the comments of some of the posters in this thread about my players, I'm betting my table is more in the dice rolling side of things, and would probably start to resent me if I always rolled all their skills out of combat. They might feel like I'm taking away some of their agency.

 

[Pvt. Winslow]

This doesn't sound to me like a skill challenge presentation issue, but rather an issue of the player not buying into the stakes. Perhaps you might try more overtly discussing the stakes of the scene with the players and giving them some say on what success and failure look like. People tend to be more engaged with their own ideas in my experience and a neat side effect of this is that players will often make failure way worse than you might be comfortable unilaterally imposing. An example might be, "Okay, so the thief is running away with the very important missive. If she gets away, this will be a very bad outcome for you. What do you think happens if you fail in this scene?" Once everyone agrees, run the "skill challenge" in whatever way your group likes best.

I'm actually coming up with blanks on how I would do this for a "skill challenge" I made. Usually, I make it a point to think of multiple outcomes to any skill challenge I propose, so that no matter the number of successes or failures the PC's get, I have some ideas of what might happen. I still leave it up to the moment, with the option to throw out my other ideas depending on player input, but I find having some prep down before hand really helps.

Here's an example of a skill challenge I just did last Monday.

The party arrived after their two day trek in Old Brehm, a sleepy little logging village far to the south. Their companion Wendy (the scholar they rescued earlier) needed to do research in the town, deciphering some old journals in order to put together an ancient "treasure map" that would lead them to the last known resting place of a legendary sky ship. I laid out the goal to the PC's, to help Wendy find the signs that would complete her map, and I had Wendy show them the journals, which were written in a bizzare, archaic Common that might have been some kind of cipher.

I then went around the table, asking each player how their character would help make progress towards the party's goal. Because some of them are new, I made some suggestions, such as helping Wendy decipher the notes (a History check), asking around the town about some of signs Wendy already deciphered (a Persuasion check), or just trying to find the odd clues themselves through searching (a Perception check).

Little did the PC's know, they were being shadowed by more members of a rival group, trying to reach the sky ship before they did. I designed the challenge to have 3 possible conclusions. If the PC's failed, not earning at least 7 successes in 2 passes (sort of rounds, but much longer than 6 seconds), then they would spend hours searching to no avail, giving up in frustration for the day. However, as soon as they let Wendy out of their sight, she would have been kidnapped just as she made a startling revelation that deciphered the map. The PC's had a ring that allowed them to telepathically communicate with Wendy, so unknown to her kidnappers, she would be relaying to the PC's where the enemies were taking her (which was towards the mountains).

If the PC's tied or achieved at least 8 successes, they would decipher the journals at dusk, and during their celebrating, would be accosted by the rival group, demanding they hand over the journals. It would be a combat with both sides aware of each other.

If the PC's had succeeded with 9 or more successes, they would stumble onto the trail miraculously quick, saving themselves half a day in the race to the sky ship, and during their search they would become aware of their pursuers. This would allow them to set an ambush if they so chose, or perhaps confront them and use dialogue to get them to stand down. Whatever the PC's wished.

In the end, the Party got 7 successes, so there was a battle (in which they fought in the village's market square and ruined quite a few wagons and stalls, angering the village), and deciphered their map. Wendy was nearly killed by an errant fireball, and they were forced to leave her in the village to recover from her wounds. She's advising them telepathically from her sick bed, acting as their Oracle (oho, Batman reference).

Okay, that explanation kind of got away from me. Basically, iserith, do you have some examples of times you let the party determine what failure would look like? If in my example I hadn't thought of a few end results, I'm not sure I could have done as satisfying a job if I'd just winged it. I made sure to have a town square map ready to go, along with the enemy tokens and stat blocks, should combat break out. I also designed the magic silver ring the PC's now have, including a picture and a hand out, which they think is quite cool.

 

[steeldragons]

If you are of the opinion that the amount of dice you roll constitute the amount of "D&D" you're playing and not rolling dice = "freeform RP", then I am afraid the many of the posts in this thread have wasted your time.

Apologies.

 

[Pvt. Winslow]

If you are of the opinion that the amount of dice you roll constitute the amount of "D&D" you're playing and not rolling dice = "freeform RP", then I am afraid the many of the posts in this thread have wasted your time.

Apologies.

Well, I've already gotten a lot of great advice so far, and I don't see it as a waste of my time at all, so there's really no need to apologize.

 

[iserith]

Okay, that explanation kind of got away from me. Basically, iserith, do you have some examples of times you let the party determine what failure would look like? If in my example I hadn't thought of a few end results, I'm not sure I could have done as satisfying a job if I'd just winged it. I made sure to have a town square map ready to go, along with the enemy tokens and stat blocks, should combat break out. I also designed the magic silver ring the PC's now have, including a picture and a hand out, which they think is quite cool.

I'll do you one better: I think I found where the issue may actually be given your description. It has to do with how open-ended you're leaving things. It's likely the players lack the context to know what to do or what to react to. When players have their characters engaged in a combat, they're dealing with specific complications that are right up in their grills. It's easier for them to make decisions about what to do in the face of that. This is what you should be doing with your "skill challenges."

Think of it this way: Characters have goals. Your role as DM is to put genre-appropriate and fun obstacles in the way of those goals. A skill challenge is just a structure for doing this and in D&D 5e it serves chiefly as a pacing mechanism for you to gauge when those obstacles have been sufficiently overcome and the characters' goals achieved. It's a tool only for you so that your challenges aren't too long or too short and are easier for you to run at the table. (In D&D 4e, it's arguably a more "gamey" affair not far removed from combat in the tactical game sense depending on how the group approaches them. But that's not terribly compatible with D&D 5e.)

Anyway, let's talk about this skill challenge with Wendy. The goal of the characters is to help Wendy figure out the location of the lost airship. The stakes are that they discover the location (victory) or they discover the location and there's some cost, setback, or complication (defeat). Now what you do is write up a list of complications to specifically present to the party that are standing in the way of the goal. Some examples might be (and I recommend writing a couple of words or short phrase at most for each): Maddening Cipher, Archaic Language, Missing Sections, and Obscure Maps. These are just things to job your memory so you can improvise the complications as they arise in the scene. Prepare more if you need to, just don't you be writing solutions because that's not your role - that's the players' role. If the players can overcome these complications successfully before accruing three failures (say), then they achieve victory in the skill challenge.

Now it's time to do the damn thang. Frame the goal in fictional terms, make sure the stakes are clear, and describe the environment - the stacks of dusty journals in a disorganized pile in a cluttered library, Wendy with her sleeves rolled up, or what have you. Then present the first complication, Maddening Cipher. "Wendy looks like she's been up all night by the bags under her eyes. Her ink-stained fingers indicate she's been pouring over these documents from dusk till dawn. She tells you how frustrated she is that she can't seem to crack a maddening cipher in which several important scrolls are written. She hands them over and asks if you can make any sense of them. How do you approach solving this mysterious code?"

Time to clam up and encourage the players to come up with an approach to the goal of cracking that cipher. They might decide to puzzle it out themselves (Intelligence check maybe, plus time). They could have a spell that will solve it (automatic success). The rogue's criminal contact might know a guy who knows a guy who's good at ciphers (automatic success, but now owes a favor). And so on. Play out scenes as needed e.g. the paper-pushing montage or the clandestine meet-up with the cagey code-breaker. When an approach has been nailed down and you're clear on its certain success, failure or uncertainty, adjudicate accordingly. If they succeed on overcoming the complication, carry on to the next one, Archaic Language: "With the cipher cracked, Wendy knows where to look next for clues - a moldering tome scrawled in a language lost to time. It will narrow down the list of possible locations if it can be translated. How do you deal with that?" If they fail, the complication either remains, changes, or is replaced by a new complication that arises as a result of the failure (whatever makes sense in context).

And that's basically it. I think the key thing missing from what you described is how specific the complications are and that you need to be all up in their grills with it. State the specific problem clearly in fictional terms, point to someone, and ask how they deal with that thing. Play out what scenes need playing out in response to that approach and boil it down to success, failure, or a check. Repeat until done. I don't know your players, but this advice has never gone wrong in all the many years I've been giving advice on skill challenges (google "iserith" and "skill challenges," heh).

Let me know if you have any questions or if you want to workshop an upcoming skill challenge here on the forums.