D&D 4E Running player commentary on PCat's 4E Campaign - Heroic tier (finished)

[C_M2008]

On skill challenges:

I tried the mini game style challenge at first and neither me or my players were very enamored with it. I didn't lay it out the Piratecat way though so I might consider that if I choose to try the style again.



The last one I ran was a murder mystery where the players had to try and find the identity of a murderer. I basically just gave them the murder scene and some basic clues (the body, a piece of cold iron, a journal and a broken window latch) and let them figure out the rest.
One player examined the body and it's wounds (Insight made sense to me at the time) and figured that an axe or polearm had been used to make the fatal wound.
Another climbed out the window(Athletics) discovering a bit of torn red silk, continuing this path he deduced a likely escape route for the killer to have followed(Streetwise) and leapt across rooftops looking for further clues(Acrobatics) eventually discovering a blood stained boot the killer ditched.
One of the others took the iron to the smith demanding to know if he had worked anything of this particular type of iron lately (Intimidate & Diplomacy) and found he hadn't but that one of the merchant houses may have imported it for someone since it is rare and expensive.
The fourth player used the journal to eliminate potential witnesses(Diplomacy mostly) and was aided when the jumper brought the boot to help and had the tailor make a list of who had ordered anything made of this particular type and color of silk recently.

Eventually they narrowed down their list of suspects and were interrogating the Night Watch. One of the more suspicious players is investigating the barracks and spots (Perception) something unusual burning in the fire place. Pulling it out it appears to be a ball of cloth. A ritual to repair it is cast (the player drawing extra power to fix it from a daily power since this goes beyond the scope of the actual ritual a bit) revealing a red silk scarf with a hole that matches their scrap to a tee.

Finally using the Command level 3 encounter power to Magically interrogate the Night watch lieutenant, a confession is reached when a cold steel axe appears in the lieutenants hands and slams into the cleric savagely (there hadn't been a fight for 3 sessions and this seemed a suitabley awesome time, otherwise he might have surrendered).

That was a cool fight too, lots of impromptu manuvers.




But anyway I basically just let the players take the ball and run with it, they didn't even know it was a skill challenge, they got success doing things they thought made sense attempting and got further clues because of it eventually succeeding in finding the right culprit. I pretty much made the murderer fit with how they investigated, it was still the guy I thought it would be, but if they had gone wildly different it might have been someone else (and they would have got the wrong guy if they had failed the challenge).

Best Skill challenge I've run for sure, those sessions were some of the best of the campaign. I'm not sure how well it ports to other scenarios though.

 

[Pseudopsyche]

Page 42 of the DMG; it's an at-will. I'm allowing expertise to apply to these sorts of impromptu attacks, since they'll already be penalized by no weapon proficiency bonus.

I must have missed the thread discussing these expertise feats. If you allow all your PCs to have expertise in their chosen weapon/implement as well as to improvised attacks, why not just decrease the AC of all the monsters instead? Is it just to discourage PCs from switching liberally among weapons/implements of different types?

While I'm de-lurking in this thread, I may as well say thanks for sharing your experiences with your campaign. I've found your ideas and insights valuable!

 

[WizarDru]

Dru, they're in post #434. Following Fajitas's example, I tried to be specific as to what was a primary and secondary skill (where secondary skills don't affect failures or successes.) Next time I do it I will mark DC targets as easy, medium and hard (instead of giving specific numbers), I will ask players to describe how the skill advances their case instead of telling them, and I may increase the DC every time the same skill is used by the same person.

Outstanding! Turns out I misread our google game calendar and our next game is a week from Saturday, giving me the needed time to add some polish to it. The more I think of this approach, the more I'm really warming to it. Presenting as almost a kind of puzzle should appeal to my group, as we tend to remove abstraction when it gets in the way of the narrative.

 

[Plane Sailing]

But anyway I basically just let the players take the ball and run with it, they didn't even know it was a skill challenge, they got success doing things they thought made sense attempting and got further clues because of it eventually succeeding in finding the right culprit. I pretty much made the murderer fit with how they investigated, it was still the guy I thought it would be, but if they had gone wildly different it might have been someone else (and they would have got the wrong guy if they had failed the challenge).

If you don't mind me asking, in what way was this a skill challenge as against just normal role-playing with certain skills used at certain points? It sounds as if all had fun, which is the main point, but were they just lucky and made all their skill checks? How many successes or failures were you expecting behind the scenes in order for there to be success or failure at the challenge? What would the consequences of failure be?

Cheers

 

[C_M2008]

If you don't mind me asking, in what way was this a skill challenge as against just normal role-playing with certain skills used at certain points? It sounds as if all had fun, which is the main point, but were they just lucky and made all their skill checks? How many successes or failures were you expecting behind the scenes in order for there to be success or failure at the challenge? What would the consequences of failure be?

Cheers

Well for each failure I planted a red-herring-which could lead to further failures but not successes, which is a bit of a jerk move, but seemed to fit the bill (they only failed one check though). It was a 12-3 challenge, mostly medium DCs. A failure would have meant that they got the wrong guy, the guy that did it got away, or someone else got killed (or some combination there of-again dependant on PC actions). It was basically used as a skill challenge so that I had a metric to measure whether or not the murderer got away with it (and XP rewards but that's not quite as important). It as you say could very easily just have been done as free-roleplay and as far as the players are concerned that's all that happened, they cleverly solved a mystery. This wouldn't work so well for a DM that likes everything set in stone, but for a DM that doesn't mind a fluid game and flying by the seat of their pants it worked well--a skill challenge without breaking out of the actual roleplay.


To me a skill challenge is a DM tool for measuring conflict resolution, the player's don't have to know it's being used for it to be effective. I can see the merits of Piratecat's way though.

 

[Elric]

I must have missed the thread discussing these expertise feats. If you allow all your PCs to have expertise in their chosen weapon/implement as well as to improvised attacks, why not just decrease the AC of all the monsters instead? Is it just to discourage PCs from switching liberally among weapons/implements of different types?

While I'm de-lurking in this thread, I may as well say thanks for sharing your experiences with your campaign. I've found your ideas and insights valuable!

You'd want to change all defenses for monsters, not just AC, since Weapon Expertise and Implement Expertise add to attacks that target AC or FRW alike. I think the biggest reason not to change monster defenses directly is that it's a a lot effort to change all of the stats if you're using published monsters or adventures. So you should change the PCs directly.

Instead of giving Expertise feats for free you could simply give characters +1 to hit at levels 5/15/25 (edit- and disallow the Expertise feats, of course). Then you wouldn't have to worry about affecting some characters (weapon + implement users) more than others, or adversely affecting/making exceptions for improvised attacks or things like a Dragonborn's Breath.

From what I understand, it's easier in WotC's character builder to give characters free expertise feats than it is to increase attack bonus directly, so free Expertise feats might be an easier solution to implement than attack bonuses.

 

[Joshua Randall]

I may increase the DC every time the same skill is used by the same person.

Excellent idea, and one that I use and endorse. I don't want to punish the players for having PCs who are particularly good at a certain skill (usu. Diplomacy or Intimidate), but man... it gets boring to have the same skill getting rolled all the time. Upping the DC can encourage the PCs to try different things.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

I'm also just going to give my players a bonus expertise feat. Like Piratecat says, it makes a lot of sense, is going to reduce player frustration (particularly for my Drow Rogue player, who seems unable to roll higher than a 7 on his dice!) and mean that the big powers hit more often.

 

[Legildur]

I'm also just going to give my players a bonus expertise feat. Like Piratecat says, it makes a lot of sense, ...

Can someone point me to the thread that discusses this in more detail? I've had a look by title, but can't seem to find it.

 

[Peskara]

- Logan’s player pointed out something after the game: there are some rogue powers with “save ends” effects that would be better if they were just “until the end of your next turn.” Take the Crimson Edge power (Level 9 Daily from the PH). On a hit, the target grants combat advantage to you (save ends). But because the target will go before you, there’s a 55% chance that by the time the rogue’s turn comes around again, he won’t be getting that vital CA. In fact, in that kind of case, the expected number of turns with combat advantage will be higher with a “until the end of your next turn” power than with a “save ends” power.

I can see where this might be a problem with a power where the target grants combat advantage only to the user of the power, but most "save ends" powers like ongoing damage or slows or dazes give at least one round of the effect because the target can't roll a save until the end of its turn.

Ones that only grant combat advantage to the power user really need to be followed up by spending an action point to get another attack in order to be sure to get the most use of them.

Great thread and great game! 4e has really made the mechanics of the game as interesting to me as the stories, so it's nice to see such a detailed analysis alongside the plot twists and turns.

Happy gaming!