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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5421319" data-attributes="member: 42582">This doesn't make any sense to me. Yes, a skill challenge is an "encounter", in the sense of the 4e rules. In HeroQuest it would be called a "contest". I don't see what follows from this, other than a trivial point about terminology.I still don't see where this issue of "excuses" comes from. Repeating some of my rules quotes:you describe your actions and make checks until you either successfully complete the challenge or fail . . . it’s particularly important to make sure these checks are grounded in actions that make sense in the adventure and the situationThis is not about "excuses". This is about engaging the ingame situation and the player explaining what the PC is doing. If the player does not describe an action that makes sense in the gameworld (ie "in the adventure and situation"), then no skill check can be made and no success accumulated.This is like saying "The problem with HeroQuest extended contests is that a certain number of success points must be accumulated by side A before they are accumulated by side B" - that's not a problem, it's just the rules structure. Yes, it's not a free-form resolution system. My earlier post said as much. But what is the objection to structure? And why is 4e uniquely vulnerable to this objection, and (for example) HeroQuest and Burning Wheel immune? Alternatively, if the contention is that HeroQuest and Burning Wheel also impede roleplaying because they have structured non-combat action resolution, then it strikes me as to laughable for words! (Of course, there are other features to HQ and BW which might be seen to set them apart from 4e - but structured action resolution isn't one of them.)Consistently with the rules text I've quoted here and upthread, I think that interaction is required. You don't get to make your skill checks except as the mechanical expression of the enacting of your smart/cunning plan.Again, based on the rules text I've quoted, I think that 4e has taken these steps. (In practice, of course, there's a degree of tail-wagging-dog, insofar as a certain type of player will always attempt to describe actions that suggest the use of skills in which his/her PC is strong. In this respect 4e does not differ from many other RPGs - it encourages players to try to draw on the strengths of their PCs when engaging a situation.)I agree that this introduces complexities, in that the benefit of the cunning plan, as far as DCs go, can't be greater than a +2 circumstantial modifier. But a cunning plan should have other benefits eg facilitating the use of skills that are better for the party, or meaning that the resolution of the challenge leaves the PCs in a more advantageous ingame situation than otherwise they might find themselves.Now this I can't rebut - I personally chalk it up mostly to poor adventure design by WotC, and also a failure to follow through on the promise of their system. But even the modules at the back of the original HeroWars rulebooks suffer from this to some extent, in that they try to anticipate the likely actions on the part of the PCs, and indicate how those would play out in the context of the scenario in question. In the HeroWars adventures this is more explicitily presented as guidelines/predictions than "here's how it will play out", but that also reflects a more general difference between 4e style and the style of other RPGs. 4e is deliberately written in a way that is (I assume) intended to make it more accessible. It also adopts some traditional D&D-isms, of writing the rulebooks as if they (to an extent at least) themselves part of play - whereas HeroWars in both its modules and rules text is much more clear that it is talking to players and telling them how to play a game, with the actual game occurring only when play itself takes place.</blockquote>

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