Skill Challenges: Bringing the Awesome

[Celebrim]

Yes. It is.

Well, that was easy. I don't normally expect to win arguments.

Ok, so if the whole mechanical system boils down to some simple bits of advice:

1) "Say 'Yes'. Reward players for using passive skills appropriately."
2) "Provide oppurtunities for using diverse skills."
3) "Ask for skill checks when they are appropriate, and reward players for being skillful."

Was it really necessary to have a fundamental shift "requiring a lot of reevaluation of how we DM because D&D has never been presented in this way before."?

Doesn't that seem to you as more trouble than it is worth?

It was something missing within the 3e rules, something that lead to the vast majority of games I observed, as being combat driven, with ocassional dialogue, and the odd class, (Mostly the rogue/bard/trained person) overcoming a trap or some such.

Bad GMing is not a result of a rules set and won't be fixed by one. The way I see it, the vast majority of 4e games will be combat driven with occassional dialogue and the odd skill check to overcome some non-combat obstacle. However, 'meaningful, interactive, and non-combat based situations' have been possible in D&D since before we had a unified skill system, much less skill challenges.

No, it was not, in any way, shape, or form, encouraged in the RAW.

It seems to me that the problem is solve then by encouraging good design, and not by adding a subsystem that is at odds with the rest of the game systems design paradigm.

 

[WalterKovacs]

I like the idea of the x/y concept. A lot of groups will go into a "routine" of trying every possible skill until they figure it out. With a sort of "limit" on not just the number of failures, but also the ammount of actions they can take towards the "goal", they need to figure out the best path to the goal. If the players aren't able to disable the trap after having acheived the 'right' number of successes, then at least some of the actions haven't really been 'helping', and thus wouldn't count as successes. Jumping ahead [i.e. going straight to disabling a trap without getting TO the trap, or figuring out WHAT the trap is] would be difficult, making the number of successes relevant. For a trap like this you need to:

Notice the trap
Figure out that it's a trap
Figure out what kind of trap it is
Get to it
Get it down
Disable it

The 'last' success is disabling it, but you need to do the other things in some sort of order to be able to complete the challenge. Which skill you use in some cases is interchangeable. And, there are chances of failure at various points. Instead of relying on a "fail by 5 or more causes something bad to happen", an accumulation of failures results in a failure of the challenge. The trap is set off, or in the case of a social encounter, the person is no longer willing to talk with the party, etc.

Also, the idea of initiative is a good idea. I've been in a few parties where out of combat, suddenly everyone wants to do "stuff", and it becomes a game of whoever can get the DMs attention does as many things as possible. On Saturday, for example, someone kept making an Open Lock check so many times in a row, without anyone else acting apparently, that they set off high level security systems. It would, in this system, be a single character failing the same skill check 4 times in a row and failing the skill challenge for the party before anyone else had a chance to act. With initiative or some other "you are in a skill challenge" announcement, than you can get a discussion, either in character or out, of who should do what. Perhaps the "first" success, for example a passive perception to notice the 'trap', or some type of diplomacy check to set up a meeting with an important NPC, sets up the skill challenge, at which point the PCs should 'know' they are in a skill challenge.

And, having played a rogue, as much fun as it is to see a door, then say "I take 10, 23 on my search, I take 10, 20 on my listen at the door, I take 10, 25 on my disable, I take 10, 25 on my Open Lock, everyone ready? open the door", not to mention the "wall crawl" looking for hidden doors ... I like the idea of traps being designed as a group effort and an encounter unto itself instead of just a single roll and either you get past it or not.

 

[VannATLC]

I'm not sure why you think it is at odds with the rest of the system.

Its mechanically similiar to combat, after all. It is functionally no different from the Narr tendancies enshrined in Encounter and Daily powers.

*shrug*

You're seeing problems I don't think actually exist.

I think the problem from 3e and prior is best solved by codifing a flexible non-combat, party interactive system.

Which is what they have done.

 

[WalterKovacs]

Errr... Ok.


1) The character uses Perception to note the wound sowed up. He then immediately proposes to use his Heal to perform a careful autoposy on the wound, and then follows up this with an immediate proposition to use Thievery to carefully remove the device without damaging it. All of these are successful, but we now have only 3 successes accumulated. Per the rules, the device isn't disarmed and the challenge isn't over, but we are now physically further along in the process as we were in the scenario where by this point the party could not fail the challenge. Does the DM demand three more successes per the rules, or does he decide to wave the remaining three challenges per his common sense? If the latter, what did he need the rules for in the first place?

Well, seeing as the person is able to perform a careful autopsy while the body is still hung up is quite odd. It would require someone getting the body down from the tree, or AT LEAST, the person getting up to the body to perform a very difficult autopsy on a corpse hanging from a tree. There should probably be some skill checks involved. Also, after the autopsy, you still have no idea WHAT the device is inside. Some sort of skill check would be required to let the Thievery skill know how to remove the trap succesfully.

Basically, in this example, the players have metagamed/handwaved a number of skill checks out of the sequence. They've made assumptions about the trap, instead of using skill checks to verify those assumptions.

2) The party is confused but cautious. They make four knowledge and insight checks to try to figure out what is going on before getting closer to the body. But do to some bad luck, these checks are all unsuccessful. At this point, per the rules the challenge is a failure and the trap should 'spontaneously' go off (or some event should happen or be invented to cause it to go off, which is fundamentally the same thing). Yet, at this point less time has transpired than in the described scenario where they reached the point where nothing they could do would fail.

In this case, it isn't that the trap spontaneously goes off. It is that their accumulated failure has lead to them being completely WRONG in their assumptions, and any skill checks they make to "succesfully" disable the trap will instead cause them to set off the trap.

3) Same thing, the party is confused but cautious, only this time they have a string of good luck and accumulate 6 insight/knowledge successes before every coming closer to the body or the three. At this point, per the rules, nothing they can do would cause them to fail - no matter how inept or incompotent they might be at skills to actually disarm the device. At this point they've done nothing to actually remedy the situation and the actual physical act of removing the device has yet to be accomploshed, yet they are farther along to success than someone who may have actually done so. Per the rules as described, what should happen if the party just leaves at this point? Per the rules, haven't they disarmed the device? Is the intent to do something the same as doing it?

At this point, they have apparently figured out the absolutely best way to disable the device. They can now perform a series of very simple skill checks to disable the device safely. In the previous example, they THOUGHT they had reached this point, and in their carelessness, set off the trap.

4) Suppose the first proposition of the party is something utterly inappropriate, like 'I go and chop down the body with my battle axe.' This action would certainly at some point set the device off, and yet when offered in the first place is it impossible for this proposition to catastrophically fail? Does the universe inevitably intervene to prevent the character from doing something which would invalidate the challenge? If it would, would it also do the same thing if the players intent was to cause the challenge to fail?

If the party chooses to intentionally set off the trap, then it is possible to do that as well. And of course, chopping down the body with my battle axe would require a certain number of skill checks to get AT the body in the first place. Also, there could be skill checks made by the REST of the party to prevent their insane barbarian from "disabling the trap".

In general, the 6/4 concept is they must succeed at skill checks that are "working towards" success in the encounter, and the 4 would failing in those particular skills. It is possible, outside of the x/y for complete failure, or time wasting, if the actions are not "working towards" success in the encounter.

Thus, the DM as arbiter, requires that their player explain how the skill they are going to use will work towards the success of the encounter. Otherwise, it will either have no net effect [time waster], or it will possibly be counted as one or more failures [as the actions risk setting off the trap, or making them appear stupid/rude/etc in a social situation].

 

[pemerton]

Yes, of course you can create various post hoc rationalizations and descriptions within the system that are logical and from the players perspective consistant. I freely concede that. In fact, the existance of these explanations is necessary to understand my concern. The fact that you tumble out claims like, 'the amount of time they take is irrelevant' and 'The trap going off spontaneously could easily be one result of four failures' and 'on the fourth failure, a crow lands on the corpse, pecks out its eye and the trap goes off' and 'Perhaps the trap is a dud' as an argument against my concern leads me to think I'm not explaining my point well enough for you to understand what it is.

Rather I'm trying to show that the number of successes you garner isn't necessarily related to how far you appear to have gone towards solving the initial problem.

<snip>

At the end of the described scenario, the party is farther along toward disarming said dangerous still armed device than the party which per the rules cannot fail to do so.

The key phrase is "how far you appear to have gone" - later on you elide this into "the party is farther along" whereas, to remain consistent, you should probably say "the party appears to be farther along".

What is required here is to ensure that narration - whether by player or GM - does not produce the actuality of having gone on further than the structure of the skill challenge permits. The burden of this probably falls on both players and GM. It can be facilitated by one or more of the following: (i) somewhat abstract specifications of the situation by the GM (canvassed by you in a thread a few weeks ago involving an escape from a dungeon); (ii) directors stance narration by players or GM to introduce extra gameworld elements (ravens, dud traps etc) to explain outcomes; (iii) a willingness to acknowledge a gap between appearance and reality - it may have [/i]seemed[/i] that the PCs had resolved the encounter, but in fact they hadn't.

This does require abandoning any assumption of causality in respect of a given skill check. The total causal effect can't be known until the whole challenge is resolved.

Isn't my point ultimately that the skill challenge system requires you to DM in a way that is not only different from how D&D is normally ran, but which is different from how the mechanics of the rest of 4e D&D requires the game to be run? Hense my complaints of 'incoherency' and all the rest?

I don't see the difference from other components of 4e (contrary to some others I think there is a radical difference from earlier editions of D&D - not only is there a defined structure for resolving non-combat encounters by the accumulation of a pre-defined number of successes, but there is a structure that, as you have shown, can only work if assumptions about the relationship between action resolution and in-game causality and about metagame narration rights are radically revised).

The complaints about healing surges - "I can't narrate the consequences of a 'killing' blow until I know the result of the PCs stabilisation check" - and the complaints about per-encounter powers - "I can't explain why this power is not available every round unless I impose arbitrary narration about the successful opening up of an opportunity by 'reality-warping' PCs" - have a very similar character to your observations about skill challenges and causality.

4e is adopting widespread FiTM action resolution. Whether it will be able to make it fully coherent, given some of the lingering simulationist-seeming mechanics (eg 5 minute rest to renew per-encounter powers, and perhaps task-oriented flavour in the skill descriptions) we won't know until we see the rulebooks. But it's not obviously incoherent to me.

One party merely by thinking about it, solved the problem. Another party (perhaps the same party in a parallel universe), merely by thinking about it it, didn't. Yet both took the same in game physical actions, namely, none.

Not quite. Both groups of players (the actual and the counterfactual) made the same skill checks. But as a result of the actual group succeeding at those checks, they earned the right to narrate their PC's successful disarming of the trap - with no more rolls required once the challenge had been succeeded at (I am assuming here that once the challenge has been won, the GM is obliged to "say yes" to the rest of the players' narration of their success).

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Well, that was easy. I don't normally expect to win arguments.

Ok, so if the whole mechanical system boils down to some simple bits of advice:

1) "Say 'Yes'. Reward players for using passive skills appropriately."
2) "Provide oppurtunities for using diverse skills."
3) "Ask for skill checks when they are appropriate, and reward players for being skillful."

Was it really necessary to have a fundamental shift "requiring a lot of reevaluation of how we DM because D&D has never been presented in this way before."?

It's amazing how simple things can be if you boil them down to your essence.

I mean, think of it - how long did it take humans to figure out wheels? But they're nothing more than a round thingy! How could the Atztecs miss that?! And it's so incredibly useful to transporting lots of heavy stuff - think of the new possibilities for trade and construction!

Or money - "Okay, instead of giving you a fish that rots in a few weeks for your fine piece of pottery, I give you this shiny piece of metal with the picture of our King on it. It's a promise that I will give you a fish in 3 weeks, when you need one. You can also go to someone else and get a fish, or an apple, or maybe a knife from him. Simple, yet awesome."

Or, say. role playing. "Okay, so I define what I play in this game with a set of numbers, and I roll dice to see if I succeed at stuff? And I can use this to pretend to be an Elf, kill monsters and take their stuff? I don't have to simulate a real world battle that happened many decades ago?"

 

[med stud]

A skill challenge might be a about getting an audience with a king or merchant lord in a short time span. The players know that the PCs are in the right place; they know that it takes a long time to get an audience the "honest" way. I will just ask the players: "How do you do to get an audience?" Then it's up to them to come up with ideas and what skills to use for those ideas and I will allow/veto usage of skills before they try. Using History to come up with an idea of what people traditionally hold power in courts? Works. Using Diplomacy and bribe an official? Easy check due to the bribe, works. Using Bluff to seduce the merchant lords daughter, making her put in a good word for the PCs? Hard check, high effect, disastrous if you fail, but it works. OTOH, using Athletics to show the merchant lord how good you climb? Doesn't work. Something like that.

The nice thing here is that the players most likely will feel that they have accomplished something when they get the audience. A skill check takes 10 seconds to make and a series of straight up Diplomacy rolls is just boring. This way you can make a story out of this, creating a sense of dynamics. I also expect to get positively surprised by the players, making it fun for me as the DM.

But, from what we know, skill challenges sounds like something you use when a situation is open ended enough. If you have one problem with one solution, there is no need to bring in everyone and try to force some contrived solution to the problem with a challenge. Climbing a wall? Use Athletics one at a time, you don't cross the wall until everyone make it. Picking a lock? One PC uses Thievery, the others can't contribute. Like it always has been, really.

 

[LostSoul]

1) The character uses Perception to note the wound sowed up. He then immediately proposes to use his Heal to perform a careful autoposy on the wound, and then follows up this with an immediate proposition to use Thievery to carefully remove the device without damaging it. All of these are successful, but we now have only 3 successes accumulated. Per the rules, the device isn't disarmed and the challenge isn't over, but we are now physically further along in the process as we were in the scenario where by this point the party could not fail the challenge. Does the DM demand three more successes per the rules, or does he decide to wave the remaining three challenges per his common sense? If the latter, what did he need the rules for in the first place?

Player: "I swing my great axe at his face! Ah, I hit! 24 damage!"

DM: "Your axe sinks into his flesh and his head rolls off.

...

Oh crap. He has 30 hit points left."


I guess that's a problem, too, eh Celebrim?

 

[AllisterH]

I'd go a couple of ways with it.

First, I doubt I'd give the players the option to choose the difficulty. Sure, there's Easy/Normal/High. But to have a player say something like "I'm going to triple somersault up to the roof, Easy difficulty" just doesn't sit right with me. And it bugged me in the playtest. There was never an incentive (not a single one) for a player not to choose Easy difficulty.

.

Wouldn't it be the other way round. The PC says I'm going to attempt an easy challenge and then the PC gets to describe however he wants to describe it. Thus, a person can triple somersault up the roof even if he wants.

The disadvantage of taking an easy challenge I imagine would be mostly time limited and how many successes you can generate in a time frame.

 

[Mercule]

Of course he would require three more successes. You still haven't disarmed the ENCOUNTER. A further three failures would see the dryad attack, for example. Depending on how much poking and prodding the PC's do, it could still set off the trap.

Note, the skill challenge is not limited to one single element - the trap. The skill challenge includes all elements in the scene - the trap plus the dryad.



Nothing in the scenario above is time constrained, so, the amount of time they take is irrelevant. The trap going off spontaneously could easily be one result of four failures. The dryad getting more and more frantic as the PC's gather around the trap to check it out and then getting antagonisitic is another. Heck, on the fourth failure, a crow lands on the corpse, pecks out its eye and the trap goes off.



Again, you equate Trap with Scene. They have enough successes to defeat the scene. Thus, nothing that happens afterwards will be bad. Perhaps the trap is a dud.



I imagine that the DMG will include advice on how to handle this. It's no different really than if you want to bang on the trapped chest - it goes off. You failed, not because of the 4 failures, but because you chose not to accept the skill challenge at all.

But, say you shoot the body down with an arrow. The body falls and bursts open. Now, how does the dryad react to this? Suppose that you now get six successes and calm the dryad down. Did you succeed or fail the skill challenge? The trap is disarmed and the dryad is friendly. I'd say you succeeded.



In an RPG there is no such thing as causality. Only what the DM rules happens. If something is unknown to the players, then it does not exist as far as the players are concerned. It's more of a quantum approach to the game - everything has occured can be known, but, until such time as it has been resolved, all bets are off.

And that applies to the DM as well.

But, in the end, Celebrim, the problem is that you have artificially narrowed the challenge to exclude all the actors. There is the trap AND the dryad and they are both included in the skill challenge. There is no one right way to solve the skill challenge and there can be any number of possible resolutions that range from catastrophic failure to perfect success.

I can really see this shift requiring a lot of reevaluation of how we DM because D&D has never been presented in this way before.

Wow. I would walk away from a game that worked as you described it. Seriously. I cannot put into words how distasteful that system would be. Fortunately for me, I don't think the 4e skill challenges will work like that -- mostly because I think the developers are better than that.

Don't get me wrong. I very, very much would like to see some added structure to puzzle solving and social encounters. Solving a trap should be more than having the rogue PC roll one or two checks against a single skill, but it also shouldn't be a simple flurry of any old skill checks, either. In this case, not all skills are created equal. Disable device is simply more appropriate to the situation (as is Healing, and maybe Diplomacy, depending on the defined scope) and that needs to be reflected in the mechanics.

My hopes for the skill challenge rules they, first of all make a significant non-combat encounter feel significant by expanding the scope beyond a single roll by a single character. They should also reward appropriately prepared parties by favoring the most applicable skills (maybe success and failure with disable device counts double toward the scenario). But, no challenge should shut out parties that don't have the exact right skill (it is a game, after all). Nor should a challenge restrict action to a single character (again with game and group activity).

So, I'd like to see things handled in such a way that a perception, healing, or knowledge(history) check would give the PCs notice that the body is trapped and count as the first success. Disable device is the obvious choice for fixing things, so I'd count a success or failure as double value, and I could see the same argument for healing. Since that doesn't hit the 6 success threshold set for the challenge, I might require another disable check (or alchemy, etc.) to deactivate the trap. On the other hand, it might convincing the dryad to let the PCs close to the tree before they can even attempt to disarm it. And there are some other factors that could probably be addressed, too.

That takes us to a place where a skill challenge is something of a mini adventure in itself, with somewhat amorphous flows. That'd be fine so long as the system accounts for PCs occasionally taking a passwall-like action that "crits" the encounter (or fumbles it, as the case may be). The system had better help DMs structure these encounters, too -- I don't want to spend an entire evening mapping out the vagaries of a single encounter. And, I hope that it handles checks that are passive -- the samurai shouldn't have to say "I think about history and how this applies", though it's fair for the player to remind the DM about certain skills or suggest applications.

That was a lot longer than I'd meant it to be, and shouldn't be taken as my interpretation of how I believe things will be handled. It's just a train-of-thought blurb on how things could be handled and/or some of what I see as being issues that need to be addressed for the system to be worthwhile.

Celebrim does have some extremely good points and concerns about what we know about the challenge system. I'm looking forward to 4e and I'm to give the benefit of the doubt that it'll turn out reasonably well in this area. I'm not exactly reassured by what would apparently please some people, though.