Skill Challenges: Bringing the Awesome

[Hussar]

Lacyon - Your opinion seems to be that there are situations which warrant skill challenges, and there are situations which don't. The examples I have brought up are, then, situations which don't. This is all well and good, but there don't seem to be clear delineations (at least from what I can see) between when you should use a skill challenge, and when you shouldn't.

What I'm afraid of, and what makes me leery of these rules, is that people will use skill challenges when they should just use nice, normal, DMing. Unless there's a clear delineation on the part of the designers as to when you should use skill challenges, and when you shouldn't (Like there's a pretty clear delineation as to when you go into combat rounds...), isn't this something a lot of DMs could get tripped up on?
/snip

This is perhaps a valid issue. And I do hope the DMG comes with some pretty solid guidelines regarding it.

From my own point of view, the easiest split would be any situation that can be resolved by a single check is not a skill challenge. A locked door, for example, is not a skill challenge. One check later, and the door is open. End of story.

Additionally, and this was alluded to earlier, a skill challenge must include an element of failure. The "rounding up the sheep" scenario isn't a skill challenge because there is no penalty for failure, other than perhaps time wasted.

To use 3e terminology, any situation which would allow you to Take 20 would not be a skill challenge. And I think that you could certainly modify the text of Take 20 to apply.

 

[pemerton]

So, the DM decides handling the body-bomb roughly will set it off automatically, but according to the rules, that is still four failures away. The players are expecting four failed checks to result in failure, but the DM determines that cutting the body down sets it off. The DM can't really express their expectations, or they are pretty much giving away the answer. The players are upset that one skill was rolled to cut the body down, or maybe no skill was rolled, but they still failed.

The notion of "the answer" here is unhelpful. A skill challenge is not about the players guessing something the GM is keeping secret (eg what skill to use). It is about the players, using their PCs as the medium, taking control of the storyline of the game.

You don't have to buy it. The point is, the trap won't go off until the four failures are rolled. If the DM determines certain actions automatically fail the skill challenge, we are back to 'pixel-bitching', which is what this system is designed to avoid.

As others have said, this is obviously not true.

Consider a social challenge, and suppose one of the PC's actions is to feed the courtier to their Sphere of Annihilation - this is clearly a decision, by the player, not to engage in the challenge, and would change the focus of play to something else.

If there is any doubt as to whether the action in question is meant to be a move in the challenge or a repudiation of the challenge, the GM can always ask the player.

People seem to think this system is the godsend for bad DMs to suddenly turn into Orson Wells of the tabletop.

Who said this? Harr didn't, for example.

The system is a way of improving (for certain RPGing preferences) the way that non-combat challenges are resolved. No one has ever suggested (at least to me) that HeroWars would turn a bad GM into a good one - but this does not mean that the HeroWars mechanics are not better than those of 3E for facilitating a certain sort of play.

I am sure you are correct, it is not a new mechanic with 4th edition. That isn't really the point. The idea is valid, it's the implementation that is the issue here.

I would be willing to bet hard money that in previous incarnations, the skills used were better defined or more specific, and skill challenge sequence was flexible enough to accommodate some 'not what the DM intended' skill use. The major problem that arises here is how the success/failure goal is entirely divorced from the skills being used, in addition to the skills being so overly broad as to be nearly meaningless.

Are you comparing the mooted system for 4e with other known systems of this sort, such as HeroWars? If so, there is no problem in divorcing the goal from the precise skills used - and there is no such thing as "intended skills". The point of the mechanic is to allow the players to shape the story by narrating the relevance of the skills they wish to use.

Then, named skills are unnecessary.

<snip>

All the DM has to do at that point is announce the challenge, and the players call out a letter while they are rolling until the success or failure of the encounter is determined, and make up a story. As mentioned elsewhere, it's writing a story about your craps game.

Of course if the events narrated in the game do not matter to the GM and players (ie if it is no part of their pleasure in RPGing to make any sort of point - be it aesthetic, thematic, whatever - through the story that they narrate) then that GM and those players won't especially care for skill challenges. But in such a case they presumably they wouldn't care for whatever it is - presumalby a mixture of GM-fiat and drama-driven action resolution with few guidelines - that the skill challenge is replacing. So there is no net loss.

There is only a loss for those with simulationist preferences. But this is so obviously the case with 4e that it can hardly be a surprise that its non-simulationism extends to its non-combat mechanics.

 

[LostSoul]

All the DM has to do at that point is announce the challenge, and the players call out a letter while they are rolling until the success or failure of the encounter is determined, and make up a story. As mentioned elsewhere, it's writing a story about your craps game.

If the players & DM don't want to roleplay, why are they playing D&D?

 

[Crosswind]

This is perhaps a valid issue. And I do hope the DMG comes with some pretty solid guidelines regarding it.

From my own point of view, the easiest split would be any situation that can be resolved by a single check is not a skill challenge. A locked door, for example, is not a skill challenge. One check later, and the door is open. End of story.

See, I'm not really a fan of this split either. Now, you're forcing the skill challenge mechanics on what...90% of the problem-solving that goes on in D&D? I'm sort of just re-stating my points, so I'll stop, but: Skill Challenges are OK in some situations. In many situations, the "You win!" or "You lose!" aspect of passing/failing the skill challenge fails to give the DM enough shades of gray in explaining what happens to the PCs.

Basically, the advantage of this change is that it provides non-RP-oriented DMs a framework for setting up a challenge and reward for non-combat activities.

The downside is that it seems to replace the more flexible and, to my mind, superior set-up of "Party comes up with a plan, DM tells them the rolls to make, DM decides what happens."

-Cross

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

If the players & DM don't want to roleplay, why are they playing D&D?

The better question is: Why do the use skill challenges?
Don't waste time with skills if you want to kick ass!

"I think there's might be a bunch of orcs in that abandoned fortress over there. Who cares who killed Valance or what the kings advisor is up to? Let's get that fortress and kill some orcs and take their stuff!"

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

See, I'm not really a fan of this split either. Now, you're forcing the skill challenge mechanics on what...90% of the problem-solving that goes on in D&D? I'm sort of just re-stating my points, so I'll stop, but: Skill Challenges are OK in some situations. In many situations, the "You win!" or "You lose!" aspect of passing/failing the skill challenge fails to give the DM enough shades of gray in explaining what happens to the PCs.

Basically, the advantage of this change is that it provides non-RP-oriented DMs a framework for setting up a challenge and reward for non-combat activities.

The downside is that it seems to replace the more flexible and, to my mind, superior set-up of "Party comes up with a plan, DM tells them the rolls to make, DM decides what happens."

-Cross

Hmm. Isn't what you describe just a subset of what can constitute a skill challenge? Instead of (the seemingly standard assumption) of picking skills in sequence, you pick them all together and then roll to see what happens. How you arrive on the skills you use doesn't necessarily seem the important part of skill challenges.

But maybe the framework in my mind is more powerful and flexible then the one in the actual DMG. The truth is out there, rolling of some printer...

 

[hong]

See, I'm not really a fan of this split either. Now, you're forcing the skill challenge mechanics on what...90% of the problem-solving that goes on in D&D? I'm sort of just re-stating my points, so I'll stop, but: Skill Challenges are OK in some situations. In many situations, the "You win!" or "You lose!" aspect of passing/failing the skill challenge fails to give the DM enough shades of gray in explaining what happens to the PCs.

If you succeed at the skill challenge, you win. There is one outcome.

If you fail at the skill challenge, I see no reason why the DM can't say that how you fail depends on what rolls you made. There can be plenty of an infinite number of outcomes limited only by how evil the DM wants to be.

Basically, the advantage of this change is that it provides non-RP-oriented DMs a framework for setting up a challenge and reward for non-combat activities.

The downside is that it seems to replace the more flexible and, to my mind, superior set-up of "Party comes up with a plan, DM tells them the rolls to make, DM decides what happens."

The party still comes up with a plan. The players may decide what rolls to make, but the DM decides the difficulty. The players can also change their mind in the middle of challenge depending on what happens. Where is the lost flexibility?

 

[LostSoul]

If you fail at the skill challenge, I see no reason why the DM can't say that how you fail depends on what rolls you made. There can be plenty of an infinite number of outcomes limited only by how evil the DM wants to be.

Exactly.

 

[Storminator]

So we've seen how skill challenges work (roughly). If you're not familiar, have a look at Harr's example below. So I ask, what are the top three things you will do (table rules, preparation, house rules, whatever) to help bring the awesome when you run skill challenges?

Do we really have 6 pages that fail to address the OP's question?

How about we stop bickering about the skill challenge system and cover what you will do to make your games awesome? And how about if your answer is "I hate skill challenges" (and all associated paraphrasing), you simply refrain from posting here?

PS

 

[med stud]

EDIT: Changed my mind.