Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Starfox" data-source="post: 6185499" data-attributes="member: 2303">Ah dinna' know 'ey 'ad majursh amon' da piratesh, matey?If a climb is played out as &quot;succeed 8 times, and if you ever fail by more than 4, you fall, take 1d6 damage per accumulated success, and need to start over&quot;, then a skill challenge is an improvement even if using the &quot;Athletics - 8 successes before 3 failures&quot; thing. But really interesting skill narration is either a progression similar to what seems to be the first skill challenge idea &quot;You are at the base of the cliff. You can begin climbing (Athletics) or plan a route ahead (Nature)&quot; and so on with different steps and option at points in the climb. Add special failure paragraphs like &quot;First failure leaves you hanging in a precarious situation. Acrobatics lets you land safely a bit further down (lose one success), Perception lets you spot another, harder path (increase DC next roll). And so forth - narrating each situation as it comes up, but needing a couple of failures before the whole task fails. You can have such &quot;save yourself&quot; situations with recursion, creating an infinite safety net if desired. &quot;You walk down the corridor.. Check perception (fail). A pit trap opens! Check reflexes (fail). You start to fall down the pit. Roll Climb to see if you can catch yourself (fail). Your companion behind you might be able to catch you... (fail). And so on unto infinity, giving the player(s) a potentially unlimited number of chances to chances to save themselves. A skill challenge variant could be to just limit the number of such saving rolls the players are allowed could work. That is, you only need to make one successful roll, difficulty is high, and you are allowed a number of failures. As opposed to a 4E skill challenge which is is a lot of easy rolls with a few failures allowed and many successes required. There are many, many ways to do this. My concern is not on how to educate gamemasters, it is on writing rules so as to make the most out of whatever skills the gamemaster has. Two drivers of equal skill in two different cars, one of them will still drive better in a car with better handling - this is what I am after, rules that make it easier to excel.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Starfox, post: 6185499, member: 2303"] Ah dinna' know 'ey 'ad majursh amon' da piratesh, matey? If a climb is played out as "succeed 8 times, and if you ever fail by more than 4, you fall, take 1d6 damage per accumulated success, and need to start over", then a skill challenge is an improvement even if using the "Athletics - 8 successes before 3 failures" thing. But really interesting skill narration is either a progression similar to what seems to be the first skill challenge idea "You are at the base of the cliff. You can begin climbing (Athletics) or plan a route ahead (Nature)" and so on with different steps and option at points in the climb. Add special failure paragraphs like "First failure leaves you hanging in a precarious situation. Acrobatics lets you land safely a bit further down (lose one success), Perception lets you spot another, harder path (increase DC next roll). And so forth - narrating each situation as it comes up, but needing a couple of failures before the whole task fails. You can have such "save yourself" situations with recursion, creating an infinite safety net if desired. "You walk down the corridor.. Check perception (fail). A pit trap opens! Check reflexes (fail). You start to fall down the pit. Roll Climb to see if you can catch yourself (fail). Your companion behind you might be able to catch you... (fail). And so on unto infinity, giving the player(s) a potentially unlimited number of chances to chances to save themselves. A skill challenge variant could be to just limit the number of such saving rolls the players are allowed could work. That is, you only need to make one successful roll, difficulty is high, and you are allowed a number of failures. As opposed to a 4E skill challenge which is is a lot of easy rolls with a few failures allowed and many successes required. There are many, many ways to do this. My concern is not on how to educate gamemasters, it is on writing rules so as to make the most out of whatever skills the gamemaster has. Two drivers of equal skill in two different cars, one of them will still drive better in a car with better handling - this is what I am after, rules that make it easier to excel. [/QUOTE]

Verification