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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5938068" data-attributes="member: 42582">Do you realise that the rules, which have been quoted both by me and [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] upthread, say the exact opposite of this?Right. I mean, how much clearer could the rulebooks be than this:Your DM sets the stage for a skill challenge by describing the obstacle you face and giving you some idea of the options you have in the encounter. Then you describe your actions and make checks until you either successfully complete the challenge or fail. (PHB p 259) It’s up to you to think of ways you can use your skills to meet the challenges you face. (PHB p 179) You describe the environment, listen to the players’ responses, let them make their skill checks, and narrate the results. (DMG pp 72, 73) When a player’s turn comes up in a skill challenge, let that player’s character use any skill the player wants. As long as the player or you can come up with a way to let this secondary skill play a part in the challenge, go for it… In skill challenges, players will come up with uses for skills that you didn’t expect to play a role. Try not to say no… This encourages players to think about the challenge in more depth… However, it’s particularly important to make sure these checks are grounded in actions that make sense in the adventure and the situation… you should ask what exactly the character might be doing … Don’t say no too often, but don’t say yes if it doesn’t make sense in the context of the challenge. (DMG pp 73, 75)It's not very ambiguous, in my view!Without a GM who plays the monsters, and has them do stuff, a combat encounter is just "attack", "attack", "attack". Is that a weakness of D&D's combat mechanics?I mean, of course a system based on strong sceneframing and active and engaged GM adjudication during resolution - such as skill challenges - won't work if the GM isn't able or prepared to frame strong scenes and adjudicate cleverly and deftly. That's why the best rulebooks for that sort of game are chockfull of advice to GMs on how to do this. (4e unfortunately is not an example of the best in this field.)But it's not a weakness, in my view. I'm from the school who regards this as one of the best ways of making the referee + players approach to play actually deliver gripping, engaging, player driven RPGing.I'm baffled. How do you two reconcile this view of skill challenges with the words in the DMG, quoted directly above, that say "You describe the environment, listen to the players’ responses, let them make their skill checks, and narrate the results. . . it’s particularly important to make sure these checks are grounded in actions that make sense in the adventure and the situation"? Are you imagining that the GM describes the situation, the players then make 12 - or however many - skill checks, with no narration, and then the GM narrates some gestalt outcome?If so, I find that bizarre. That's not how any other extended contest works in any other RPG that I'm aware of, and I'm 100% sure that that's not how the 4e designers intend a skill challenge to be run, given that it is an entirely derivative extended contest mechanic.(A meta-comment: a lot of online discussions about skill challenges seem to take place as if they sprang from nowhere into 4e. It seems that many posters aren't aware that this sort of mechanic wasn't invented for 4e, but was cribbed for 4e from mechanics invented by other designers - the earliest version I know of is in Maelstrom Storytelling, from 1997, but I haven't done a comprehensive survey.)</blockquote>

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