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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8197350" data-attributes="member: 6790260">While I don't necessarily think that a roll is required, calling for an ACTION is certainly required. It's actions that have consequences--rolls simply inject extra uncertainty. Players often avoid making hard decisions, because hard decisions mean taking some action, and thus consequences. Rolling is just one subset of actions.Anything that can be solved that easily should not be a skill challenge. Literally exactly the same as "anything that can be resolved in a single act shouldn't be a combat," or "anything that can be resolved in a single act shouldn't be an adventure."Now, no DM is perfect (I certainly am not!), so it's quite possible for any of the above things to happen in actual play. You didn't see the one-action resolution for something ahead of time. There are AFAIK only two valid responses to that:1. Level with your players. "Hey guys. I goofed, I didn't think of that as a solution. I'd really like to proceed with things as I had originally planned. You totally outwitted me, so props for that, but can we skip this obvious solution and go through this as I'd planned?"2. Accept it. "Wow, alright, you guys totally solved that immediately, here's your XP."No rules--whether for SCs, combats, adventures, campaigns, whatever--have ever said you should enforce continuing on if it doesn't make sense. That people cut slack for all sorts of older-school rules that run into problems like this, but don't for something like Skill Challenges, continually upsets me.Absolutely, 110%. Each action should change the state of play, just like in combat.Sadly...this is also 110% true. The modules were terrible, and while the actual rules were reasonable and not as badly-written as I had originally thought, the vast majority of DMs ran them in the worst possible ways. Dry, static, bullheaded, utterly mechanistic, and purely down to "which threshhold do you pass first." Nothing like what they should be.As I've said in other threads: if many people used Reaction rolls (just as an example) incorrectly, that doesn't mean Reaction rolls are a bad mechanic. But, just like many other parts of 4e, people often had an initial antagonistic reaction, and interpreted absolutely everything as though it had to be perfectly micron-precision mechanistic at absolutely every level of play....sucking the fun out of the game purely in how they chose to play it, making it "MMO-like."</blockquote>

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