Skill Challenges

[pemerton]

I find that it is better to narrate the situation and make skill rolls as they come based on the PCs tactics.

One fundamental feature of the 4e skill challenge mechanic is finality. In this respect it is like combat - the GM is obliged to narrate around the dictates of the mechanics (eg on the 12th success in a Complexity 5 challenge the GM must narrate the PCs achieving their goal). Whereas the sort of approach you describe leaves the pace and resolution being freeformed by the GM, with the players' skill checks having a GM-adjudicated influence upon that freeform narration.

Nothing I've posted indicates which is the preferable approach - I'm just wanting to make clear that they are extremely different ways of handling action resolution in an RPG.

 

[pemerton]

how would you adapt that mechanic to avoid that issue

My view is that if you want every player to participate, you have to put every PC under pressure. Tell the player of the mage that a rock is tumbling down the slope and about to crush his/her PC, and I'm pretty sure the player will do something in response - cast a spell, make an Acrobatics check, or whatever!

 

[jbear]

You can also approach successes as goal based, not roll based.

Eg. Stage 1 Goal: Discover the tracks before nightfall: 1 success
Stage 2: Reach the mountains following the tracks before it begins to rain; It will rain in 2 days: 1 Success
Stage 3: Survive the night/Stave off the wolves: 1 success
etc etc (depending on how long you wnat your chase and the obstacles you imagine the PCs will have in their path as they progress)

The shift here is basically the individual rolls don't represent a success or a failure in themselves. Achieving the goal before the requisite for failure occurs is what determines the success for failure or not. So Bob the Ranger might have Survival +8 but fail his roll. If Jim the Wizard and Marty the Cleric decide to sit back passively and do nothing and night falls; the group gets a failure because night falls before they successfully find the tracks not because Bob the Ranger failed his roll. Jim and Marty could have come up with their own ideas/creative solutions but they chose to pick their nose instead. The trail is now colder when they pick it up the next day which may add a difficult new dynamic to the chase.

 

[Greenfield]

The beauty of the skill challenge in 4e was that it gave DMs a structured way to award Exp for things other than combat.

Many of the "solutions" offered seem to be ignoring that aspect, with story rewards rather than treating them as true encounter challenges.

Or am I misreading things?

 

[pemerton]

The beauty of the skill challenge in 4e was that it gave DMs a structured way to award Exp for things other than combat.

Many of the "solutions" offered seem to be ignoring that aspect, with story rewards rather than treating them as true encounter challenges.

Or am I misreading things?

You may be missing that, post-Essentials, skill challenge XP are awarded whether or not the PCs succeed.

More generally, in 4e XP are not a reward for challenges overcome, but rather for meaningingfully playing the game (hence the rules for "free roleplay" awards in DMG2).

 

[Starfox]

Nothing I've posted indicates which is the preferable approach - I'm just wanting to make clear that they are extremely different ways of handling action resolution in an RPG.

Not so extremely different. When each works, they are in fact quite similar, as the rules will feel transparent.

My view is that if you want every player to participate, you have to put every PC under pressure. Tell the player of the mage that a rock is tumbling down the slope and about to crush his/her PC, and I'm pretty sure the player will do something in response - cast a spell, make an Acrobatics check, or whatever!

So the mage decides to shoot the rock asunder with a spell. How do you quickly adjudicate that in the 4E skill challenge structure? There simply is no easy way to structure all the possible actions a PC can use in such a situation. There is basically two responses:

A: Toss the skill challenge as written overboard: "Roll a spell attack" - Despite the rules that skill challenges use skills and not attack rolls, and that the DCs appropriate to skills and attack rolls are different.

B: Stick to the rules and punish the players ingenuity: "You fail, get hurt, and now you only have 2 potential failures before disaster strikes"

 

[Sunseeker]

So the mage decides to shoot the rock asunder with a spell. How do you quickly adjudicate that in the 4E skill challenge structure? There simply is no easy way to structure all the possible actions a PC can use in such a situation. There is basically two responses:

A: Toss the skill challenge as written overboard: "Roll a spell attack" - Despite the rules that skill challenges use skills and not attack rolls, and that the DCs appropriate to skills and attack rolls are different.

B: Stick to the rules and punish the players ingenuity: "You fail, get hurt, and now you only have 2 potential failures before disaster strikes"

First, the Mage makes an Arcana-Concentration check to be able to shoot under pressure.
Second, determine the "stats" of the rock, basically, AC and HP. Assign fitting numbers. Is is a very big rock? A very hard rock? A very metal rock? If all you can think of is "it's a rock", it's probably granite. Granite would have moderate AC(it's pretty tough), and low HP(once broke it fragments easily) Lets say it's AC is 15 and it's HP is 10.

Well, does the mage make the shot? If he succeeds, yay! Go mage! If he fails: acrobatics check to jump out of the way of the rock. Fails? Rock makes an "attack" on him. Is it big and rolling downhill? Then it has a high-to-hit(it's hard to miss the only thing in front of you) and high damage(killing-level high). If you want to get really nit-picky, assign the rock a movement speed, multiply it's size category by it's speed to determine "force", multiply by d10's in the same way you do falling damage. So, a rock moving at 10 squares per round with a size category of "large"(1 medium, 2 large, 3 huge, ect..) would be 20d10. That's also sufficiently high enough to ensure no player thinks they're tough enough to just "stand and take it".

So we make a quasi-skill-challenge combat.


Also: did I really just stat out a rock?

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[Starfox]

So we make a quasi-skill-challenge combat.

Quasi-skill-challenge combat = narrative action? It certainly does not use the standard skill challenge format!

 

[pemerton]

So the mage decides to shoot the rock asunder with a spell. How do you quickly adjudicate that in the 4E skill challenge structure? There simply is no easy way to structure all the possible actions a PC can use in such a situation.

<snip>

Despite the rules that skill challenges use skills and not attack rolls, and that the DCs appropriate to skills and attack rolls are different.

Quasi-skill-challenge combat = narrative action? It certainly does not use the standard skill challenge format!

I think you may have misread the skill challenge rules.

4e PHB pp 179, 259:

Whatever the details of a skill challenge, the basic structure of a skill challenge is straightforward. Your
goal is to accumulate a specific number of victories (usually in the form of successful skill checks) . . .

In a skill challenge, your goal is to accumulate a certain number of successful skill checks before rolling too many failures. Powers you use might give you bonuses on your checks, make some checks unnecessary, or otherwise help you through the challenge. . . Chapter 5 describes the sorts of things you can attempt with your skills in a skill challenge. You can use a wide variety of skills, from Acrobatics and Athletics to Nature and Stealth. You might also use combat powers and ability checks.​

On the GM's side, there are similar comments along these lines in the DMG 2.

In any event, there is nothing strange about using attack powers in a skill challenge, including to blow up rocks!

Stick to the rules and punish the players ingenuity: "You fail, get hurt, and now you only have 2 potential failures before disaster strikes"

Are there really GMs who disregard the rulebooks and adjudicate the game this way?