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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6124316" data-attributes="member: 4937">Ok, that's very clarifying.  This is not what I thought you meant by 'micro-game' when you used the term.Ok, the situation you describe is a pretty common one during my play.   First, the things you describe are not 'hard' by my definition of hard.  It would be surprising for someone who is particularly good to only have a '40% chance of success'.   Swimming in rough water is generally DC 10.  An unencumbered swimmer who is 'particularly good' probably has at least a 75% chance of success, and notably cannot fail by more than 5.  The worst thing that can happen here is he can't make headway.  He's not going to start drowning until he tires out or begins to suffer from hypothermia or other exposure damage.   A Hero can probably tread water for hours.   One who is 'particularly hardy and enduring' can probably tread water for days.   So the first thing I might ask is, "Is this situation really threatening enough to throw the dice over?"   Apparantly, in your case it was, because the players weren't 'particularly good'.   Ok, more on that in a bit.My characters are now 6th level.  The above situation isn't heroic enough to bother them with, unless the character that just went overboard is wearing platemail or can't swim.  None of the things on that list involve more than about DC 10, and so for the character that is good most of that just happens.   Its equivalent to challenging 6th level characters to kill 4 or 5 ordinary rats.   It's not exciting because its trivially easy for them and involves a small portion of the party working on the problem.   If however, it's a small child that just went overboard in a storm, the visibility is bad, and the boat is moving rapidly away from the child, and the water is freezing cold - now we are talking.  Now you have a situation that will be as dramatic as a combat, and which everyone will participate in and which we can engage in depth play during the scene.   Heck, I can even imagine Craft (Cooking) coming into play here - I'd give a circumstance bonus (as aid other) to the heal check to have the child recover from hypothermia to a player who said, "I put on a pot of tea" or "I heat some broth to help warm the child" and who made a simple skill check. The other thing I would note is that, even if this is a challenging situation - the players are on a reef during a storm and there are 15' high breakers, the 'series of D20 rolls' you describe isn't that awkward.  You could just as easily describe combat as nothing more than a 'series of D20 rolls'.   What I think you miss in your description is that each of the steps involves a meaningful choice.   In 4e skill challenge, what you propose or do really has only a limited impact on the outcome of the mini-game.   All propositions that are valid within the skill challenge come close to doing exactly the same thing.  The mini-game largely ignores the fiction created by the players.  In this situation though, the decision to resolve the problem by throwing a rope is meaningful, and the sitaution evolves largely in response to those players choices.The third thing is that your players in this situation weren't 'particularly good' at swimming or using rope.  As a result, they are struggling in a situation where normally compotent individuals - say NPC sailors - probably wouldn't be struggling.  As such, they are in an awkward spot precisely because this is unusual.   These are first level characters fighting ordinary rats and having problems with it, which may feel really odd depending on what they are used to.   Sir Reginald the Dragon Slayer is used to striding around the world hewing his way through the forces of evil, and now he's drowning in a mild storm.  Some would say, "Of course Sir Reginald can swim heroicly.  He's Sir Reginald."   That's a 4e approach.  A more traditional approach is, "If Sir Reginald doesn't want to drown, he should learn to swim."   In my game, we had an encounter early on in a lake filled cavern surrounded by giant flowstone.  Traversing the room involved lots of climb checks, balance checks and hauling on ropes to get everyone safely over, and a few dramatic moments where someone fell in the water and was nearly eaten by a giant crawfish.  So again, returning to the mini-game you describe, there are all sorts of branching points depending on whether or not the characters fail or not. Player A has fallen off a ship into the ocean.  If he fails the swim check badly enough, he'll sink and start to drownPlayer B throws a rope down from the ship - if Player A has sunk, this plan has already hit a snag.  Maybe player B will have to jump in after Player A to rescue him.  Player B may decide to take the rope with him, but if it holds it it might effect his ability to swim.   Maybe he should risk tying the rope around his waist?  Maybe he should forgo the rope and have Player C throw it to both of them.Player B dives in.  If Player A doesn't come up, player B may need a spot check to find him in the water.  If the spot check fails, maybe he needs a search check to find him by feel.   Meanwhile Player A is trying to rip his armor off with a strength check while swimming, sometimes sinking, maybe sometimes bobbing to the surface if he's lucky. Meanwhile the boat is drifting off.  Maybe Player D needs to take the helm to turn the boat around in the storm. If it takes too long to get a rope to player A, he may be fatigued or unconscious.  You may have to tie a rope around him to haul him up, because he lacks the strength to do it on his own power.  Either way there may be reflex saves to avoid colliding with the hull of the boat in the rough water (resulting in bashing damage).  There is in my opinion a lot of meat here.  What did you find awkward?   What do you mean by 'roll and done'?   Particularly with a high chance of failure as in your example, its more like to be 'roll and things just got worse'.   There is also a lot of rules in D&D where 'success' and 'failure' aren't the only options.  Many skill checks are 'success', 'failure', and 'no progress'.  In the case of climb, you either 'go up a certain ways' or 'fall off' or 'make no progress this round'.   Swim, IIRC, is similar.   Your swimmer had a 60% chance of going under, a 20% chance of treading water in place (whether on the surface or 15' down), and a 20% chance of moving somewhere (back to the surface, toward the boat, etc.).   Meanwhile the boat is probably moving as fast or faster than he can swim, and even if he grabs the rope he still has to swim he just now has assistance, both with staying afloat, +2 bonus maybe, and more importantly with getting closer to the boat (the being pulled in part).There are a few things I have found awkward in D20.  One of them is the 'long climb'.   Let's say you want to climb a 100' cliff.  At every point there is a risk of dramatic failure.  If the character's climb skill is good enough that he's likely to climb the cliff, but not so good there is no chance of fall, you have roll like a minimum of seven climb checks.  It's awkward to narrate that, and can be tedious.   But on the other hand, resolving it as a single die roll - as I sometimes do in other circumstances - is also awkward.  If the player falls 15' up the cliff, he may have second thoughts and decide to forgo the climb.  But if I decide it is resolved as a single throw, and I arbitarily decide the fall (if it happens) is halfway up, the 50' fall is possibly lethal.   And I've arbitarily decided against a fall from say 90', where for a low level character it likely would be lethal.  Not sure what to do there, it may just be inherent to lengthy dangerous tasks (you'd have the same problem walking on a wire above a great height, with a character that can't quite hit the DC automatically).</blockquote>

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