The D&D Experience (or, All Roads lead to Rome)

[BryonD]

There are some very good design notes and suggestions in DMG2 and in Mearls series of articles in Dragon concerning skill challenges. Things like allowing automatic successes for appropriate power usage. "High quality" action results or crit type rolls giving 2 successes. Even inappropriate skill choice giving automatic failures. More importantly, suggestions on how to blend skill challenges as an underlying framework to an extended bit of narration.

Just to be picky, I already pointed out that inappropriate rolls could clearly be discarded.

But it is still all an "underlying framework" when none is needed, and moreso, a lack of such is preferred.

I guess you could say that in my game I use skill challenges. Except instead of 6 success, they all require 1. And instead of each success having a default of 1/6, they have no default whatsoever. I don't offer "double credit" or even "triple credit" for better answers, because the idea that these actions have discrete quanta of completion is still overly rigid and unsatisfying. Once the cumulative qualitative merits of actions, be they one or 18, meet the threshold, then "1"ness is decreed.

When I want an open-ended spectrum, pointing out that 1 might actually be 2 is only a small improvement.

Now you might also say it could be 3. How about 4? How about 19 and the target is 53? If you draw enough points you can make a polygon that the human eye can't tell from a circle. But why bother if you have a circle?

But for now you have just "improved" the square up to a pentagon.

 

[BryonD]

Even the 6/3 was a DM choice, just like deciding he wanted to use Level 6 Ogres instead of Level 10 trolls for an encounter. The DM could as easily have decided more or fewer succeses were required for the skill challenge.

No, not "just like". Placing npcs is part of defining the plot, setting, and narrative. Whether he assigned 6/3 or 17/2 has no narrative meaning. The freedom to change the variables of that construct makes it no less a clunky construct controlling the story.

 

[Lanefan]

You know, from reading this I'm beginning to see where a skill-challenge-like system could be useful for a new DM, or even an experienced one who needs guidance on how to mechanically evaluate role-played encounters and-or encounters where there is no combat.

It doesn't involve any dice. Rather, the DM writes '+' and '-' on a scrap of paper and starts keeping tallies as things go along - a '+' for something good/useful/ingenious and a '-' for something stupid/counterproductive/whatever. She then quickly dreams up a couple of numbers - let's say 6 and 3 - and decides if there's 6 tallies beside '+' before there's three beside '-' then the encounter turns out successfully. The players never see any of this and just play as they normally would.

What this does, besides getting dice out of where they shouldn't be, is allow the DM a significant and very handy fudge factor and provides for variable win-loss conditions. In a 6-3 example, the DM could have something different happen on a 6-0 win than if it's 6-2, and if it ends up 5-3 then it could be a partial win; whatever. The DM could also set a challenge as 1-x, where *any* '+' is a win but the number of '-'s somehow becomes a factor later. Also, if only the DM knows the score then the score doesn't affect player actions.

An enterprising DM would also note who contributed to the '+' side, and only those characters would get ExP for that "challenge".

Lanefan

 

[pemerton]

But you had predestined that no action could provide more than, nor less than, 16.67% of the solution. With no knowledge of how good or bad the actions would be, you declared "the number will be six".

What do you mean by "action"? I had predetermined that the number of successes required is 6. "Success" has a technical meaning here. As I posted in reply to Exploder Wizard, there are fairly intricate rules and guidelines across the DMG, the DMG2 and the Rules Compendium for allowing some successful checks to count as multiple successes, or to cancel failures, or to give bonuses to other check, etc etc. All that stuff happened in the bear and water weird examples.

Because the flavor text does nothing to change the game reality of roll die, compare to DC, place check mark under yes or no.

I don't really agree with this. First, the flavour text changes the ingame reality quite a bit - it makes the difference between the bear being friends with, or afraid of, the sorcerer. And it also changes the resolution - because different options are open up or closed off. If the dwarf doesn't start pushing rocks in as his first action, he can't then push them in further as his final action.

You are taking credit for different descriptions of the path. But when we are comparing two mechanical systems you can not take credit for something that the mechanics very pointedly disregard.

I don't quite understand this. My game table used a mechanical system to generate an interesting story about taming a bear. No one knew how it would happen at the start. At the end, we had a bear who had been befriended by the ranger, was scared of the sorcerer and paladin, and wanted to eat the dwarf but had been persuaded not to.

Maybe other tables can get the same story using other mechanical techniques. Cool! Give us some actual play examples! But that doesn't mean (i) that the techniques that my table used didn't help, nor (ii) that the story was predetermined by the mechanics. It wasn't. No one knew how it would end up until the things was done (heck, even half way through I was still expecting the dwarf to try and fight the bear, and was anticipating the resolution being that of a dead bear and a dissapointed paladin).

 

[pemerton]

So if I want glass cannons to exist in my world, I should avoid 4E?

I think so. 4e definitely treats hit points as playing a metagame role, namely, of regulating pacing in combat.

Minions a la 4e are the ultimate glass cannon. Additionally, would not a striker (or whatever cute name the monster equivalent gets) without support be considered one?

True about minions - mechanically they are glass cannons, but again, the rationale here is mostly a pacing/scene-framing one.

You're right about there being glass cannon PCs - and some monsters have more hit points per level than others. But there's nothing quite like the 3E ogre mage or the AD&D NPC magic user.

Nor indestructible pillows, or whatever the opposite would be.

And it's such an easy fix, too. Just take the concept of hit dice and divide it up, so each creature has a "Fight Level", or FL (i.e. it is as good in combat as a this-level Fighter), a saving throw level that may or may not be related to FL (4e has done this already with variable defenses but maybe hasn't realized it), and a hit point total that is determined by whatever means you like but is or can be completely divorced from the other factors.

4e has something like this: Skirmishers have equivalent FL, defence and hit point level. Brutes have higher FL and hit points but slightly lower defence. Lurkers have higher FL but lower hit points. Artillery have higher FL but lower hit points and defences. Soldiers have higher defences.

But none of the differentials is as great as in previous editions.

 

[pemerton]

It doesn't involve any dice. Rather, the DM writes '+' and '-' on a scrap of paper and starts keeping tallies as things go along - a '+' for something good/useful/ingenious and a '-' for something stupid/counterproductive/whatever. She then quickly dreams up a couple of numbers - let's say 6 and 3 - and decides if there's 6 tallies beside '+' before there's three beside '-' then the encounter turns out successfully. The players never see any of this and just play as they normally would.

What this does, besides getting dice out of where they shouldn't be, is allow the DM a significant and very handy fudge factor and provides for variable win-loss conditions.

Lanefan, add in the fact that sometime dice will be used (for skill checks) and what you have describe here is the skill challenge mechanic. Including with variable win-loss conditions.

There's a further question of whether you let the dwarf fighter play his "come and get it" card to get benefits when it comes to shoving rocks into springs at the bottom of spirit-infested pools. That's neither a die roll nor just a described action, but an issue of metagame "fate point" type options.

But you could run skill challenges without having metagame options like come and get it.

 

[Hussar]

I find interesting that Hussar trusts 3E for DMing... don't get me wrong: been there, DMed a lot. I loved to play 3.5 but absolutely hated to DM. Broken spells, grapple rules, I still have nightmares.

On the other hand, 4E shines in therms of rules consistency (lacking a lot in disbelief suspension, IMO, tho). In fact, constant rules updates anti combos (and CB/MB) is what sold 4E to me.

But it's a strange love... I like 3.5 more than 4E, by miles (it just give me less headaches...)

That said, I take no side on D&D these days... I got burned by 2E, 3.5 and 4E. Playing GURPS until 5E shows up, and having lots of fun

See, now I had a totally opposite experience. Sure, grapple could be a problem, but, that wasn't usually a huge one. Spells were almost never a problem in our campaigns and I allowed pretty much anything. Then again, we rarely had anyone play wizards, so, maybe that was the reason. But, I did see lots of clerics.

I find the 3e mechanics to be very rock solid. I'm not someone who had huge problems with the CR rules either to be honest. I found them useful most of the time and, with a bit of examination, it wasn't too hard to figure out why things went pear shaped.

No, my problems with 3e were mostly related to the massive amount of drudge work that I totally did not enjoy. Building the stat block for a 12th level wizard took me friggin' forever. And it was almost always wrong. So, unlike BryonD, I LOATHED creating in 3e. Didn't mind if the drudge work (stat blocks mostly) was done for me - ie running modules - but, I'd never build a campaign from scratch in 3e again.

 

[Neonchameleon]

You know, from reading this I'm beginning to see where a skill-challenge-like system could be useful for a new DM, or even an experienced one who needs guidance on how to mechanically evaluate role-played encounters and-or encounters where there is no combat.

It doesn't involve any dice. Rather, the DM writes '+' and '-' on a scrap of paper and starts keeping tallies as things go along - a '+' for something good/useful/ingenious and a '-' for something stupid/counterproductive/whatever. She then quickly dreams up a couple of numbers - let's say 6 and 3 - and decides if there's 6 tallies beside '+' before there's three beside '-' then the encounter turns out successfully. The players never see any of this and just play as they normally would.

What this does, besides getting dice out of where they shouldn't be, is allow the DM a significant and very handy fudge factor and provides for variable win-loss conditions. In a 6-3 example, the DM could have something different happen on a 6-0 win than if it's 6-2, and if it ends up 5-3 then it could be a partial win; whatever. The DM could also set a challenge as 1-x, where *any* '+' is a win but the number of '-'s somehow becomes a factor later. Also, if only the DM knows the score then the score doesn't affect player actions.

An enterprising DM would also note who contributed to the '+' side, and only those characters would get ExP for that "challenge".

Lanefan

Congratulations! You've just understood the workings behind skill challenges with one simple exception. Not everything people try works which is why you make skill checks. And part of the fun of the skill challenge rules is recovering from an unexpected failure. But "the dice where they shouldn't be" is an issue that's an argument for another time and has probably been rehashed a few thousand times already. I know why you think the way you do and disagree, but consider that a matter of taste; dice provide advantages and drawbacks.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I agree with your sentiments, but not your facts. Contra your first paragraph - there are ways for a successful check to count as more than just 1 success in the challenge. Contra the last sentence of your second paragraph, 4e already has what you say it is missing.

The mechanics I've got in mind here are secondary checks from the DMG and DMG2, plus "advantags" from the Rules Compendium, plus examples of how these can be done in some of the published skill challenges. Some of this came into play in my game on the weekend, but I left it out in my post for brevity (for example, when the paladin intimidated the bear, standing next to it and waving his khopesh while using an Encounter thunder power to help, he got a bonus on the roll).

This example proves my point even more. It was simply another formulaic rules construct being exploited because it was known to provide a bonus.
Find a way to use combat power X in a non-combat challenge and receive a bonus to Y, oh, and you get a cookie.

I see this kind of thing more as a no brainer rather than inspired creative content. Hmm... a skill challenge is an encounter so find a way to shoehorn a combat encounter power into the situation, get an extra bonus, and profit. Hey no loss either as the power is refreshed right after the encounter. Such additions to the challenge are still merely rules constructs involving selecting something from a preset menu for a benefit and coming up with a plausible excuse in the fiction to justify the action.

In addition to what I said above - there are ways to affect the challenge other than by changing the number of successes required. One is to take actions that change the fictional situation such that new options to which the PCs are better suited open up. And if we go beyond the issue of mechanical difficulty, the PCs can take approaches which (for example) leave the bear calm and scared of them or calm and friendly to them (or, as in my party's case, scared of some and friendly to others). These are meaningful differences.

In other words, succeed at a difficult menu option to unlock options of lesser difficulty making the overall goal easier to accomplish. I still don't see any genuine creativity in this or how the judgement of the DM has any bearing on the situation at all.

If the basic actions of the players and the decisions of the DM can be simulated in a computer game then then the lightning in a bottle, which is the core of the human D&D experience is lost.

 

[BryonD]

There is a lot of talking past each other and covering the same ground happening.

Fitting the story to the mechanics is different than fitting the mechanics to the story.

That does not mean one if remotely "better" or "more fun" than the other. But someone who likes one may not like the other, or, more likely, may like it notably less.

But they are different.

And I see people telling me that their orange is exactly the same as my apple, and then using a description of an orange as proof that it is an apple. So be it. To me that just means you are having fun and don't perceive the distinction that is important to me. And there is no remote need for that distinction to be important.

But when someone says that it doesn't look like Rome to them, they can be telling the truth, even if you don't see it.