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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 3808338" data-attributes="member: 3424">I think that the current skill system favors individual challenges because beyond a certain point, there is no chance for the least skilled character to succeed at a skill check that the most skilled character finds challenging. Granted, this usually occurs at higher levels - 17+ if we consider just the base difference in skill ranks (0 vs 20+) - but it could be as low as 10+ we add the effect of ability score differences and skill-enhancing feats.You can still have individual challenges in a SWSE-like skill system. You just have to set the DC to higher than 21 + half character level. Barring exceptional ability scores, the least skilled character will automatically fail this skill check, and the most skilled will have about a 50% chance of success.What the SWSE-like skill system does is that it makes group challenges more viable across a wider range of levels. If you assume that there is at most a 10-15 point spread between the most skilled and the least skilled characters, you can set the DC at a point where the most skilled character is likely to succeed, but has a small chance to fail, and the least skilled character is likely to fail, but has a small chance to succeed. Under such a system, you would want failure to impose a penalty, but to not be automatically lethal. Consider the effect of a Spot check, for example. Failing a Spot check may mean that the character is flat-footed and unable to act in the surprise round, but it does not in itself automatically kill the character. Similarly, an encounter could be set up so that failing to make Balance, Climb, Jump, Swim, or Tumble checks could hamper a character's movement, but need not be automatically deadly.Of course, you could take the alternative approach of setting the DCs lower, so that in a group challenge, the most skilled character will automatically succed while the others have to make skill checks to avoid a penalty. However, on reflection, that can also be done under a SWSE-like skill system by setting the DCs to 11 + half character level.I guess the conclusion is, with the current skill system, you soon reach the point where there are only two kinds of viable challenges: the individual skill challenge, which the least skilled character has no chance of succeeding at, and the group skill challenge, which the most skilled character has no chace to fail at. With a SWSE-like system, you can have both these challenges, as well as the intermediate group challenge, which the most skilled character has a chance of failing, and the least skilled character has a chance of succeeding at, across a wider range of levels.</blockquote>

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