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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4205560" data-attributes="member: 4937">Which is irrelevant because I was mentioning earlier editions specifically with the thought of having used dice as a fortune mechanic to determine how a story plays out during points of conflict or action.  Third edition was not the first attempt to do so outside of combat.  It was merely the first edition of D&D to attempt to unify all the disparate and somewhat ad hoc mechanics that had developed in earlier editions of play.  In first edition, you would have resolved out of combat actions with a combination of ability checks, secondary skills, non-weapon proficiency checks, saving throws and unique subsystems to handle specific cases like NPC reactions or searching for something invisible.  It wasn't that there was no attempt to provide a fortune mechanic outside of combat, it was simply that there were no guidelines for doing so consistantly and the various methods all left something to be desired.  I see no evidence that 4e is 'doing it well'.  It's so busy trying to codify how to be a DM with a simple system that its forgetting that we prefer PnP precisely because the DM doesn't have to stick to the rote mechanical but can handle the unexpected, invent resolution mechanics on the fly, and transcend the rules and the scenario when needed.So does the example skill challenge in the recent excerpt.Nothing in the skill challenge in the recent excerpt suggests that the +53 Diplomacy character cannot or should not resolve the whole skill challenge himself.Nothing in the skill challenge in the recent excerpt suggests that it can't be resolved by rolling Diplomacy 8 (or more) times.Who said anything about 'instead'?I've argued repeatedly that that would be difficult or impossible to inforce in the general case, and it would appear based on the recent example that in fact the 4E system doesn't even try.Where in the world did you get the idea that I was hostile to dice.  I mean sheesh, must I repeatedly address this nonsense?  Where any of my examples remotely diceless?More helpful, perhaps.  Revolutionary and fundamentally different than what we've had before?  No, not at all.  Besides, I did not need to demonstrate that story awards existed in a systematic way in order to suggest that skill challenges have always been a part of D&D.  I freely concede 4e's take is more systematic than what's come before.  My whole complaint all along is that the experienced play group not only gains very little by such a framework, but that such a rigid framework in fact gets in the way and detracts from play.That sentence doesn't even make any sense.  You think we set target DC's and modifiers and then throw the dice just for show?  You don't think that 3e really had rules for skill checks?  What in the world are you talking about?</blockquote>

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