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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6244841" data-attributes="member: 2067">The way to cut the gordian knot is to recall that what I'm calling for has three distinct elements that make it work:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol"> All characters have some minimum way to contribute to any challenge (a thief who sucks at combat can still try to make basic bow-and-arrow attacks; a fighter who sucks at interaction can still try and make a CHA check; a bard who sucks at exploration can still roll WIS to navigate).  This makes the experience non-binary: Sam can still toss a rock (ie, do something), even if overall he sucks at combat. It's clearly not where he excels, but he can participate. In a tortured analogy to a play, he doesn't get this monologue, but he can be in the background as a member of the crowd and maybe even gets a line or two. So by "sidelined," I don't mean "can't do anything," I mean, "can't do much in comparison to someone who didn't choose to suck here."</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol"> Most challenges are brief, on the order of 5-15 minutes or so. Think, for context, about how long it takes a party to wail on one or two standard monsters in 4e: that's about the length of most challenges I'm looking for. That's enough for a few rounds of combat, but it is significantly faster on average than 4e (but also probably a bit longer on average than 3e's "rocket tag"). So by "for significant amounts of real-world time," I mean 15 minutes or more (ish -- this is not hard data, but a soft approximation). </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol"> For exceptional challenges that are meant to be a significant chunk of time for whatever reason, these challenges should be multifaceted, including all three pillars. Thus, a run through a burning forest (an exploration challenge, primarily) that is meant to be an epic, party-involving challenge should also involve combat (fire elementals!) and interaction (maybe, again, fire elementals! Or maybe NPC's fleeing the fire!). In groups where people are interested in more than one pillar, by choosing characters who focused in more than one pillar big party-level challenges must be balanced, else it is ignoring 1/3 or 2/3 of the party's abilities, and is sidelining a character for a significant amount of real-world time. I believe the game, given its stated genre expectations and self-description, can presume that people are going to want characters who are good at all three pillars to different degrees, so the game can likely assume that longer challenges should typically fire on all three elements, while noting and supporting those that want to only fire on one. </li> </ol>It's more along the lines of, "If you've decided you want a character with a deficiency in this area, I'm not going to just let you ignore that deficiency because you're getting a little creative with your fiction. Play the role you've chosen to play." Compare it to an attack roll. Just because I describe how my fighter uses his shield to deflect an incoming blade and jabs multiple times in quick succession doesn't mean I get to roll multiple attacks, yeah? So you describe it awesomely. Great! Make an attack roll. So the druid describes making animals hostile to the baron as an attempt to intimidate him into revealing his deceit -- make a CHA check (if only to represent how influential that horse you're talking to can actually be to the guy who can deny it food and execute it at will). That's the kind of creative thinking bonus that seems awesome in a vacuum, but can really skew someone's experience if it dominates. Admittedly, depending on the table, it's not always a problem, so I just want the rules to empower me to say my piece, without prohibiting other groups from saying, "all right, sounds good."</blockquote>

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