Untrained/trained Skills....Noooo!

[jasin]

The problem with this is that it is very very hard to enforce this. Combat naturally creates a 'everyone pitch in' sort of situation. But skill challenges tend not to be like that, except in very narrow situations where if they came up frequently you'd be rightfully accused of railroading. Sure, you can have a wall where everyone can participate in the climb, but even in the real world mostly a person free scaling a wall does so alone and you send your best climber up first. How would you force the rest of the party to not send the rogue to do it? Crafting non-combat challenges where everyone needs to participate and which are natural seeming is hard.

"The castle is collapsing, everybody out! Run, across that narrow walkway!"
"We need to get inside that camp without alerting those guards... keep quiet, everybody."
"Watch out, folks. They say there's bandits in these hills, so let's not get caught of guard."
"The magistrate is bound to question every one of us, so we better stick to the story, right?"

It's particularly problimatic with social challenges. I'm uncomfortable with resolving challenges that resolve around roleplay with primarily with dice rolls anyway, but how do you force a party to not present a single charismatic face man as thier leader? Will every noble always insist on hearing the 'henchman's' position on the matter? How thematically does the noble know who the PC's are on every occassion? How would you feel if the NPC hired hand had as much influence over the touchy diplomatic negotiation as the ambassador (the PC)? I just don't see how you force this collective skill use situation as a DM without it being totally clumsy.

To me it seems quite the opposite, that social challenges are rather awkward under the current rules, and would be less so with Saga-like skills.

We recently finished an published adventure (in Age of Worms) where the central event was a party thrown by the ruler of the city. My character had about +35 to diplomacy. The next highest score was about +5.

This meant that the intelligent course of action was for everyone to pretend they were indeed my henchmen or servants, with absolutely no relevant opinion of their own, and just shut it while I talked. Because if my +35 check could result in anything other than a stellar success (and it could, since the DCs were set with the assumption of a good diplomat), their +5 ran a serious risk of creating an serious enemy.

It seems to me it would have been both more fun and more realistic if the scores were more like +15 and +5 like they might have been in Saga, with appropriately scaled DCs. Even if we might have still decided that the face-man does all the talking, the DM could have NPCs engage the others in conversation on their own so that it is a challenge, rather than an auto-fail situation.

 

[Zurai]

So, then simply disarm him, throw the weapon away, and bitch-slap the fighter silly till he's unconscious.

How? Disarming provokes an AoO and is disrupted if the AoO hits. It's also an opposed attack roll, with unarmed disarms at a penalty. The wizard would have a +6 or +1 to the fighter's +5 - and he deals no damage on a failed disarm attempt.

 

[Zurai]

(actually, it might very well be a commoner, because wizards without spells are nothing more than commoner...)

An unarmed level 20 commoner has a nigh-zero chance to win against anything. Commoners have no BAB progression, so he'd have a +0 to hit. He'd need a 20 to hit the fighter in the example, and could never confirm the critical.

 

[jasin]

The wizard has a +10 to hit, but -4 because he's attempting to deal lethal damage with his bare fists.

Why in the world would he want to do that?

 

[Zurai]

Why in the world would he want to do that?

Because the example was him KILLING the fighter?

 

[Zurai]

And don't even start on "he could knock him unconcious then coup de gras" or I'll start on "well the fighter could be smart and use a greatsword instead of a longsword and power attack instead of shield spec and dodge".

 

[DandD]

Simply make a normal movement attempt that provokes an Attack of Opportunity, so that the fighter wastes his one AoO.

 

[Gundark]

I disagree that being a blacksmith has zero effect on the game. I can see it come up every so often. Pick a more useful profession for an adventurer like sailor and it can come up a lot. Having "just put it in your background" can lead to min-maxers writing long backgrounds that touch on every profession needed (I was a blacksmith, then a tailor, then a sailor). Why not have the rules help out here a bit?

First off, I have never run into a guy who would do the whole long background thing (I have never heard of min-maxing with regards to character fluff). Even if I did run into said "Fluff-maxer" as a DM I wouldn't let him get away with it.

Second, even with your sailor example I can't think of a single situation where you would need to make a profession check. If they have it in their background that the character was a sailor then it would be the DM's call to whether the character is able to do the task.

I used to hear all these complaints about how 3e took the power out of the DM's hands. Well I would think something like this would put it back.

 

[DandD]

And don't even start on "he could knock him unconcious then coup de gras" or I'll start on "well the fighter could be smart and use a greatsword instead of a longsword and power attack instead of shield spec and dodge".

Why not? Once you're unconscious, you can easily be killed. Either by coup de grace, or simply hitting the now-defenseless fighter again and again with lethal damage, till he's really dead.

 

[Zurai]

Simply make a normal movement attempt that provokes an Attack of Opportunity, so that the fighter wastes his one AoO.

... and the wizard wastes his second disarm roll, and still only makes a +6 vs +5 roll in the first place. The fighter could then spend his move action picking the sword back up (not even provoking an AoO for doing so, because the unarmed wizard does not threaten any squares) and his standard action attacking.

For those watching at home, that's a negative net gain for the wizard. He wasted his two attacks for the turn and did absolutely nothing to hinder the fighter.