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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4192221" data-attributes="member: 4937">Who, me?  Could you point to my 'I am right rhetoric'?If you don't mind, do me another favor and when you want to discuss something with me, address me rather than making an appeal to the thread like I'm not in the room or something.Something like, "Celebrim, shut up.  Get over yourself.", would be far more respectful.  I can take it.First of all, not everyone has admitted I'm right.  Second of all, getting everyone or anyone to admit I'm right is not the point.  I really don't care whether you think I'm right or not.  What I care about is whether I think I'm right.  I'm trying to learn something here.  I've already learned a thing or two I didn't know before I tried to get my thoughts in order to reply to various people.  I won't.  However, thinking about structured skill challenges has made me think about some things I might do.Me too.Then I would argue that if I'm still thinking, and you are still thinking, that I'm not a troll.Errr? Why?  It's fundamental to my point that the way people - not just me but also for example the OP - are handling skill challenges is not really different than 3E, and that the new unique feature of the 4e 'skill challenge' - the tally of failures and successes - if taken literally gets in the way as much as it helps.  I am trying to argue that simply tally systems are 'dumber' than DM judgement, and that if a DM does want to keep track of success and failure in a non-arbitrary manner that he should be open to tallying successes and failures using different methodologies than just summing up successes and failures thus far.   For example, some encounters might work better if you track the difference between success and failure - where what matters isn't 'I got X successes', but rather 'I have X more successes than I have failures'.  I can think of at least 1 published 3.X adventure that does this in a scenario.   I can discuss all sorts of sitautions where this is more effective.  Another variation might be, "Get X success before turn Y", where you don't care about failure so much as getting everyone involved.  I can think of all sorts of scenarios where this is better, for example, it removes the problem of 'We'll just stand back and let the guy with Skill Focus do all the work because we don't want to risk a failure on a check'.And so forth.I've been arguing since the mechanic was unvieled that it was an unnecessary strait jacket on DM arbitrartion that had no bearing on the best way to handle complex skill scenarios.  The fact that complex skill scenarios are possible in existing scenarios is critical to this line of argument, because otherwise you get 'It's not perfect but its better than nothing.'  My response is precisely, 'Not only is it not perfect, in many cases its worse than nothing.'  I think it proves something.  At the very least it proves that the write up in the DMG better have alot of clarifications along these lines to prevent confusion, bad rulings, bad design, and bogging things down.But its just one problem among many.  There is a whole other class of problems which involve, 'What happens when the player tries to solve the problem in a way that doesn't involve skills (as defined by the game) at all?'  Using spells is one obvious example.  Another example is demonstrated by the player who has a concrete proposition, but doesn't know what skill is involved.  For example, in the closing room trap there might be a stout 3' mithril bar in the room.  One player might propose, "I go over to the mithral bar and roll it such that it is perpendicular to the room in hopes that its strong enough to keep the walls from coming together."   Now, this isn't a particularly skillful action.  As a strength check, the difficulty is trivial.  Do you penalize the player by making them roll a skill check for a trivial action?  How do you handle this anyway?  Without a skill system, the answer is pretty clear.  You figure out what the break DC of the bar is, what the strength of the trap is, and you decide if the trap breaks or bends the bar - thus saving the players (or at least giving them a nearly indefinately long time to solve the problem).  With a skill system, if you aren't just willing to toss it out, the answer is complicated.   Or what about, "I set my immovable rod agaisnt the wall."  Skill check, or toss this whole notion that we need to tally successes and failures out the window?</blockquote>

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