Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5434460" data-attributes="member: 42582">Dausuul, some interesting posts.My own view is that it goes further than that.For example, the mock-play example skill challenge in the Rules Compendium ends in the following way: the players fail their third skill check - a streetwise check to investigate a building. As a result of this failure, not only do they not learn much about the building, but the GM has them attacked by some thugs (whom they had earlier scared off with a successful intimidate check) as the consequence for failing the skill challenge.Although the rulebook doesn't actually call this out - part of why, in my view, it continues to be a badly written set of skill challenge rules - this example is very telling: it reveals that, as part of the resolution of a skill challenge, the GM has to be prepared to make things happen that don't follow the causal rules of the gameworld itself. In the example, for instance, failing a streetwise check not only causes the PCs to remain ignorant of a building's history, but it also causes them to be attacked by thugs - even though, within the gameworld, there is no causul link between the thugs and the PC's attempt to learn about the building.4e is full of this sort of thing. Come and get it may be a very obvious example, but like you say it is marginal. But skill challenges are not marginal to 4e's design. They are central. (Their viability also depends, at least to some extent, on the +half level to skill rule - another thing disliked by many non-4e players).Healing surges are also central - not the one-day recovery aspect, which you could drop or change without affecting much besides adventure pacing (and I think it would be sensible for the game rules to flag the possibility of changing this to get a particular style of game) - but the way in which healing surges and healing powers, as written, cause recovery of hp during a combat to be an important and engaging part of the tactical play. Dropping this aspect of surges would be a huge change to the dynamics of 4e combat.Needless to say, therefore, I think it is a bigger task than you suggest to try to integrate 4e and 3E approaches to play.Some sort of modularity seems a natural way to go. But the experience of Rolemaster suggests it can also be a problem - if the use of house rule is itself no longer a house rule, but an official part of the ruleset, than publishing modules, running organised play, etc, becomes an even bigger hit-and-miss affair than it already is.A variant on modularity is to try to build in something similar to what HeroQuest does with simple and extended contests - a quick combat system that resolves with far fewer checks, but produces roughly the same sorts of outcomes with roughly the same sorts of probabilities - which is to be used for most combats, and then the full system for those which merit that sort of treatment. So the modules become a type of pacing device (presumably under the GM's control, or at least with the GM having the last word on whether a given combat is done fully or quickly).Hopefully such a system would also help integrate combat and combat powers into skill challenges - at the moment this is a pretty ad hoc area of the rules.</blockquote>

Verification