Forcing people to ruin the adventure (Skill Challenges)

[Lago PARANOIA]

I don't want to derail the current threads talking about skill challenges by my ranting, But I've heard this several times in those threads and it pisses me off to the maximum extent possible.

Poster A: The problem with skill challenges is that it encourages the bard to roll diplomacy 6 times while the fighter either just spams Aid Another or goes to play Smash Bros.
Poster B: The solution to that is to ban Aid Another and make the fighter use a skill anyway.

Uh, I'm sorry, WTF? Are you out of your mind here? The reason why the fighter didn't want to participate in the 'convince the nymphs' challenge was because she knew ahead of time that she could contribute nothing but failure.

Why in the name of fuck would you intentionally design rules that not only forces someone to fail, but also puts the blame squarely on the poor schmuck's shoulders?

So cut it out

[MartinHarper]

Well, the DM could ban Aid Another, make the fighter use a skill, and allow her to use Endurance to convince the nymphs by shagging them all. That would be fine, even if the fighter has Endurance +8 while the bard has Diplomacy +9.

If the DM bans creative uses of skills as well, then that is indeed insane.

[Roy]

Solution to Skill Challenges: Lesbian sex!

Koumei would approve.

[mean_liar]

Seriously expanding the scope of Skill Challenges to include more than one schtick at a time is a good way to get something out of them. You allow just enough Aid Another so that the one character you couldn't shoehorn in still has something to do, even is its a lame something. At least its not everyone bored.

Plus, allowing broad interpretations of skill use encourages Magic Tea Party bullshittery where players wax prolific about whatever the fuck makes them so awesome they can roll Athletics.

[RandomCasualty2]

Yeah, I think if you're going to get anything productive out of skill challenges, it's going to be that they force people without high bonus primary skills to think of interesting ways to implement their other skills creatively.

[PhoneLobster]

Well, the DM could ban Aid Another, make the fighter use a skill, and allow her to use Endurance to convince the nymphs by shagging them all. That would be fine, even if the fighter has Endurance +8 while the bard has Diplomacy +9.

If the DM bans creative uses of skills as well, then that is indeed insane.

But...

That's just negotiating a different skill use with the GM. Something commonly done anyway.

The skill challenge structure is one that demands that the players all contribute something.

In a sensible "system" (and I hesitate to use the word to cover the material in question) the GM presents an arbitrary challenge, you negotiate a skill to resolve it with. And, maybe you roll it. The bard sings, OR the fighter shags, or one fails and the other steps in to try to resolve it.

If the fighter is refusing to participate it is probably because they can't see a path to negotiate a relevant skill. Demanding that they do so doesn't solve that problem.

The whole idea where "hey wait, what has Toby the ugly goblin wizard who does nothing but cast fire spells done to help out here? Well screw you guys then the nymphs fucking hate you until he impresses them as well" is, well, stupid.

[Username17]

The skill challenge system has incompatible goals. That it does not achieve any of them is partially because the system was caught in a tug of war generated by having your mission statement generated by running together standalone statements that scored well in focus groups regardless of whether they could plausibly even sit side by side in the same game; partly caused by the fact that the entire skill challenge system was hacked out by someone who very obviously never played it or did any math on its effects; and partly because Bill Slavicsek is a no-talent hack. But even if it had achieved any of its stated goals, the fact is that a lot of the goals simply can't be achieved if other stated goals are even attempted.

Creativity vs. Transparency

If you ask gamers something stupid and buzzwordy like "Should players be dynamically involved in noncombat challenges by creatively using their abilities in a proactive fashion to solve problems and aid the group?" the chances are that most people will say yes. So it's understandable that jackasses would fold that shit into the game design directives. However, if you ask gamers another question along the lines of "Should players have open and clear access to the capabilities of their characters before selecting abilities as well as during play when choosing the actions of their character?" then the chances are that gamers will say yes to that too. And yeah, those are totally different games being described. They could both be good games, and they could both be role playing games. But they aren't the same game. Like, at all.

• Creativity: In Black Forest characters have vaguely defined abilities like "outdoorsy" and "tailoring" and they even acquire these abilities dynamically in the middle of challenges by spending dramatic imperative to take control of the story and manifest abilities that are consistent with their backgrounds and experiences but not yet on their character sheet. Players do not have a firm grasp of what their milk maid character can do because that is left up to the unfolding of the story to determine.
  
  Transparency: In Warp Cult, characters have fixed abilities and skills are off a list of finite and invariant size. Actions are clearly defined as being associated with one skill or another, so characters can plan out their actions and count out their dice pools turns in advance. The game is playable without a storyteller because actions don't need adjudication.
  
  Hybrid: In Shadowrun, the vast majority of actions are handled by Active Skills, and these skills have little in the way of overlap. There are however a amorphous pile of "background" skills that allow players to do exposition and get small synergy bonuses at ill defined story nexuses. But these backgrounds are optional even to implement, because legwork can be done pretty much exclusively with the fixed skills if you want.

None of these directions are wrong. But 4e's attempt to go full creative while going full transparent is an obviously insulting pipe dream. Even a hybrid system like Shadowrun basically has to cut a clear line where the transparency ends and make crossing that line an optional experience.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

I don't get the Skill Challenge stuff anyway. In 3E the players decide what they want to do and how, and the GM looks up/makes up the DCs for the resulting skill tests as they come up, adapting to each result with consequences. The number of skill tests varies, and even the goal varies (from "break into the treasure chamber" to "escape from the dungeon" after the stealth check was failed).

In 4E, the DM has to make up the challenge beforehand, number and DCs, and somehow juggle the results. Or forget the whole structure and just roll with the game, like in 3E.

[Koumei]

Solution to Skill Challenges: Lesbian sex!

Koumei would approve. :rofl:

This is of course the correct solution.

[MartinHarper]

If the fighter is refusing to participate it is probably because they can't see a path to negotiate a relevant skill. Demanding that they do so doesn't solve that problem.

If the fighter is rolling Aid Another or passing, that's probably because doing so and relying on the Bard's Diplomacy +9 is a provably better strategy than using her own Endurance +8. The fighter can see the path to negotiate Endurance, and she knows that it is sub-optimal, and she doesn't use it. Requiring the fighter to participate solves that problem. There are other solutions.

If the Fighter cannot see any option aside from Bluff+1, Diplomacy+1, or Intimidate+1, then I agree that's unfortunate. If a player is bad at BS'ing the DM, they'll be sub-par at skill challenges, just like if a player is bad at tabletop gaming, they'll be sub-par at combat. So the other players need to help their friend, and the DM needs to throw easier challenges at the group, and maybe the fighter will get better over time.

[Fuchs]

"Refusing to participate" sounds odd. Before 4E started to poison the hobby I'd never thought in such terms - as a DM I'd have had simply rolled with such a scene, and the Nymphs would have made a move on the fighter, and his reaction would have colored their impression, influencing whatever the party did next. I have NPCs who are active themselves, not just window dressing for the SC rolls.

That's one of the ways SC fail, IMHO - they tempt new DMs to have a very narrow vision, seeing such scenes as a static encounter PCs take place in or not, not a organic, changing situation. Kind of like a CRPG, with the party standing around while you take one character to talk.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If the fighter is rolling Aid Another or passing, that's probably because doing so and relying on the Bard's Diplomacy +9 is a provably better strategy than using her own Endurance +8. The fighter can see the path to negotiate Endurance, and she knows that it is sub-optimal, and she doesn't use it. Requiring the fighter to participate solves that problem. There are other solutions.

It doesn't solve the problem. If the player of the fighter can't think of a way to use the good skill they have then you're just forcing them to carry the 'you're going to make us fail ball'.

I've played in Skill Challenges. I for one do not find the 'think of a way your Cleric's Religion check can help us climb the mountain!' style of gameplay fun, numbers aside. It doesn't feel like I'm creativity using a skill to find a solution, it feels like I'm doing a song and a dance for the DM until he decides to let me continue the adventure.

"Refusing to participate" sounds odd. Before 4E started to poison the hobby I'd never thought in such terms - as a DM I'd have had simply rolled with such a scene, and the Nymphs would have made a move on the fighter, and his reaction would have colored their impression, influencing whatever the party did next. I have NPCs who are active themselves, not just window dressing for the SC rolls.

How does that change the situation of forcing the Fighter to carry the 'you're going to make us fail' ball unless you Magic Tea Party it?

[Fuchs]

How does that change the situation of forcing the Fighter to carry the 'you're going to make us fail' ball unless you Magic Tea Party it?

Well, it's not a "ok, folks, this is our task, all but the bard go play smash bros" scene but a "ok, you arrive at the chateau. The following things happen..." where the PCs are met and challenged in hopefully fun and original ways.

It's like not forcing everyone into the "this is a skill challenge, your next three rolls will be important!" straitjacket, but letting the characters act and react, and take it from there. If the fighter botches his intimidate skill that's not a "failure, 2 left", but "ok, you get challenged to a duel" result, to which the party can react.

In other words, the SC is too abstract for my taste, to structured, if combat was the same way it'd be handled like this:

"Ok, I need 6 successes before you get 3 failures, folks. Fred the Fighter got 1 success with attack, but Bob the bard got struck by an arrow, that's one failure there, cleric is up, what do you do?"

"I heal the bard!" "Ok, success, you're up to 2 now."

And so on.

[MartinHarper]

If the player of the fighter can't think of a way to use the good skill they have then you're just forcing them to carry the 'you're going to make us fail' ball.

That's a different problem to that mentioned by Poster A in your original post. One problem with 4e skill challenges is "I'm not going to use my +8 skill because aiding the Bard on his +9 skill is better". That can be solved by restricting the use of Aid Another and passing, as your hypothetical Poster B says.

Now, this solution creates a new problem with 4e skill challenges: "I'm too dumb to think of any approach to this problem that isn't covered by Diplomacy, and my Diplomacy modifier sucks". That's a different problem. It's essentially the same problem as "I'm too dumb to make a character that is competent in combat" or "I'm too dumb to use my character effectively in combat", and the solution is the same: the other players need to help their friend, and the DM needs to throw easier challenges at the group, and maybe the fighter will get better over time.

I've played in Skill Challenges. I for one do not find the 'think of a way your Cleric's Religion check can help us climb the mountain!' style of gameplay fun, numbers aside.

It's a matter of taste. Regardless, this is a third problem with 4e skill challenges, and is best solved by you ripping up those pages and doing something else, such as Magic Tea Party.

[Roy]

So your solution is to... get sneak attacked by the trap. Great, now the Fighter can't do anything at all because he doesn't know when he's ruining a 'skill challenge'.

At least in 3.5 when he opened his mouth outside of combat he wasn't hurting anyone else.

[Fuchs]

What's wrong with simply presenting players with a situation, and see what they do, without trying to fit their actions into a skill challenge?

[Roy]

What's wrong with simply presenting players with a situation, and see what they do, without trying to fit their actions into a skill challenge?

You're either sneak attacking them with a trap, or you're having to redesign the entire non combat portion of the game that you paid for with the expectation it works.

So basically you bought a car then learned it doesn't have an engine, doesn't have an oil tank, and has a gas tank so fucked up it's a coin toss as to whether or not the car will explode in your face when you crank it up. And even if you got such a car for free, you'd still be ticked off it has those critical flaws.

[PhoneLobster]

What's wrong with simply presenting players with a situation, and see what they do, without trying to fit their actions into a skill challenge?

It's fine. It's just not a skill challenge system.

It isn't exactly much of a system at all, it's just fairy tea party and negotiation with the GM for arbitrary rulings.

It's the way most of this material probably should be handled, but again I stress, is not a formalized skill challenge system.

[TheDarkFuzz]

Regarding how skill challenges force people to ruin adventures, I don't even think that just applies to the players.

I think the biggest crime of skill challenges is that they corrupt new or inexperienced DMs into thinking that this is really how skills should work. It completely destroys the suspension of disbelief for any game they run, because they end up doing things like asking people to go around in Round Robin fashion throwing their highest modifiers at the problem until it is solved. Even when the problem can be rationally solved in less rolls than the challenge calls for by competent characters.

"Sure, your Perception check noticed the trap, and your Dungeoneering check showed you a simple way to bypass it."

"Ok, sure. We bypass it."

"Hold on. Who hasn't made a check at this trap yet? You guys need more successes. Bard? Ranger?"

"Fine, I use Diplomacy to encourage my companions that the rogue knows what he's doing. 31."
"I use Nature to, uh, figure out what sort of wood the trap is made out of. 19."
"I'll use Athletics to bypass the trap while doing, I don't know, a handstand or something. I got a 23."

"Good job! You bypass the trap. You get through the hallway and find yourselves descending a grey stone staircase. Does anyone want to make a check?"

"Le sigh."

I mean, rolling my +22 Diplomacy or whatever is fun the first couple times, but by the third "challenge" I spend Magic Tea Partying my way into using Diplomacy again I am ready to shoot myself in the head. Especially when a large skill result should outright solve a problem ("You've convinced the mad old hermit that he can trust you with his secrets.") or even earn the party a bonus (The Duke is impressed enough with your rhetoric that he's willing to meet the higher price for your services.) but instead does nothing because it's just one success out of six that literally has zero effect in game besides upping your "win the encounter" count by one. And from what I can tell, there isn't a scale for winning more (being more convincing than usual, or more athletic, or more whatever), just a set result that plays into exactly what the DM wants to happen. On top of everything else, skill challenges tell me that as long as my numbers are moderately high, getting them higher is irrelevant because it won't change a single thing about my capabilities.

Oh, and woe betide the player with the new DM who wishes to find a use for his skills outside of the adventure's skill challenges. Thievery to pickpocket some coins in the market? Turns out nobody has any. Diplomacy to haggle with the shopkeep? Oops, turns out the prices are set by invisible arbiters who will not have any of your shenanigans. 4e implicitly (perhaps not explicitly) informs new DMs that the right way to play the game is to limit skill use to exactly when the adventure calls for it and discourage rational efforts to do things outside of that.

This is a problem that most new DMs have when they start off (because they are often afraid of what players can do), but at least games like 3.5 will usually have the common decency to address what happens when you use skills in an unplanned situation. That way noob DMs have some guidelines to follow that actually end up making them more comfortable with letting players explore and interact with their world. 4e just pushes new DMs to hitch players back onto the tracks as quickly as possible and with minimal interaction with non-story elements, lest they gain some form of advantage in coin or magic without grinding enemy mobs. It tells new DMs exactly what they shouldn't hear - that railroading players into shouting numbers at you until they win is how the game is meant to be played - and actively discourages them from allowing players to find clever solutions that might circumvent or step outside of the rigid framework they have written down.

I realize I'm largely preaching to the choir here, but I've had this rant waiting for a little while now, ever since I started playing 4e with a group that's new to DnD. It's like I'm playing 3.5 back when I started and our DM was just as new as the rest of us, only worse. At least back then I could make Bluff checks to sell cute pets from my bag of tricks and skip town before they evaporated. In 4e? LOL YOU CANNOT HAS MOAR GOLD.

[Fuchs]

Very well put, TheDarkFuzz.

[Roy]

Very well put, TheDarkFuzz.

Plus Fucking One. Also, welcome to the Den.

[PoliteNewb]

"I'm too dumb to think of any approach to this problem that isn't covered by Diplomacy, and my Diplomacy modifier sucks"

=

"I'm too dumb to make a character that is competent in combat" or "I'm too dumb to use my character effectively in combat"

I don't see these situations as entirely analagous...seeing as how there are very clear rules for combat, and the skill challenge issue seems to be a muddled mess.

There's no (or not much) confusion about how you use Righteous Brand or Rain of Blows...there are situations when it's good to use them, so you do. You don't have to run around asking yourself "How can Rain of Blows contribute to the party right now?" and finding a way to shoehorn it in.

If skill challenges DO require you to seriously go around thinking "How can my ranks in Intimidate help us in this skill challenge?", that's a little different.

Combat powers are...well, designed for combat. So if you're killing stuff, you can probably find something useful to do. Non-combat skills, on the other hand, cover...everything that isn't combat. And that's a much broader area, so the chances that your skills will be appropriate is necessarily smaller.

[Username17]

Thought for the day: if you force the Fighter to attempt to contribute with a +8 while the Bard has a +9, then the Fighter is reducing the team's chances of success by being conscious. It then becomes imperative for the team to knock the Fighter out before talking to the nymphs or getting on the airplane. Then he can wake up afterward and the team will have made the requisite rolls at the higher bonus.



-Username17

[Caedrus]

Regarding how skill challenges force people to ruin adventures, I don't even think that just applies to the players.

I think the biggest crime of skill challenges is that they corrupt new or inexperienced DMs into thinking that this is really how skills should work. It completely destroys the suspension of disbelief for any game they run, because they end up doing things like asking people to go around in Round Robin fashion throwing their highest modifiers at the problem until it is solved. Even when the problem can be rationally solved in less rolls than the challenge calls for by competent characters.

"Sure, your Perception check noticed the trap, and your Dungeoneering check showed you a simple way to bypass it."

"Ok, sure. We bypass it."

"Hold on. Who hasn't made a check at this trap yet? You guys need more successes. Bard? Ranger?"

"Fine, I use Diplomacy to encourage my companions that the rogue knows what he's doing. 31."
"I use Nature to, uh, figure out what sort of wood the trap is made out of. 19."
"I'll use Athletics to bypass the trap while doing, I don't know, a handstand or something. I got a 23."

"Good job! You bypass the trap. You get through the hallway and find yourselves descending a grey stone staircase. Does anyone want to make a check?"

"Le sigh."

I mean, rolling my +22 Diplomacy or whatever is fun the first couple times, but by the third "challenge" I spend Magic Tea Partying my way into using Diplomacy again I am ready to shoot myself in the head. Especially when a large skill result should outright solve a problem ("You've convinced the mad old hermit that he can trust you with his secrets.") or even earn the party a bonus (The Duke is impressed enough with your rhetoric that he's willing to meet the higher price for your services.) but instead does nothing because it's just one success out of six that literally has zero effect in game besides upping your "win the encounter" count by one. And from what I can tell, there isn't a scale for winning more (being more convincing than usual, or more athletic, or more whatever), just a set result that plays into exactly what the DM wants to happen. On top of everything else, skill challenges tell me that as long as my numbers are moderately high, getting them higher is irrelevant because it won't change a single thing about my capabilities.

Oh, and woe betide the player with the new DM who wishes to find a use for his skills outside of the adventure's skill challenges. Thievery to pickpocket some coins in the market? Turns out nobody has any. Diplomacy to haggle with the shopkeep? Oops, turns out the prices are set by invisible arbiters who will not have any of your shenanigans. 4e implicitly (perhaps not explicitly) informs new DMs that the right way to play the game is to limit skill use to exactly when the adventure calls for it and discourage rational efforts to do things outside of that.

This is a problem that most new DMs have when they start off (because they are often afraid of what players can do), but at least games like 3.5 will usually have the common decency to address what happens when you use skills in an unplanned situation. That way noob DMs have some guidelines to follow that actually end up making them more comfortable with letting players explore and interact with their world. 4e just pushes new DMs to hitch players back onto the tracks as quickly as possible and with minimal interaction with non-story elements, lest they gain some form of advantage in coin or magic without grinding enemy mobs. It tells new DMs exactly what they shouldn't hear - that railroading players into shouting numbers at you until they win is how the game is meant to be played - and actively discourages them from allowing players to find clever solutions that might circumvent or step outside of the rigid framework they have written down.

I realize I'm largely preaching to the choir here, but I've had this rant waiting for a little while now, ever since I started playing 4e with a group that's new to DnD. It's like I'm playing 3.5 back when I started and our DM was just as new as the rest of us, only worse. At least back then I could make Bluff checks to sell cute pets from my bag of tricks and skip town before they evaporated. In 4e? LOL YOU CANNOT HAS MOAR GOLD.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I realize I'm largely preaching to the choir here, but I've had this rant waiting for a little while now, ever since I started playing 4e with a group that's new to DnD. It's like I'm playing 3.5 back when I started and our DM was just as new as the rest of us, only worse. At least back then I could make Bluff checks to sell cute pets from my bag of tricks and skip town before they evaporated. In 4e? LOL YOU CANNOT HAS MOAR GOLD.

Small quibble: the reason why this doesn't work anymore is because 4E decided to make the function of diplomacy completely nebulous by assigning no DC and not giving a clear idea what you can do with a roll. It doesn't have anything to do with skill challenges.