Rodney Thompson: Non-Combat Encounters

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Rodney's Blog

This has been the best tidbit yet.

I hope this helps alleviate the "4E is a wargame" concern that many here have.

If this kind of information makes the 4E DMG we will be able to claim that 4E has a strong hand in encouraging roleplaying. The mechanics were always there (Rodney's article will definately influence my remaining 3.5 games), but this type of thinking was never spelled out in the DMG. Even as a long-time (25 years) DM I had not thought of examples such as a History check to find an escape route.

Many are probably shaking their heads and calling me a bad DM at this point, but hey, the previous editions never encouraged this type of thinking tied to the actual rules. The article is like an epiphany for me at least.

 

[Kordeth]

Unless Rodney got married to Chris Thomasson and I didn't get invited to the wedding, that's Rodney Thompson's blog.

Cool post, though.

 

[Rex Blunder]

Well, Chris didn't want his last name anymore. Maybe it was sold to the highest bidder.

 

[TerraDave]

They have made a lot of promises regarding both skills and non-combat encounters. But will they give us more then a glorified version of "wing it"...we don't know.

Hmm, maybe they should do a preview of some of this stuff.

 

[Derren]

They have made a lot of promises regarding both skills and non-combat encounters. But will they give us more then a glorified version of "wing it"...we don't know.

Hmm, maybe they should do a preview of some of this stuff.

I agree. There has been so much talk about how awesome 4E will be that I am actually turned off by all this promises. They should show some mechanics instead of always repeating the same thing over and over again.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Unless Rodney got married to Chris Thomasson and I didn't get invited to the wedding, that's Rodney Thompson's blog.

Cool post, though.

I was close! There are too many Thom- designers. I'm sure someone will come along and point this out as yet another flaw of 4E.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Well, not that Rodney's blog is a preview, per se, the mechanics were previewed at DDXP. The History check to escape the guards is a great example. I don't consider this to be a "just wing it" representation either. Good advice for a DM is that they cannot possibly think of every possible solution to a challenge. Many games I have played and many I have run have sufferd from the DM knowing the "right" solution to the problem. It leads to railroading and giving the players the impression that their choice make no difference and that they are really only in the game to solve the DMs latest puzzle.

The article had solid advice and I could glean the rules just from his short description:
1) The DM presents the party with the Non-Combat Challege. (ex. escape from the town guards.)
2) The DM sets DCs with success levels. For example a DC 5 check may result in a victory that leads to a new problem, while a DC 20 check may not only solve the current problem but also provide an added benefit to others or the PC. (He mentions level of success.)
3) The player tells the DM his plan to solve the problem and the skill(s) he would like to use to accomplish said goal.
4) The DM determines if the combined plan and skill make sense together.
5) At the DMs approval, make your skill check.
6) DM determines the outcome based on level of success.

This would make for good rules structure, realizing that the DM always has to "wing it" when determining the outcome of an untold number of ideas that different players may devise.

Hopefully good guidelines for skills and the implementation of the above is fleshed out in the PHB and DMG. This is key. The above mechanics have been available since the DSG and WSG were released for 1E but none of the designers took the time to give the DM guidelines on how to use the player's ideas to guide the outcome in hand with the rules system. Previous editions left the DM to "wing" the system entirely.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

If there is anything I don't like on 4E, it's definitely that there are to many "Thom-" designers. I mean, I can't really be bothered to read everything in the blog on the off-chance I find out the name.

I would prefer if each designer name would start with at least a 3-letter unique combination. Maybe alphabetically ordered.

I mean, Alpher, Bethe and Gamow could do it, why not the WotC design team?

 

[Greg K]

It's a good article, but rmy reaction was this was nothing new. I and the GMs that I have played with have been doing things like this with skills for a long time. There was even a section in the DMs guide talking about alternative skill uses and, of course, expanded skill uses in various products. It might also be why I have seen the issue of players over focusing on a few select skills to keep them maxed and ignoring other skills to be a player or group issue and not a game issue. If the DM makes skills relevant, players will learn that focusing on keeping a few skills maxed rather than diversifying is not always a good thing.

 

[Goobermunch]

It's a good article, but rmy reaction was this was nothing new. I and the GMs that I have played with have been doing things like this with skills for a long time. There was even a section in the DMs guide talking about alternative skill uses and, of course, expanded skill uses in various products. It might also be why I have seen the issue of players over focusing on a few select skills to keep them maxed and ignoring other skills to be a player or group issue and not a game issue. If the DM makes skills relevant, players will learn that focusing on keeping a few skills maxed rather than diversifying is not always a good thing.

Except that in 4e, _all_ your skills go up as you level. So even if you've only focused in 4 skills, you'll still have a non-sucky chance of pulling things off with your untrained skills (though maybe not as great as with your trained skills). As a result, the PCs are automatically diversified (to a limited extent). So long as the DMG has rules for setting reasonable DCs by level, your PC should be good at a lot of things.

From the math side, I understand that skill training gives a PC a +5 to a skill. That means that a remarkably talented PC without training will be as good as an average PC with training (assuming stat mod for 20 = +5; a 20 dex is as good as training in a dex based skill vs. an average (read bonus 0) PC with training). Since both characters will improve at a rate of 1/2, that means that an untrained PC will still have a decent chance of marginal success.

--G