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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4193790" data-attributes="member: 4937">Do we ever really leave that country? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />Suppose my players decided that the best use of thier time was making 'Conan the Barbarian' style preparations for the battle - fortifactions, stakes, weapon caches, etc.  I've had players or been in groups that would get heavily into that sort of thing.  When the battle comes am I going to tell them that there work and planning has no presence or role in the battle and that the results of the battle have no logical connection to the preparation that they made?  Players IME do things because they want to produce a particular outcome.  When proposition A doesn't produce outcome B, I better have a good explanation or I will be percieved as unfair, DMing badly, being railroady, and/or not listening to the players.   And frankly, they would be right in that assessment.On the contrary, I think logical rewards are easier to come up with and handle than abstract ones.  If the players win the support of a local temple, then its easier to imagine the concrete results of that than it is to abstractly imagine what that resource translates into and what abstract value it has.As an aside, I'm not terribly worried about whether or not the rewards are balanced.  If a local temple has a 17th level cleric in it that can mop up the foes easily, and didn't want that then its my fault for putting uber-PCs in local villages to outshine the players and the players credit that they used that resource.  That it 'ruins' my plans is trivial.  If I didn't foresee thier plans and can't handle them, again that's my bad - not the players.I've got 25 years of experience as a DM and I question my ability to run skill challenges as some have described them.  I'm not just bringing up these examples to denegrate 4e - I'm bringing them up because I'm literally not sure I'd know what to do except toss the skill challenge out the window and go back to what I know.  I'm not at all sure that skill challenges are easier for an inexperienced DM except that I think that by not understanding them, when problems arise inexperienced DMs are likely to toss the rules out the window without knowing it.  Which they probably should IMO.Again, I agree.  Which I why I've said that skill challenges and dungeons are incompatible, and that you only get them to work together by ignoring aspects of one or the other.</blockquote>

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