Skill Challenge Overkill (mearls stuff)

[Mallus]

I think it depends on the nature of skill challenges and what they are used for.

Definitely. My group uses them to resolve the PC's intricate and loopy plans. So far they've been entirely player-initiated.

Depending on the challenge failure can be trivial or a TPK.

My understanding is that Skill Challenges shouldn't be used to resolve conflicts that can result in a TPK.

Do the players approach a skill challenge with same degree of determination as combat?

We approach them differently, because the stakes have been different. In combat, the PC's lives are at stake, with the Skill Challenges, it's been their goals.

If the players figure out that no matter what happens in non-combat encounters will prevent the adventure from being completed then its no wonder that some players will not bother giving it thier best shot.

This doesn't really apply to our group. We give everything as good a shot as interests us at the time, and there's no 'adventure' to complete/fail. It's a free-form urban campaign, dungeonless, primarily player-directed plots/actions. So as failed Skill Challenge might mean the campaign goes in a completely different direction.

 

[scrubkai]

Even if we removed stunts from combat, every PC would have a
fairly decent list of actions to perform no matter what the circumstances
of the particular fight happen to be. On a skill challenge based on social
and knowledge related skills, the jock types help the party most by sitting
out of the encounter and letting the brains handle everything. This would be like having those skilled at diplomacy sitting out of combat because they would be a liability to the party and couldn't help.

Maybe I'm different, but I've never designed a skill challenge that didn't have some way for everyone to help.

If my players are trying to convince the town mayor of something, sure Diplomacy and knowlege skills might be primary, but I always put in something else that will help from the physical skills....
Some examples:
Endurance, taking some political big wigs out for drinks and getting them drunk to free up the conversation (but still remembering them all)
Streetwise or Stealth to find out what pressure points the mayor may have
Athletics to get in with the guards and have their captain put in a good word with the mayor for you.
Acrobatics to entertain the people and take their mind off x problem to give the mayor some breathing room.
All of these things could add bonuses to the final diplomacy check.

No I don't use all of them on a given skill challenge, but with a little bit of thought you normally can build the skill challenge so that something falls into each character's wheel house.

PLUS: the other thing I've found that works well, is to tell the players they have to do x, and lay out a situation. Then let the players tell you what skills they want to use and how they will use it. If it's a good idea let them try and give a +2 to the next major check.

An example in one of our games, we had to entertain one of the fey courts that in return for some information we wanted.
We had a paladin, a wizard, a warlock, warlord and Ranger.
We started out the skill challenge by mingling with the court.
Knowledge Arcana (Wizard), Diplomacy (Paladin) and Insight (Warlock) were all used to give some successes and determine what skills would really be useful for entertaining the court.
We figured out that the main skills that would be used was diplomacy to tell a story and Acrobatics for tumbling. Athletics could be used for feats of strength but it was harder to impress the fey with this so we decided not to go this way.
We used Knowledge History (Warlord), Nature (Ranger) and Arcana (Wizard) again to give a bonus to our Diplomacy (Paladin) check on the story.
Then we used the endurance (Warlord) and acrobatics (Ranger) to put on a tumbling display.

In the end, every character contributed and we all had a blast figuring out how our skills could be used in what could have been just all taking/Diplomacy.

 

[Spatula]

Does a total loss (wipe) in a combat encounter lead to an adventure roadblock? No matter what the answer, skill challenges should be given the same treatment.

I don't see why this is the case, and it goes specifically against the intent of the system. Skill challenges are simply a different beast than combat encounters.

 

[Oldtimer]

4E overhauled the classes in a major way to help ensure that every PC could meaningfully contribute to the action. As far as combat encounters go I think the goal was achieved, but non-combat encounters didn't get the same treatment. The three failures baseline for failure is the equivalent of saying that once three hits are scored against the party before they can score five or six, the combat is over and the PC's lose.

It's actually much worse than that. It's the equivalent of saying that once the party members have missed with three attacks, they have lost the combat.

Missing in combat is bad, but it's not what makes you lose the fight. It's the opposition hitting you and whittling away your hit points. The more combatants you have on your side, the longer you will last and the more likely you are to win. Skill challenges work in an opposite way - the more participants you have on your side, the more failures will be rolled and the less likely you are to win. This is the fatal flaw of the model.

 

[jbear]

@Ktulu

I posted the link in the original post (pg2). It is working for me. Is it working for others? I tried to post it again and I got a critical error... so I'm loathe to try that again.

 

[Felon]

There are lots of other problems too. 4e doesn't have skill points or other resources to allow characters to emphasize a particular skilll. Your 8th-level rogue is probably about as good at Thievery as any other 8th-level rogue, and he's probably as good at it as the 8th-level wizard is good at Arcana. Conversely, the wizard is probably lousy at Thievery and the rogue likely doesn't have Arcana. In 4e, it's very pat, very cut-and-dried. You can take the skill focus feat, and there's the occasional utility power, but otherwise there's just no way to really excel at skill, so nobody ever feels like "woohoo, this is my time to shine--this is what I was born to be doing".

Skill focus
Background bonus (if you are using heroes of war)
Items granting skill bonuses
Stat bonus (a wizard will have much more reason to pump int than a rogue, so the former should have a higher arcana check).
Racial skill bonus (for relevant skills)

Feats.

Feats, utility powers, items (and on a more permanent basis, race).

Geez, that human instinct to gainsay is pretty unresistable. Folks crawled out of the woodwork to try to mention various ways to get skill bonuses--including a couple of which I'd already allowed for. The thing is, most of those ways mentioned lack flexibility and practicality for anyone except the hellbent. The neat things about skill points were that they were a resource specifically for skills, and they didn't tread on other character options.

...what, are you in a group of 5 rogues? A character excels (or does not) in relation to the group around him, not in relation to every character with the same race/class choice...

No, Spatula. A character excels (or does not) is in relation to the difficulty of the challenges he's facing. Whether it's a trap, a hazard, a monster I'm playing who-gets-the-surprise-round with, or a ritual casting, my ability to excel beyond what the average character with the same race/class choice is capable of can make all the difference.

 

[Felon]

It's actually much worse than that. It's the equivalent of saying that once the party members have missed with three attacks, they have lost the combat.

Missing in combat is bad, but it's not what makes you lose the fight. It's the opposition hitting you and whittling away your hit points. The more combatants you have on your side, the longer you will last and the more likely you are to win. Skill challenges work in an opposite way - the more participants you have on your side, the more failures will be rolled and the less likely you are to win. This is the fatal flaw of the model.

Well, I'd say it's one of the fatal flaws, but very well-said. If the errata is interpreted to say that participation is voluntary, then there needs to be incentive for people to risk participation. Make the skill challenge consist of rounds, and shift the emphasis from rolling more successes than failures to rolling as many successes as possible before a round is over. That encourages broad participation, rather than the "form a train behind the expert" approach.

 

[Mallus]

Geez, that human instinct to gainsay is pretty unresistable. For some reason folks crawled out of the woodwork to try to mention various ways to get skill bonuses--including a couple of which I'd already allowed for.

Perhaps they mistook this for a discussion.

The thing is, most of those ways mentioned lack flexibility and practicality for anyone except the hellbent. The neat things about skill points were that they were a resource specifically for skills, and they didn't tread on other character options.

But since skills are more valuable in 4e, those expenditures can be worthwhile. With less utility magic, skills represent the only way to 'get things done' in many situations. Using a Feat --which you get more of-- to train or improve a skill isn't a bad deal.

Whether it's a trap, a hazard, a monster I'm playing who-gets-the-surprise-round with, or a ritual casting, my ability to excel beyond what the average character with the same race/class choice is capable of can make all the difference.

So your enjoyment is pegged to some kind of hypothetical Bell curve?

 

[amethal]

Missing in combat is bad, but it's not what makes you lose the fight.

No argument there. My character once failed fourteen consecutive 50% miss chances against an opponent's greater blink, but we still won the fight.

 

[Runestar]

The thing is, most of those ways mentioned lack flexibility and practicality for anyone except the hellbent. The neat things about skill points were that they were a resource specifically for skills, and they didn't tread on other character options.

How so? Even at 1st lv, a cleric can already automatically succeed at any passive perception check as delineated in the PHB. Feats are a dime a dozen in 4e, and so watered down that even skill focus isn't really any inferior by comparison. Elf isn't that unusual a race either. A cleric has every incentive to pump wisdom. And the DMG suggests that PCs should get gear suited to them anyways.

Just imagine if each PC had been designated a few skills he was in charge of maxing (eg: the dragonborn paladin focuses on intimidate). The end result is that between all the players in the party, they can easily succeed at any single skill check expected of them (save for skill checks which involve the entire party, such as athletics). Which means that they should be able to readily take on most skill challenges.

You can argue about roleplaying and all that, but at the end of the day, your party is still going to want to succeed at where it matters most - the die rolls, because even the most beautifully roleplaying still can't make you roll better (barring house-rules where the DM substitutes roleplaying for checks).

Are those sources expensive? Maybe. But depending on how badly a party wants/needs to succeed at skill challenges, it may well be worth the investment. Look at the final skill challenge in H1 for instance (the part about closing the portal successfully). I can't see anyone succeeding on it but the most optimized of PCs.

Especially since skill challenges now allow the PCs to voluntarily excuse themselves if they believe they will be more of a hindrance than help (if aid another is not an option for some reason), the stark reality is that only those with good checks are going to participate.

Perhaps Meals intended skill challenges to be so much more, but apparently, something got lost in the final translation. Maybe a few "get it", but for the rest, they are stuck with the few lackluster examples illustrated in the DMG.