Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 lionlemur Apr 03, 2010 20:53:59	Let me start by saying that I've played pretty much every edition since the boxed set I got in 1979 for Christmas.  That doesn't mean I'm a better DM than anyone else, just that I've experienced a lot of different editions.  I'm heavily into the RP and storytelling aspect of the game and frankly my math skills stink, so I don't have the energy or type of brain to be a power gamer.  On the other hand I am very sneaky and great at figuring out how to beat a Wish spell, or how to capitalize on some small aspect of a characters background story and turn that into a campaign point.  Having rejoined the game recently after a few year break while I acquired a "Life," I picked up the 4e rulebooks and was immediately dismayed with skill challenges.  To me, they feel like what could be great RP fodder sucked into the vaccum of dice rolls.  Now I think they're sometimes brilliant for social situations where the Duke is in a whiney mood so despite the fact that you've come up with a good plan and have outlined your idea to him (in RP, I hope) quite well, he's just not in the mood to hear or understand you. On the other hand, most of the other skill challenges I've read through, could  be so much more fun dealt with by great PC ideas and with a heck of a lot of RP along the way, instead of some dice rolls. How do you deal with skill challenges?  Do you like them or hate them?  What would you or do you change?  Please do illustrate with examples too!
#2 Neutronium_Dragon Apr 03, 2010 23:35:19	Above all else: pick up the DMG 2 and go through its chapter on skill challenges to get an idea of how they're really meant to work. The DMG 1 writeup was sorely lacking, and is often regarded as the one really weak point in the book.
#3 draenath Apr 04, 2010 0:37:36	I wrote this to you in another post before realising this one had been created: Some great roleplaying situations in my campaign have been created during skill challenges. My players don't just tell me what skill they wish to use and roll the dice. They describe in vivid detail how they use athletics to scale the wall and keep track of the BBEG they are shadowing or use Dungeoneering to create a viable battlestrategy to help the city that is undersiege bolster the walls with added support. I have seen the Bard seek out certain artisans and use either bluff/diplomacy to convince them in the construct of the city's defense wth dialogue and streetwise. Further role-playing branches off and i do not stop it just because it is in the middle of a skill challenge, we run, adapt and play with it. A skill challenge is not just a nature/stealth - whatever check... at least not in the games I play in.
#4 muppet1 Apr 04, 2010 5:41:34	I find skill challenges the biggest problem with 4e too.  If you are an experienced dm and your players are used to roleplaying I would be tempted to just scrap them completely and roleplay it instead.  The best of both worlds is to have the situation roleplayed and for you to be able to work out what dice you want them to roll as a result of it but this is very hard to do in practice and can seem a bit random. I have played in a wide range of different skill challenges with a number of DM's and they have ranged from we roleplay and the dice come naturally from it and it all works well, to we sit there desperately trying to think what skills we ought to be applying with the whole thing seeming really artificial. It can be worse if you either have players that switch off the second you aren't fighting anything or if you have a skill challenge where some characters feel useless.  Fighters in particular seem to fit in this group but that may just be the type of player that is generally the fighter. I have run only a few skill challenges as DM.  Some seem to work better than others.  I quite like the party vs the environment type or vs a trap type as it is normally obvious what is going on and there isn't much interaction with npcs.  The whole thing seems to break down when the skill challenge involves real roleplaying with NPCS unless it is a skill that is beyond me and most of the DM's I have seen.  My strategy now is to try to just roleplay the encounter and throw in the odd dice role when it seems relevent and again success at this is pretty variable. So to sum up skill challenges are good for negotiating things like tracking, hostile environments and traps etc and not great if used rigidly in my experience with NPCS in general e.g. the rulling council meetings, and just general talking to get information.  It is much better to have the PC's ask off their own bat things like do you know anything about this amulet? than have some roll determine the outcome.  But again in the amulet case if the PC's had access to a library a skill challenge might work out well.
#5 Psikerlord Apr 04, 2010 6:46:46	I started out a big fan of skill challenges but after playing through plenty as both a DM and player, I have now given them the flick. Our group gets more out of those kinds of scenario's by just RPing and the DM calling for skill checks as seems appropriate. Unlimited options, less prep time, more fun. I recommend staying clear of them. The original idea of getting all players involved in every situation was a noble one. It quickly got tossed when the math determined that dragging unskilled PCs into every situation = challenge failure. What's left of the SC system doesn't achieve any purpose you can't do better the old fashioned way.
#6 lionlemur Apr 04, 2010 11:36:47	Above all else: pick up the DMG 2 and go through its chapter on skill challenges to get an idea of how they're really meant to work. The DMG 1 writeup was sorely lacking, and is often regarded as the one really weak point in the book. Wow, thanks for pointing this out.  I actually did have the DMG2, but hadn't cracked it open yet, as I was still slogging through DMG1.  Suddenly I don't hate the concept of skill challenges as much anymore.  Instead I'm looking at them as a good way of adjucation when the party comes up with a wild plan.  Because I know that whatever *I* think might be the way the players would handle a situation when I'm making up a scenario, they nearly always come up with something out of left field, and often with something that sets me back just trying to figure out a fair way of dealing with it.  Now I can just let them set their plan into motion, figure out how the NPCs might react and set their wacky plan up as a skill challenge.   I hate saying "no, that won't work," and this is an excellent way to say, "yes," or at least "try it." I'm still a little perturbed with the math on the DCs.  For instance a "hard" challenge for a lvl 1-3 party is equivalent with a "moderate" challenge for a lvl 9+ party.  (And for the lvl 1-3s, they don't even have the benefit that leveling up will give to their skills.) But overall, I'm much happier with the DMG2 take on skill challenges.  I'm also very glad they've taken out the "make the DC harder if the players find a creative way to use a skill you didn't anticipate" thing.
#7 Neutronium_Dragon Apr 04, 2010 11:55:42	Keep in mind that skill DCs (whether they're part of a skill challenge or not) are rated easy/moderate/hard based on the sort of challenges that a character of that level should be facing. The plain brick wall is DC 10 (moderate) for a 1st level character. A moderate DC for a high level character might instead be DC 20, but that's because a high level character is expected to face the Bloodsoaked Cliffs of Doom as a climbing challenge, not a plain brick wall.
#8 talavar Apr 04, 2010 20:51:13	I just let my players do what they have always done and figure things out for themselves and I'll just ask for a roll when I feel they need one. After trying to make them interesting I finally decided to just give up on them all together. I do keep some of the sort of technical challenges with shutting down portals and such. I still go through them quickly though.
#9 oldguygaming Apr 04, 2010 20:52:42	I'm pretty much in the same boat. When I first heard about skill challenges, I wasn't excited about them and I guess ever since I've always just skipped over any mention of them. I really should take another look at them and try to be a bit more open-minded. It could be that I'm missing out on something really useful. My first impression, which I guess I still have, is that skill challenges were invented as a means of handling role-playing situations in groups where the members don't like to role-play. Since this is a problem in many groups, I figured it was a innovative way of solving the problem for those groups. But since my group is fine with role-playing, I assumed we didn't need it so I have never actually read through that section at all.
#10 draenath Apr 04, 2010 22:03:16	The beauty I found with skill challenges was that my group had 3 new members to D+D. They were embarrassed about role-play and never got into character much. I wasn't at the time using skill challenges much due to not fully understanding them (having glossed over the written parts and never having played a published adventure). I decided to start using them, the first in a combat situation which could have swung either way (the PC's were outsiders in a forest protected by fey folk)... it encouraged two of the quiet people to actually stand up and be noticed, as they attempted to bluff the Wood Woad's into allowing the PC's to pass. Since then, the party just get creative with skill challenges. They will attempt any skill they see useful. I try to say "YES" as often as possible, never restricting the required skills to pass the challenge. If the PC's can think up a logical and creative way to succeed using that skill that I never thought of, I am not going to say, "No, sorry Alerie, you can not use acrobatics to gracefully tumble and contort your body into an interprative dance about the beauty and grace of Corellon to convince the Fey Guardian that you and the party need to use their Fey Circle."
#11 palomon Apr 04, 2010 22:13:56	What I enjoy about skill challenges is that it is very similar to any roleplaying scenario, yet it adds in the statistics for the characters.  In this way, it combines the elements that keep combat balanced into social interactions (which are the elements of skill and knowledge in the stats and luck in the dice).  What I like about this is that it helps to eliminate meta-gaming.  Just because a character says their character is doing something doesn't mean that the character is going to succeed.  A fighter with plate armor can try to swim across the moat, but he will most likely run into trouble.  Likewise, the gnome wizard can try to kick down a prison door, but he most likely will only hurt himself.  And yes, I know that DMs have used skill checks in roleplaying scenarios long before skill challenges were even being dreamt up by the designers.  And yes, I and other DMs still use skill checks in roleplaying challenges.  But skill challenges are something slightly different, and they should be used as such.  If anyone wants to see some good uses of skill challenges, I'd recommend watching the "Robot Chicken Plays D&D" podcasts on the D&D site to see the master Chris Perkins make good use of them.
#12 Centauri Apr 05, 2010 13:14:02	I like skill challenges. I've heard them dismissed in favor of just roleplaying. What I don't see is how someone "roleplays" getting out of a collapsing structure, or chasing down a suspect, or dealing with a death trap. Of course roleplaying should still occur during those situations, and everyone at the table should be able to participate in the description of them, but unless the action is trivially easy at some point you have to determine if the character is capable of dealing with it by rolling a die. If you're experienced with those sorts of situations and have a feel for how many successful skill checks should mean victory and how many failures should mean defeat, then great. Me, I like having a framework for those numbers, and the DCs, and the amount of experience and treasure a challenge is worth. Really, it's the same for situations that truly can be reduced to just talking to each other. Maybe some DMs know what the DC should be, how to reflect that in the NPC's speech and actions, how many roles are appropriate before the PCs succeed or fail, and how much experience such an encounter is worth. Maybe I'll know all that someday. Until then, skill challenges are a very useful tool when I want to highlight the skills of the characters and the narrative and roleplaying abilities of the players.
#13 lionlemur Apr 05, 2010 13:25:39	What I enjoy about skill challenges is that it is very similar to any roleplaying scenario, yet it adds in the statistics for the characters.  In this way, it combines the elements that keep combat balanced into social interactions (which are the elements of skill and knowledge in the stats and luck in the dice).  What I like about this is that it helps to eliminate meta-gaming.  Just because a character says their character is doing something doesn't mean that the character is going to succeed.  A fighter with plate armor can try to swim across the moat, but he will most likely run into trouble.  Likewise, the gnome wizard can try to kick down a prison door, but he most likely will only hurt himself.  And yes, I know that DMs have used skill checks in roleplaying scenarios long before skill challenges were even being dreamt up by the designers.  And yes, I and other DMs still use skill checks in roleplaying challenges.  But skill challenges are something slightly different, and they should be used as such.  If anyone wants to see some good uses of skill challenges, I'd recommend watching the "Robot Chicken Plays D&D" podcasts on the D&D site to see the master Chris Perkins make good use of them. I don't have an I-pod.  Is it possible to watch a podcast without one?  If so, anyone have a clue how?
#14 palomon Apr 05, 2010 16:05:44	Actually, they made it really easy to access from the D&D website so that you can just watch it from your web browser.  I posted a link below that'll take you diffectly to the videos, or you can access them from the D&D home page.  Enjoy! www.wizards.com/dnd/Videos.aspx
#15 bone_naga Apr 06, 2010 11:30:21	The best advice on skill challenges is to look at them as guidelines rather than strict rules. All they are is a tool to serve your purposes. Variants I've seen or used: -Incremental Success: Each successful check grants a minor benefit (such as learning useful information during an investigation) to the PCs. Once either the max successes or 3 failures are reached, the challenge ends and the PCs have accomplished all they can at this junction. It also helps if the benefit from the success is tied to the skill that is used. You can do the same thing with incremental penalties for failure. -Sub-Challenges: There is a main SC with a series of sub-encounters, which can be more skill challenges, combat encounters, traps, puzzles, or really anything where you can define conditions for success or failure. Each sub-encounter counts as either a success of failure for the main SC. Great for sieges or extended military campaigns. -Non-skill Challenges: Use the basic structure of the skill challenge (X successes before Y failures), but without using skill checks to determine the successes/failures. Mike Mearls posts an example of this in the 4e Skill Challenges group here community.wizards.com/skill_challenges_4... -Partial Success/Failure: Even if the PCs don't succeed, their efforts might not be in vain. Maybe they gain some benefit if they hit at least half the required number of successes. Likewise, in delicate situations even a single failure might carry consequences, even if it is still better than failing the entire challenge. -Skill Tree: The list of available skills for the challenge starts out small, but each success opens up one or two other skills, which in turn may open even more skills (or at least different uses/descriptions for those skills) creating the feeling that the PCs are progressing through the challenge in a logical fashion. You can also require that regardless of the number of successes, the PCs unlock a certain tier of skills for the challenge to be complete. Tips from my own experiences: -Narrate the challenge. Roll the dice when appropriate based on the player's description of their actions, but it should feel like a roleplay session, not a dice rolling contest. -Be open to creative uses of skills or even powers, but don't let players abuse the system. -Limit uses of Aid Another and find ways to keep the players from just using a single skill throughout the entire SC. -Design and run the challenge in a way that makes sense for the situation at hand. This sounds like common sense but people come up with crazy ideas and get wrapped around the rules. The rules are guidelines. The SC is just another way for the PCs to interact with the world. If that interaction doesn't make sense, it breaks their immersion in that world. -Not everything that requires multiple skill checks is a skill challenge. Sometimes its ok for something to just be a handful of individual checks rather than a unified challenge to overcome. -PCs should succeed most of the time (just like with combat), but have plans in case they fail, aren't interested, or try to circumvent it.
#16 brassbaboon Apr 06, 2010 13:07:21	Skill challenges = "meh" to me. I find them arbitrary and counter-intuitive as they are generally implemented. The only significant skill challenge our DM put our party through was a total bust in every way possible. It was anti-role playing, it was arbitrary and restricted improvisation, it was mathematically unlikely that we would succeed (five people rolling success on any DC has a near-certain chance of failure) and the consequences were so dire (loss of three healign surges each) that it led to the only realistic threat of a TPK in our entire campaign history. I don't use them in my campaigns, I do what I've always done which is improvisational role play.
#17 sobchak Apr 06, 2010 13:12:39	Our DM is old school so we do not use skill challenges very often. In fact, through six levels of play, there has only been one, but it was good. So we are on our first patrol in a city beset by siege and intirgue.  The alchemist's shop is on fire.  He is very important to our plot, so we rush to put out the fire.  Pretty simple right?  We are commandering carts, and barrels of water, and getting on the roof where the fire has been set by flaming arrows. After a few rounds raiders enter the map and attack us. There was goblin hexer and a soldier of some sort, a few minions, and a 2 brutes.  So things got a lot more intersting as we tried to manage both the skill challenge and the battle.  A confused, beat the clock scenario unfolded.  We utterly failed the skill challenge, but won the battle.  It was very memorable. The alchemist's shop exploded and two PC's were launched off the roof.  When it comes to social skills we tend to just RP.  You can't RP physical skills.  They need a mechanic for success.  I'm not so sure about social skills.
#18 brassbaboon Apr 06, 2010 13:31:57	"You can't RP physical skills." Yes you can. This goes back to the differing definitions people have of "role playing." Too many people think "role playing" is just "improvisational acting." It's not. Role playing is also having your character act in accordance with their stated skills and abilities. You roll the dice to determine the outcome of mechanics based role playing, and the result is dependent on the player's actual abilities. If your character is trying to do something that they don't have the mechanical ability to pull off reliably, then the mechanics of role playing will determine the outcome. Having the right skills to pull off your efforts is part of the overall process of creating unique characters and playing them. My problem with skill challenges is that it's just too arbitrary. "Succeed in three before you fail in two" or whatever the rule is. That's when you get DMs pressing to come up with something to force into the situation just so they can make the mechanics work. That's not to say that a skill challenge has to necessarily be bad, I'm sure a very skilled DM can construct a very enjoyable skill challenge according to the rules, but I just don't see the point when that same DM can approach the same "problem" with a totally unforced set of challenges for the party to overcome, and determine what constitutes success according to their own understanding of the way their own world works. I view the skill challenge rules as a guide not a mandate.
#19 rian_king Apr 06, 2010 13:34:25	People are making skill challenges to mechanical.  What i believe the skill challenge is a way to give some structure to role-playing situations. You shouldn't change how your role-play(players and dm).  Players have the skills and get a chance to use them.  What DMs have to remember is not all players like to role-play.  A skill challenge is for these players also.  It lets the role-players role-play, and the nonrole-players get in on the action. Don't forget the skill challenge is not just for social encounters.  A skill challenge is also used for say climbing a mountain, sneaking into the Barron's castle, or chasing a villain as he tries to leave town. The DM2 has a great skill challenge where the players are racing down the river to catch a villain Short version don't limit skill challenges to social encounters
#20 sobchak Apr 06, 2010 13:45:32	"You can't RP physical skills." Yes you can. This goes back to the differing definitions people have of "role playing." Too many people think "role playing" is just "improvisational acting." It's not. Role playing is also having your character act in accordance with their stated skills and abilities. You roll the dice to determine the outcome of mechanics based role playing, and the result is dependent on the player's actual abilities. If your character is trying to do something that they don't have the mechanical ability to pull off reliably, then the mechanics of role playing will determine the outcome. Having the right skills to pull off your efforts is part of the overall process of creating unique characters and playing them. My problem with skill challenges is that it's just too arbitrary. "Succeed in three before you fail in two" or whatever the rule is. That's when you get DMs pressing to come up with something to force into the situation just so they can make the mechanics work. That's not to say that a skill challenge has to necessarily be bad, I'm sure a very skilled DM can construct a very enjoyable skill challenge according to the rules, but I just don't see the point when that same DM can approach the same "problem" with a totally unforced set of challenges for the party to overcome, and determine what constitutes success according to their own understanding of the way their own world works. I view the skill challenge rules as a guide not a mandate. You are correct that you can RP physical skills.  But for our group, when we RP a social encounter with one our DM's NPC's, things get very heated.  I can describe climbing a wall, or tight rope walking across a chasm, but I am much more in the moment when interacting with an NPC.  I'm way off topic here, and thinking far outside the bounds of skill challenges.
#21 Centauri Apr 06, 2010 14:41:56	"You can't RP physical skills." Yes you can. This goes back to the differing definitions people have of "role playing." Too many people think "role playing" is just "improvisational acting." It's not. Role playing is also having your character act in accordance with their stated skills and abilities. You roll the dice to determine the outcome of mechanics based role playing, and the result is dependent on the player's actual abilities. I don't think "roleplaying" only means "noncombat" or "conversation" but usually when someone refers to "roleplaying" it's as the opposite of "rollplaying" or rolling of the dice. Yes, one can make choices that one's character would make, even speak with or describe the amount of diplomacy one thinks one's character would use, but when one rolls the die, one's (presumably) giving some weight to the outcome of that die, and not just letting the situation stand on the words and descriptions. Hopefully, the result of the die will be used to further enhance the depth of the scene, be it combat, a negotation, or whathaveyou, but the roll itself says "It's not all about the roleplaying." That's why it's not clear (to me at least) what it means to "roleplay" a skill challenge that involves more than conversation. Not that anyone is exactly suggesting that one do that. My point is just that even if one just talks out talky encounters, skill challenges are still useful for other types of scenes. My problem with skill challenges is that it's just too arbitrary. "Succeed in three before you fail in two" or whatever the rule is. That's when you get DMs pressing to come up with something to force into the situation just so they can make the mechanics work. Sure, but it's a refreshing bit of structure over DMs who will just have a group keep rolling until they get the outcome the DM (consciously or unconsciously) desires. And anyway, even if you stick with the success/failure ratios, you have complete freedom over every other aspect of the challenge. Heck, I've seen skill challenges in which failure in a certain skill counts as two failures. Why not make it three? Why not make it four and start them off with a failure in the next challenge. Still arbitrary, but at least it's in the DM's hands. So, DM's who crave control can still have it. DMs who like to relinquish some control in favor of seeing where the players and the game might end up can stick with the ratios as written. That's not to say that a skill challenge has to necessarily be bad, I'm sure a very skilled DM can construct a very enjoyable skill challenge according to the rules, but I just don't see the point when that same DM can approach the same "problem" with a totally unforced set of challenges for the party to overcome, and determine what constitutes success according to their own understanding of the way their own world works. I view the skill challenge rules as a guide not a mandate. First of all, I agree with your last statement. At their core, all the skill challenge rules are saying is that it's good to have a framework for dealing with complicated non-combat escapades on which the players might embark, so that you can create appropriately difficult and appropriately rewarding challenges (and combinations of challenges), and, oh, here's one such system that you might like to use. I don't consider skill challenges "forced" so I'm not sure what you mean by that, but I don't think your assumption is valid. A DM who can make an enjoyable skill challenge might not necessarily make a more free-form challenge as enjoyable, any more than he could come up with a fair and challenging combat without the framework of the combat rules. And the "according to their own understanding of the way their own world works" line I find very creepy. Talk about arbitrary.
#22 brassbaboon Apr 06, 2010 15:16:54	You are correct that you can RP physical skills.  But for our group, when we RP a social encounter with one our DM's NPC's, things get very heated.  I can describe climbing a wall, or tight rope walking across a chasm, but I am much more in the moment when interacting with an NPC.  I'm way off topic here, and thinking far outside the bounds of skill challenges.  Well, I'll pursue it just one more level. There is a huge disagreement in the "RPG" world about what role playing is. I see it all the time in casual comments on even barely tangentially related items. Based on many of the comments I've seen, I believe that there needs to be some communication of the difference between "role" and "roll" playing. Both have their place, and if done properly both constitute "role playing" as it was and always has been intended to be in D&D, going all the way back to the first boxed version. In fact, I am convinced that it was a major goal of the "skill challenge" concept to help DMs understand how role and roll playing interact. They just sort of failed pretty miserably in the execution of that. Here is my take, for what it is worth. Improvisational acting in D&D is one of the most fun and engaging aspects of the game. However, just like game mechanics can be abused, so can improvisational acting. Improvisational acting should be performed within the character's mechanical definitions. When the player of a half-orc barbarian with a charisma of 8 "role plays" a complex attempt to bluff or convince an NPC to do something, that is every bit as much of an abuse of improvisational acting as if the player of the party wizard with a strength of 8 "role plays" ripping the cage door off of a cage. Players should know their character's strengths and weaknesses and their role play should be based upon their character's defined abilities. And when there is a need to resolve any "conflict" that's when the "roll play" comes in. When a player uses their own acting skills or inborn charisma to perform something in game, instead of their character's abilities, that is exactly the same thing as if a player uses their own physical strength to perform something in game. Everyone recognizes the absurdity of "I can lift this, so my character with strength 6 ought to be able to" and yet I routinely see and hear about players demanding that their 8 charisma dwarf should be able to convince the pretty barmaid to tell them a secret because they "role played it out." Skill challenges are a way of putting some mechanics around the concept of having a player's character perform in game according to their actual defined mechanical abilities, as opposed to the (excellent or poor) improvisational acting abilities of the player. Now, good DMs have been doing this for years, so it's not a new concept. But plenty of D&D players to this day insist that they can "role play" what they want, and to "roll play" the result is some sort of violation of the sacred "role playing" contract. It is no such thing. It is ensuring that your character accomplishes in game what your character is mechanically capable of accomplishing in game, just exactly the same as rolling an attack or making a saving throw. I really do not understand why people have such a hard time understanding this.
#23 sobchak Apr 06, 2010 21:19:50	This is a great post Brassbaboon.  I do struggle with the limitations in regard to social skills.  Would you never allow an 8 cha PC to convince the barmaid to talk, regardless of what the PC said?  For example, if you have low cha, it could be poor hygiene just as much as poor verbal skills depending on how the character is developed. Perhaps you talk too much rather than too little.  Perhaps you are too honest.  The physical skills are much more one dimensional, and easier to to rule in my mind.  The wizard with 8 str has to roll and roll high for a str feat.  A verbal encounter is a mixture of wisdom, int, and cha.  Perhaps I make it too complex, and perhaps our DM is too permissive.  You did a great job of clarifying your position.  I guess my position is that a verbal skill modifies what is said with a roll, while a physical skill is just a roll, and much more clear cut.  Sometimes that 8 cha orc PC can say something while RPing that is just too good to pass up, especially in a low stakes social encounter. Call it a moment of brilliance.  Or animal intelligence. I don't disagree with your general sense of how to rule these issues.  I just like a little flexibility for individual players to exercise their verbal skills from time to time.
#24 brassbaboon Apr 07, 2010 0:45:26	This is a great post Brassbaboon.  I do struggle with the limitations in regard to social skills.  Would you never allow an 8 cha PC to convince the barmaid to talk, regardless of what the PC said?  For example, if you have low cha, it could be poor hygiene just as much as poor verbal skills depending on how the character is developed. Perhaps you talk too much rather than too little.  Perhaps you are too honest.  The physical skills are much more one dimensional, and easier to to rule in my mind.  The wizard with 8 str has to roll and roll high for a str feat.  A verbal encounter is a mixture of wisdom, int, and cha.  Perhaps I make it too complex, and perhaps our DM is too permissive.  You did a great job of clarifying your position.  I guess my position is that a verbal skill modifies what is said with a roll, while a physical skill is just a roll, and much more clear cut.  Sometimes that 8 cha orc PC can say something while RPing that is just too good to pass up, especially in a low stakes social encounter. Call it a moment of brilliance.  Or animal intelligence. I don't disagree with your general sense of how to rule these issues.  I just like a little flexibility for individual players to exercise their verbal skills from time to time.  Of course your 8 charisma dwarf can try to charm the barmaid into talking, it's just going to require a heckuva skill check roll, and the barmaid's going to have to roll poorly for the attempt to succeed. If you can say that a verbal "conflict" is a mix of wisdom, intelligence and charisma, I can say a physical act is a mix of strength (raw power), constitution (endurance) and dexterity (timing and positioning). The point is that it's exactly the same thing in both cases. There is no reason that one category gets this benefit of the doubt while the other category does not. That just gives an advantage to players who are skilled with social skills in the real world while their character in the game world is not. It unfairly punishes people who lack such social skills in the real world while their character in the game world has god-like abilities. In those cases where a player performs absolutely brilliant role playing, the DM can add a modifier to the opposed roll check, just as they might add a modifier to the wizard's attempt to open a stuck gate because the wizard role plays a desperate rush of adrenaline. That is always the DM's perogative. But this is about core mechanics and how "role playing" (improvisational acting) can be abused. People like to abuse it. Abuse is even rewarded. And I'm not trying to tell people how to play the game, I'm just telling people how the game was designed to be played. If you want to play chess with the rule that pawns can move forward or backwards, more power to you, I don't care, but that's not how the game is designed. Plus it is my opinion that role playing your character within their actual limitations is not only more immersive, it is more challenging and therefore more rewarding when you pull it off. If that barmaid has some information your party truly needs to know, no decent DM is going to make it dependent on a dwarf with 8 charisma charming her to get it. To me this is a very fundamental philosophical point about role playing. A player has a responsibility to role play their characters accurately, and when they don't the irony is that they think they are doing great role playing, but the role they are playing is not the role of the character they are supposed to be playing. For example, I'm a fairly decent person with social skills. But if I were playing a charisma 8 dwarf trying to talk to a pretty barmaid, I'd role play it straight and hope for the best. I'd be tongue-tied, a little coarse and probably talk a little too loud, because that's my character. If somehow my roll ends up being successful, great, but regardless I'd come away secure in the knowledge that I had played my character honestly and sincerely, which is what true role playing is supposed to be all about.
#25 sobchak Apr 07, 2010 9:31:34	I feel like you are starting to argue with someone at points in your last post.  That's not my angle.  My post has obviously hit a sore spot.   I never said I was an improvisiational actor.  I am merely suggesting that the verbal dimension of the game has an added dimension of complexity that can be difficult to manage at times.  It is great that you have a firm grasp of how to handle these things.  I'm not interested in telling you how to play, what the intention of the designers is, the basic tenets of role-playing, or taking on a dismissive tone. In regard to pawns moving forward and backward, consider my move en passant. I'll check out so this thread can get back on topic.
#26 brassbaboon Apr 07, 2010 11:37:08	I fail to see how my post was "dismissive" or argumentative. You asked a question. I answered it. You don't like the answer, fine, but my post was not in any way intended to be combative. I answer questions as directly as I can and use illuminating examples and analogies to try to make the point more clear. Here, let me put it like this. Let's take the situation of me playing a charisma 8 dwarf who is trying (for whatever reason) to charm a bar maid with a charisma of 16.  The dwarf has a goal of retrieving information from the barmaid. That is not my goal. That is the dwarf's goal. My goal is to role play my dwarf as accurately as possible, as the dwarf pursues his goal. When the player adopts the goals of the character as their own, then they are losing track of the fundamental goal of role playing. The goal of role playing is to play a specific role and in this case the role is that of a dwarf with a charisma of 8. So if I decide to improvisationally act as if the dwarf were an elf with a charisma of 18, I may be "role playing," but I'm not role playing my character. That's what I'm trying to say.
#27 inarai Apr 08, 2010 18:37:03	Skill challenges = "meh" to me. I find them arbitrary and counter-intuitive as they are generally implemented. The only significant skill challenge our DM put our party through was a total bust in every way possible. It was anti-role playing, it was arbitrary and restricted improvisation, it was mathematically unlikely that we would succeed (five people rolling success on any DC has a near-certain chance of failure) and the consequences were so dire (loss of three healign surges each) that it led to the only realistic threat of a TPK in our entire campaign history. I don't use them in my campaigns, I do what I've always done which is improvisational role play. Why was everyone rolling, rather than assissting a single person who was rolling? And by your definition of role play (One with which I largely agree), you can RP challenges just fine.  Skill challenges involve you actually doing something, you can role play it however you like.  If you don't, it is because you haven't chosen to do so or failed to put that decision into action.  It is not a flaw in the system.
#28 brassbaboon Apr 09, 2010 0:51:23	Skill challenges = "meh" to me. I find them arbitrary and counter-intuitive as they are generally implemented. The only significant skill challenge our DM put our party through was a total bust in every way possible. It was anti-role playing, it was arbitrary and restricted improvisation, it was mathematically unlikely that we would succeed (five people rolling success on any DC has a near-certain chance of failure) and the consequences were so dire (loss of three healign surges each) that it led to the only realistic threat of a TPK in our entire campaign history. I don't use them in my campaigns, I do what I've always done which is improvisational role play. Why was everyone rolling, rather than assissting a single person who was rolling? And by your definition of role play (One with which I largely agree), you can RP challenges just fine.  Skill challenges involve you actually doing something, you can role play it however you like.  If you don't, it is because you haven't chosen to do so or failed to put that decision into action.  It is not a flaw in the system. I don't think our DM did the skill challenge right, but I don't think he did it that differently than other DMs, with perhaps the exception being to make the entire party succeed on each skill check. The challenges themseves were pre-determined and set in stone. It was "make a perception check to see if you see your pursuers. OK, you failed, everyone loses a healing surge, so they are on your tail. Now make an insight check to see if you suspect you are being pursued, OK you succeeded on that, so now make a hide check to see if they spot you, oops, you failed that too (another healing surge lost), so they are on your tail again. Now try to outrun them. Oh, you failed that too (another healing surge lost). Roll iniative." I suspect many skill checks are laid out in advance in a similar fashion, but without the "the whole party has to succeed" interpretation.
#29 absimiliard Apr 09, 2010 10:25:16	I like skill challenges a lot.  You don't need to do them as either DMG suggests, though I often do.  But I'll take almost any circumstance and make it a skill challenge. You want to sneak a magically-warded merchant's son into his house so he can ambush the evil sorceress who married him and turned him into a dog and cast him out?  Sure.  Give me an Arcana check to shield him from her detection, I'll need a Thievery check to pick the back-door's lock to the house, someone will need to talk to the servants and convince them (could be Diplomacy, Intimidate, or even Bluff), and you'll need a Stealth check to hide yourselves in preparation for ambushing her when she enters the room you're in.  Tada!  You call it a series of skill checks, I call it a skill challenge.  Either way, the players get to use stats on their sheets as well as roleplay by describing what they do and what they say. The best types of skill-challenges involve the players telling you what they want to accomplish, you telling them bits of how they could do it, them refining their plan, and then you putting skills to each step.  It let's everyone contribute creativity, and lets everyone use their skills. And if they fail, well, all the better.  Failures are just the opportunity to make their lives more complex. The best fail I've ever had was when the characters were climbing up from the King's Highway to Maelbrathyr.  They needed to reach the city before Festival ended so they could purchase transport to the surface and reach their home-city, it was an urgent sort of thing.  They failed the skill challenge to climb up to the city.  As a result they arrived after Festival, and knew they'd be enslaved if they just approached the city as themselves.  So they disguised themselves and snuck in pretending to be pilgrims of Torog there to visit the holy sites in the city.  After that they had to surreptitiously find a way out, in the end they contacted a rogue noble house that did the transport. So from one failed skill challenge I got a host of problem solving, talking, more skill challenges, an entirely new obstacle to overcome (surviving in a hostile city), and when they finally got home they knew it had been a close thing. So, just for me, I love skill challenges.  Just don't take them as written in stone as to how they have to be structured.  Play them as more free-form and you can use them to let the players apply their characters skills to almost anything.  (and players like using stuff on their sheets, I know I do) -abs
#30 inarai Apr 09, 2010 14:33:17	Skill challenges = "meh" to me. I find them arbitrary and counter-intuitive as they are generally implemented. The only significant skill challenge our DM put our party through was a total bust in every way possible. It was anti-role playing, it was arbitrary and restricted improvisation, it was mathematically unlikely that we would succeed (five people rolling success on any DC has a near-certain chance of failure) and the consequences were so dire (loss of three healign surges each) that it led to the only realistic threat of a TPK in our entire campaign history. I don't use them in my campaigns, I do what I've always done which is improvisational role play. Why was everyone rolling, rather than assissting a single person who was rolling? And by your definition of role play (One with which I largely agree), you can RP challenges just fine.  Skill challenges involve you actually doing something, you can role play it however you like.  If you don't, it is because you haven't chosen to do so or failed to put that decision into action.  It is not a flaw in the system. I don't think our DM did the skill challenge right, but I don't think he did it that differently than other DMs, with perhaps the exception being to make the entire party succeed on each skill check. The challenges themseves were pre-determined and set in stone. It was "make a perception check to see if you see your pursuers. OK, you failed, everyone loses a healing surge, so they are on your tail. Now make an insight check to see if you suspect you are being pursued, OK you succeeded on that, so now make a hide check to see if they spot you, oops, you failed that too (another healing surge lost), so they are on your tail again. Now try to outrun them. Oh, you failed that too (another healing surge lost). Roll iniative." I suspect many skill checks are laid out in advance in a similar fashion, but without the "the whole party has to succeed" interpretation. Part of the point should be letting the party figure this stuff out.
#31 ilikefrogs Apr 09, 2010 16:25:29	I don't think our DM did the skill challenge right, but I don't think he did it that differently than other DMs, with perhaps the exception being to make the entire party succeed on each skill check. The challenges themseves were pre-determined and set in stone. It was "make a perception check to see if you see your pursuers. OK, you failed, everyone loses a healing surge, so they are on your tail. Now make an insight check to see if you suspect you are being pursued, OK you succeeded on that, so now make a hide check to see if they spot you, oops, you failed that too (another healing surge lost), so they are on your tail again. Now try to outrun them. Oh, you failed that too (another healing surge lost). Roll iniative." I suspect many skill checks are laid out in advance in a similar fashion, but without the "the whole party has to succeed" interpretation. From what I've seen, the DM screwed up the challenge. Rather than telling the players which checks to roll, he should have let the players determine what skills they will attempt to use to solve the challenge. Theivery checks to set traps to throw off the followers. Bluff checks to convince them they were following the wrong party. Nature checks to hide your trail.
#32 rian_king Apr 10, 2010 10:10:37	I think part of the problem is DMs are treating skill challenges like combat.  Roll dice, see if you hate or not and how much damage. Skill challenges need good descroption from both players and DM A recent skill challenge I ran( I think i said this before in this post) was closing a portal of magic. I descirbe in good detail " As you arcane powers to close the portal it gets smaller and smaller.  You can see creatures heading towards the enternce" Now I didn't say pass or fail in that sentence.  My players knew they did.  I also didn't announce a skill challenge, but they knew it was. The failed the skill challenges and some monsters got through. " The portal seems to expand greater then when you started and some *can't remeber what creature it was* come out and attack" They know they failed the challenge and after the monsters was killed they thought for a few seconds "The portal seems to regain some stability again but more and bigger creatures are coming towards" They got they could try the skill challenge again This wasn't the greatest detail but added life to the challenge. A bad or boring skill challenges are 80% likely a DM who doesn't or doesn't know how to run one It took me a few tries(meaning a lot) to finally "get it"