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Oracle_Hunter
2008-06-20, 02:22 PM
Let's get down to brass tacks.

I'm running a 4e game. Maybe you're running one, or you're playing in one. In any case, you're probably going to run into skill challenges. They're a new model of conflict in 4e and they have a lot of promise. However, they haven't been worked out as thoroughly as, say, the combat. That means they're a bit rough around the edges.

So, I ask you, how shall we sand off those edges?

In my experience, here's what I've found:
1) They work very nicely for social encounters, but not so easily for non-combat, non-social skill challenges.
2) You need to be very careful in providing the "fluff" about them. It is easy for you or the PCs to get lost if you're not keeping the story updated.
3) They are not always appropriate for Group Skill Checks. Say, for group stealth checks.

My suggestions:
1) Things like tracking bad guys, climbing mountains, and so forth should be framed as a "Everyone is working together, but if enough people screw up, something bad happens." DO NOT use the "Group Skill Check" mechanic, but rather think like this:
The party is climbing a mountain. They all have climbing lines, pinions and hammers, and are pointing the way for each other. Sometimes people screw up, but if it doesn't happen too often, everyone can still make it to the top without trouble. Frame it as a 6/3 Athletics Check, so that even if the wizard misses a handhold, the fighter can catch him before he falls to far. But if the fighter is spending all his time catching wizards, he might miss the unstable rock and trigger a mini-landslide that dumps the whole party to the bottom

This keeps you from having to think up obscure things for the PCs to try to do to climb a friggin' mountain. It also can capture the fluff of teamwork without actually making people stealthier when working in a group, or for one clumsy paladin to reveal the party of ninjas. It also allows the challenge to move more smoothly than having to figure out how many half-moves it takes to reach the top and tracking falling damage for every time the wizard fails an Athletics check.

2) Man, the fluff thing is very important. If the PCs fail a check, make sure they knew that they failed, but that all is not lost. And don't break immersion by saying "roll bluff, diplomacy, or intimidate" like the DMG says. That's stupid. Give clues about what the PCs should try - for social encounters, it's pretty self-explanatory, but for, say tracking, try this:
"You stand at the foot of Mount Killakobold. Above you stretches a dangerous, but climbable, route to the summit, provided you have the spit and vigor to do it. You suspect there must be an easier way to get up the mountain, but only an expert mountaineer could be expected to spot such a path from the ground"

This lets the PCs know that they can try to climb the mountain (Athletics, moderate DC) but that failure could prove quite dangerous. Alternatively, they could try to seek an alternate route (Nature, hard DC) which may just waste time, or may prove to be no easier than the main route.

3) The mechanics for Group Skill Checks seem attractive from the get-go, but they're a trap. Since Skill Challenge DCs are static, and every successful assist gives the PCs +2, you're going to have to fumble with DCs like you did back in 3.5. No reason to do that. Take the path I mention in #1 for most checks, but for things where the PCs should be able to concentrate their strength (say, in bashing down a door) use the mechanic as a one-off skill check, not a Challenge. If they fail, say "you used your all to try and bash down that door, but it's just not going down. Maybe after a day of rest, you might be able to try it again." This keeps us from falling into the "Take 20" Trap and answers the PCs questions of "why can't we try again?"

Anyhow, that's what I've found. Your thoughts and experiences?

THAC0
2008-06-20, 03:14 PM
Let's get down to brass tacks.

I'm running a 4e game. Maybe you're running one, or you're playing in one. In any case, you're probably going to run into skill challenges. They're a new model of conflict in 4e and they have a lot of promise. However, they haven't been worked out as thoroughly as, say, the combat. That means they're a bit rough around the edges.

So, I ask you, how shall we sand off those edges?

In my experience, here's what I've found:
1) They work very nicely for social encounters, but not so easily for non-combat, non-social skill challenges.
2) You need to be very careful in providing the "fluff" about them. It is easy for you or the PCs to get lost if you're not keeping the story updated.
3) They are not always appropriate for Group Skill Checks. Say, for group stealth checks.

My suggestions:
1) Things like tracking bad guys, climbing mountains, and so forth should be framed as a "Everyone is working together, but if enough people screw up, something bad happens." DO NOT use the "Group Skill Check" mechanic, but rather think like this:
The party is climbing a mountain. They all have climbing lines, pinions and hammers, and are pointing the way for each other. Sometimes people screw up, but if it doesn't happen too often, everyone can still make it to the top without trouble. Frame it as a 6/3 Athletics Check, so that even if the wizard misses a handhold, the fighter can catch him before he falls to far. But if the fighter is spending all his time catching wizards, he might miss the unstable rock and trigger a mini-landslide that dumps the whole party to the bottom

This keeps you from having to think up obscure things for the PCs to try to do to climb a friggin' mountain. It also can capture the fluff of teamwork without actually making people stealthier when working in a group, or for one clumsy paladin to reveal the party of ninjas. It also allows the challenge to move more smoothly than having to figure out how many half-moves it takes to reach the top and tracking falling damage for every time the wizard fails an Athletics check.

2) Man, the fluff thing is very important. If the PCs fail a check, make sure they knew that they failed, but that all is not lost. And don't break immersion by saying "roll bluff, diplomacy, or intimidate" like the DMG says. That's stupid. Give clues about what the PCs should try - for social encounters, it's pretty self-explanatory, but for, say tracking, try this:
"You stand at the foot of Mount Killakobold. Above you stretches a dangerous, but climbable, route to the summit, provided you have the spit and vigor to do it. You suspect there must be an easier way to get up the mountain, but only an expert mountaineer could be expected to spot such a path from the ground"

This lets the PCs know that they can try to climb the mountain (Athletics, moderate DC) but that failure could prove quite dangerous. Alternatively, they could try to seek an alternate route (Nature, hard DC) which may just waste time, or may prove to be no easier than the main route.

3) The mechanics for Group Skill Checks seem attractive from the get-go, but they're a trap. Since Skill Challenge DCs are static, and every successful assist gives the PCs +2, you're going to have to fumble with DCs like you did back in 3.5. No reason to do that. Take the path I mention in #1 for most checks, but for things where the PCs should be able to concentrate their strength (say, in bashing down a door) use the mechanic as a one-off skill check, not a Challenge. If they fail, say "you used your all to try and bash down that door, but it's just not going down. Maybe after a day of rest, you might be able to try it again." This keeps us from falling into the "Take 20" Trap and answers the PCs questions of "why can't we try again?"

Anyhow, that's what I've found. Your thoughts and experiences?

Good points. The husband and I have been discussing this near constantly.

Fluff is key, but a proper balance is the most important part. Too much fluff, not enough crunch, and the players are just going to get confused and frustrated "I have no idea what I should be rolling" type of thing. Too much crunch, not enough fluff, and it just gets to be a boring mathematical exercise "Who's got the best athletics modifer, guys?"

Challenges fare better when accompanied by Something Else. Yes, that's vague, but deliberately so. It can be a number of things, but the goal is to give an outside encouragement to not just figure out who has the best modifier all the time. Maybe if it's during combat, the fighter might have the best mod, but he's busy keeping the goblins off so the cleric had better give it a try. Or maybe if there's time pressure, it's worth having the ranger and mage both make checks to speed up the process.

Failure needs to be thought out ahead of time. For example, if there's a challenge to figure out how to open a secret door, and failure means the door doesn't open? Well, the PCs are just going home! Far more interesting if failure means that the door opens slowly and noisily, giving the bad guys enough time to set up an ambush on the other side!

endoperez
2008-06-20, 03:19 PM
From what I've read about skill challenges and people's complaints about them, it seems like you can let good (or bad) roleplaying result in a single success (or failure) if you feel like you should reward it. I think that would work better than just a numeric value, if it isn't used too much.

Yakk
2008-06-20, 03:21 PM
Skill Challenge:

Skill Challenges have a level and a complexity.

The DCs of the Skill Challenge are determined by their level. Easy DCs are 15+Level/2, Moderate DCs are 20+Level/2, and Hard DCs are 25+Level/2.

A Skill Challenge is a failure if the players accumulate more than (Complexity+1) failure points before they get twice as many success points.

Not all skill checks in a skill challenge generate success or failure points.

The time-frame of Skill Challenges is flexible. Some occur at combat pace, others in minute intervals, and some even take days between rounds.

For the skill challenge, each character should do an active check each turn. They can choose to do nothing, but every 2nd "do nothing" generates a failure point.

In addition to players actively doing skill checks, the DM can ask for "environmental" skill checks each round, reflecting the baseline effort it takes not to fall behind. You can use collective skill checks or individual skill checks for this.

Collective Skill Check:
Sometimes everyone has to be stealthy, or climb a mountain. To simulate helping each other out, characters can be helped (Easy DC), help 2 other character (Moderate DC), or help 4 other characters (Hard DC).

To beat the Group Skill Check, you need at least as many successes as failures, and you need enough help successes to "carry" the Easy DC characters.

Stakes:
There are four components to each Skill Check. Difficulty, Peril, Advantage and Context. In general, these things should trade off against each other.

Difficulty:
Easy DCs are 15+1/2 the level of the challenge.
Moderate DCs are 20+1/2 the level of the challenge.
Hard DCs are 25+1/2 the level of the challenge.

Peril:
Some skill checks generate negative consequences when you fail. A simple example is losing a healing surge every time you fail certain kind of a check. Almost always you collect a failure point -- but sometimes the DM can offer a different penalty rather than the failure point...

In some cases, the Peril isn't a failure point, but rather a penalty on later rolls. For example, an insight failure might earn the next roller a -2 penalty on their roll.

Some skill check failures generate no failure points at all, even if passing them generates success points. This is appropriate when there is no time limit, or the attempt wouldn't take a significant amount of time relative to the time limit.

Advantage:
Most skill checks grant you a success point, but some do not. An insight roll might grant you a +2 bonus to the next roll made, and not count as a pass. Sometimes the success might be so useful that it generates a success point and another advantage -- or even two success points.

Or a skill check can grant you knowledge about the nature of the skill challenge -- such as "the inscriptions remind you of a Religious symbol you saw in an old tome", providing a good hint.

Context:
Trying to use Diplomacy when you are chasing after someone in the streets of Al-Bazara might work, but it sure is out of left field. Skills that fit the context of the challenge generally end up being easier or have a larger benefit. On the other hand, a well described use of a skill provides it's own context. Such a "writing into context" technique should be limited to one use per skill per encounter, to prevent "Arcana can solve EVERY problem!"

Non-skill use:
Often a player finds a way to use their Powers or other non-skill based mechanisms to respond to a skill challenge. Remember the rule of Yes -- avoid saying no!

This can provide a large bonus to some other skill roll, grant success points strait-out, or otherwise have a positive result. You could have the player roll a stat+d20 with a +5 to +15 bonus from the power against a DC.

Setting Stakes:
For each skill roll in a skill challenge, you should take into account all of the stakes. A skill that is poor for the context, with an easy DC, that has no downside if the player fails should not, in general, produce a huge advantage when the player makes the roll. :)

nagora
2008-06-20, 03:52 PM
Failure needs to be thought out ahead of time. For example, if there's a challenge to figure out how to open a secret door, and failure means the door doesn't open? Well, the PCs are just going home! Far more interesting if failure means that the door opens slowly and noisily, giving the bad guys enough time to set up an ambush on the other side!

Alternatively: the DM knows how the secret door opens. If the players work it out then it opens. If they just stand around rolling dice then it doesn't.

If you really have to reduce the characters to such shallow puppets of the dice then what possible pleasure is there in "playing" them? They've just become playing pieces.

"Check the wall for loose bricks."
"Are any of the paintings loose?"
"Is there any sign on the floor that something swings out here?"
"Are there any objects nearby that could be triggers?"
"What about the ceiling?"
"Extinguish all the torches and see if we can see anything in infravision or ultravision."
etc.

That's how you open a secret door! There is NO random factor involved.

You're letting the rules box you in if you can't do something as simple as describe what your character is doing without them.

Crow
2008-06-20, 03:57 PM
My (limited) experience with skil challenges has led me to believe than the system is better used with non-social challenges, than with social ones.

Could somebody give me a good example of how to run a skill challenge that accounts for what the players actually do and say during the encounter, rather than just how they roll?

That said, the system is quite nice for non-social challenges. Our group did one with crossing a rickety rope bridge (4/2). We chose somebody to go first, and their success gave the rest of the group a +2 bonus on their checks to getting accross. A failure might represent something like grabbing for the rope and missing it due to the shifting bridge, or forgetting which steps were safe and putting their foot through a rotten board.

THAC0
2008-06-20, 04:03 PM
Alternatively: the DM knows how the secret door opens. If the players work it out then it opens. If they just stand around rolling dice then it doesn't.

If you really have to reduce the characters to such shallow puppets of the dice then what possible pleasure is there in "playing" them? They've just become playing pieces.

"Check the wall for loose bricks."
"Are any of the paintings loose?"
"Is there any sign on the floor that something swings out here?"
"Are there any objects nearby that could be triggers?"
"What about the ceiling?"
"Extinguish all the torches and see if we can see anything in infravision or ultravision."
etc.

That's how you open a secret door! There is NO random factor involved.

You're letting the rules box you in if you can't do something as simple as describe what your character is doing without them.

Wow. I don't think I said anywhere that they were just rolling dice? I said that skill challenges can become that if the DM doesn't use them correctly.

If you want to do your secret doors without skill challenges, that's fine. If people want to use theirs with role playing AND skill challenges, fine.

Tough_Tonka
2008-06-20, 04:07 PM
I highly recommend explaining the rules for skill challenges to the players before you even start your first game. I didn't explain the rules for skill challenges until the players had their first one, which was a non-social/combat one, and they had a heck of a time trying to figure out what to do.

For the next skill challenge I plan to use (one where the heroes will be following a map thorough the mountains to find a wizards ancient observatory) I plan to use the following:

I'm basing the skill challenge off of the Lost in the Wilderness example in the DMG.

I figure each round with consist of a day hiking.

I'll explain the what skills they need to use indirectly by saying something like, "Each day you need to make a check to navigate through the mountains (primary skill Nature, secondary skill History to help read the map) and another to make it through difficult terrain (Primary Skill Endurance, for hiking around the mountains, or Athletics, for climbing the mountains)."

I'm not sure what the penalty for failure will be, I think each failure for the Athletics and Endurance checks will cost a random party member to lose a healing surge from exhaustion or accidents when they arrive.

If you have any other suggestions I'd love to hear them. :smallsmile:

Hopefully this will work much better than my last skill challenge.

nagora
2008-06-20, 04:15 PM
Wow. I don't think I said anywhere that they were just rolling dice? I said that skill challenges can become that if the DM doesn't use them correctly.

If you want to do your secret doors without skill challenges, that's fine. If people want to use theirs with role playing AND skill challenges, fine.

But what is the role of the dice in the situation? If the door is opened by saying the magic word on the parchment they found in the old book on the desk in the library and a player suggests that, would you ever dream of making them roll and then not having the door open just because they failed the roll?

If you would, then god help your players, and if you wouldn't then why would you make them roll to succeed when they haven't worked out the clues or searched the room properly or whatever? What if they didn't find the parchment in the library because they never went to the library? Would you allow them to open the door without it just because they rolled well? It's madness, Is tells ye! Madness! Arrr!

I'm sure you're not just rolling the dice because I know you're not an idiot; but if you're doing other things (ie, descriptive speech) what purpose do the dice serve? The DM knows whether the characters are doing what's needed or not, doesn't s/he??

THAC0
2008-06-20, 04:27 PM
But what is the role of the dice in the situation? If the door is opened by saying the magic word on the parchment they found in the old book on the desk in the library and a player suggests that, would you ever dream of making them roll and then not having the door open just because they failed the roll?

If you would, then god help your players, and if you wouldn't then why would you make them roll to succeed when they haven't worked out the clues or searched the room properly or whatever? What if they didn't find the parchment in the library because they never went to the library? Would you allow them to open the door without it just because they rolled well? It's madness, Is tells ye! Madness! Arrr!

I'm sure you're not just rolling the dice because I know you're not an idiot; but if you're doing other things (ie, descriptive speech) what purpose do the dice serve? The DM knows whether the characters are doing what's needed or not, doesn't s/he??

Ok, I'll try to explain further. This particular instance was designed as an experiment with the Skill Challenge system, and come up with on the fly. To open the door, tasks X, Y, and Z had to be accomplished. These tasks were accomplished through role-playing, with the skill challenge mechanic being used to determine how well they were accomplished - successes and fails. As it turned out, we didn't do so well. The result? As I said earlier, the door opening noisily/slowly, giving the bad guys time to set up an ambush.

Personally, I enjoyed it. It was a lot more fun to have all the characters participating instead of sitting back and giving the rogue a chance to do the only thing he's somewhat capable of doing.

To address some points you brought up: If the mechanism for opening the door was to read a word off of a parchment found in an old book - how do they find it? Well, one option is to say that if the player says that they're looking in the books, they find it. Another method is to place it into the skill challenge: if the player says they're looking in the book, they need to pass a perception check to see if they find the parchment. And maybe then the mage needs to pass an arcana check to pronounce the word correctly.

It makes perfect sense, so long as you think about what the rolls mean, instead of saying "It's a skill challenge, pass 6 arcana or perception checks before you get three fails."

Which is why the DM's abilities are absolutely critical to the success of the skill challenge mechanic.

I hope that was coherent! :smallsmile:

TheTargeter
2008-06-20, 04:59 PM
But what is the role of the dice in the situation? If the door is opened by saying the magic word on the parchment they found in the old book on the desk in the library and a player suggests that, would you ever dream of making them roll and then not having the door open just because they failed the roll?

If you would, then god help your players, and if you wouldn't then why would you make them roll to succeed when they haven't worked out the clues or searched the room properly or whatever? What if they didn't find the parchment in the library because they never went to the library? Would you allow them to open the door without it just because they rolled well? It's madness, Is tells ye! Madness! Arrr!

I'm sure you're not just rolling the dice because I know you're not an idiot; but if you're doing other things (ie, descriptive speech) what purpose do the dice serve? The DM knows whether the characters are doing what's needed or not, doesn't s/he??

Well, say reading the magic word from the old text would require an arcana roll. Probably an easy DC. A succesful check means you read and pronounce it correctly, a failure means you flub a sylabble and while the door still opens, something negative happens too...like it opens making a lot of noise or a magical trap on the door is triggered.

If they didn't go the library, then perhaps a harder arcana check would be required for someone studied in magical arts to examine the door and try to figure it out. Or a dungeoneering check to look for structural weakness in the door or surrounding area. Or a perception check to find some other trigger that might open it. Or a strength check to try and just bust through the sucker.

But a skill challenge doesn't need to be for everything. If there's a straightforward way to open the door that you don't want the PCs to have any trouble doing, then you don't need to do any check at all. If you want to be able to just let them read the text off the scroll and the door opens, fine. There's no rule saying you have to do it either way.

Skill chalenges, to me, should always be designed with the possibility of failure in mind. If the players fail it, they still progress, but with penalties. They might lose some health/surges, they might have made a new enemy, they might have made themselves stand out as targets to hidden or waiting monsters. But they shouldn't be stuck if they fail. For example, I'm planning a skill challenge where the PCs are captured and the villain is trying to get important information out of them through torture. They'll have to make a series of athletics, con, and dex checks to resist various forms of torture, and social checks to try and bluff or sweet-talk the interrogator. If they succeed in the skill challenge, then the torturer gets frustrated and gives up for a while. If they fail, they've probably lost some healing surges, and at the end, the torturer will threaten to kill one of them if they don't give up the information(and I'll tell the PCs that it will definately happen if they don't talk). Failure means the villains will know important information and take the story in a different direction. Either way they'll be taken to their cells and move on to trying to escape, but if they failed earlier they'll have less healing surges for the escape attempt, as well as no experience from the skill challenge. Either way, the plot will progress.

I think the trick is to make sure there are penalties for failure, but not penalties so harsh that it will make the players hit a brick wall.

Crow
2008-06-20, 05:07 PM
But how does the BBEG get the information out of their characters if the player of that character says "No matter what happens, I am not telling him anything. Even if it means I have to die first."? Do you put words into the character's mouth for the player if they fail the challenge? That isn't fun, and your skill challenge may as well have been a cutscene.

The only way skill challenges work for social encounters (and I still don't have faith that they do, unless your group doesn't want to bother with the whole "talking" portion of it) is if the players are trying to get something out of the NPC. But not the other way around.

nagora
2008-06-20, 05:09 PM
I hope that was coherent! :smallsmile:

It was but I think we're missing each other in translation as it were.

The funny thing is that I can see that the skill challenge system would be fun, as a game or sub-game in itself. But, as a DM, I can't understand why I would allow a system to dictate to me the success or failure of actions when I know whether they are the right, wrong, or partially right things to do in the situation. No one anywhere in the world understands the situation as well as I do since I created it!

And as a player I can't get my head around the idea that my character would, say, suddenly pipe up and say something stupid in the middle of a negotiation unless I thought that the character had a (possibly stupid) reason for doing that. Again, no one anywhere in the world understands my character as well as I do!

In both cases there's no justification for a random element to our decisions, which is part of what happens with the SC system - it does not merely reflect the success or failure of the actions we as DM and players choose. The dice are rolled and then we are expected to explain the result even when that result is that your character did something you would not have done.

I can see the justification when you don't have a DM (or when you don't have any players? Perhaps not...) and need/want to run a solo game, but it's like the old random dungeon system: a substitute for the real thing (I could make another comparison but I'd get an infraction).

Perhaps in the end the issue is that you are just experimenting with the system and don't yet care much about what the character does. Maybe as the character grows on you you will come to resent the dice overridding what they try to do. I would.


Stuff...
I'm off to bed so I'm not going to go into detail except to say that everything you suggest can be done, and more logically, by direct player action than by any system. And that if the players screw up and can't progress that's their problem, but the DM should always make sure that such a situation only happens because they players screw up, not that the scenario is screwed up to begin with. Usually a bottleneck in a scenario that has to be passed to continue is a sign of bad design. Usually.

Azerian Kelimon
2008-06-20, 05:16 PM
There is a VERY easy justification for the random rolling: Live shows.

Yeah, sounds like a non-sequiteur, I know. But it perfectly illustrates what the random roll is. Sometimes, you're playing a concert, when suddenly, you screw up, you miss a beat, the tone wasn't adjusted properly and the song sounds horrible, or in the more extreme cases, you have to leave the show to be treated for appendicitis (True story, it happened to Brian Johnson, though that could possibly count as a success too, as everyone thought he was awesome by rolling on the floor spinning while singing, and the performance was one of the factors for him getting into AC/DC). That's what the random roll is supposed to represent, the chance of something making a screw up, or you doing a particularly awesome performance, with the technicality of a song being a good representation of the DC level (For example, it's much easier to play I love Rock and Roll than it is to play Bat out of Hell). A skill challenge is like that, a series of roleplaying ping-pong, with the random roll accounting for things not going as planned, or you having a streak of luck.

SmartAlec
2008-06-20, 05:20 PM
But how does the BBEG get the information out of their characters if the player of that character says "No matter what happens, I am not telling him anything. Even if it means I have to die first."?

Well... then the Player has to make rolls to see if his character achieves what he/she wants his/her character to achieve, right? Just like with any physical challenge. It's not whether the PC says anything that's the real issue; it's whether the PC breaks, or holds together.


And as a player I can't get my head around the idea that my character would, say, suddenly pipe up and say something stupid in the middle of a negotiation unless I thought that the character had a (possibly stupid) reason for doing that. Again, no one anywhere in the world understands my character as well as I do!

I don't think things ever go someone plans them in their head, every time. It could be something as simple as a misplaced yawn, getting distracted and giving someone a funny look, being dry and having your voice fail for a moment, or even the classic: forgetting what the hell you were going to say. Happens to all of us.

Everyone screws up from time to time. The interesting part is finding a way to RP the failure as consistent with the character, and with the Player and the DM working together to make sure that everyone's entertained by what's going on, even if it isn't necessarily good news.

TheTargeter
2008-06-20, 05:42 PM
But how does the BBEG get the information out of their characters if the player of that character says "No matter what happens, I am not telling him anything. Even if it means I have to die first."? Do you put words into the character's mouth for the player if they fail the challenge? That isn't fun, and your skill challenge may as well have been a cutscene.

The only way skill challenges work for social encounters (and I still don't have faith that they do, unless your group doesn't want to bother with the whole "talking" portion of it) is if the players are trying to get something out of the NPC. But not the other way around.

Then the PC dies. I won't force the players to talk. I expect they will because I know my players, but on the off-chance every single one of them refuses to talk, then things will go in a different direction.

Azerian Kelimon
2008-06-20, 05:46 PM
Or Dominate. If the PC's REALLY did screw up and got caught by the BBEG (After they have gained a few levels, of course. During the first levels, I use kid gloves, because losing because of a few lucky crits is never fun), no mercy for them, and the BBEG is not going to act Genre Blind either.

THAC0
2008-06-20, 05:53 PM
It was but I think we're missing each other in translation as it were.

The funny thing is that I can see that the skill challenge system would be fun, as a game or sub-game in itself. But, as a DM, I can't understand why I would allow a system to dictate to me the success or failure of actions when I know whether they are the right, wrong, or partially right things to do in the situation. No one anywhere in the world understands the situation as well as I do since I created it!

And as a player I can't get my head around the idea that my character would, say, suddenly pipe up and say something stupid in the middle of a negotiation unless I thought that the character had a (possibly stupid) reason for doing that. Again, no one anywhere in the world understands my character as well as I do!

In both cases there's no justification for a random element to our decisions, which is part of what happens with the SC system - it does not merely reflect the success or failure of the actions we as DM and players choose. The dice are rolled and then we are expected to explain the result even when that result is that your character did something you would not have done.

I can see the justification when you don't have a DM (or when you don't have any players? Perhaps not...) and need/want to run a solo game, but it's like the old random dungeon system: a substitute for the real thing (I could make another comparison but I'd get an infraction).

Perhaps in the end the issue is that you are just experimenting with the system and don't yet care much about what the character does. Maybe as the character grows on you you will come to resent the dice overridding what they try to do. I would.


I think we have a fundamental disagreement here, just in the way we view things. As some other posters have said, it needn't be as obvious as a character saying something stupid - it can be something tiny, some mistake. We do all make mistakes, no matter how hard you work to avoid them. I can practice a piece on my horn over and over and have it down perfectly, but there's still a chance that maybe one day I sweat a little more and my fingers slip, or my hair falls loose and gets in my mouth when I'm trying to take a breath, and then I don't have enough air to finish the passage. That's what the dice rolling represents to me - the tiny things that can go wrong that the characters may not always have control over. It's not a matter of the dice overriding what the character would do at all. Or it shouldn't be!

TheTargeter
2008-06-20, 05:57 PM
And as a player I can't get my head around the idea that my character would, say, suddenly pipe up and say something stupid in the middle of a negotiation unless I thought that the character had a (possibly stupid) reason for doing that. Again, no one anywhere in the world understands my character as well as I do!

In both cases there's no justification for a random element to our decisions, which is part of what happens with the SC system - it does not merely reflect the success or failure of the actions we as DM and players choose. The dice are rolled and then we are expected to explain the result even when that result is that your character did something you would not have done.


What?! No, no, no, no. The die rolls DO NOT determine what action the player takes. The player tells the DM what he wants to do, then the DM asks for a check based on what makes the most sense. For example, in my above situation, if one of the players pipes up and tries to give the torturer false information, then I tell them to roll a bluff check. If they threaten the torturer("when I get out of here I'll...") then I'll ask for an intimidate check(with probably a negative modifier since the PC is bound and helpless). If one of the PCs is stabbed or cut then they'll need to make a con check with failure causing a lost healing surge. One of the players tells me he wants to try and break free? Strength check to break his bonds.

It's not a matter of the DM saying "roll a bluff check", the player rolling, and the DM saying "okay, you tell him misleading information".

The skill checks are spawned from the player's decisions and from what actually happens in the rp side of things.

FoE
2008-06-20, 06:05 PM
But how does the BBEG get the information out of their characters if the player of that character says "No matter what happens, I am not telling him anything. Even if it means I have to die first."? Do you put words into the character's mouth for the player if they fail the challenge?

I would bet you money that the majority of people who are tortured initially mean to keep their silence, but quickly give in as the pain gets worse and worse. That's the point of torture.

Azerian Kelimon
2008-06-20, 06:08 PM
I would bet you money that the majority of people who are tortured initially mean to keep their silence, but quickly give in as the pain gets worse and worse. That's the point of torture.

Or say whatever their captors want to break free because they can't take it anymore, and apparently that's what the majority does. Maybe, if the player doesn't want to speak up, he or she can do that, but outright saying "I'm not gonna talk, no matter what" is either Player fiat, or will require some pretty good RP'ing.

marjan
2008-06-20, 06:15 PM
Everyone screws up from time to time. The interesting part is finding a way to RP the failure as consistent with the character, and with the Player and the DM working together to make sure that everyone's entertained by what's going on, even if it isn't necessarily good news.

You mean like this (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=850).

Azerian Kelimon
2008-06-20, 06:19 PM
I don't know if I should do a deadpan "very funny, so very funny" or LOL blatantly.

batsofchaos
2008-06-20, 06:31 PM
But how does the BBEG get the information out of their characters if the player of that character says "No matter what happens, I am not telling him anything. Even if it means I have to die first."? Do you put words into the character's mouth for the player if they fail the challenge? That isn't fun, and your skill challenge may as well have been a cutscene.

But if they succeed throughout they might manage to escape or bluff their way through. The skill challenge is not a device to railroad the information out or kill the players (which is what a cutscene would be), but rather a way to give mechanical rules to a situation that has multiple outcomes based on intangibles that cannot be duplicated by straight roleplaying. Sure it can be done without checks just based off of role-playing, but then it becomes entirely DM discretion.

Does the torturer believe the bluff? Does the character manage to hold his resolve faced with death? I know it puts a little bit of variable into how the character behaves, but that's what the game is based on. Saying "my character's resolve wouldn't fade, even if faced with death!" is the same thing as saying "My character wouldn't have missed that swing, he hit that orc!" It's unrealistic; characters crack under pressure just like they miss sword swings. If the character has been roleplayed as someone that would be unlikely to crack, that should be reflected in bonuses to the skill check.

Titanium Dragon
2008-06-20, 06:46 PM
I think some people didn't read the guidelines on those pages of the DMG.

First off, it specifically specifies that you should never, ever use a skill challenge for something where, if the characters fail, the adventure ends. This is a pretty common mistake with skill checks in general, and it is important to note that this simply should not happen.

Second, not everything requires a skill challenge. For instance, a group stealth check is actually specifically pointed out as being possible to do simply via having the person with the lowest modifier to their stealth check roll for the party - a pretty fast and logical way to do things, really.

Really, a skill challenge is only worth doing if it is going to constitute a real encounter (or part of one) and if both success and failure mean something which will help the story along, with success being more beneficial to the characters than a failure. For instance, if the party is climbing a mountain, I wouldn't require a skill challenge unless both failure and success constitute something interesting - if they fail, maybe they trigger a rock slide, and the monsters come out of their secret ground level passageway to attack the characters. The adventure continues, but they had a tough encounter they could have avoided/made easier by not taking damage previously and doing it in more favorable terrain. Had the characters succeeded, they'd have gotten to the top of the mountain and gone in through an air vent, meaning they can get the drop on the first set of monsters they fight and perhaps sneak past some or something.

If its just "roll to climb a mountain", and they need to climb the mountain regardless (i.e. failure prevents the characters from doing anything) then it shouldn't be rolled for at all (or maybe they need X number of successses, and for each failure they accrue the party loses a healing surge or something, but it won't cause them to fail to climb the mountain). Being lost in the wilderness should lead to more adventure and stuff that will help them get back on track, not them wandering around for weeks in the jungle.

Crow
2008-06-20, 08:28 PM
The forum ate my previous reply, but I will sum it up quickly;

I'm sorry, but it really seems like the torture scenario is leading in the direction of the old debate about using Diplomacy against the PCs. In any case, a session where the DM gets his sadist rocks off while my character lies strapped to a torture device and I "get" to make checks every once in a while to see if I survive, doesn't seem to fit the idea of a skill challenge as they are intended to be used.

In addition, having hair in your mouth which interferes with your breath should be expressed as a modifier to the skill check, not as the result.

People don't play heroic adventurers so they can forget what they were going to say, randomly yawn during tense negotiations, and accidentally flip someone the bird while picking up their salad fork. The player should determine their character does, and then roll the die to determine success. The player should not roll the die and then be told that their character did something which their character would not do. The rolls are there to determine the environment's reactions to the players' overtures. The environment does not determine the reactions of the players.

marjan
2008-06-20, 08:40 PM
In addition, having hair in your mouth which interferes with your breath should be expressed as a modifier to the skill check, not as the result.


While I agree that circumstance modifiers should be used as much as possible, that's not always easy. Problem with applying circumstance modifiers is that you cannot account for all of them, usually. I don't think anyone have heard his DM say: "-2 diplomacy because you have hair in your mouth".

Human Paragon 3
2008-06-20, 08:46 PM
I just want to say this thread has been awesome- awesomely useful! I especially want to thank Nagora for forcing such great answers out of the rest of the playgrounders. This will be instrumental in how I ultimately run my skill challenges. It's threads like this that make all those inane 4vs.3 threads worth while!

Crow
2008-06-20, 08:49 PM
Yes, it would be just a bad as hearing "You get a -2 to your bluff because you accidentally flipped the bird to the King." To which, the player would rightfully protest. A resolution before action mechanic would do this all the time though, which can be fun for the players, but more than likely will not be.

JaxGaret
2008-06-20, 09:48 PM
Just a note: GURPS has something similar to the "If you fail this roll, this is what your character does" type of roll. It's called a Self-Control roll IIRC. It's part of its Disadvantages system, what in D&D would be Flaws.

I've had the conversation with Bait before about how some people would hate to have to roll to see what their character does, and others would not (him the former, I the latter). I think that as long as you are still in control of the specifics of the RP of your character, the die rolls simply help to flesh out the game world. In other words, your RP still matters - the game world simply called what you did a "fail".

Also, if your die roll fails the DC by a couple of points but you did something awesome RP-wise, and the DM doesn't give you a circumstance bonus to make up the difference so that it's a success, IMO that's bad DMing.

THAC0
2008-06-20, 09:54 PM
In addition, having hair in your mouth which interferes with your breath should be expressed as a modifier to the skill check, not as the result.


I disagree, but that comes down to interpretation I suppose.

The result is that you failed the check. But why? I was pointing out that there can be all sorts of reason for failing a check that do not involve the character doing something contrary to their nature, which seemed to be Nagora's concern.

JaxGaret
2008-06-20, 11:26 PM
I disagree, but that comes down to interpretation I suppose.

The result is that you failed the check. But why? I was pointing out that there can be all sorts of reason for failing a check that do not involve the character doing something contrary to their nature, which seemed to be Nagora's concern.

Perhaps the whole situation comes down to something simple: it matters whether you roll your skill check before or after you RP it. If you roll beforehand, and keep the result secret before you are done, you can RP tending towards success or failure, depending on how well you roll and how difficult you think the skill check is.

namo
2008-06-21, 01:31 PM
FYI: skill challenges are known to have problems (http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=16114921&postcount=11).

nagora
2008-06-21, 01:47 PM
I would bet you money that the majority of people who are tortured initially mean to keep their silence, but quickly give in as the pain gets worse and worse. That's the point of torture.

As someone who's roleplayed a character who cracked under torture I would say that a creative DM can test a PCs resolve without dice.

I can buy dice rolling for borderline cases; but SCs are not intended for that, the intention is for almost all cases.

We have combat rules because we don't want real combat at the table; we don't have roleplaying rules because we DO want real roleplaying at the table.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-06-21, 01:52 PM
FYI: skill challenges are known to have problems (http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=16114921&postcount=11).

Yeah. That's why I started the thread, to figure out how to make 'em work right.

So, aside from some nay-sayers, I've gotten a lot of good ideas from this thread. Yakk's post, in particular, stated the theory of Skill Challenges in black-and-white clarity.

Re: the Torture Challenge
I think this might actually be pretty good. Make an Endurance "Support Check" (it's what I'm calling the non-success/failure rolls) before every action to see whether the social roll will be a moderate or a hard DC. Start with a Complexity 1 challenge and every day move to a more complex one; success means they don't get any useful info out of you, and a failure means you tell them something they want.

In the event that a PC is captured and interrogated, this puts some drama into the situation, and it doesn't let every character to have infinite fortitude ("plot armor" in a sense). Now, I'm not suggesting that you allow Diplomacy or Intimidate to work on PCs, but torture is a classic Fantasy Trope and, conveniently, 4e provides a neat system where you could use it.

Just some thoughts, anyhow

So, keep the thoughts coming. I think this is a good exercise.

hamishspence
2008-06-21, 04:27 PM
immersion is tricky. The usual rule is players roll, but this can break immersion. If the DM rolls all the player's skill checks, they may feel railroaded.

I'd go with players using their skill checks as keyword in the challenge: Player "I wish to BLUFF the noble into helping us" DM: "ok, what do you say?" Player gives a long speil, DM: "and roll" and the DM compares result to DC and makes adjustments if the players have shown real ingenuity.

Players should be rolling after they have spoken. whether they should know ahead of time how hard the DC is is a different question.

Beleriphon
2008-06-21, 04:47 PM
We have combat rules because we don't want real combat at the table; we don't have roleplaying rules because we DO want real roleplaying at the table.

Keep in mind the skill challenge is ultimately meant to represent the fact that you can make mistakes that can result in a failure but not necessarily force one. The other thing is does is help to remove the DM arbitrarily calling something a fail for whatever reason. As a hint I'm not a fan of DM fiat without some kind of reward, the M&M system does this nicely, but thats a different barrel of fish.

In a diplomacy scenario if the players roll enough success, not a single success mind you, then their diplomacy succeeds. If there is no chance for success in a scenario then a skill challenge is unnecessary, because the players, and characters, have already failed via DM fiat. This isn't really fair, a skill challenge is a fair and reasonably effective way determine success or failure without fiat.

Again, its not necessary in every single scenario, but there are times when random chance can come into play. I think it also helps if you have a clear goal for the challenge, and a clear result of a failure.