Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Stalker0" data-source="post: 4277877" data-attributes="member: 5889">In this post I will go into much more detail about the system. This is mainly nuts and bolts stuff, you don't need to read this to use the system.Let’s Begin: The Problems with the Skill Challenge system.1)    A party handling a skill challenge of their level has a very low chance of succeeding. This is of course the heart of the issue. If a party is handling a skill challenge of their level they should at the bare minimum a 50/50 chance of winning. But in general, players are supposed to win, so even 50/50 would be regarded by many as too low. As currently stands, those numbers stand at around a 10% win rate or lower, which is completely unacceptable.2)    Skill Challenges have a huge variation in win rate based on DC and complexity. This is a problem hidden in the math of the skill challenge system. For example, let’s say the skill challenge is perfectly balanced at complexity 3 at a set DC. The win rate is exactly where you like it, and everyone is happy. If you add even +1 to the DC you can throw off the win rate by 15-20%. Change the complexity and you can change that number even more. If a party is just slightly weaker in skills than another party, they can literally go from a decent chance of beating the challenge to a very poor chance with the most minor changes in skills. 3)    Increasing complexity can actually make a challenge easier depending on the skills of your party. This one isn’t necessarily a “problem” as much as it is unintuitive. For example, if your party on average will succeed on each individual skill check of a challenge 70% or more of time, you will actually increase the party’s win rate by increasing the complexity. However, if the party has only a 65% chance, then their win rate will drop by increasingly complexity.Tackling the Problem: Our basic assumptionsBefore we can do any math to fix these problems, we need to know what the solution is. In other words, how often should a party beat a skill challenge? I took my own personal intuition, and asked many other people I game with. We each came to around the same conclusion:We will assume that a party of 5 is facing a skill challenge of their level with complexity 5. All checks for the skill challenge will be medium difficulty (the standard skill challenge). Each player will have the ability to use their best or close to their best skills for this challenge. In other words, we are assuming skill training and a high ability score (probably +4 or more). So at 1st level, each player will roll at a +9 in general.With this assumption, we felt that a party should succeed at that challenge 80% of the time. However, at the same time, we thought that each individual check should succeed around 70% of the time. We all know how it feels when your DM gives you a skill DC, and everyone looks at each other across the table thinking that DC is absolutely crazy. With a standard skill challenge, every check should have a reasonable chance of succeeding, so that players don’t get frustrated.Pen and Paper: Our major limitation.An important part of this process is to remember that we are playing a pen and paper game. Players are doing math in their heads and looking up charts in books. I could create an absolutely beautiful mathematical model that would run skill challenges perfectly across multiple skill levels, and you would never want to play it because it would simply be too darn complex! So while we are fixing the system, it is important to remember that the end product must be as easy to use as it is clean in its final results.Now that you all know the goal, our assumptions and limitations, I will go through each section of my rule system and explain in detail how it solves the problems I have outlined above.The Complexity Table:This table has undergone a large revision. I have change the success and failure numbers, now have a footnote for two of the complexity numbers. So what is going on?Curbing the variance: As I mentioned, one of the problems with the current system is a change in complexity has a huge change in the win rate. The reason is simple, the more rolls you have, the larger the variance. If a take a 70% chance of succeeding at any 1 roll and multiply it across 4 rolls, then I multiply it across 12 rolls, you’ll see a very large difference in the final number. The reality is that’s a basic property of the math we are working with, and I can’t change it without breaking our pen and paper limitation. But I can limit it.The first thing is to reduce the variance in total rolls. In the original system, you could roll as many as 5 rolls for complexity 1 and 17 rolls for a complexity 5. That’s just too large a difference to create a consistent system. With my system, the rolls go from 5 to 11, a much tighter fit. We then change the ratio of successes to failures. This helps tighten the gap even further. Now when I set each individual success to 70%, the difference between complexity 1 and 3 is only 4%. That’s much better than 12-15% we experienced before. Fixing the Inversion Problem: Fortunately, this is an easy fix. With the new success/failure ratios, this is no longer a problem. At any success rate you set, a higher complexity will equal a harder challenge….but hopefully not too much harder.Questions you may have:1)    I understand the new table, but the highest complexity feels like too few rolls to me. Is there a way I can keep the length of the old complexity 5 but still get the good math of the new system?The best way to do this is to do a big skill challenge in parts. For example, run a complexity 3 skill challenge for your party, and then a little later run a new complexity 3. Give them rewards or failures at the end of each one. This will give you added length, but allows the math to “reset” which will provide you a better challenge system over all. Remember that complexities 4 and 5 are designed for special circumstances, and are NOT recommended for most groups.2)    Complexity 3 has 7 successes and 5 failures. Couldn’t I just make a challenge with 14 successes and 10 failures and get the same results but have a longer challenge?The answer is no. Probability doesn’t work that way. Even though the ratio of success/failure is the same, the actual results would be very different.3)    I don’t understand the footnotes in the table. What about complexity 4 and 5 is so special?In general, I don’t recommend these complexities for a standard party. The reason is the average party’s win rate drops greatly with these systems. Their purpose is for a party that has players of general aptitude in skills but has one very very strong skill user. Some DMs may find this skill user takes too much of the spotlight in their skill challenges. By adding more rolls, the big skill user will contribute a smaller portion to the party’s success, but will still have a big impact. In addition, while the win rate drops with these complexities, the big skill power of the one character brings the number back up.The Aid Another System:One thing I decided had to be in my system was a way for a player with weaker skills to still make a solid contribution to a skill challenge. The reasons are many:1)    The variance in the skill challenge system is so high, that even 1 player with -2 to his best skills compared to the party average can actually drop the parties’ win rate by near 10%. This number gets higher in smaller parties, and if the bad skill player has initiative and goes more often.2)    No player wants to feel like they are dragging the team down. Part of the problem with a cooperative skill challenge is if a player doesn’t seem to be contributing as much as other players.3)    A self-correcting system. I can only make a system so good without breaking the pen and paper limit. I can only account for so many variables in characters, and my system will never be perfect for any party. Aid another allows the players to take charge of their weaknesses in a teamwork manner, which helps keep the skill challenge system consistent without a crazy ton of math.So you may be wondering why I went with the system I did. After all, there are a 20 or more ways to do aid another (I know, I tried most of them). Here are the nuts and bolts of the system.Infinite Retries, but only one success: One obvious flaw with allowing infinite aid another’s  is that players with really high skill checks could simply aid another all the time, providing a permanent +2 to people’s rolls. However, I wanted infinite retries in there for an important reason…it scales with complexity. Any time I add a single +2 bonus to a roll a limited number of times that helps a system with fewer rolls. For example, if I added +2 to one roll out of 10 rolls, I helped 10% of the rolls. If I add +2 to 1 roll out of 20, that’s only 5%. Basically if I limit aid another, I give preference to complexity 1 over complexity 3, because complexity 1 has fewer rolls. This is a problem I struggled with in putting in an aid another system. However, with infinite retries the chances of a successful aid another roll increase with complexity, because there can be more attempts made (and more players have a chance to try it). So while it doesn’t scale completely, it doesn’t affect the variance too much.No penalty for failure: To me this is a very important feature. If you are forced to roll a bad skill, your actually hurting the party by participating in the skill challenge. We never want that. With aid another, the worst that can happen is that you get frustrated for failing the check, but you won’t hurt the party’s chances.Only one aid another per round: This one probably seems odd. There are a couple of reasons. One, I want to prevent the abuse where 1 player makes all of the “real” skill checks with their very high skill roll while the rest of the party sits back without a chance to fail. Two, because I’ve mentioned the skill challenge system is very sensitive to changes in skill checks. Allowing a party to acquire +4 to +8 bonus on most of its skill challenge rolls will greatly alter the win rate of the challenge.Nonallowed Skills: In the DMG, the basic rule for nonallowed skills is that DM may allow you to make a skill check with a nonallowed skill but the difficulty becomes hard. This is a bad rule for two reasons:1)    If the character has ultra specialized in that skill, he may be able to make even hard DCs fairly easily. In that case, that skill just became the ultimate catch all skill, able to be used in any situation.2)    If the player has an average modifier to that skill, allowing him to make a hard Dc check is actually very harmful to your parties win rate for a skill challenge! The DM would actually be kinder to the party as a whole if the player got to skip without rolling.In my system, I have rolled nonallowed skills into the aid another system. The DC is still hard, meaning a character is encouraged to use skills that relate to the challenge. But if he wants to press on, he won’t penalize the party. Further, if you do want to use your uber catch all skill, the most it will net is a +2 for someone else, and then you have to use a different skill to aid another. You get the benefit of your uber skill, but in a much more limiting manner.Critical Successes, Daredevil Stunt, and Skillful Recovery:A common house rule, a natural 20 is a big win, even in a skill roll. I have adapted it to my system for a couple of purposes:1)    Its fun! Let’s face it, everyone loves to roll a 20. And if a skill challenge is supposed to have the drama of a combat in many cases, why shouldn’t the natural 20 love fall along as well.2)    It helps curb the gap between different complexities. I’ve mentioned several times how the win rate between a complexity 1 and a complexity 3 can vary pretty wildly. Adding this rule actually helps that. The reason is the more rolls you have in a skill challenge the more likely 20’s will come up, which helps higher complexity skill challenges. While all complexities benefit from this rule, higher ones benefit more, which bridges the gap.Daredevil stunt rose out of my skillful recovery system. I wanted my system to have a benefit for big skill users. Aid Another tends to help skill users with poor skills for a challenge, and the system is designed around the normal skill users. But what about the people with a racial bonus, skill focus, and magic items to help their skills…where’s the love for them? The answer is daredevil stunt. Hard checks in a skill challenge are just that…hard. They aren’t made for just anyone, they’re made for people who auto make medium difficulties and still have bonuses to burn. This system allows those people to get some extra benefit to their high bonuses in the form of better chances for critical successes. This further allows them to bail out their lesser skilled brothers in the party, while looking heroic at the same time.Skillful Recovery was actually my favorite idea out of all of this. I tried all sorts of natural 20 rules and nothing worked the way I wanted. I tried adding a +2 bonus to the next skill roll, I tried +5. The actual effect on the math was either non-existent or too strong. I tried adding a +1 bonus to all skill checks for the encounter. That was too swingy, or just outright too strong. Plus those ideas are pretty boring in general, skill challenges should be as exciting as a combat if possible. Skillful Recovery is my solution. One it provides a significant bonus, but not as high as other less exciting ideas. It has more impact on higher skilled players, which I felt was important. Yet it still allows lower skilled people to get use out of critical successes. And who doesn’t love bailing out a friend by making a good check and saving the party from failing the challenge? The overall effect of SR did what I wanted, it narrowed the gap between complexities. Further, it provides benefit to higher skilled players while protecting the party from lower skilled players.The Skill DC TableFirst presented, yet the last thing I worked on. Once all of the subsystems were in place then came time to set the DCs across levels to ensure the win rate stayed consistent for all parties across all levels. What I did was create 3 template characters. One character was standard, I assumed a starting 18 in a stat with skill training. He put 1 of his two ability points in his main stat (for skill purposes) at each interval. Then I took a bad skill character. Starts with a 14, no skill training, doesn’t put any points in that ability score, except for the ones he gets at 11th and 21st. Lastly, the golden boy of skills. Starts with a 20, skill training, skill focus, and a racial +2 to the skill. Takes every bonus in that stat, and picks up a +1 to +6 magic item for that skill when he can.I then calibrated the numbers around these templates. I focused on the standard character, making sure the medium DCs provided that 80% party win rate I wanted. I tailored the easy DCS to the bad character, but bumped them up a bit to ensure they weren’t too easy for a standard character. Then I created the hard DCs to be a challenge to the golden boy, then pulled them down a bit so they were in reach of the standard character. The result? Take a standard party, let them use their good skills for a challenge of their level. They’ll succeed around 75-80% of the time, and each roll has a 65-70% chance of success. Parties with high skill guys can have fun with daredevil stunts and more critical successes, while teams with lower skill guys can be helpful with aid another.</blockquote>

Verification