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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 5468481" data-attributes="member: 18280">For some folks who are worried about defending skill challenges, perhaps we could look at the attack matrixes of 1e for a while.Within the framework of combat, once a player has committed to making an attack, the die rolls determine both whether or not the character hits, and how much damage he does.  The opponent's hit points determine the theshold of success in order to beat the challenge.  In this way, combat is very much like a skill challenge.Moreover, when one ramps up the complexity of options (and there are many in 1e), one gets something analogous to primary and secondary skills in a skill challenge....different ways to reach the threshold, some of which are better than others, depending upon the exact nature of the challenge.Within the framework of combat, 1e is "rules-first", in exactly the same way that skill challenges are "rules-first".  Or it would be, if there was not attempt at mitigation.In the case of 1e, there are several attempts to mitigate this (i.e., to make it as mildly rules-first as possible, so that the fictional reality of the milieu, while perforce taking a back seat, doesn't have to sit far to the back):(1)  There is more than one threshold.  Hit points represent the most obvious way to defeat the challenge a monster represents; there are other ways to do it.  In some cases, there are ways to do it that step outside of the mechanics-first framework entirely.(2)  The values in the mechanics are intended to model the fictional reality of the milieu.  The X has Y hit dice because that is what Xs are like.  The Z has A armour class because that is what Zs are like.  IOW, even when the game is mechanics-first, the mechanics themselves are devised in such a way as to emphasize the fictional reality.(1) and (2) actually walk hand in hand.  The fictional reality requires that things are the level of challenge they are, because that is the level of challenge that they should be for fictional, rather than mechanical, reasons.  Because nothing has to reach some exact measure of challenge, there can be easier and harder ways to deal with anything, just as in real life.(3) Where the mechanics are deficient in modelling the fictional space, the DM is advised to alter the mechanics, rather than to alter the fictional space.So, in 1e we have a combat system which is firmly rules-first, but which has tried to mitigate itself to be as fiction-first as possible.  The problem with this, of course, comes into play when attempts to manipulate the fiction circumvent problems in ways that strain the fictional reality.  An editorial in Dragon comes immediately to mind, where a player convinces his DM to allow him to stab an opponent with a dagger, leave the dagger in the wound, and then enlarge it, with the idea that this would be instantly fatal.  As a one-off, such an idea might work, but the rules of a fiction-first setting demand that what is possible, is possible.  Not "is possible once".There are problems with this approach, therefore.  And it is experiencing these problems that leads to codifying a greater part of "what is possible" within a ruleset.  Which, in turn, has its own problems.  The question is, what set of problems are you least bothered by?  And what set of problems are you best equipped to deal with?EDIT:  The Jester's lake skill challenge impresses me because it seems to have this sort of mitigation built into it.  I found his swamp skill challenge, while superior to the vast majority I've read, offers less mitigation.  It seems to me that the nature of the skill challenge system makes this sort of mitigation difficult to do well.  Not impossible.  Just difficult.RC</blockquote>

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