Skill Challenges: Please stop

[Dannyalcatraz]

There is nothing wrong with praying to Kord for help, but there's nothing wrong with option A either (nor are they mutually exclusive). It may actually encourage the player to use his PC's better attributes to solve the problem.

Knowing that he is weak and the boulder is large, he should use his Int.

1. Perhaps he can grab a board and a smaller rock to use as a fulcrum and lever and use his body weight to move the boulder.
2. Perhaps he can lift or shift the boulder enough and cast Grease upon the body of his ally and the boulder itself will squeeze him out.
3. Perhaps he props smaller rocks under the boulder to keep it from shifting and uses a shovel to dig under his pal to free him.
4. Does he have Reduce, Enlarge, Bull's Strength or Shrink Item on his spell list? Each could help.

Forgot an option: amputate the pinned limb and then get him to a powerful Healer...like the guy whose RW story was brought to movie theaters in 127 Hours. Only better, 'cause of magic.

 

[the Jester]

You've been playing this game too long. I'm sure you know better than that!

Actually, in my campaign, a character who wants to be the talky guy will put skill points in Diplomacy or Bluff or what have you, because otherwise he doesn't get the benefits of having done so.

YES!!! Yes, this is my point. The wizard sees the boulder on the unconscious barbarian, crushing the life out of him. He knows he is weak but he knows how critical this is. He makes an empassioned plea to Kord. Every player (not character) at the table is moved by the rp that is going on here. The wizard cries out for his dying friend and, then, darn it he pushes for all he's worth on that rock. As the DM, do you:
a) say, "Roll a strength check. It's DC 20."
b) say, "For an instant, the Strength of Kord flows into you..."

If you pick option a, then you're doing your players a disservice. There is a difference between ignoring the rules and letting them prevent you from making the game great.

I totally disagree.

What you say is true for a certain playstyle. That isn't the style I prefer, and while a lot of groups do- and in their case I think doing as you suggest is fine- I'm more of a mind that if the dying friend can be saved by impassioned roleplaying, you've just cheapened death and taken away the sense of risk.

I know, I know, there are a million exceptions and circumstances that change this based on the particulars (maybe the party is on a mission of vital importance to Kord, maybe the barbarian is one of Kord's bastards, maybe...), but in general, in my campaign, if the dice say you die, you die.

The worst thing about your proposal (to my taste, that is) is that once the dm has bitten this "save a pc through roleplaying alone" hook, he has set himself up with a devil's choice. The next time a pc is at serious risk, he must either allow a roleplaying-only lifesaving move again or else risk being perceived as highly unfair- having let Bob's pc live but not Joe's.

Again, it's a matter of style and taste, and there is nothing wrong with your playstyle- but it is not the kind of game I will ever run or that I find enjoyable.

 

[the Jester]

Hell, the more I think about it I might even prepare for the eventuality that having failed they try to abandon.

I guess I wasn't clear about this in the text regarding the skill challenge I posted, but the pcs are absolutely able to say, "Ehh, forget this, we're done here" and walk away. They must beat the skill challenge to have the particular adventure on the island, which is a follow up to an attack that killed one of the pcs earlier in the campaign. They are motivated, but never required to follow the bait. The consequence for doing so is... they do something else instead. (They have about half a dozen pending threads they could follow up on, or they could do something else entirely if they want.)

I have to admit that I find a lot of the WotC 4e adventures to be very heavy-handed as to how things should play out; I tend to think that the Delve Format encourages that heavy-handedness.

God yes. The delve format sucks donkey balls.

The Jester put up a really cool example of a skill challenge; the only thing I would question about it is the infinite number of sodden ghouls. At some point, I would allow the PCs to persevere simply by dispatching them -- doing so makes the situation tJ describes in his skill challenge perfectly in light with what I am calling "fiction-first".

I suppose it could happen. There is an actual theoretical maximum based on the number of them in their lair, but it's high enough that I didn't worry about it in writing up the skill challenge.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Dammit, Jester. I still can't XP you....and the donkey balls comment deserves it!

 

[surfarcher]

Well a fast and interesting thread! While I might make some individual responses later, I'm more likely to spread some XP with little notes.

I can't help but noticing that every person who says "Skill Challenges are bad, yadda yadda" seems to be playing the mechanic in the open. IME this invariably leads to the kinds of problems everyone cites.

Announcing an SC and bringing the mechanic out onto the table, like we do with combat, is incredibly negative IME. At best your players typically hunt through their best skills and try to figure out how they can apply them to chug up successes with a modicum of RP on the side! And at worst they simply pick through a set menu of skills and results.

I prefer the transparent approahc - using the mechanic as an accounting tool and a way to measure and guide progress. So I play it pretty loose and instead rely on adlib and roleplaying and it works incredibly well and seamlessly for us.

I also love designing an SC that branches based on the player choices I make veritable bushes, trees and even forests sometimes!

My groups seem to find my skill challenges very memorable and, besides the very first one with a group, I never make the mechanic visible to them at all. And I think that's the key to making SCs meld and flow with the whole story. That smooth flow is something I also try to achieve with combat, which is a different subject.

A few of our recent memorable challenges:
* The Dwarf Paladin getting jailed on a murder charge, the party proving his innocence.
* Travelling to find info relating to the McGuffin.
* A raid on a caravan of 75+ orcs/half-orcs/humans to destroy an arcane device.

I think it's important to remember that SCs aren't just limited to skills. DMG2 is very clear that you can open this up to many more things. In other words the roleplaying is the important part, the mechanic is a tool for the DM. So framing is incredibly important.

It's funny. If folks allow their players to misuse or abuse skills then I think that's an issue that group has with skills. It's only natural that group will also have issues with skill challenges. particularly if they are non-transparent SCs. I mean, why allow folks to go "I intimidate him! A 20! Pwn3d!"? In a sense that's really got nothing to do with SCs, but with allowing poor roleplaying. Don't get me wrong I don't get my players to RP every word, and that would be unfair on less eloquant players. But they need to at least give a sense of how they are being intimidating and there's no reason the rest of the players can't help them work that out.

Consider my sig from rpg.net. It's intentionally a little provocative, but please don't be offended:

-doug
DM since '81... Loving my new FR 4e campaign Rhedden!

"I hate skill challenges! They are too deterministic! They feel artificial! Blah blah!"
You are doing them wrong.

If you want help doing them right ask in the [ALL Editions] Workshop: Non-Combat Game Structures (Skill Challenges, etc) thread!

Not intended to upset of inflam, but intended to point clearly to my own beliefs on the topic.

 

[El Mahdi]

...Personally I treat social skills much the same way. Sure we role play the social encounters. But when the 8 charisma shaman (with a player of 18 charisma) does all the talking, rest assured I'll ask for a diplomacy check and give NPC responses accordingly...

IMO, this is one of the traps that skill challenges lead you into. When that player playing that Cha 8 shaman makes a clever or moving statement that is strongly in character, you want to reward him for it. Immediately. If you, instead, you ask him to roll a Diplomacy check then you're opening the possibility of punishing him instead. Will that same player get into the game as much the next time there's a social encounter? I say no. Instead, he'll just roll his Diplomacy check like everyone else and the scene will die with a whimper...

Should the sorcerer with the 18 Cha get perquisites for investing in that stat? Absolutely! But punishing those with Cha as a dump stat doesn't reward the player with a big score in the same stat. In fact, it's more of a punishment since the shaman's failure is the party's failure too.

I agree with your overall point, but disagree with the assumption that it has to be this way. There's nothing that says you have to follow the Skill Challenge system rigidly. There's nothing that says you can't chalk up an automatic success for good roleplaying by a player, without ever having them make a skill roll (an immediated reward, regardless of actual stats). I think the above situation falls under one of my general rules: Good roleplaying by a player always trumps any weakness of the character. But also, within the Skill Challenge system, a player doesn't have to use a charisma based skill. Skills based on other stats not only can be used, but are encouraged to be used. It's a system that when used correctly promotes creativity rather than limiting it...

I use Skill Challenges in my 3.x games to wonderful effect. They are great way for me to add a bit of behind-the scenes structure to non-combat encounters - so I don't have to adjudicate everything, and so there's a feeling of consistency and fairness for the players (as opposed to purely my subjective decisions). I like to old-school-DM encounters also, and I think I do it quite well (at least my players tell me I do), but I've found Skill Challenges to be a very beneficial addition to my DM toolbox. But, like most in this thread have said, I almost never run them as written in the rules, and I've houserule in much of the advice I've already heard here in this thread. Especially: I never announce a Skill Challenge. I prefer them to be more transparent and less gamist (not that gamist is a bad thing, just not the style I like to use). I never tell players how many success or failures they need, and never provide them with a running score of their successes and failures. I prefer it to be a structure that's only apparent to the one behind the screen.

But above all, I follow the advice that Mengu said in the same post you quoted:

Skill challenges are what you make of them. If you and your group have a problem with them, don't run them by the book, I don't think anyone does.

 

[surfarcher]

D. Stalker0's Obsidian system pwns WotC's Skill Challenge system.

Actually once you properly understand the RAW SC system as presented in DMG, DMG2 and the Rules Compendium it's incredibly flexible and open. A real RP encourager... And it's a cryign shame WotC did such a terrible job of communicating the system. They should be lashed to death with tiny whips made of their own pubic hair for that.

Where I think Obsidian is stronger is if you want a highly visible mechanic that's in the player's face, rather than a mechanic not directly visible to the players.

 

[Barastrondo]

I have to admit that I find a lot of the WotC 4e adventures to be very heavy-handed as to how things should play out; I tend to think that the Delve Format encourages that heavy-handedness.

Sure. That's definitely a problem of the delve format; they're set up to be linear and easy for novice DMs to use with a minimum of ad-libbing. But what I like about skill challenges lies in the potential, rather than in the specific examples. It's sort of like dark elves to me: sure, there are several things about drow-as-presented that I find problematic, but the concept of outcast elves turned all bitter and Unseelie and coming for you in the night, that's worth figuring out some new implementation.

 

[Raven Crowking]

You know what? While I still believe that the 4e ruleset is pro-rules-first, I have changed my mind about the value and usefulness of skill challenges. I admit fully that the Jester's example was the tipping point.

Bravo, Sir!


RC

 

[surfarcher]

I agree with your overall point, but disagree with the assumption that it has to be this way. There's nothing that says you have to follow the Skill Challenge system rigidly. There's nothing that says you can't chalk up an automatic success for good roleplaying by a player, without ever having them make a skill roll (an immediated reward, regardless of actual stats). I think the above situation falls under one of my general rules: Good roleplaying by a player always trumps any weakness of the character. But also, within the Skill Challenge system, a player doesn't have to use a charisma based skill. Skills based on other stats not only can be used, but are encouraged to be used. It's a system that when used correctly promotes creativity rather than limiting it...

Actually the Skill Challenge rules themselves (as per DMG2) very clearly indicate that many things can be used to chalk up successes or precipitate failures, not just skills. This can be use of powers, logic and many other things - spelling out "roleplaying and innovatiove thinking".