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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5467475" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, I agree there's nothing inherently wrong with an SC having quite serious consequences. I wouldn't generally kill a party outright with one, and in MOST cases you don't want the consequences to halt the adventure outright, but the &quot;SCs only grant some advantage/bypass some disadvantage&quot; concept seems too weak to me. One of the issues is it encourages players to simply optimize for combat. Sure, passing SCs is nice, but if you never HAVE to overcome them you can just basically ignore even trying to up your chances. I think that contributes to the 'arms race' I see in some games with 4e where the PCs optimize, the DM throws on harder encounters, etc. This is also a problem with any technique which doesn't give you some actual mechanical reasons to up your skill bonuses etc. Seems to me another reason for a good dose of mechanics in non-combat situations.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 5467475, member: 82106"] Yeah, I agree there's nothing inherently wrong with an SC having quite serious consequences. I wouldn't generally kill a party outright with one, and in MOST cases you don't want the consequences to halt the adventure outright, but the "SCs only grant some advantage/bypass some disadvantage" concept seems too weak to me. One of the issues is it encourages players to simply optimize for combat. Sure, passing SCs is nice, but if you never HAVE to overcome them you can just basically ignore even trying to up your chances. I think that contributes to the 'arms race' I see in some games with 4e where the PCs optimize, the DM throws on harder encounters, etc. This is also a problem with any technique which doesn't give you some actual mechanical reasons to up your skill bonuses etc. Seems to me another reason for a good dose of mechanics in non-combat situations. [/QUOTE]

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