Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;374827PS Windjammer: Aha! OK cool, I see where you're coming from now.

Not sure which bit of my posts you're reacting to, but I think your parody of a group check trying to find the way to the giants' steading  was spot on. In short, the situation is such that it screams for the expert to find the tracks and the rest of the party to stand back and not intervene by e.g. obscuring those same tracks (picture Aragorn and a bunch of hobbits here on the way from Bree to Rivendell - it's not like the hobbits can actively mess up Aragorn's attempts to find the way to Rivendell).

And that incidentally highlights a major problem I have with skill challenges - they try to impose more structure on non-combat scenes than I find necessary. Whether a situation mandates a group check or not ought to be dictated by the situation, not by a rigid set of rules the DM must foist on any non-combat situation regardless of context. Which is why I think skill challenges do more harm than good.

This drive to foist mechanics on in-game situations when it doesn't make sense is a recurrent theme in my experience with 4E. There are two remedies to this IME - either ditch the mechanics or run with them in a Hackmaster-vein of self-parody.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;374863Otherwise, an exploration-based challenge would probably have a per-round effect...you need 10 Nature successes to escape the Maze of Minauros and each round the GM rolls to see if a random encounter occurs.

Last evening I picked up a parcel of D&D 3.5 modules, and chanced upon the perfect skill challenge in one of them which covers this type of situation so nicely that I'm going to share it here. It's a location from the major dungeon in Barrow of the Forgotten Thing.

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"THE LABYRINTH

... The map shows only a stylized version of the vast labyrinth—areas 14 and 15. PCs move through the magic maze as described later in this section.

When the PCs enter the labyrinth, read:

You enter a large room with irregular stone walls, a rough floor, and a high, uneven ceiling. You see no sign of the carefully carved features present in the other sections of this complex, instead crude carvings and patterns of what might be writing decorate the rough walls.

The builders of the forgotten king's tomb designed the labyrinth to dissuade robbers from continuing down toward the complex below. They carved out innumerable tunnels and dead ends, and the wizards and clerics who worked with them imbued the labyrinth with magic.
Detect Magic: The entire labyrinth radiates a strong magical aura, and discerning which type is nearly impossible. If a character focuses detect magic on the runes in the maze, that PC might learn more. If a rune is specifically viewed using detect magic, it radiates a strong aura (DC 22 Spellcraft check to determine the school is abjuration [25%] or conjuration [75%]).
Random Rooms: Describe the maze in terms of the tunnels the PCs traverse and the rooms they find. Rooms vary in size, but each has 1d3+1 exits. When a room has only two exits, the way to continue is obvious. When more exits exist, the characters have to follow the trail of the robbers or trust in fate to guide them out. Due to its magical nature, the labyrinth cannot be defeated in mundane ways, such as by following the left wall to the end.
Following the Robbers: If the PCs attempt to track the tomb robbers through the labyrinth, the abjuration runes make the task more difficult. Each time a PC first examines a room for tracks or other signs of the tomb robbers, have that PC attempt a DC 15 Will save. On a success, the character can attempt a DC 20 Survival check to determine the way the tomb robbers went. If the PC fails the save, the character finds tracks all over the place, leading through every possible exit. Once the characters lose the robbers' trail, they might run across it again at your discretion—they certainly find it again near the maze's exit.
Exiting the Labyrinth: Keep track of how well the PCs follow the path of the tomb robbers. If the PCs determine the correct path and exit the room, they earn one point toward escaping the labyrinth. If they choose the wrong path and exit the room, they lose one point (backtracking restores this lost point). The PCs need to gain a total of five points to exit the labyrinth. Keep the point total secret. If the PCs guess, as they may have to do quite often if they don't have a tracker or fail enough Will saves, roll randomly to determine which exit is the correct one after the PCs choose. Since each troublesome room has three or four exits, the PCs have a 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 chance of taking the correct path each time. Choosing incorrectly often enough can squander a lot of points and get them lost. The mechanic for the labyrinth is supposed to simulate its magical nature. Obviously, the tomb robbers haven't gone through every room in the labyrinth, but the magic of the maze keeps the PCs guessing and moving along. If you feel the PCs have gotten themselves in too deep a hole, you can arbitrarily let them exit the maze at any time. "
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See this? That's a pristine example of a mechanics that actually match the flavour of the situation - the escalating tension of getting lost in a maze, the desperate attempts to recover one's path, and so on. That's clever design. Not: front-loading a general design idea and then hammering all situations to fit its structure ("Procrustean" is the adjective I'm groping for).

Mostly I was referring to the embedded link earlier to the thread describing 4e as parody - before then I couldn't reconcile how your posts seemed to shift between a pro/anti stance...but now it totally makes sense. The KoTS skill challenge is hilarious, btw

The 3.5 challenge is interesting -I'd agree it seems less forced since they built up the structure from simpler components (basic checks) instead of having to rework an already complexified system.

I'd say here there's less groping involved to convert back abstractions to specifics . e.g. its clear that each roll is concrete (one room), even if "5 path points" isn't; and even in the case of the system totally having a haemorrhage from god-knows-what PC ability the GM can refer back to the PCs path so far and see where they are.

Quote from: StormBringer;374874What about "Here's the layout of the room you are in, you have five rounds to find a hiding spot before the guards arrive"?

Well, yes.  That's how the game should be played.  You will notice we were conducting some thought experiments at that point in the topic, manipulating Skill Challenges.

But you're right of course.  If all you are trying to do is evade detection in a static room, there isn't any reason to run a Skill Challenge no matter how you mold it.  But there is plenty of reason to prep a flask of acid to drop when someone opens the door...

Quote from: winkingbishop;374940Well, yes.  That's how the game should be played.

Good. Just so long as we're not into one-true-wayism.

Quote from: winkingbishop;374940But you're right of course.  If all you are trying to do is evade detection in a static room, there isn't any reason to run a Skill Challenge no matter how you mold it.

True. No, really this time. Not every non-combat encounter should be a skill challenge. That's not the intent, and it's not a good way to use them.

Quote from: Fifth Element;374956Good. Just so long as we're not into one-true-wayism.

That's a fair jab, even if it was a slip or poor communication.  What I should have said was "That's how the problem (or encounter or situation) should be played."

i.e. There's no sense trying to squeeze a task like that into a Skill Challenge.

Quote from: areola;374812True, but telling a player to his face that he has to stop being diplomatic immediately seem inorganic in a supposedly immersive roleplaying moment.

Why would you tell the player to stop? I don't get it.

Seanchai

Quote from: FrankTrollman;374910Making these sorts of mechanics really isn't very hard once you know what the mechanic is supposed to do. The fact that they've managed to write up errata to those rules six times in two years, and it still sucks means that they just aren't even trying. The 4e Skill Challenge rules are made by people who refuse to use a solar powered calculator to check the probabilities their system generates. And they don't even have a clear design goal of what they want the subsystem to do. We'd do better waiting for monkeys to type out Hamlet than waiting for James Wyatt to get us a Skill Challenge system worth using.

UNPOSSIBLE! I was clearly told that the 4e designers, unlike past edition designers (who were all just wannabe novelists), had real mathematical backgrounds and that those backgrounds were being used to make the 4e maths perfect, unlike past editions (where if the maths ever actually worked it was purely by accident).

Therefore any of these so-called 4e math problems -- the grind, high level bonuses, skill challenges -- cannot, by logical reasoning, be actually caused by faulty math and must therefore be a product of either user error, ideological hostility, or pure jealousy.

The maths must be true!!!

Quote from: winkingbishop;374940Well, yes.  That's how the game should be played.  You will notice we were conducting some thought experiments at that point in the topic, manipulating Skill Challenges.

But you're right of course.  If all you are trying to do is evade detection in a static room, there isn't any reason to run a Skill Challenge no matter how you mold it.  But there is plenty of reason to prep a flask of acid to drop when someone opens the door...

This added a bit more shine to my viking hat.

:hatsoff:

Well I'm guessing they're best used when you have a situation thats large and badly defined (and you don't want to bother working out exact details). In theory, I guess you could abstract a task of any complexity into a skill challenge (OK, you need 30 successes at DC 35 to conquer the planet. Go!).
Potentially you could use them to replace situations that would take big chunks of time run simulationally, and so have a faster-paced adventure.

Or they could be used when you want drama (may need to be run well for that!), or if you just want PCs to have a chance to shine with their skills.

Potentially I guess you could also use them for situations where other rules just don't work -e.g. I've always had problems running chases in 3.5 since I find it messy dealing with squares, 'teleport' movement on people's turns, and what not, so in our home campaigns we've long used (since way before 4e) an opposed DEX check system for resolving this, which looks vaguely similar to a skill challenge.
EDIT: vaguely similar in the sense that everyone is rolling lots of checks anyway - each character got a separate success track here.