Skill Challenges: Bringing the Awesome

[Imp]

How is the "What if they Win it in 3" problem any different than "What if my players manage to defeat the epic final encounter I had planned within one round or less"?

In general, the consensus answer to most questions is that if it wont harm your game in the long term, then reward unexpected successes of that sort by just going with the flow.

You know, honestly, I don't see the particular problem with winning a skill challenge in 3 if you're normally supposed to win it in 6, now that you mention it. But there were others posting in this thread who did see that as a problem and I guess I was responding to that.

In re improvising in general, there are really lots of little issues that go along with a heavier improvisational burden on the DM, not just catastrophic brain failure – things like falling into cliches ("oh great, Thog, you failed another History check; the DM's going to send a crow again to set off the trap") or whatever. I don't think the emphasis on improv is terrible, just something to keep an eye on. Carry on.

 

[kennew142]

The skill challenge is the part of 4e I am most skeptical about. I agree with Celebrim in some respects. I have several problems with the arguments presented so far. That's why I'm waiting to see the rules in the DMG before weighing in too heavily. My group has used something akin to the skill challenge mechanic in our 4e preview games, but only as an investigation tool.

From the Traps article on DDI:

Don't fret, rogue fans. That class and other characters trained in Thievery are still the party's best hope to shut down traps quickly and well. The goal was to make traps something that could be countered when a party lacks a rogue or the rogue is down for the count, not to mention make traps more dynamic and fun. In doing this, we quickly came to the realization that canny players, in a flash of inspiration, can come up with interesting solutions to counter even the most detailed traps. Instead of trying to anticipate these flashes though design, we give you, the DM, the ability to react to player insight with a host of tools and general DCs that allow you to say "Yes, you can do that, and here's how." We think this is a better approach than shutting down good ideas from the players for interesting story and challenge resolution, simply because you lack the tools to interpret their actions. After all, you should have the ability to make the changes on the fly that reward interesting ideas and good play. This is one of the components of every Dungeons & Dragons game that allow each session to be a fun and unique experience. Traps, like all things in the game, should embrace that design philosophy.

It would seem that the appropriate skills can be used to simply solve a trap. A skill challenge is only necessary if the appropriate skills are missing.

I'm hopeful that the Skill Challenge system will be flexible enough as written (no need to break the rules) that characters can solve the challenge if they succeed at the right combination of skills, even if they haven't made the correct number of successful rolls.

I have to add that I would never announce a skill challenge. When we used them in our games, we just asked the players what their characters wanted to do. The only proviso was that we made sure that we asked all of the players for their characters actions before allowing any one player to do a second action. It was free form and it worked great for us. As always YMMV.

 

[Hussar]

Actually, I would think that skill challenge will only occur if the situation cannot be solved with a single skill check.

Take a locked door. That's not a skill challenge. It's a simple Theivery check and/or break the door down. There's no challenge there, just a skill check. The existence of skill challenges does not negate the possibility of a skill check.

A skill challenge is an extended action which will require a number of skill checks to resolve. I imagine in the rules there will be something covering simply repeating the same skill, so no six history checks to solve the situation. And, in fact, IIRC, they talked about that when discussing diplomacy - you couldn't simply do the same thing over and over again and get new results each time.

If a situation is a simple pass/fail, then it's a skill check - did you see that kobold? Make a Perception check. Did you unlock that door? Make a Thievery check.

But, if that locked door has a riddle on it, with a guardian that will attack you if you try to force the door, THEN you might fall into a skill challenge.

Unless, of course, you simply bypass the challenge by whacking the guardian first.

 

[kennew142]

I think people are reading too much into it to see it as a subsystem. I'm not sure that it's necessary to announce a skill challenge, unless your players have trouble picking up the clues. I think a skill challenge is something you just fall into when it's appropriate. The X successes before Y failures model is a system for providing some way for characters to succeed when they don't have the most appropriate skills and/or powers. It shouldn't be used as a straightjacket.

It's my post; of course it's my opinion.

 

[FadedC]

Actually, I would think that skill challenge will only occur if the situation cannot be solved with a single skill check.

Take a locked door. That's not a skill challenge. It's a simple Theivery check and/or break the door down. There's no challenge there, just a skill check. The existence of skill challenges does not negate the possibility of a skill check.

A skill challenge is an extended action which will require a number of skill checks to resolve. I imagine in the rules there will be something covering simply repeating the same skill, so no six history checks to solve the situation. And, in fact, IIRC, they talked about that when discussing diplomacy - you couldn't simply do the same thing over and over again and get new results each time.

If a situation is a simple pass/fail, then it's a skill check - did you see that kobold? Make a Perception check. Did you unlock that door? Make a Thievery check.

But, if that locked door has a riddle on it, with a guardian that will attack you if you try to force the door, THEN you might fall into a skill challenge.

Unless, of course, you simply bypass the challenge by whacking the guardian first.

Alternately you could turn an important skill challenge into a skill challenge that only involves 1 character. For example disarming a death trap or negotiating with the king could be just be a thievery or diplomacy challenge where you need 6 successes before 3 failures. The advantage to this is that it makes it less likely that a high skilled character will fail due to a single bad roll or that an incompetent character will succeed with a single good one.

 

[Primal]

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?

I personally think the problem will rather be:

DM: "The Oni swings his Greatsword at you, and CRITS! 30 damage!"
Player: "Oh, crap! That puts me well into negative HPs... let's see, I'm at -19."
DM: "The Oni's greatsword cruelly cuts through your entire upper torso, nearly cleaving you in half! Your innards are spilling out, too."
(next round)
Player: "Ok, I'm rolling for recovery... NATURAL 20! Whoo-pee! I get up, well and healthy!"
DM: "Uh, okay, um, yeah... you get up... (oh, boy!)"
Player: "So I'm not cloven in half, right? That didn't happen, or do I get some penalties on my rolls? Or did I just insta-heal? What about those innards hanging out?"
DM: "Er... maybe we'll just skip to the next round... okay, what are you gonna do?"

 

[hong]

I personally think the problem will rather be:

DM: "The Oni swings his Greatsword at you, and CRITS! 30 damage!"
Player: "Oh, crap! That puts me well into negative HPs... let's see, I'm at -19."
DM: "The Oni's greatsword cruelly cuts through your entire upper torso, nearly cleaving you in half! Your innards are spilling out, too."

Why are you creating problems for yourself?

 

[Primal]

I think that the player choice of difficulty modifies the base difficulty.



I disagree. I think you can support different styles of play with a single ruleset, but generally dislike the notion of different rules sets within the same game system supporting who knows what. I think that adding incoherency to the rules greatly out weighs any additional ability to support narrativist play. So IMO, this is a step backward.

Hmmm... I see it actually benefiting gameplay, storytelling and character immersion -- therefore, I see it as a step *forward*. However, I agree with you that it probably feels weird on its own in otherwise very gamist system (or a bunch of subsystems encouraging highly-gamist and tactical gaming over story and simulation). Now, if we're talking about the *other* mechanics in 4E, I see most of them (e.g. 'exception-based' ability design, NPCs as "monsters", strictly defined 'roles', self-healing, boardgame-y tactical combat, class-exclusive "attack powers", etc.) truly being steps backward (towards AD&D and, sadly, even beyond). But if they get this one element "right" (my subjective opinion, mind you), encouraging "nar" play in D&D, it gives me hope that maybe we'll see 5th Edition focusing on less-gamist goals and focusing on other stuff besides combat in its mechanics. Honestly, I'm more than willing to admit that I think the 4E skill system does work better than skills in 3E, at least from the narrativist perspective.

This isn't even really my worry. I'm not really worried about gamist concerns like whether or not having even a single skill focus would largely invalidate a skill challenge. What I'm really worried about is the issue of causality. That is, can players predict what the set of likely outcomes an action are without the stakes being explicitly set? In my judgement, the described system has causality problems in that not touching the trap can cause it to blow up. In fact, merely talking about the trap can cause it to blow up, in some cases before the players even learn that there is a trap. Likewise, merely talking about the trap can physically disarm it. To a certain extent, because the outcomes are precircumscribed, what the players do or propose to do is hense irrelevant and the outcome doesn't have to procede logically from the propositions. Ultimately, no matter what they do or propose to do, some causality occurs that isn't directly caused by in game physics but rather by out of game mechanics. The logical connection is built back in as needed. I'm not a strict fortune at the end sort of player or referee, but not only does this tend to go too far for me, but it's jarring to have this 'fortune a good bit before the middle' in a game which tends towards 'fortune a good bit past the middle'.

If I'm going to play a game where we figure out what the outcome is before we figure out the propositions that produced it, I'd like to have a coherent structure for it and not do one thing in one situation and one thing in another.

I see your point, but I'm fairly certain that they've devoted a lot of pages in PHB (and DMG) to dealing with this issue. I *do* hope that there is some system for setting the stakes -- if not, your concern is actually valid. I could see players using their 'History' skill (e.g. to determine if that particular trap and how to disarm it is mentioned in the texts their PCs may have read) arguing about the consequences if failing that skill check blows up the trap ("I didn't touch it! I was just pouring through my tomes!"). It seems that the DM still has the final word over what happens and how, but I'm a bit concerned about less experienced players and DMs who may either abuse/misuse the system very easily.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I personally think the problem will rather be:

DM: "The Oni swings his Greatsword at you, and CRITS! 30 damage!"
Player: "Oh, crap! That puts me well into negative HPs... let's see, I'm at -19."
DM: "The Oni's greatsword cruelly cuts through your entire upper torso, nearly cleaving you in half! Your innards are spilling out, too."
(next round)
Player: "Ok, I'm rolling for recovery... NATURAL 20! Whoo-pee! I get up, well and healthy!"
DM: "Uh, okay, um, yeah... you get up... (oh, boy!)"
Player: "So I'm not cloven in half, right? That didn't happen, or do I get some penalties on my rolls? Or did I just insta-heal? What about those innards hanging out?"
DM: "Er... maybe we'll just skip to the next round... okay, what are you gonna do?"

I feel tempted to make hongs question a bit more verbose. Why are you adding flavour text to an result that doesn't make a lot of sense, considering the rules? I mean, I could understand it if he you didn't know that there was a possibility for a healing surge, but if you know it, why use flavor text that can never remain consistent? Cutting through anyones torso isn't even something that should happen in 3E without outright killing someone - or are you telling me someone* could survive this for nearly a minute, and possibly "stabilize" to get better on his own?

*) someone that is not a Troll, Annis Hag or other creature with Regeneration


But I think I should really resist this tempation. We have had a enough of this discussed already, and the matter at hand - Skill Challenges - is far more interesting.

 

[hong]

In our Age of Worms game, the barbarian had the Mad Foam Rager feat from PHB2, which 1/day lets you delay the effect of an attack for 1 round. He'd regularly use it when an attack took him to negative hit points, often when he would be at -40 or -50. We got into the habit of describing him in this state as literally having his guts falling out while he was running away.

The funniest time was when there was an anti-life shell between him and the cleric, so he took the direct route and jumped over the shell. So you had these guts lying on top of the shell, and then slowly dripping through as they expired.