Quote from: Abyssal Maw;374670(The following is from an LFR adventure). I guess this is kinda typical for a 4E Skill Challenge.

Thanks much.

Quote from: jgants;374600* The whole "I roll diplomacy again" thing.  I've compensated for that with my own little houserule where I keep increasing the difficulty by +2 every time they use the same skill again.

I thought Challenges could either have limited or unlimited rolls. That is, you could use Arcana twice for the Challenge, but no more.

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;374802I thought Challenges could either have limited or unlimited rolls. That is, you could use Arcana twice for the Challenge, but no more.

Seanchai

True, but telling a player to his face that he has to stop being diplomatic immediately seem inorganic in a supposedly immersive roleplaying moment. You can tell the player to stop rolling diplomacy because it's a waste of time or try to subtly hint through NPC reaction, but if they don't get it, they would want to keep rolling.

Quote from: Seanchai;374802I thought Challenges could either have limited or unlimited rolls. That is, you could use Arcana twice for the Challenge, but no more.

Challenges can work however you want. Escalating difficulty seems like a neat idea to me -- I'mma steal it.

QuoteThen as now, the primary people who had an issue with it, didn't actually play the game.

Well...yeah...believe it or not, I am trying to be helpful on this thread specifically (if only for WBs sake), though I've not what you'd call a fan. Also for the record, I have played through an actual skill challenge once, albeit briefly, on the World Game Day for MM-2 (The adventure with the rust monster in it). However in any system, I'd totally agree that its worthwhile having skill usage be relevant, useful, and worth xp.

Going back to the first example with the ogres, my example probably was a bit silly but its easy enough to fix the system here. You just count 'successes', (disregard numbers of failures completely), and the party gets something happening each round until X successes accumulate and they find the plot. Weaker party members can then try to help without having to worry that they'll sink the encounter for their friends.
OK, there are instances where party members could screw it up for their allies (e.g. I recall getting lost on scout camps moderately often because someone was convinced that their way was the right way to go) but it should at least be possible for a character to just 'not help' due to a bad roll rather than actively hindering.

Also, I think the rules really should make a distinction between normal tasks and tasks that are intrinsically harder due to party size (Sneaking around, Bluffing, finding enough Reduction Cream in the wizard's lab to get the whole party down the rathole) - for these, you could increase the number of successes needed due to party size. Just as an idea, maybe you could let a high-skill character roll at a penalty to generate more than one success to try and cover for their friends.

PS Windjammer: Aha! OK cool, I see where you're coming from now.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;374827Well...yeah...believe it or not, I am trying to be helpful on this thread specifically (if only for WBs sake), though I've not what you'd call a fan.

I know, right?  It's like people find it hard to believe we can talk about 4e without barfing all over ourselves.  I'm seriously trying to get my head around this.  I'm close.  I want to run a good game, or series of games, not wed a system.  

QuoteGoing back to the first example with the ogres, my example probably was a bit silly but its easy enough to fix the system here.

I thought your example was totally appropriate for what we were talking about; there are narrow ways to interpret group skill checks "roll-for-roll" and "zoomed out" global ways.  If you focus on the narrow, one die at a time, it starts to look silly.  Zoom out, and it can make some sense, but it's pretty close to violating my level-of-abstraction comfort zone.  

Quote from: winkingbishop;374829I thought your example was totally appropriate for what we were talking about; there are narrow ways to interpret group skill checks "roll-for-roll" and "zoomed out" global ways.  If you focus on the narrow, one die at a time, it starts to look silly.  Zoom out, and it can make some sense, but it's pretty close to violating my level-of-abstraction comfort zone.  

You understand the concept of the "group check" (as opposed to an individual check or an assist) right? That's when everyone rolls, (nobody aids) but you only need X amount of successes for it to be considered a success. You can call that X amount "half" or "at least one" or "all" or any other number you like.

So for example, in a scene where everyone has to slog through a jungle swamp, while getting bitten by mosquitoes.. it's a group check for endurance, but if at least half (an arbitrary number)  are successful then that's a success.

There's some interesting takes on different type of skill-roll-off structures in Rune, (the Ars Magica derived RPG by Robin Laws) if anyone has that. I like to mix and match some stuff from there as well.

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;374833You understand the concept of the "group check" (as opposed to an individual check or an assist) right?

Yep, that's what I was talking about earlier.  But for the record, you had to remind me about group checks earlier in the thread, somewhere on page 1.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;374827Weaker party members can then try to help without having to worry that they'll sink the encounter for their friends.

This is the biggest reason (IMHO) for dropping the difficulties -- I like it when an untrained PC can have a reasonable chance of succeeding. I recommend giving +2 or so for good roleplay, too.

If you're feeling saucy, as a DM, you can always say "OK, you successfully assisted!" when someone makes a good effort but fails, and then the talented PC can make the "real" roll. But I like a little chance of failure, so I try not to do that too much.

Cf. Frank's post ealier - in a standard challenge you have either a 'succeed' or a 'fail'. That is, when I roll, I'm reducing the number of rolls remaining in the challenge by 1. If I suck, that's bad, since that's one less roll that a competent ally could make. The best approach is then to leave your friends at home/out of the challenge (if possible). A challenge can make it mandatory for them to participate but they're still participating as a liability.

Dropping the difficulties hides the problem but doesn't fix it - the problem is the accumulating failures, not the DC. The party are going to care less than the weaker party members are participating, but removing them is still the winning strategy.

If you want a (slighty inaccurate but illustrative) analogy, a Skill Challenge as written is like a combat where every time you hit the monster, it takes damage, and every time you miss the monster, it heals. In this situation, everyone who can't hit it is better off staying in the corner.

Start counting successes rather than fails and suddenly, its actually good to have friends, since a 20% chance of an extra success is better than an 0% chance of an extra success. Or, have a roll count as a 'failure' only if it misses by (say) 5 or more and there's still a tradeoff.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;374845Start counting successes rather than fails and suddenly, its actually good to have friends, since a 20% chance of an extra success is better than an 0% chance of an extra success. Or, have a roll count as a 'failure' only if it misses by (say) 5 or more and there's still a tradeoff.

Just as a compliment to your statement here, I was pondering the value of using degree of success as a way to create a wider range of results during a skill challenge.  Beat the DC by 5, gain 1 Success, beat the DC by 10, gain 2, etc.

Combine this with what you and Frank were describing earlier (making Skill Challenge success dependent only on number of successes, limited by time or some other external variable) and you not only ensure everyone wants to participate, but you get to reward your Really Skilled PC for their insightful skill selection.

If you like tightly-written Skill Challenges, you could add yet another layer of complexity.  Say that only Primary Skills are allowed to contribute degree of success and Secondary Skills, while still usable to keep the party's head above water, cannot.

Only trouble with these brainstorms is that "external variable" (i.e. how many rounds you get to accumulate successes).  I don't know how I could rationalize a time/round deadline for all Skill Challenges.

Take a Skill Challenge called "Breaking and Entering" - the party needs to case a joint, avoid detection and end up in the treasure vault.  In this example, it's actually more appealing to me to track Successes vs. Failures; Every failure represents a growing risk that the guards are going to stir, a threshold so-to-speak for when they finally put down their cards and get off their ass.

Take another example called "Find the Sage" - the party is in town square and need to find someone that speaks Gee-Whiz before their caravan leaves.  The number of accumulated successes ultimately decides how much learn from the sage once the time limit expires.

Well, I can't take any credit re. the counting failure aspect - I'm totally just jumping on the bandwagon.

I should qualify my last post - realistically, there are some situations where failures should count. In cases like your sneaking in example, you've got a bigger effect (more characters inside the treasure vault) and you should pay for that in terms of success chances.

Time-wise, a skill challenge could have a fixed deadline and that will probably be arbitrary...perhaps based on how long characters need to roll, and how long a roll takes. (If the time is unrestricted and there's no danger, its largely pointless to roll at all - they'll get there in the end).

Otherwise, 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.

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.

That is almost exactly how I was trying to cram the speculative Breaking & Entering challenge into a round-dependent affair:

After hearing the door creak open, the guards will begin sweeping the area in five rounds.  The party must accumulate X successes within five rounds or encounter the guards...

Quote from: winkingbishop;374865That is almost exactly how I was trying to cram the speculative Breaking & Entering challenge into a round-dependent affair:

After hearing the door creak open, the guards will begin sweeping the area in five rounds.  The party must accumulate X successes within five rounds or encounter the guards...

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

Having a skill challenge where the number of rounds is variable is a possible variation. So possible in fact, that you should write rules for exactly that into the basic Skill Challenge rules. The two basic models are extension and termination. An extension model is something like "If anyone can make a difficult History test, you get an extra challenge round." A termination model would be something like "If anyone fails a simple Stealth test, the challenge ends one round early."

You could even really mix it up by having those tests be optional choices inside the challenge rather than between round mandatory setups. So you could for example let people make Intimidate tests as easy tests during a negotiation, but if someone tries that route and fails, the negotiation terminates one round early.

So you could have the following changeups:

• The Heist After the first round, everyone has to make an easy Stealth check (not a challenge round). If anyone fails, the third round of the challenge does not happen. The players may choose to run away rather than doing the second round.
  
• The Negotiation The challenge lasts 2 rounds. If a player attempts to use Intimidate (easy) and fails, reduce the number of rounds by 1. If a player attempts to use History (hard) and succeeds, increase the number of rounds by 1. Maximum one increase and one decrease.

Making 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.

-Frank