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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5635222" data-attributes="member: 54877">The half group skill check is a variant on a group skill check, where you only require half the group to meet the DC, for the whole group to succeed. If half the group can make the Balance check, they all make it across the chasm. If they fail, they all fail. I suppose that technically belongs in house rules, but I'm not here mainly interested in the tweak itself. It is something that someone, I forget who, mentioned here, and I tried it. The neat thing about it, which would work in any system, but seems especially productive in 4E with its half level skill bonus, is what it does to the psychology of the players when using skills. The first thing I noticed was that as soon as we started using it, the players pushed harder in situations where it could be used. Got three guys that are sneaky and three that aren't? OK, just how tough are we talking on the challenge, and just how bad are the three that aren't? Suddenly, it is an option. An exciting option worth trying. Second, the rolls of all those "marginal" people start to really matter. You "know" that the really good guys will make the check and the bad ones miss it. So it puts the focus precisely on those guys in the middle that normally don't get called out. We even had one dramatic attempt where the second best sneaker rolled a 1 and failed--and then as no one else bailed them out, the guy with a 3 skill rolled a 20 and succeeded! Normally, that would be anti-climatic, because even if forced to try a normal group check, the other failures would have ruined the luck of the low skill person. Finally, the above changes the focus on improving skills. Those occasional skill training or skill focus feats look more attractive, when having that third character with a decent Arcana check makes the group viable at closing a network of arcane portals, for example. I'm always interested to find ways to make a party with a good skill set matter, but this one kind of snuck up on me. It wasn't presented as that kind of change, but rather as something to make group checks a bit more palatable. I've found it to be much more than that, a very good fit for 4E, and wondered who else had tried it.</blockquote>

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