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Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Skill challenges and tactical choice
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<blockquote data-quote="Jer" data-source="post: 4256904" data-attributes="member: 19857"><p>This is implicit in any kind of skill check framework, though. The players are going to make suggestions about what they want to try, the DM is going to map those suggestions to skill checks (or, if you're particularly old school, allow for automatic success if the player comes up with a good idea). All of the tactical choices are wrapped up in the player suggesting what he wants to do. If you're trying to get your buddy out of jail after a barroom brawl, then the "slow but safe way" is to go to the town magistrate and try to convince him to let him out. The "fast but dangerous way" is to attempt a jail break. The "standard way" is somewhere in between those two things - possibly finding the mayor or some other influential citizen and offering an exchange of services for some string pulling, or calling in a previous favor from an influential contact. There are, of course, multiple examples of each of these three categories, because who knows what your players are going to come up with.</p><p></p><p>The skill challenge mechanic is just a framework for the DM to decide whether the players have succeeded or failed at the choices they've made. It's a way of wrapping some formal mechanics around what before 3e would have been nothing but "roleplaying" challenges or "convince your DM that what you're proposing would work" - a great mechanic if you have a reasonable DM, but highly dependent on who your DM is. And in 3e these tend to boil down to a single skill check, which is mechanically fine, but sometimes unsatisfying. Having a bit of back and forth roleplay with the local magistrate and then having your success or failure come down to a single roll, with perhaps a slight bonus or penalty depending on what went on between the characters, feels arbitrary. </p><p></p><p>With skill challenges, the 4e designers seem to be trying to split the difference between the fairly bland mechanics of a die roll and the open-ended, DM-dependent non-mechanics of a roleplay challenge. I like the mechanical design of it, and it seems similar enough to other "extended skill contest" frameworks I've used that I think it will work reasonable well. I especially like some of the open-ended uses that Jonathan Tweet has described in his campaign blog on gleemax.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jer, post: 4256904, member: 19857"] This is implicit in any kind of skill check framework, though. The players are going to make suggestions about what they want to try, the DM is going to map those suggestions to skill checks (or, if you're particularly old school, allow for automatic success if the player comes up with a good idea). All of the tactical choices are wrapped up in the player suggesting what he wants to do. If you're trying to get your buddy out of jail after a barroom brawl, then the "slow but safe way" is to go to the town magistrate and try to convince him to let him out. The "fast but dangerous way" is to attempt a jail break. The "standard way" is somewhere in between those two things - possibly finding the mayor or some other influential citizen and offering an exchange of services for some string pulling, or calling in a previous favor from an influential contact. There are, of course, multiple examples of each of these three categories, because who knows what your players are going to come up with. The skill challenge mechanic is just a framework for the DM to decide whether the players have succeeded or failed at the choices they've made. It's a way of wrapping some formal mechanics around what before 3e would have been nothing but "roleplaying" challenges or "convince your DM that what you're proposing would work" - a great mechanic if you have a reasonable DM, but highly dependent on who your DM is. And in 3e these tend to boil down to a single skill check, which is mechanically fine, but sometimes unsatisfying. Having a bit of back and forth roleplay with the local magistrate and then having your success or failure come down to a single roll, with perhaps a slight bonus or penalty depending on what went on between the characters, feels arbitrary. With skill challenges, the 4e designers seem to be trying to split the difference between the fairly bland mechanics of a die roll and the open-ended, DM-dependent non-mechanics of a roleplay challenge. I like the mechanical design of it, and it seems similar enough to other "extended skill contest" frameworks I've used that I think it will work reasonable well. I especially like some of the open-ended uses that Jonathan Tweet has described in his campaign blog on gleemax. [/QUOTE]
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