Doing Skill Challenges Right

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Post by Username17 »

I see this method as being mostly goal oriented. That is, you pretty much have to accept that powerful people are going to be able to do stuff within their specialty by just saying "I do it!" meaning that if you want to provide them challenges, you have to go farther afield. So what you set up is Goals, that require a specific number of successes to achieve.

Simple examples might include:

The Mechano-Hydra

It's a huge device made of clockwork and powered by a boiler full of poisonous bile! It has seven heads which swing wildly around like a toy wooden snake fighting a chicken. It's a potentially very difficult challenge. It's Difficulty 7, but there's no real mandatory method of achieving victory, s there's no mandatory skill attempt. Plausible methods of achieving a success:
  • Engineering. If you can figure out the secrets of its workings, you can make defeating it easier.
  • Maneuvering. If you can draw it into a confined space or dangerous area, you can help break its power.
  • Alchemy. It runs on boiling poison bile you say?
  • Combat. If all else fails, smash it!
And so on. The concept is that providing methods for foiling the mechano-hydra gives the entire party a jump on the battle against it. Players nominate methods to try to defeat it, and make their checks, and so on. If players have enough relevant skills and plans, they can rube goldberg the mechano hydra to death without fighting it at all. Maybe the team Jester gets it to chase him onto a floor that the team Gadgeteer has determined can't support it while the team Druid has arranged for a bunch of sandy grit to be on that floor so that during the collapse the joints of the mechano-hydra will be damaged, and the team Malefactor has got a bucket of non-flammable oil to douse the boiler with... and so on and then the plan goes through and the mechano-hydra ends up grinding to a halt and falling into a ravine.

Or maybe the entire team doesn't care and they just fight it out with the hydra, beating on it head after head until the damn thing stops working.

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Post by RandomCasualty2 »

Voss wrote: Having the system completely fails too. The best example of exactly this type of thing is a lot of recent computer games, particularly Bioware and Obsidian lately. There are certain decision trees, presented as options, that lead to the exact same result. You can say yes, no, try to intimidate, bluff or diplomatize the person, and you get the exact same result. NWN2 is particularly bad about this. Try to refuse a NPC. It really won't let you, and the options are just window dressing. What 4e does is present the exact same thing. You can just skip the dice rolling and proceed directly to the DM's success scenario. Or if he's really creative (which seems to be discouraged), you can go to the failure scenario. But it doesn't actually matter what you do.
Yeah, a system in general doesn't discourage railroading unless it's a particularly inflexible system that lets you autodiplomatize any NPC, which tends to be really stupid in terms of storytelling, since you can get NPCs to potentially do anything for you.

Basically a social system is just about replacing RP with a mini-game. Whether that mini-game is just a single die roll or its a series of strategic placements, the concept is still the same. But the success or failure effects are going to be entirely up to the DM. if he wants to railroad you, then pretty much it could be like NWN2, where you end up doing something very similar (the king agrees to let you enter the labyrinth, but doesn't provide you with horses).

It's really up to the DM, as diverse as he wants the plot to be. And I think it pretty much has to work like that. The DM should be however strongly encouragd to present different outcomes and branches for the plot.
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Post by CatharzGodfoot »

How's about extending the idea of combat advantage number to all tests, and unrenaming it to Edge?

Various actions can increase your Edge towards any difficult task, eventually allowing you to pull out your diplomatic, artistic, or acrobatic `finishing move'? You start out with a significant edge on easy tasks, removing the need to do extra stuff. Just as with imps really easy tasks just go `poof' when you announce the appropriate action.
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Post by Calibron »

CatharzGodfoot wrote:How's about extending the idea of combat advantage number to all tests, and unrenaming it to Edge?

Various actions can increase your Edge towards any difficult task, eventually allowing you to pull out your diplomatic, artistic, or acrobatic `finishing move'? You start out with a significant edge on easy tasks, removing the need to do extra stuff. Just as with imps really easy tasks just go `poof' when you announce the appropriate action.
If you use the same mechanic wouldn't that lend itself to accruing Wounds against the task in an unappealing "I roll diplomacy. I roll it nine times." kind of way?
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Post by Username17 »

Caliborn wrote:
CatharzGodfoot wrote:How's about extending the idea of combat advantage number to all tests, and unrenaming it to Edge?

Various actions can increase your Edge towards any difficult task, eventually allowing you to pull out your diplomatic, artistic, or acrobatic `finishing move'? You start out with a significant edge on easy tasks, removing the need to do extra stuff. Just as with imps really easy tasks just go `poof' when you announce the appropriate action.
If you use the same mechanic wouldn't that lend itself to accruing Wounds against the task in an unappealing "I roll diplomacy. I roll it nine times." kind of way?
If the mechanic were offered with a slight twist, that such additional preparations merely provided a D&D style named bonus and your final attack was use-it-or-lose-it, then it wouldn't.

The example in this case would be Climbing the Mountain. You get a single Climb Check. But if the Climb Check doesn't look good enough to you, you can put out other stuff, such as Logistics and Research to produce a set of bonuses until the Climb check does look good enough to you.

For this to work, the final check would want to be on 3d6 I think.

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Post by NoDot »

FrankTrollman wrote:For this to work, the final check would want to be on 3d6 I think.

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Remind me why we even have to-hit rolls and are not collapsing them with damage/CAN?
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Post by Username17 »

NoDot wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:For this to work, the final check would want to be on 3d6 I think.

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Remind me why we even have to-hit rolls and are not collapsing them with damage/CAN?
Make tactical choices matter.
  • Since your to-hit chance varies based on conditions rather than personal awesomeness, you are never confronted with not giving a damn about positional advantage. Tactical position matters at all levels.
  • Since your to-hit chance varies based on the defenses you target (Tenacity vs. Willpower, for example), you are encouraged to use tactically appropriate weapons against foes of all power levels.
So regardless of whether you are fighting mooks or titans, your tactical position and attack choices matter. That's good.

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Post by NoDot »

FrankTrollman wrote:
  • Since your to-hit chance varies based on conditions rather than personal awesomeness, you are never confronted with not giving a damn about positional advantage. Tactical position matters at all levels.
Temporary CAN bonus.
  • Since your to-hit chance varies based on the defenses you target (Tenacity vs. Willpower, for example), you are encouraged to use tactically appropriate weapons against foes of all power levels.
As I think we were adding stats to damage too, I don't see how this effects anything.

(A quick peek on the wiki says otherwise for that last one, but I don't see the difference here right now. Maybe I'm missing something.)
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Post by Username17 »

Imagine for the moment that you are presented with various available attacks and you know that you will be allowed to add your attribute modifier to the to-hit roll. This means that of the many attacks in the game that your character could know, you only will end up bothering to learn ones that get bonuses from your biggest attributes. This forces divergence between characters.

Now imagine for the moment that each of your attacks has its to-hit bonus modified by an attribute of the target. This means that you are best off selecting one attack to kill a sprite and another to kill a mantis girl. This causes in-combat tactical choices and intelligence on enemies to matter.

---

Now these could certainly be folded into the damage roll. Since damage results include "no damage" it is entirely possible to go the White Wolf route and just not even have a separate to-hit and damage test. But that has a couple of pit falls. The first and most obvious one is the deer rifle/rocket launcher problem. But of equal if not greater concern is the difficulty of the "five flavor soup" - that the more things you add to a single die roll the less you can see the effects of any particular thing you do.

The advantage of a d20 is that you know ahead of time what effect a modifier will have and can plan accordingly. That makes it a good place to hand out positional advantage numbers and the like.

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Post by SphereOfFeetMan »

FrankTrollman wrote:Now imagine for the moment that each of your attacks has its to-hit bonus modified by an attribute of the target. This means that you are best off selecting one attack to kill a sprite and another to kill a mantis girl. This causes in-combat tactical choices and intelligence on enemies to matter.
Meh. That isn't very interesting. That's just like 3.x where you know fat monsters have good fort saves, so you target their will save. Or you know not to target the Rogue with a Reflex save.

That's fine as a balance point. It shouldn't be considered to be the primary or even secondary point for 'in-combat tactical choices.' Interesting tactical choices are stuff like: varied movement speeds, battlefield control, threat ranges, etc.
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Post by virgil »

You may think tactical choices are just that, but I think choosing which attack based on the defenses of the target matter as well. Also, with 3.X, you had such a plethora of choices where what save was allowed didn't horribly matter (either because it forced it every round, or there wasn't one to begin with), so it was still a matter of not caring a whole lot about your opponent's defenses.
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Post by SphereOfFeetMan »

virgileso wrote:You may think tactical choices are just that, but I think choosing which attack based on the defenses of the target matter as well.
Sure, they matter. But when attacking a defense, its more interesting when its something like ranged vs slow melee, or AoE's vs glass cannons.

I just don't want to see the primary tactical choices in combat to be choosing which "color" of your damage is best able to hit an enemy units defense.
virgileso wrote:Also, with 3.X, you had such a plethora of choices where what save was allowed didn't horribly matter (either because it forced it every round, or there wasn't one to begin with), so it was still a matter of not caring a whole lot about your opponent's defenses.
As far as 3.x Fort/Ref/Will is concerned, that is half-true. Enchanters are discriminating in choosing their targets, as are Death Mages with their SoD's. Walls don't care about saves. It's pretty varied.
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Post by Psychic Robot »

Mearls actually commented about skill challenges being borked:
Hey all,

We had a meeting about skill challenges on (cue creepy music) Friday the 13th. We came to a few conclusions on what happened, what our intent is, and what we're going to do about it.

The system went through several permutations as we worked on it, and I think there are some disconnects between the final text, our intentions, and how playtesters and internal designers use skill challenges.

So, we've been listening and reading threads and figuring out some stuff on our end.
That is to say:
We fucked up the math. Whoops. I guess we can publish errata or something.
Last edited by Psychic Robot on Sat Jun 14, 2008 11:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by RandomCasualty2 »

The problem with having a color based defense scheme is that basically it just becomes a matter of memorizing everyone's color and attacking accordingly. It's not so much tactical as it is just a matter of knowing your enemy.
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Post by CatharzGodfoot »

RandomCasualty2 wrote:The problem with having a color based defense scheme is that basically it just becomes a matter of memorizing everyone's color and attacking accordingly. It's not so much tactical as it is just a matter of knowing your enemy.
Still, I like the idea of agile characters being harder to trip and strong character harder to bullrush. If perceptive characters are harder to fool, you gain realism even if it's just 'knowing your enemy'.
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Post by Psychic Robot »

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Still, I like the idea of agile characters being harder to trip and strong character harder to bullrush. If perceptive characters are harder to fool, you gain realism even if it's just 'knowing your enemy'.
You're talking about realism in a game where there are dragons, old men that shoot fireballs, characters that can survive 200 foot falls onto rusty barbed-wire, etc.!?!

OMG HOW DARE YOU!1!1!
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Post by Voss »

Psychic Robot wrote:Mearls actually commented about skill challenges being borked:
Hey all,

We had a meeting about skill challenges on (cue creepy music) Friday the 13th. We came to a few conclusions on what happened, what our intent is, and what we're going to do about it.

The system went through several permutations as we worked on it, and I think there are some disconnects between the final text, our intentions, and how playtesters and internal designers use skill challenges.

So, we've been listening and reading threads and figuring out some stuff on our end.
That is to say:
We fucked up the math. Whoops. I guess we can publish errata or something.
That is so unbelievably awesome. Its also worth noting that this was going to be the 'knock-your-socks-off' social combat system that they briefly tried to pimp, but didn't actually unveil until very, very late in the preview schedule (to a lot of people going, 'Um... wtf?').

Yes indeed, Mikey, you make fail.

And what the hell, anyway? Did they seriously hope that no one would notice? That all the char-op people would just leave, and no one would sit down and crunch the numbers just because they didn't?
Last edited by Voss on Sun Jun 15, 2008 4:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Jerry »

Voss wrote:And what the hell, anyway? Did they seriously hope that no one would notice? That all the char-op people would just leave, and no one would sit down and crunch the numbers just because they didn't?
Bah-humbug! Who needs numbers when you can "Role-play?"
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Post by Talisman »

Jerry wrote:Bah-humbug! Who needs numbers when you can "Role-play?"
[silently raises his hand]

I love the fact that 4e has been out for a WEEK and the LEAD DEVELOPER is already publicly making excuses for its suckery.

Oh, and I think you mis-translated Mearl's quote, Psychic Robot. Here's my translation:
Mike Mearls wrote:We made a great skill system, but the writers screwed it up and the players are poking holes in it for no good reason. This isn't out fault; it's the fault of the playtesters. See, we're listening to you; now shut up.
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Post by CatharzGodfoot »

His hands were probably tied through design be committee. It's the only explanation I can come up with and still keep my faith in humanity.
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Post by RandomCasualty2 »

CatharzGodfoot wrote:His hands were probably tied through design be committee. It's the only explanation I can come up with and still keep my faith in humanity.
Yeah, design by committee seriously sucks. It means that basically you're going to have to try to bend your system to try to make everyone happy, so that stuff that you really didn't want in the first place ends up in there. So like even if your system is aweosme, at some point you've got some fucktard on the committee who ends up not understanding and making some ill-conceived addition that ends up breaking it.
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Post by CatharzGodfoot »

RandomCasualty2 wrote:
CatharzGodfoot wrote:His hands were probably tied through design be committee. It's the only explanation I can come up with and still keep my faith in humanity.
Yeah, design by committee seriously sucks. It means that basically you're going to have to try to bend your system to try to make everyone happy, so that stuff that you really didn't want in the first place ends up in there. So like even if your system is aweosme, at some point you've got some fucktard on the committee who ends up not understanding and making some ill-conceived addition that ends up breaking it.
Actually, my view is that design by committee fucks things up by taking too long to come up with a system. When expediency is needed, you either want a tight group that works very well together or a single leader who is capable of keeping tabs on everything.

Large groups of people tend to argue about inconsequential things for long periods of time. Also, if a single person (or subgroup) doesn't feel they have enough power there's a good chance that they'll go off and do their own thing. Which seriously sucks.
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Post by Amra »

I'm with Frank. I've been using an informal version of his approach since the start of 3e. When faced with a particular challenge or problem, my players reach for their skills; something like the Mechanical Hydra is a great example; the fella who *always* includes Knowledge [engineering] would ask me if he could figure out how it works, the lass who is always trying to see if her square peg is round after all would ask whether she could use her Heal skill to work out the creature's joint articulation and thus determine how to flummox it, and so on.

For complex tasks, having three or four (or even more) sets of skills that *could* be used to solve it - and having the players talk me into applying still others! - has always been part of the charm. It also allows for greater teamwork, and prevents the idiotic scenario of your adventure crashing to a halt because nobody in your group invested in the one skill you've decided needs to be applied to a given situation.

I've always let players aid each other with *different* skills as well (and I believe this actually turned up as guidance for DMs in one book or another). Perhaps the Diplomacy check to get the merchant to disclose the real identity of his contact is easier if there's some badass in the corner glowering at him in an Intimidating way. Perhaps Disabling the pit trap is easier if someone with a Knowledge of Engineering can tell you which way the lid is structurally most likely to swing.

All of this is good, but I freely admit that it relies entirely on having a cooperative DM who's up for creative thinking and isn't an asshole about people thinking their way around things. It is, in short, arbitrary.

However, it's better than a system where things can't be attempted, or whereby the same things get harder the better you are at them so you end up not excelling at anything. That just blows goats.
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Post by Voss »

RandomCasualty2 wrote:
CatharzGodfoot wrote:His hands were probably tied through design be committee. It's the only explanation I can come up with and still keep my faith in humanity.
Yeah, design by committee seriously sucks. It means that basically you're going to have to try to bend your system to try to make everyone happy, so that stuff that you really didn't want in the first place ends up in there. So like even if your system is aweosme, at some point you've got some fucktard on the committee who ends up not understanding and making some ill-conceived addition that ends up breaking it.
Still no excuse for basic conceptual errors that are obvious upon reading it once.

There is no way they didn't know they were shoveling a pile of shit here. If not with the whole game, then at least with the skill challenges. Its painfully obvious how the numbers play out- this wasn't OK, and no excuses a week after the street date are going to get them out of the fact that this was fucked up when it went to the printers almost 3 months ago.

(Sadly, what will get them out of this is the fact that some people will suck any cock presented to them... even if its dripping blood out of pus-covered sores).
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Post by Bigode »

Voss wrote:(Sadly, what will get them out of this is the fact that some people will suck any cock presented to them... even if its dripping blood out of pus-covered sores).
Any cock with the right brand name.
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