WotC_Shoe: He DM's, but his pc's don't fight!

[inkmonkeys]

Am I the only one that finds this unsettling? I know different game tables have different styles of play, but I didn't know the developers played such a...kick-in-the-door type of game.

This should be no surprise: Gameplay varies from group to group. In Shoe's monthly game, we have more talky and less fighty. I wouldn't draw any sweeping conclusions from Shoe's post beyond "Shoe's Wednesday group doesn't often take this tactic."

 

[FadedC]

In the escape from Sembia thing, there was an example where a priest wanted to use his religion skill to rile up the mob and create a distraction. The DM let him do it as a penalty. A bit of a stretch maybe, but every DM allows different things.

Nowhere nearly as much of a stretch though is Derren's theory that because one DM at a table allowed it, every DM everywhere must be forced to allow the religion skill to be used in chase scenes.

 

[mach1.9pants]

And what about the 4e ruleset makes it different?
Put some meat on that bone.

This, more info on non combat stuff!

 

[catsclaw]

Nowhere nearly as much of a stretch though is Derren's theory that because one DM at a table allowed it, every DM everywhere must be forced to allow the religion skill to be used in chase scenes.

I really don't understand why people are up in arms about letting players decide how they want to approach skill challenges, rather than the DM dictating what skill they need to roll. Sure, you're going to have players trying to come up with a way to always use their best skill. And? So?

If I was in a group where the rogue with the maxed-out skill in Stealth kept coming up with brilliant, off-the-wall ways to use it to bypass a challenge, that sounds kind of fun. If it started to feel stale, or the other players started to tire of it, or the player couldn't come up with good reasons why it would work--then you don't let it work. Otherwise, what exactly is the problem?

 

[Insight]

I really don't understand why people are up in arms about letting players decide how they want to approach skill challenges, rather than the DM dictating what skill they need to roll. Sure, you're going to have players trying to come up with a way to always use their best skill. And? So?

If I was in a group where the rogue with the maxed-out skill in Stealth kept coming up with brilliant, off-the-wall ways to use it to bypass a challenge, that sounds kind of fun. If it started to feel stale, or the other players started to tire of it, or the player couldn't come up with good reasons why it would work--then you don't let it work. Otherwise, what exactly is the problem?

And again, we don't know that every skill challenge will be as open-ended as the one at the preview. My DM didn't really seem to understand how skill challenges worked all that well, so he allowed us to use any skill we had.

I didn't see the rules he was given, so I can't claim one way or the other whether or not the skill challenge was designed to be entirely open ended. Even if it was, that doesn't mean every skill challenge has to be completely open ended. Remember, the previews were designed specifically to showcase new stuff.

I have a feeling (and I haven't seen the rules, so, unlike some, I won't pretend to have a definitive opinion on this) that each DM will tailor his or her skill challenges a little differently. I can certainly envision scenarios where some skills simply wouldn't be appropriate, and I'm sure other posters can as well.

Also, we don't know how the resolution mechanic really works. For example, we know that there are low, medium, and high risk challenges. You (the player) decide how hard you want to make it to succeed (how much risk you want to take on). What happens if you succeed in one high risk challenge versus two low risk challenges? We don't know.

Making a blanket statement that x number of successes means that the DM's hands are tied and he has no say in the outcome is more than a little presumptive at this point.

 

[Lacyon]

And again, we don't know that every skill challenge will be as open-ended as the one at the preview. My DM didn't really seem to understand how skill challenges worked all that well, so he allowed us to use any skill we had.

I didn't see the rules he was given, so I can't claim one way or the other whether or not the skill challenge was designed to be entirely open ended. Even if it was, that doesn't mean every skill challenge has to be completely open ended. Remember, the previews were designed specifically to showcase new stuff.

Not only were they designed to showcase this stuff, they almost certainly didn't include the kind of detail that you'd likely get into for a full campaign.

There was a lot of jawboning back and forth about the History check to know about the city's sewers or whatever, and in a lot of campaigns that probably doesn't make much sense. But when you're in a short, convention-based game that has no real connection to an ongoing game world, there's a lot less reason to say no.

 

[Henry]

What is the only thing you've ever officially gotten XP for in dnd 2-3.5E? XP for anything outside of combat is a houserule or optional DMG rule as far as I can recall. If you can talk your way through an encounter for no XP or kill everything for a couple thousand, I think most people will go for the latter, especially if they try to talk through a couple times and get no in-game reward for it.

To be fair, I hear this frequently, and it's incorrect; page 36-37 of the 3.5 DMG tells it differently. If the challenge is overcome, then you get the XP; the book uses a specific example of a party getting XP for sneaking past a sleeping minotaur. It leaves it up to the DM as to what "overcoming the challenge" means, but if you talk your way past that guard, OR if you beat him up, you're still getting XP for it.

 

[Harshax]

Why does everything have to be different than 3e? 3e was perfectly good at roleplaying, not so good at some other things. If they didn't bother modifying the parts that worked well, isn't that a good thing?

That may be, but 4E emphasizes creating challenges that can be resolved by multiple skills and multiple players.

In 3E only the character with the highest diplomacy would talk. If he botched his roll, it was time to roll initiative.

4E (based on what I've read here) will let characters contribute almost any appropriate skill to a challenge, and the total number of successes will determine the success. So one character can contribute Diplomacy, another character can contribute their duegar knowledge, another can bluff and intimidate, while another can use perception. The assumption is all the players are working together toward one goal: succeed at the challenge. (In this case infillitrate the duegar stronghold)

Even for a skilled DM, it can be difficult to keep the game flowing if the rest of the party gets bored because they're stuck in a social encounter and only 1 or 2 players invested in Diplomacy and Sense Motive. So what happens? The other players go off to do their own thing, and now the DM splits their attention between multiple (albeit short) story lines. If the primary challenge wraps up, but he's engaged a secondary (previously uninvolved player) in some tangeant, the rest of the players are in a wait pattern while the character completes his fiddly side-quest.

I'm really looking forward to those rules.

Edit: I don't really care if this is a 'Yes you can Paradigm'. Whatever the rule for contributing challenges, there will be times where a skill use is not obvious to the challenge at hand. Therefore, I will not allow players to use the 'roll whatever my highest skill is' in order to succeed at a contest. They will have to explain how they think their skill use is contributing to the challenge.

 

[Ahglock]

Am I the only one that finds this unsettling? I know different game tables have different styles of play, but I didn't know the developers played such a...kick-in-the-door type of game. At the risk of sounding arrogant, those types of games got old and uninteresting very quickly for my gaming group; we haven't played like that since we were 14.

My group nearly always attempts the creative solution first, in the same vein as the wizard here, and resort to fighting should that plan fail. Is my group the exception here?

I'd find it unsettling if I thought the vast majority of play testers played this way. Yeah I suspect the creative solution part of the game gets less rules and play testing but that is kind of a given. Its kind of hard to write comprehensive rules for the creative ideas you don't think of. Combat is a fairly known commodity you can write rules for and plan for how it will go. Off the wall plans the best you can do is give advice with some rules guidelines because there are too many possibilities to cover, but at least you can cover basics like jumps, diplomacy etc. Many things have me concerned about 4e this isn't one of them.

 

[Iron Sky]

To be fair, I hear this frequently, and it's incorrect; page 36-37 of the 3.5 DMG tells it differently. If the challenge is overcome, then you get the XP; the book uses a specific example of a party getting XP for sneaking past a sleeping minotaur. It leaves it up to the DM as to what "overcoming the challenge" means, but if you talk your way past that guard, OR if you beat him up, you're still getting XP for it.

Hm... recall FAIL. Been too long since I read the 3.5E DMG I guess(like since it first came out). And I'm fairly certain my players haven't read it either...