Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8729800" data-attributes="member: 42582">What does the "it" in this last sentence denote?In 4e D&D, the GM decides the complexity of the skill challenge - from 1 to 5, which means from 4 to 12 successes required before 3 failures. This is in part a decision about difficulty, but not entirely, because there are all sorts of ways that players can spend resources to manipulate their check results, and the more complex the skill challenge the more resources the players can afford to throw at it, given that in 4e D&D many resources renew on a per-encounter basis. The 4e Rules Compendium sets out even more techniques for handling the difficulty of more complex skill challenges.The real effect of the GM decision about complexity, therefore, is that it establishes the significance of the encounter/scene at the table. It gives it a duration and hence a "weight" in play. This is an important part of a GM's role in 4e (in combat encounters, the analogue is deciding on the number of opponents, whether to stat them as minions, standards, elites or soldiers, etc).But none of this establishes the outcome of play nor what happens next.As I've mentioned a few times now, you seem to be assuming that the GM is the storyteller. That is not the case in closed scene resolution.Upthread I posted an actual play example. I don't know if you read it. Here are a couple of fragments:The player of Derrik is the one who is establishing the rapport with the Baron as a fellow "man of action rather than ideas". That's not the GM's doing.The player of the sorcerer is the one who is managing both pacing and threat by leading Derrik away from the table and up to the balcony. Again, that's not the GM's doing.The player of Derrik is the one who traded on the rapport established with the Baron to reveal the secret about Paldemar. And then to provoke Paldemar into attacking. The player of the wizard helped out.This was the resolution of the challenge, and so binding on everyone. The players, not the GM, were the ones who established - via their play - that Paldemar had revealed himself as Golthar, and that what would come next was him attacking the PCs.Again, this is not true in RPGing in general, and not true in closed scene resolution frameworks. If the player declares their PC's action, and the check succeeds, then their intent is achieved. This can be seen in the examples I've just posted and said a bit about.</blockquote>

Verification