So, earlier tonight I was talking on the phone with Emily Care Boss (name dropped!) about the problems with the skill challenge system as it currently stands. During this conversation we covered a number of topics from statistics to design goals to player psychology and tolerance for rolling to Otherkind dice and ways to force mechanics to rely on the fiction more than just other mechanics. And in that mess we sussed out a way that I think might make skill challenges, as they stand now, work for me. And it’s really kind of simple, actually. When she put this in my head, I wanted to kiss her. And I will, damn it!
This is it in a nutshell: Instead of making it an all or nothing gamble–where you need to succeed x number of times before 3 failures or you don’t get anything–you can break up whatever the skill challenge is for into x pieces, awarding one for each success until all the pieces are gotten or 3 failures have occurred.
I’m pretty sure this does nothing to change the actual rules, but it does make losing skill challenges a little less harsh. In fact, it should shift the whole player approach from “we need to succeed at all this” to “we need to succeed at as many as we can.”
For a DM, it should help with design aspect of the design challenges.
It’s late at night, and I’ve got to get well rested for climbing tomorrow (that’s right, I climb, want to make something of it?) so I’m just going to plop a few examples complexity one skill challenges in here and explain more tomorrow.
Purse-snatching: Sir Laurels has had his purse snatched by a group of ruffians and the PCs must retrieve it. It’s a chase with the primary skills being Athletics and Acrobatics to get through the busy streets and over the laden tables and random pottery of the market place. Perhaps even a chance to roll Perception to keep an eye on those swift little buggers. The PCs must get 4 successes before 3 failures. The ruffians are heading straight for their hideout across town, so even if they don’t catch them, they will have an idea where they might be hiding. Each success brings them one step closer. The first let’s the PCs know what side of town the ruffian hideout is located in. The second let’s them know what neighborhood. The third, what street. And the fourth allows them to catch the ruffians just outside their secret entrance.
The Mountain Pass of Moradoom: In Tolkien fashion, the PCs must pass over Mt. Moradoom to reach the Witch’s Valley. Again, 4 successes before 3 failures. Since the adventure is in the valley, we shouldn’t set the goal so that failing to reach it means they can’t find the valley. Instead, let’s say that if the players fail, they each lose two healing surges by the time they reach the valley. Primary skills are Knowledge Nature, for surviving in the frigid clime of the mountain peak; Endurance, for marching through the four-foot high snow; and Athletics for pulling yourself over the top of the worst ridges. Each successful roll reduces the healing surges lost by a fourth.
Alternatively, if the adventure isn’t necessarily in Witch’s Valley, but instead there’s a weapon there they could use against the enemy, you could set failure to mean the mountains are impassible and they must find another way around. In this case, the rewards for making rolls would be rather different. Perhaps the Endurance means they lose less time because they can march longer, so the detour doesn’t set them back as much. Perhaps the Athletics means one of them climbed high enough to see the layout of Witch’s Valley, so when they get there they will know exactly where to go. And so forth.
XP for succeeded at skill challenges should probably remain the same. That is, you must succeed at the whole challenge to get it. In fact, all the normal rules for the challenge should remain the same. This really doesn’t affect anything at all, except for making it much more palatable when the PCs inevitably fail. The ultimate goal of the challenge becomes icing, something to shoot for, but not necessary. Which, as it turns out, is exactly what the DMG tells you to do.
12 Comments
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
I like this idea. I REALLY like this idea. It adds a lot of story potential and flavor to the skill challenges and keeps the xp reward system intact.
Simple and sweet. I could kiss YOU Eppy (and I will, damn it)
This is awesome. Is there a way we can fix the skill challenges to work exactly right AND do this?
That’s fucking clever! When I first read the skill challenge rules, I was kind of confused. So now we roll the dice 3 times instead of once? How does that make things more exciting or interesting, exactly? It’s still just a matter of mathematical probability, it just takes longer and the math is a little more complicated than rolling once.
But adding some fictional context to each roll changes that, without actually changing the rules. Very clever indeed.
Also I wholeheartedly agree about being careful not to stonewall the players (eg. taking away healing surges rather than just saying “You don’t reach the valley, I guess we’re done”). Is that something they address in the DMG with regular skill challenges? I guess in the first example you gave, the adventure doesn’t revolve entirely around the thieves’ hideout or else, again, you would need to make sure they succeed in finding it either way, with just a penalty for not finding it.
Doh. I meant to say “you would need to make sure they succeed in finding it either way, with just a penalty for failing the challenge rather than not finding lt at all”.
The example skill challenges given in the DMG lean toward the “don’t stop the adventure if the players fail” route. Stumbling into a monster’s den, operating on false information, etc. etc. The false information route is a little tricky, because it asks players to *not* use out-of-character information. I mean, players are going to know when they fail a skill challenge, right?
Yeah, the DMG specifically says not to frame skill challenges so that losing them will derail the adventure. So that definitely works within the framework of this system.
I’m all for this system setting up obstacles for us. Like, we need to make four successes to get the Duke to let us tack some orcs through his land. We only got two, failing our Diplomacy attempt twice. But one of the successes was an Endurance check in which Glurn stayed up the whole night drinking with the Duke. As a result, the Duke forbids us from taking our war with the orcs to his lands, but he does invite us to go hunting with him.
So we have our opportunity to track the orcs, but we just have to do it on the sly, while the Duke is chasing his elk.
I think we always have operated on that “don’t stop the adventure if the players fail” premise so we are ok there. D&D 4 didn’t have to tell us that for us to play that way.
I just am not sitting well with the fact that even with the errata the system might still be kinda broken. Awesome-Emily’s solution just makes each leg of the success an actual slice of the success. She gets +500 xp from me. Please email her and tell her Eppy.
True! D&D 4 didn’t have to tell us that.
But I’m glad they’re telling other people that. It’s a common mistake for novice GMs to set up a situation where a roll must be made or the game will grind to a halt.
Under the new errata, it might not be as broken. Assuming we have a decent spread of skills in our group and we can do a little back-scratching by way of a few aid anothers, it looks like we might actually have a decent shot at succeed with even the hard difficulties at the lower complexities.
I’m waiting for a little more math to roll in before I get my hopes up, but there might be something to this errata of theirs.
::drives math truck into the side of Eppy’s house::
Apparently, this whole “some success = partial success” is built into WotC’s second published adventure, Thunderspyre Labryinth.
That’s encouraging news.