Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 vman3force Jun 03, 2009 23:59:44	This is going to be a pretty long post, just so you know... I'm starting a home brew heavy campaign soon, and one of the things i wanted to address in my rule tinkering is the fact that the rules make it all too easy for PC's (and DM's) to forgo doing any brain work themselves. one problem, as i see it, is the way skill checks work. they give you a neat little number which you are supposed to throw at any non combat challenge you encounter. looking for secret doors, talking to someone, researching clues - it turns anything and everything that could be an opportunity for players to stretch their creative muscles into a randomly generated outcome. lets look at a pit trap for instance: as the rules stand now, its a perception check to spot, a theivery check to disable. it's simple, easy to remember, easy to execute, and dead boring. traps are supposed to represent a challenge for the players to overcome, and with these rules the only challenge is rolling above some number. its so formulaic. Another example is diplomacy, intimidation, bluff, streetwise - anything communication oriented. there are basically three ways to use these skills. 1) just roll for diplomacy. this requires no thought at all. "I roll diplomacy to get him to lower the price. an 18." Oh, how tactful of you. 2) just role play. this seems preferable, however it's just a big middle finger to the person who rolled up a half elf bard with a 20 in charisma and training in diplomacy. 3) sort of a blend of the two: make the players role play, but then after they give a rousing speech make them roll a skill check just to see if all that effort was worth it. "Great speech bob, but with a paltry 5 for a roll your not convincing anyone." This method is superfluous, and by far the worst. Hopefully you can understand where im coming from when i state that the skill system needs some work, at least for the type of adventures i want to run. So i gave it some thought and decided to rework it as follows: There are now two groups of skills, which work in slightly different ways mechanically. These groups are Active Skills and Passive Skills. Active Skills are skills that encompass actions whose chances of succeeding or failing are based entirely on in game factors: the character's skill (represented by the skill bonus), external circumstances (represented by bonuses or penalties) and chance (the D20). Active skills work exactly the same as before; roll to see if you succeed. Passive Skills are skills that emcompass actions whose chances of succeeding are partially on the character's shoulders and partially on the Player's. For passive skills, the number indexed on the skill list acts as a representation of the implied bonus the player would have, if he or she actually had the training and experiences of the character. There are three types of passive skills - communication (Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, and Streetwise); Knowledge (Arcana, Dungeoneering, Nature, and Religion); and sensory (Perception and Insight). First we'll look at how to treat communication. If Bob were to try to make a diplomatic persuasion to lower the asking price for a shield, he (the player) would do his best to convince the merchant via role play. the DM would then judge how convincing it was (possibly, but not necessarily by using a scale of one to twenty; this depends if you want to stick with concrete numbers), and would also take into consideration that Bob's character was trained in diplomacy. He would then make the judgment call that with the training under his belt, bob's speech was convincing enough to succeed. Knowledge skills work a little differently, in that the skill bonus represents how much accumulated knowledge a character has on any given subject. When a player asks for information about a certain type of monster, the DM looks at their bonus. There is no roll involved to see if the wizard suddenly had a memory fart and cant remember the first thing about what a certain monster does - the character either knows it or he dosen't (if you want to stick to concrete numbers, just assume they take ten every time and adjust knowledge DC's accordingly). The DM should raise or lower the DC depending on how specific the information the player is asking for is. Finally, sensory checks. These are halfway working already - passive perception and insight work fine. however, instead of outright telling them about a trap that they might notice, or a lie that they detect, you should give them descriptive clues. If their passive perception is enough to notice the pit trap, mention that they notice the floor in the room looks irregular, and then make them experiment to find more clues pointing to traps. They might notice a pause in the nobles speech, but don't give away the fact that he's bluffing them. make them work for it. And of course, it they persue the bait and look in the right places, dont hesitate to give them any new information: if they specifically state that they are searching a certain wall segment, most likely they are going to find the secret door (that is, if you deem their perception bonus high enough to warrant it.) Some skills fall under both passive and active; this is because 4E's skills gather under one umbrella similarly themed sub skills. it is simple to address this issue - when a skill, lets say arcana, is used to perform a ritual, it is active. when its used to remember information about some magic topic, it is passive. Here is a list of the skills, along with their new categorization. ('A' denotes an active skill, 'P' a passive, and 'A/P' a skill that fits into both.) A Acrobatics A/P Arcana A Athletics P Bluff P Diplomacy A/P Dungeoneering A Endurance A Heal P History P Insight P Intimidate A/P Nature P Perception A/P Religion A Stealth P Streetwise A Thievery so what do you think? would you change anything? how does it compare to the RAW?
#2 wpgdave Jun 04, 2009 9:59:54	Not a bad idea. Statistically, it works out to basically the same thing as rolling. If your players like the idea then use it. Personally, I've found that my players really like rolling dice. Sometimes they jump the gun by rolling a skill check and telling me the result before I've even asked them to roll anything ("Okay, you rolled 24... but why, and with what skill?"). If your players really like rolling for things they might not like you taking away these opportunities by making more checks passive. The "#3" method you mentioned (role-play and then roll) is only "by far the worst" if not handled properly. If a player's roll doesn't match his role-playing, going strickly by the roll is not the answer! If Bob makes a bad speech and rolls poorly, there's no problem, but what do you do when a great speech is followed by a 5? Tell Bob that some of the crowd, while captivated, seems to be waiting for something more. After he adds something to the end of his speech, have him roll again! If he rolls poorly again, tell him that his speech failed to maintain its fantastic tempo and fell short of the audience's expectations. This approach helps solve the problem you mentioned, and encourages more role-playing. However, allowing more than one re-roll will make the players feel like there's no point in rolling (since you won't let them fail), so don't overuse this. On the other side of the spectrum, if inadequate role-playing is followed by a great roll ("This bit of lint is actually your king, it sounds so stupid it has to be true... Bluff 22"), either a) shake your head and let the player succeed, b) give the NPC a large bonus based on how unconvincing the role-playing was (up to +20, as per the 3.5 rules), or c) suggest that the NPC needs a little more convincing, and allow the good roll after the player amends what they said. If your players are okay with not rolling for knowledge checks, I don't see any reason why not to do this (if you know their skill modifiers, then you're basically just choosing what each character knows). Since most players I've met prefer the "#3" method (with the approach I mentioned above), the only social skill that I would choose to make passive is Insight. I hate it when players roll Insight because it's rarely satisfying. Either I say, "As far as you can tell, he isn't lying," which doesn't usually dispel anyone's suspicions, or I tell them that they "get the feeling that" such-and-such is the case. Using passive Insight seems like a good idea to me, as long as the DM doesn't forget when a particular PC should be getting a "hunch".
#3 pluisjen Jun 06, 2009 5:34:25	For the social stuff, I used to substitute the players talk for the die-roll; so if the person gave a convincing talk I'd just assign a number to it, and assumed he rolled that (convincing talk; I'll give that a 14) Of course it had to be compensated a bit for the player (my girlfriend for example is horrible at these social skills, since she's a bit shy) so it just has to be a good talk for that player; if it's above average for them, give them 12-16, if you hadn't thought it possible they'd pull something like that off, give them a 20. It gives everyone a fair chance of getting a good score without giving an advantage to those players that are good at social interaction, still gives players and advantage for taking Diplomacy as a skill or having high Charisma, and is a lot more fun then just rolling for it while also removing the issues with 'good talk, low roll'.
#4 bone_naga Jun 06, 2009 8:12:48	This may work for your group, and its not a bad idea. Just keep in mind that the entire reason that you can substitute social skills checks for actual roleplay is that not all roleplayers are created equal. Someone might feel that just because they have a stutter or that they only have half of your vocabulary doesn't mean that their CHA 18 character shouldn't be able to say something eloquent and meaningful. Again, this might not affect your group right now, but just keep it in mind if you get new players, especially ones who are new to roleplaying in general. Personally, I just ask the player to tell me what his character wants to do, and based on what he tells me and how elaborate it is, and how realistic it is that the guy would listen to this, he might not roll at all (auto fail or auto success) or I might tell him to roll a skill check. As for knowledge skills, I use them in a similar manner for things that I think someone trained in the skill should just know. For other things that are less common knowledge, then I make them roll.
#5 aaddern Jun 08, 2009 12:10:17	I find for my group, they like to roll dice. (but then , i sometimes find them rolling dice when we are not playing just for fun). I also find that roleplaying out Social encounters is important to them, to character development , and to me. What i have done in the past is 1 of 2 methods. 1 - Roll and then Roleplay . basicly they make the roll, I will ask them to role play out there roll; (bad rolls is a chance for them to role play a bad speech , good ones for a good speech ) .. this works well for more experienced role players. the other option i have toyed with is kind of the opposite .. role play then roll. In this scenario though , you would end up with what all of you are talking about sometimes (bad role plays with good roles or good role plays with bad roles). so i tend to modify the role with a bonus / disadvantage of up to +/- 5 depending on how good or bad the speech was. I do , like someone mentioned find this best , when i take into account there real skill in roleplaying , and base it off of the effort of what I expect. This method is the most important to me / used the most when I have players wanted to trick / bluff someone ; as i want them to come up with the lie. worse lies should be less likely to work. im not sure this has much to do with the original post , or if at this point these ideas where my own or i got them from somewhere sometime back. but i thought they might benefit someone reading this. ---- As for passive knowledge ; i have found scene we started playing 4E that i have used that, it starts the combat encounters a lot quicker, however I will often allow an active knowledge on request if a player wants to see if they know more.
#6 AbdulAlhazred Jun 09, 2009 15:37:36	Hmmmm. While I don't know if I agree with all of the OP's specific opinions about skill rolls in various contexts the main thrust of what he's saying is good. The real problem is that this is a fundamental issue with ALL roleplaying systems. There IS no skill system, or lack thereof, which can address it completely all of the time. The character is not the player. For any given thing the player wants to do the character's ability to do that thing WILL differ from the player's ability to do that same thing. An 18 CHA rogue can probably arouse people to do almost any ridiculous thing. The player is highly unlikely to be so stirring and articulate. A lot of players can't even simulate that. Should they simply not ever play characters with high charisma (or always fail miserably if they do so). Obviously not. None of this is an issue with anything non-social since whatever roleplay happens in the course of it is not going to change the outcome. The player specifies what they want and some sort of game mechanic tells you if it succeeds or fails (involving dice or not). On the other hand what about those pesky social skills? They CAN be handled the same way, mechanically that makes the most sense. The only reason it isn't acceptable is simply because players WANT to roleplay. This isn't a problem of the 4e rules system, it is just a part of the fundamental nature of the game. Some systems "fix" this by having no defined social (or sometimes even mental) attributes defined for the character. The problem with that is you can't pretend to be someone more charming than you actually are, nor think any smarter than you can actually think. It is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The solutions people have mentioned above all plaster over the problem, but it can't be fixed. Personally I prefer to allow people to roll or to roleplay. If they choose to simply roll a diplomacy roll, then they're relying on their character to come up with a good way of delivering the message. They're still going to need to tell us the content of what they said, but the words are the character's. It is a bit gamey, but in many cases it is the best course of action. Especially good when you have fairly trivial interactions to deal with. The most fun way I've found is to just let the player act out their interaction and estimate the likelyhood that it would work on a give NPC. A bad speech might still work, but a better one will provide a bonus and a horrible one will usually give no bonus at all. Then a die can be rolled if needed to account for imponderable factors. As for Knowledge and perception type checks, I think they are fine as die rolls. The game is only an approximation of the game world. Let the dice stand in for all the little factors that nobody can possibly keep track of, like how well you slept last night and how much the torch happened to be flickering while you searched the wall, just like it stands in for all the little nuances of combat that can't be role played either.
#7 Shamanstarr Jun 14, 2009 11:14:03	In a social interaction skill type challenge, I have My players tell Me what they are trying to do, roleplay convincing people of something, a speech, whathave you, then, I take into account the basic flavor of what they attempt, the skills of the character involved, any situational modifiers, and then I let them make a skill roll of My choice based on that outcome, possibly resetting the DC to compensate for the situation as well. The players might have been trying for a Diplomacy check, but I might rule it's more an Intimidate check given their methods. Roleplaying is about playing the game, not rolling dice, however, as has been said, the players are not their characters, and generally there is a statistical difference between the two. Alot of gamers, I know, hard to believe, are not very socially confortable. The bulk of their social engagements are gaming sessions, not dates and plays and such. This being the case, there is very real issue with keeping in game in-game and out of game out-of-game. That's why I say let them come up with how they plan to do it, but not the specific skills, and you the DM come up with which skill is appropriate and adjust the DC. Seuss