What's a 4E skill challenge?

[Seerow]

Rather than go into detail on those opinions, I'll keep it short: We have a winner and you can go onto ignore.

We really need a counter on these forums. A little counter that shows up right under your posts.... that tells everyone how many ignore lists you are on.


It'd be interesting to see if there's a single registered user on the forum that doesn't have Shadazar ignored for example.

[Grek]

Sup. I have nobody ignored, and I think people who use the ignore function are wusses.

[RadiantPhoenix]

I don't have anyone on ignore, but I can see the appeal sometimes.

[Stubbazubba]

I'm really close to ignoring shadzar, but have not yet done so. I'm not entirely sure why, he never contributes to a discussion, the best he does is not derail it in a very 4th-grade "Hey everyone, pay attention to me!" type of thing.

[OgreBattle]

Diplomacy on the water sounded pretty interesting though. The cleric communes with the raging spirits and is granted safe passage.

Forging a pass from a kingdom you've never heard of for ghostly guardians, yeah pulling it out of your butt makes it sound like you pulled it out of your butt. That sort of thing should require a successful History check to unlock as an option, or a Bluff/Diplomacy to figure out as much as one can from the Ghosts.


I like the idea of a skill challenge, the IDEA sounds good, but the implementation is too easy to mess up or turn into "I roll and win/lose"

[Josh_Kablack]

Sup. I have nobody ignored, and I think people who use the ignore function are wusses.

I prefer to think of it as a means of optimizing how I spend my time direct my nerdrage.

[Chamomile]

Would it still be considered a skill challenge if defeat were measured in some way other than number of failures (for example, number of rounds elapsed)? Or is a skill challenge, by definition, lost when a certain number of failures accumulate? Because it sounds to me like the only insurmountable problem is that being bad at relevant skills means you are actively contributing to the party's defeat, instead of just failing to contribute to their success.

[DSMatticus]

Sup. I have nobody ignored, and I think people who use the ignore function are wusses.

Damn right.

I prefer to think of it as a means of optimizing how I spend my time direct my nerdrage.

Reading shadzar's posts is a quick, if painful, way to fill up your (nerd)rage meter.

[Chamomile]

You're not a real man unless you read consistently incomprehensible and fallacious writings!

[Username17]

Would it still be considered a skill challenge if defeat were measured in some way other than number of failures (for example, number of rounds elapsed)? Or is a skill challenge, by definition, lost when a certain number of failures accumulate? Because it sounds to me like the only insurmountable problem is that being bad at relevant skills means you are actively contributing to the party's defeat, instead of just failing to contribute to their success.

They have revised the skill challenge system thirty times, and that particular piece of shit design stays in there, so I'm guessing it is "Essential" to the concept. They've changed the DCs, they've changed the number of successes and failures that are required to reach success or failure thresholds, they've changed what happens when an individual failure comes up, they've changed what skills are allowed, they've changed how many times you can use a skill, they have changed what happens when a get to some milestone of successes (usually 1/2 or 1/3 of the total), and so on and so on. But one thing has always stayed constant: the worst thing about them: the fact that failure happens because a player attempted to move the team towards victory and failed. It seems to be integral to their concept that attempting to contribute is the thing that actually makes the party lose.

And boy is that a shitty concept.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

Indeed. The "You've got X rounds to get Y successes, everyone, get going!" concept has been around for years now I think, yet WotC never used that one afaik.

[Kaelik]

Yeah, if you want to read, fixing skill challenges to at least accomplish their supposed goals even if they do still suck, you can see Frank manage to come up with "People have X rounds, and if you fail, it's not actually worse than you not trying" on the first try.

Because Mike Mearls is more retarded than the most retarded monkey at the retarded office on retarded wednesday.

[icyshadowlord]

Wait, is Mike Mearls more retarded than actual retards? Or is calling Mike Mearls a retard an insult to all the actual retards in the world?

And actually, now that we know the problem with 4e's system, what kind of system should be set up to replace it? One like in 3.x editions?

[Kaelik]

Wait, is Mike Mearls more retarded than actual retards? Or is calling Mike Mearls a retard an insult to all the actual retards in the world?

And actually, now that we know the problem with 4e's system, what kind of system should be set up to replace it? One like in 3.x editions?

There are a lot of things you could do, depending on what you want. I personally never want to engage in a skill challenge at any point in my gaming carreer, because I think they are fucking retarded, and you should instead face a challenge or multiple challenges that are very specific, and that you can win in a theoretically infinite number of ways.

I mean, I've seen lots of example "skill challenges" like, the situations that would be solved by them, and in no single one did I ever say, "Yeah, I'd prefer to have the party roll a bunch of skill checks to deal with this problem, instead of just having people use abilities to beat specific problems."

IE, if the skill challenge is: Make your way through the jungle of shit. I would prefer if instead of people rolling survival and athletics and knowledge geography and whatever, one guy just said "Well, I'm a deep dwarf, so I know north all the time no matter what, so I reorient us to always go the right way." And some other guy said "I use my nature powers/knowledge to find a group of wild horses, and make them carry us" And another guy said "I conjure food every day so we never starve." And then when the pouring rain comes, they each find their own way to deal with it, like the rogue is crazy prepared and pulls out his anti rainstorm gear, and the Wizard cast Mordenkienen's Faithful Umbrella, and maybe the cleric has an AoE that deals with it for everyone, whatever.

And that sort of thing isn't made better to me by saying "So then, when the ranger rolls his survival roll, he says stuff about horsies, and when the rogue rolls his he points out that he's a deep dwarf." For a great number of reasons, one of which is that it treats numerous separate problems as one big problem, so somehow you can escape the forest even if the rogue fails his "know north" check, and no one else even attempts it, and secondly, because as a general rule I prefer abilities that allow your character to do things out of combat, instead of abilities that allow you to maybe do things. Always knowing north is a minor ability that is still cool to have, even if it's basically never needed, and knowing you can always do it allows you to plan on having it. Having to roll for it is shit.

Some abilities might need to be skills, like knowledges/Perception/Stealth/UMD/Social stuff if that's where you put it in your system instead of having genuine social combat. But fuck everything else that's a skill.

TL;DR: I hate skill challenges, so even the best version of a skill challenge is still a shitty thing. I am the wrong person to ask if you actually like the idea of skill challenges what to do with them.

[Chamomile]

Okay, then, people who are not Kaelik. I'm GMing a 3.Tome game and I want skills to be useful for something even if people don't take any skill-based feats from the appendix. Wat do?

[Fuchs]

Take any situation - like getting to the king to plead for help - and then let them plan their approach, and have them use their skills when appropriate. Handle succes or failure as usual with skill checks.

[Chamomile]

Take any situation - like getting to the king to plead for help - and then let them plan their approach, and have them use their skills when appropriate. Handle succes or failure as usual with skill checks.

This typically boils down to just one, sometimes two, Diplomacy checks, though.

[Username17]

What you do is split it into a series of tasks. So for the "convince the king" thing, you break it down like this:

• First you have to figure out what the king wants. Possible player choices:
  • I've got knowledge history, I'll try to recall what the kingdom's outstanding demands are.
  • I've got Sense Motive, I'll try to just figure it out.
  • I'll cast contact other plane and fucking ask.
  • I'll use detect thoughts and find out.
  • I'll use my ludicrous Move Silently check to sneak in and spy on the king.
  • I'll go out and Gather Information to find out if anyone knows.
  • etc. etc.
• OK, he wants access to grazing lands on the other side of the river. How are you going to convince him he can get that? Possible player responses:
  • I've got Diplomacy, I'll try to negotiate a land transfer.
  • I've got Bluff, I'll try to convince him we have a pending agreement for a land transfer.
  • I've got Intimidate, I'll go get those pussies on the other side of the river to give it up.
  • I've got a bunch of money, how much could some grazing land next to the Bane Mires even cost?
  • It's what, Harpies over there? How about I just fucking stab one in the face and bring the corpse back?
  • I'll use Forgery to make some ancient documents giving us rights to the land.
  • etc. etc.

And so on. You give people goals, and then some player steps forward and offers a way to use their character abilities to make those goals happen. The big problem is that active players end up solving a very large percentage of the stages. But Skill Challenges don't fix that, so whatever.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

Take any situation - like getting to the king to plead for help - and then let them plan their approach, and have them use their skills when appropriate. Handle succes or failure as usual with skill checks.

This typically boils down to just one, sometimes two, Diplomacy checks, though.

If a diplomacy check or two is all it takes, then it is not really a big challenge anyway.

[Chamomile]

Take any situation - like getting to the king to plead for help - and then let them plan their approach, and have them use their skills when appropriate. Handle succes or failure as usual with skill checks.

This typically boils down to just one, sometimes two, Diplomacy checks, though.

If a diplomacy check or two is all it takes, then it is not really a big challenge anyway.

Congratulations, you have discovered the problem.

[Fuchs]

What problem? What do you do if the two kobolds you throw at your party are killed in one hit each? You build better encounters that cannot be beaten with two hits.

Really - throw some obstacles at people if you want a scene to be more than two diplomacy rolls. Maybe the king is heads over heels for his new mistress, neglecting the audiences, and has ordered no one to disturb him. You may want to sneak in to meet him, or maybe attract his attention in another way. The chancellor may try to block your attempts, or an enemy has damaged your character's reputation by having ruffians pose as you, or some famous bard has warped the latest deed of yours, so you need to correct that before the court will even consider seeing you, and so on.

But if logically two diplomacy rolls will solve the problem, hey, then it was not a really important scene or challenge to begin with.

[Chamomile]

Really - throw some obstacles at people if you want a scene to be more than two diplomacy rolls. Maybe the king is heads over heels for his new mistress, neglecting the audiences, and has ordered no one to disturb him.

"I Diplomacy him to get over her, and then I Diplomacy him to help us."

The chancellor may try to block your attempts,

"I Diplomacy the chancellor, and then I Diplomacy the king."

or an enemy has damaged your character's reputation by having ruffians pose as you,

"I Diplomacy the king into believing those were impostors, and then I Diplomacy him to help us."

or some famous bard has warped the latest deed of yours, so you need to correct that before the court will even consider seeing you, and so on.

"I Diplomacy the count to correct the bard's tale, and then I Diplomacy him to help us."

Unless you'd meant that every single one of those was supposed to happen all at once in which case my player's will rightly call me out on throwing a million random roadblocks in their way with no solid justification.

Frank's idea of just zooming in further to break the bigger problem into multiple smaller ones is certainly doable, but it's a lot more work on my end and hard to come up with on the fly. If the party decides they want to convince King Genericus to march against the Black Prince, then...I guess they probably have to convince someone to give them an audience with the king, and then they have to convince the king to actually do it. So. That's two. I can't really think off the top of my head how to break the problem into any smaller pieces than that. CHA is my dump stat, I don't really know how to negotiate.

[Fuchs]

Again, if Diplomacy solves all your problems you've got a problem - with Diplomacy. I suggest to stop treating it as dominate person.

[Chamomile]

Except that these are all scenarios where I want them to be able to use Diplomacy to solve the problem. Yes, I could just say that the chancellor seriously hates you and won't let you in no matter what, but that doesn't give me a more interesting way to resolve social encounters, it just gives me an excuse to laugh at everyone who put points into social skills instead of climb, jump, balance, and tumble. I need a skills mini-game that requires multiple rolls and rewards some kind of thought.

Skill challenges accomplish both of these, but with the drawback that characters without the relevant skills are actively harming the efforts of the party by racking up failures. Breaking the challenge into lots of smaller pieces works far better in terms of encouraging player creativity and don't have the drawback of skill challenges, but it requires a lot of work on my part. If there's some kind of basic template for convincing anyone to do anything which can be applied to virtually any social interaction, that'd be helpful (I can already do things like this for stealth, because I've seen heist movies, and for magitech technobabble, because I've played a lot of Final Fantasy games, so social interactions are the only real problem).

[shadzar]

Except that these are all scenarios where I want them to be able to use Diplomacy to solve the problem.

Here shows an underlying problem with skills in general and skill challenges.

skills of ANY sort, should not be something the DM decides what should be used. "ONLY the one with fire-building can light the sconces to open the secret door."

skills are things designed so players had more to do, at least that seems the reason everyone says; because the players just couldnt figure out they could do something if it wasnt in some list on a character sheet.

a DMs want for a player to use a certain skill then becomes a problem, where the skills are no longer tools for the players to be able to do things, but keys to open the locked doors the DM has placed before them. which isnt any different from "only one possessing Macguffin X can enter this door", "only a dwarf can enter this room". sometimes those special keys may be needed, but overused they become a burden.

do the players want to be able to use Diplomacy to solve the problem?

just saying, skills are so stupid a system be careful with it.