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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Brian Gibbons" data-source="post: 2691321" data-attributes="member: 7369">I'm always surprised at the dichotomy between puzzle-solving and character skills/stats.  Far too many GMs/modules seem to use the "Alright, I'm going to step out of the game, hand the players a puzzle, and sit back and let them solve it as players; after we're done with that obstacle, we'll go back to playing D&D" system.Simply rolling for a puzzle is unsatisfying to some, but that's far from the only possible way to make a puzzle an actual part of the game, related to the character's skills/stats.- When you ask the players riddles, allow each character a number of wrong answers equal to their Wisdom bonus;- If the players have to do a crossword or other language-based puzzle, have the amount of time each player receives dependent on their Intelligence bonus;- Have different levels of puzzles--the smarter characters (or those able to make a relevant Knowledge skill check) receive easier puzzles or ones with more clues already filled in;- When asking riddles, go around the table in Intelligence bonus order (or an initiative based on Int).  The player first in line gets to hear the riddle and either answer it or pass it on to the next, and so on down the table (meaning that the most intelligent has the most options in picking what to answer; the least intelligent the least options).Yes, the above options generally assume that PCs are solving puzzles independently (as otherwise it becomes tougher to tailor it individually to each PC).  That's deliberate.  If puzzles in general are player-based non-D&D challenges, group puzzles are even worse, usually degenerating into the one or two players who like puzzles interacting with the GM while the players who just came to play D&D sitting there bored.Personal worse puzzle ever encountered: A module which attempted to have one of those classic three-variable matrix logic puzzles ("The fortuneteller lives in a purple tent", "All red tents are occupied by men", "The butcher does not have a blue tent") in which the idea was you were supposed to puzzle out where everyone lived, in order to determine where to go to meet your target.  It nonetheless utterly failed to account for the simple obvious solution of the PCs walking over to the area in question and just asking around for the information rather than puzzling it out.Characters have skills and abilities in D&D.  If those skills and abilities are not able to be used in solving a puzzle, you're not playing D&D.-- Brian Gibbons.</blockquote>

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