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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Vyvyan Basterd" data-source="post: 5036138" data-attributes="member: 4892"></blockquote>Perception can be used at a greater distance than encounter range. Staying vigilant and watching for trouble in the distance can alter your path. Another good reason why "choose your path" as presented by others is too limited. Continuous information could make the characters want to alter the execution of the plan midway.Maybe it would be more relevant if you actually discussed what makes complex skill checks a better mechinc than skill challenges? I have as little knowledge of 3E complex skill checks as you do 4E DMG2 skill challenges.Thank you. You've at least discussed the matter though you disagree.Before we start a whole line of quibbling over the meaning of the word fiat, I meant a yes/no decision made solely by the DM. I know a DM sets DCs and can set them to achieve certain results.Uh, no. More like:1.  Was 1e designed for game balance.2.  What do you mean by game balance?3.  Discussion of balance then and balance now, how they can be different but the same, etc.4.  Thinly veiled attack on 4E as a game that runs from one hour long combat to the next.5.  VB the 4E Paladin reacts with a Nu-uh! Uses skill challenges as an example.6.  Swirl around the drain...I'm not trying to find best, I'm looking for interesting to me. Is it better to run a skill challenge vs. the common sense approach of 1E? No. It's just a different method to achieve the same end goal. The 1E method allows you to, as Ariosto says, get on with the game. And that's fine and I loved that method for many many years. The skill challenge attempts to add a resolution mechanic to non-combat encounters that has only previously existed in combat encounters. I find the exploration of its use interesting now. But I'm not going to say it's better and only take offense to those trying to tell me that the common sense approach is the One True Way.Click the link in my sig, you tell me. I've 2 of 2 people give positive feedback to the exact example we are using in this thread.The world as presented is limited to what the DM has thought of before sitting down to the table. And you won't have presented every possible thing to the players before they sat down (or immediately following). If the players plans involve looking for local connections to the bandits and you didn't consider that possibility you decide as DM at that point whether those connections exist and therefore whether a check in that regard would succeed or fail. Nothing is the framework forces you as DM to define your game world in any way you don't want to.[/QUOTE]

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