Please cure my 4e illiteracy

[The Shaman]

There are two things that keep cropping up in different threads, and as I haven't been 'round these parts in awhile, I'm a little in the dark as to what they mean:

1. How do "skill challenges" work?

2. What's "Page 42?"

I'd like to understand what y'all are talking 'bout.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

A skill challenge is a mix of narrative and crunch techniques used to overcome encounters and situations that
a) are not direct combat and
b) should not be resolved with just one roll.

Example: Party is taken prisoner in the troll lair, to be eaten soon enough. One of the players convinces the troll cook that they can cook something up that tastes superior to what the cook can create out of their human flesh.
The DM declares a skill challenge: 3/3, meaning players win if they can do three successful rolls and lose if they botch three.

The point here is that the players should come up with interesting uses for their skills. Like in this example:

- One player uses religion to bore the troll with a story about a cooking saint so that one of the players can pour some sleeping poison into the cauldron.

- One player uses Knowledge: Dungeoneering to identify edible parts of monsters lying around in the kitchen that they can use for the meal.

etc.

 

[nightwyrm]

Page 42 is the page in the DMG that gives guidelines and tables of expected DC and damages based on PC level for adjudicating PC actions not covered by rules and powers.

 

[Morrus]

2. What's "Page 42?"

Page 42 of the DMG, specifically. If you haven't already, the general consensus is that you should.

 

[Cadfan]

Skill challenges are a framework in which normal, 3e style skill checks are used. Successful skill checks earn a "success," unsuccessful ones earn a failure. You have to get a certain amount of successes before you get a certain amount of failures in order to succeed at the challenge. As usual, the DM gets to determine whether what you're trying to do makes any sense, and the DM can disallow certain ideas or add a framework for how much you can try a certain thing, etc, etc. A simple example: you want to convince a Duke to lend you troops. The players come up with ideas to convince the Duke, try them, and at a certain point the Duke will either agree or disagree. Its exactly like previous editions, except for the framework surrounding how the DM decides whether you succeed or fail. From the player's perspective, there's a fair chance they won't be able to tell the difference between editions. From the DM's perspective, there's a change in emphasis (complex tasks are expected to require multiple skill checks as the norm) and he has a guideline he can use instead of just winging it.

Page 42 is the page in the book that provides the underlying assumptions about damage per level, and gives advice on how to use those assumptions to help you make up ways to resolve ideas the PCs come up with in combat that aren't in the book. Its essentially the "stunt" rules. Fans of 4e love this section because everyone loves stunts. Critics of 4e hate this section because whenever they argue that something isn't in 4e, fans refer them to this section, sometimes fairly, sometimes not.

I'll just warn you- most debates about the nefarious Page 42 don't make any sense at all, and seem to take place between people who have never read it. This is one of those rare situations where I'll say that both sides really are at fault- normally I hate quisling equivocation about everyone being equally wrong, but Page 42 really seems to confuse people. Its just a glimpse into the game's assumptions about damage per level, with some advice on adjudicating stunts. You'd think it was either the second coming of the lord, or a cruel attempt by WOTC to force us to pay money to write our own RPG.

 

[Nahat Anoj]

1. How do "skill challenges" work?

At its heart, boiling everything down into the essential bits, all a skill challenge is, really, is the group accumulating so many successes on a series of skill checks before accumulating three failures. The more successes you need, the more difficult the skill challenge.

There a whole lot of variation and a whole lot of wrinkles, such as using some skills to open up the use of other skills, some skills being easy to use for a given challenge while other skills being hard, skills giving bonuses to rolls, and so on. Succeeding at a skill challenge means the group did what it needed to do, while failing usually leads to more complications, such as a combat encounter, losing a healing surge, or whatever.

Skill challenges are designed to dovetail with the combat system, so you could create a skill that's the equivalent of, say, a solo monster and make it worth the appropriate amount of xp. They can be used for social or physical endeavors (interrogations, wilderness trekking, negotiations, etc.).

2. What's "Page 42?"

Page 42 in the DMG is a discussion on actions that the rules don't cover. There are some guidelines for how to treat unusual actions by the PCs and a table with various skill difficulties and damage expressions by level. If a PC tries a stunt and pulls it off, then the DM can use the suggestions on this page to help determine the level of damage the PC does. The example given is a PC swinging on a chandelier, kicking an ogre in the chest, and pushing into a brazier of burning coals.

The whole spirit of this page is that the DM should encourage PCs to perform stunts, think creatively, and how to do that from a game mechanics perspective. My favorite passage from this page is:

Your presence as the Dungeon Master is what makes D&D such a great game. You make it possible for the players to try anything they can imagine. That means it's your job to resolve unusual actions when the players try them.

That just neatly encapsulates what page 42 is about.

 

[Jack99]

You'd think it was either the second coming of the lord, or a cruel attempt by WOTC to force us to pay money to write our own RPG.

That's pretty funny!

 

[malraux]

Similarly, page 42 is a set of DCs and associated damages. it scales by level and difficulty. So if a player wants to use dungeoneering to avoid getting lost, (which i'd say is roughly medium difficulty) I'd look at page 42, look at the line for the character's level, and see what the medium difficult DC is, and that becomes the DC for the skill check. It also has associated damages.

See Here for the chart

 

[Sammael]

What bothers some people about page 42 is the very notion that the check to do the exact same thing should have a different DC depending on the character's level. This is not necessarily implied by the chart, but it's how many people read it.

 

[Imaro]

What bothers some people about page 42 is the very notion that the check to do the exact same thing should have a different DC depending on the character's level. This is not necessarily implied by the chart, but it's how many people read it.

Actually I think the reason many people "read" it that way is because the example on pg. 42 does it that way and the instructions under "Cast the Action as a Check" where using easy(10), moderate(15) and hard(20) + 1/2 level... is just a roundabout and more exact way of using the table in the "changing DC's by level" assumption. I haven't been able to find an example where the table is ever used in a different way. Personally I have a 2 main problems with page 42...

1. There are set DC's independent of level in the 4e PHB and parts of the DMG... yet pg. 42 which creates dynamic difficulties that scale with level is also used, this creates a disparity in that you get naturally better in some things while doing off the cuff actions actually gets harder as you progress in relation to those specific things that are set.

2. Page 42 tells you how to create a stunt but gives no examples or guidelines on how to balance anything outside of damage. So how does it affect the game when you go by these ad-hoc DC's but your players are looking to do more than damage? How does that ipact the balance of the game?

Similarly, page 42 is a set of DCs and associated damages. it scales by level and difficulty. So if a player wants to use dungeoneering to avoid getting lost, (which i'd say is roughly medium difficulty) I'd look at page 42, look at the line for the character's level, and see what the medium difficult DC is, and that becomes the DC for the skill check. It also has associated damages.

Malraux, I'm curious do you ever use the DC's in the PHB or do you only use page 42? If you use both how do you reconcile the fact that a PC of 10th level only needs to roll a 20 or higher to identify the name, type, keywords & powers of a monster he's never seen before but has to roll a 21 or higher to find his way from being lost...regardless of the fact that 5 levels previous he still had to roll a 20 to identify the monster but only had to roll a 17 in order to avoid getting lost. One has gotten easier and the other harder... both objectively and in relation to each other. Honestly this causes a bizarro world reaction in me when I look at it. And I'm wondering how others reconcile this weirdness.