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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 4910659" data-attributes="member: 80487">Different skills are applied to different means to different ends. A 4e "skill challenge" is very, very different from the "skill challenge" of a classic OD&D or AD&D dungeon. This is not by accident, but by design.It is just so with the old game's probabilistic production of results that many people find unacceptable and so "fudge". The results are (perhaps with rare exceptions) just what the designer intended! Were the intent otherwise, a deterministic method (or explicitly bounded results) would be obviously preferable.For all the attention devoted in some more recent designs to loading the odds heavily in favor of "the right way", a set of a million trials still yields some outliers that "go wrong".This concept of preferred outcomes is set forth repeatedly in the 4e DMG, although the dice-rolls remain for those who wish to use them. A sort of "split personality" may result, a compulsion to hide fudging behind a pretense of applying the rules.It is quite possible to have an interesting game in which the outcome (in broad strokes) is preordained, the challenge lying in choosing among the paths to that end. How much does victory cost? What was the magnitude of defeat?Both Bonaparte and Wellington won many of their battles largely in the maneuvers beforehand. To take on a reasonably skilled player in a fairly historical re-fight is pretty much to accept that the Great Captain's side is going to hold the field at day's end. It is possible, though, to compare the players' performances with their historical counterparts -- and thus to win the game despite losing the battle (or vice-versa).</blockquote>

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