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<blockquote data-quote="ThirdWizard" data-source="post: 4191807" data-attributes="member: 12037">Here are a few things that I think distinguish skill challenges from the 3e skill system.The main difference is that 3e has no advice for really doing anything interesting with skills. There's a trap? Roll Search/Disable Device. You want someone to like you? Roll Diplomacy. There's no advice for interoperability between skill sets. Convincing the Bandit King requires Bluff/Diplomacy/Intimidate in 3e and nothing more. In 4e, you can use History, Nature, Insight, or whatever else might apply.The second difference is that you actually have skills in 4e, which is something people have been houseruling about 3e for as long as I can remember (I especially started agreeing with this after seeing the Iron Heroes skill system). In 3e, too many classes have 2 skills/level. In 4e, everybody has at least 4 and you can spend a feat to get another. Thus, without the &quot;skill monkey&quot; role, or more precisely the inclusion of everyone as a &quot;skill monkey,&quot; more PCs can participate in out of combat activities.And, finally, the third benefit is the success vs. failures with the abstracting of the challenge. No longer is success/failure tied to one roll for important events the default assumption of the system. And, keep in mind, the biggest difference is the default assumption of the system changing, not what you &quot;can&quot; and &quot;can't&quot; do with them! This way, you can attempt things in multiple ways with more granularity between success and failure. One bad Diplomacy roll won't mean the entire negotiation was a failure. One bad Knowledge(the Planes) won't mean that you don't know something. If you're using a skill challenge, then it operates more like combat with a series of rolls determining an outcome, leading to more tension, suspense, and, dare I say the word: fun. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink&nbsp; &nbsp; ;)"&nbsp; data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="ThirdWizard, post: 4191807, member: 12037"] Here are a few things that I think distinguish skill challenges from the 3e skill system. The main difference is that 3e has no advice for really doing anything interesting with skills. There's a trap? Roll Search/Disable Device. You want someone to like you? Roll Diplomacy. There's no advice for interoperability between skill sets. Convincing the Bandit King requires Bluff/Diplomacy/Intimidate in 3e and nothing more. In 4e, you can use History, Nature, Insight, or whatever else might apply. The second difference is that you actually [i]have[/i] skills in 4e, which is something people have been houseruling about 3e for as long as I can remember (I especially started agreeing with this after seeing the [i]Iron Heroes[/i] skill system). In 3e, too many classes have 2 skills/level. In 4e, everybody has at least 4 and you can spend a feat to get another. Thus, without the "skill monkey" role, or more precisely the inclusion of everyone as a "skill monkey," more PCs can participate in out of combat activities. And, finally, the third benefit is the success vs. failures with the abstracting of the challenge. No longer is success/failure tied to one roll for important events the default assumption of the system. And, keep in mind, the biggest difference is the default assumption of the system changing, not what you "can" and "can't" do with them! This way, you can attempt things in multiple ways with more granularity between success and failure. One bad Diplomacy roll won't mean the entire negotiation was a failure. One bad Knowledge(the Planes) won't mean that you don't know something. If you're using a skill challenge, then it operates more like combat with a series of rolls determining an outcome, leading to more tension, suspense, and, dare I say the word: fun. ;) [/QUOTE]

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