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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7344229" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well, this statement at the end of the post you quoted is mistaken: &quot;combat isn't an all-or-nothing situation. Careful strategy can massively swing the results. A single failure to hit is usually irrelevant. The characters can trade daily powers and action points to help. It's possible to recover from a bad situation. None of this is present in the skill challenge system. It's all or nothing.&quot;A skill challenge isn't all or nothing - the players might lose the challenge overall, but make some important change in the fiction on the way through.And a skill challenge does permit the expenditure of resources to help - this is discussed in the DMG and further elaborated in the DMG 2 - which is one way of managing the need for more successes relative to failures in a more complex challenge. (And as [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has already indicated, the RC has further information and advice.)The only fiction that is established is that one of those people is harder to defeat in combat than the other. Which is equally a property of a skill challenge once DCs are set in accordance with the guidelines.We don't know that one of the creatures is &quot;easier to hit&quot; in any in-fiction sense: the higher AC could be due to DEX (harder to hit) or armour (harder to hurt) or (in 5e) barbarian CON bonus (tough skin), etc. And the different hp don't mean that, in the fiction, one is weaker than the other: in AD&amp;D the 20 hp being might be an ogre, and the 50 hp being a 13th level thief with CON 15. The ogre clearly is bigger and stronger than the thief; the thief's higher hp reflect nimbleness, luck, divine protections, etc.This is no different from a skill challenge. If I make notes that, on a failed Endurance check in the course of the challenge to cross The Barrens, a PC loses a healing surge due to dehydration, that is establishing fiction.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7344229, member: 42582"] Well, this statement at the end of the post you quoted is mistaken: "combat isn't an all-or-nothing situation. Careful strategy can massively swing the results. A single failure to hit is usually irrelevant. The characters can trade daily powers and action points to help. It's possible to recover from a bad situation. None of this is present in the skill challenge system. It's all or nothing." A skill challenge isn't all or nothing - the players might lose the challenge overall, but make some important change in the fiction on the way through. And a skill challenge [I]does[/I] permit the expenditure of resources to help - this is discussed in the DMG and further elaborated in the DMG 2 - which is one way of managing the need for more successes relative to failures in a more complex challenge. (And as [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has already indicated, the RC has further information and advice.) The only fiction that is established is that one of those people is harder to defeat in combat than the other. Which is equally a property of a skill challenge once DCs are set in accordance with the guidelines. We don't know that one of the creatures is "easier to hit" in any in-fiction sense: the higher AC could be due to DEX (harder to hit) or armour (harder to hurt) or (in 5e) barbarian CON bonus (tough skin), etc. And the different hp don't mean that, in the fiction, one is weaker than the other: in AD&D the 20 hp being might be an ogre, and the 50 hp being a 13th level thief with CON 15. The ogre clearly is bigger and stronger than the thief; the thief's higher hp reflect nimbleness, luck, divine protections, etc. This is no different from a skill challenge. If I make notes that, on a failed Endurance check in the course of the challenge to cross The Barrens, a PC loses a healing surge due to dehydration, that is establishing fiction. [/QUOTE]

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