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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4162227" data-attributes="member: 4937">Errr... Ok.See, now that is what provokes me to say, "Um... what?"  If it is apparantly valid to you, then it can't also seem to you to fall down.  Seeming to 'fall down' implies that to you the argument is apparantly invalid.Everything is the DM's choice, including breaking the rules.  My point is that the rules as described can break causality (or rather, break forward causality).  It is the DM's choice to adhere to this mandated causality break or not, but if he doesn't adhere to it then he is also perforce choosing to break the rules.  And I'm asserting that the fact that the rule is written such that the DM is inclined to break it to maintain causality and/or versimilitude is a condemnation of that rule.Yes, but that isn't exactly what I'm talking about.  Situations like that are fairly easily covered as '6/4, failure to accumulate 6 success after 24 hours (or whatever unit of time) consitutes failure in the challenge.'  That's not a big problem.  Let me give a couple of examples of what I consider problems: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?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.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?  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?As you can see, with the 6/4 constraint added to the situation, causality becomes hazy and conditional in a way that has nothing to do with DM ineptness.  This is easily seen because if we remove the 6/4 constraint and remove the 'skill challenge' context, we never find ourselves in a situation where 'successful proposition A' doesn't lead 'logical consequence B' and the DM doesn't have to invent 'run time' exception handling or retroactive events to explain the consequences of success or failure. Please keep in mind that I'm not saying that the DM can't successfully invent explanations, nor am I saying that it is impossible to adhere to the rules and also provide a logical framework.</blockquote>

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