[X] My Assistant

[Cheops]

I'd like to point out that all the math I have seen does not include Group Checks or the Bonus Successes both of which are intended to make it easier.

Bonus Successes are tests where a success/failure doesn't matter to win/lose but a success provides a bonus (usually +2) to the next guy's check. they are also usually Easy (15) tests as opposed to Moderate (20) tests.

Group Checks are specifically mentioned in the text but no example of their use is given. Basically you make your Aid Another test (DC 10 or 15 I believe) and if you succeed you give +2 to the acting character. At most you can add +8.

One of the players in my SR/ED group is in a 4th campaign right now and he has succeeded in 2 solo challenges but the DM didn't add the +5 to the difficulty. So they seem to work if you use the above 2 properly or if you get rid of the +5. Especially since the +5 is quoted as for Skill Checks not Skill Challenges.

[FrankTrollman]

Any thoughts on using the system they use for disease for challenges?

Well, the Disease rules are another thing where "you fail." So inherently I'm not much in favor of them. Basically the vast majority of characters have an Endurance bonus of about 1/2 their character level, and the DC to improve your lot is generally set at about 1/2 Level + 22. So the majority of people can't actually recover at all and just slide down to the end. Even people with an 18 Con and trained Endurance find that when they get to 9th level and get exposed to Blinding Sickness that they improve on a 13+ and their condition degrades on a 9 or less, meaning that slightly more than half the time they march down to end stage and go blind.

Your Dwarf's chances improve substantially to about 4 in 5 of not going blind if you lie down and have a Heal specialist of your level attend you. His chance is actually no better than yours at beating the disease, but since you both roll and take the better result at least you have the odds on your side.

The real problem with the diseases is that it's just a calc function to see where it's going. That is, there's a single track, a single die roll type, and you just roll dice until successes or failures get a certain amount ahead of the other. Basically it's the same deal as Skill Challenges, and you basically don't win for much the same reason: bad math. Only this time it's even worse because it's always "Endurance" that you need maxed out to get a 50/50 shot instead of taking your pick of 3 or more skills.

And I don't see skill challenges as being one guy looking for his biggest skill and rolling it 11 times. If you look at the actual examples, the whole point is to facilitate group roleplay.

That was apparently the intent, but that's not anything like what it does. The big problem here is that everyone is sharing the same successes and the same failures. That is, you have exactly 11 die rolls on a Complexity 3 challenge. You have exactly 5 die rolls on a Complexity 1 Challenge. For the whole party. If someone comes in and makes a half-hearted attempt to accomplish something with a midling to low chance of success, they are hurting the party. The "correct" choice is to take the d20s away from whoever doesn't have the absolute best relevant bonus, and then have them make all 5, or 11, or whatever checks.

If you really wanted to facilitate people contributing to the team efforts, you'd have everyone share the same success pile and give each player their own limit of failures. Then having the party Dwarven Inferlock or the party Elven Ranger give his input into social endeavors or having the party Wizard give a trapped hallway an inspection would be a sensible and beneficial thing. The current rules don't just have bad math, they are also structurally problematic because any time the Inferlock attempts to contribute to a social encounter in any way the party Half Elven Diplomancer feels genuinely annoyed because that Inferlock just took one of the limited die rolls that the Diplomancer could have used and blew it on a long shot that was unlikely to accomplish anything.

I'm all for giving everyone something to do when dealing with noncombat scenarios. But the 4e Skill Challenge system really spectacularly does not do that. Since the limit is on how many times the party rolls dice rather than how many times each individual rolls dice, there is no incentive whatsoever to engage more than one player at the table. I mean, you can radically alter the prospective inputs of DCs and required successes such that you can complete tasks and higher complexity tasks aren't mysteriously easier than lower complexity ones (currently a Complexity 1 challenge fails if more than 20% of skill attempts come up failures, while a Complexity 5 challenge fails if more than 29% of skill attempts come up failures). In fact, someone already did that Right Here. But while that fixes the basic math so that you can in fact succeed, it does not change the fact that the preferred method of doing that is the rather uninspiring one of sending the diplomancer forward to talk until the king tells him to shut up and have all the other players pretend to be deaf mutes during that time.

Encouraging teamwork would be built on a similar basis as combat, where an individual character getting eliminated from the challenge didn't eliminate anyone else. Encouraging tactics and cooperation might come in the form of giving a penalty to whatever test was the last type that a character succeeded with. That way other players would come in and attempt to use skills like Insight or whatever to keep the character's Diplomancy penalties from getting too high.

I've never seen a truly perfect skill system. But I've seen better skill systems than 4e's in SPULTURATORAH. Given the amount of hype and promise this skill system was released with, I'm genuinely offended. Not just disappointed, but actually offended. I can literally see the lack of care and utter contempt for the players and paying customers in every page of it. This isn't something like Shadowrun's Bloodzilla, where it's an obscure rules problem that shouldn't have happened but frankly doesn't matter. This is a supposedly major part of the game and it's so crocked as to be usable in even the most casual context. There's no clever combos or obscure rules interactions to put together to make the game break here, it takes Herculean effort just to make the current festering corpse be merely slightly more cumbersome than the admittedly hole-filled 3rd edition system.

-Frank

[deek]

You know, if I played at a table that had a bunch of strangers, the DM described nothing besides "you hit, you miss" and I was more interested in getting to 30th level than having any fun, all of what you (Frank) say, would be true. I mean, I understand what you are saying and where you come from, but realize, a lot of us actually come to the table with friends and just want to have fun.

Take away the +5 for skill checks, and I think the tests run pretty well. Take away the fact that the best chance to succeed is to only utilize the strongest links in every encounter, whether combat or skills, and yes, you end up with just one person sitting there rolling a bunch of dice.

I know you come from a perspective of only black and white when it comes to rules. That's your thing. You have a talent for pulling anything out of the context of the game and focus solely on the numbers...and if its not "right" in print, then its wrong. And we need that...in moderate doses of course.

But is removing that +5 and having a good laugh when the halfling in your group attempts a Acrobat check in front of the king, with much lower chance of success than the Diplomancer? And if he succeeds, do we not have a wild story to share with each other and friends? I mean, it even says in the core rules how many skill challenges shouldn't come down to such a failure that the party is stuck. Often times, it should just make the next encounter/quest a little harder or take a bit longer. Heck, even the one talking about a failed skill challenge when trying to trek through the woods has a failure result in everyone having to lose a healing surge until the next encounter or extended rest. Its not like a failed challenge equals death of the DM gets to take on of your magic items away...

[paws2sky]

In an effort to keep that other thread positive, I'll post this over here...

2. Balance makes everyone feel useful, and everyone has options.

Somehow this reminds me of Syndrome from The Incredibles.

"Oh, I'm real. Real enough to defeat you! And I did it without your precious gifts, your oh-so-special powers. I'll give them heroics. I'll give them the most spectacular heroics the world has ever seen! And when I'm old and I've had my fun, I'll sell my inventions so that *everyone* can have powers. *Everyone* can be Super! And when everyone's Super... No one will be."

I've had a few days now to digest 4e. Simply put, I don't care for it. I suppose I could go on about why, but others have said it before me and probably with more skill.

I will say one thing positive about it though: Its motivational. In fact, it spurred me a bit to work on my 3xM system (a 3.x and Modern hybrid) last night. I set it aside a year or so ago and haven't been motivated to mess with it until now. Of course, in looking at it again, I almost want to scrap it and do a SR4 conversion instead.

-paws

[Wounded Ronin]

You know, if I played at a table that had a bunch of strangers, the DM described nothing besides "you hit, you miss" and I was more interested in getting to 30th level than having any fun, all of what you (Frank) say, would be true. I mean, I understand what you are saying and where you come from, but realize, a lot of us actually come to the table with friends and just want to have fun.

But insofar as they're selling you a book of rules, it doesn't make sense to say that rules shouldn't be discussed because you don't care about rules.

By that logic instead of shelling out all this cash for lots of RPG rule books you should just take a stack of books by your favorite fantasy author, sit around with friends, and make up collaborative fan fiction. If you claim it's 100% about social interaction and 0% about whether or not the rules fail.

[Nightwalker450]

Somehow this reminds me of Syndrome from The Incredibles.

"Oh, I'm real. Real enough to defeat you! And I did it without your precious gifts, your oh-so-special powers. I'll give them heroics. I'll give them the most spectacular heroics the world has ever seen! And when I'm old and I've had my fun, I'll sell my inventions so that *everyone* can have powers. *Everyone* can be Super! And when everyone's Super... No one will be."

Actually this reminds me of 3.5 where a Level 10 fighter, goes up against the magically equipped commoner. It doesn't matter what you can do in 3.5, if you don't have all the magical equipment. Usually descriptions of 3.5 characters are 10% character 90% equipment.

I like this change in 4.0, where the equipment matters less than your characters actual skills and abilities. And the fighter class no longer breaks down to "Full Attack" or "Move, then Attack".

[FrankTrollman]

But insofar as they're selling you a book of rules, it doesn't make sense to say that rules shouldn't be discussed because you don't care about rules.

By that logic instead of shelling out all this cash for lots of RPG rule books you should just take a stack of books by your favorite fantasy author, sit around with friends, and make up collaborative fan fiction. If you claim it's 100% about social interaction and 0% about whether or not the rules fail.

Agree. If you want to play Magical Fairy Princess Teaparty with your friends, that's fine. That game, along with Cops and Robbers, House, and Cowboys and Indians are of course venerable and exciting games that people have been playing to vast amusement for generations, and I wouldn't begin to take that away from people.

But I think that if sitting around with your friends discussing which of your imaginary princesses is the prettiest is what you actually want, then you don't want or need a game system at all. If you want to play a game that has success and failure and you want the halfling to jump around doing a fool' performance or whatever, then you probably shouldn't be playing a game where doing that makes the entire team lose, and you certainly shouldn't be playing a game where your entire team loses regardless of what you do.

-Frank

[deek]

Ummm...yeah...magical fairy princess teaparty...

C'mon now, in a typical group, how long does it normally take to find a problem in a rule? Usually not more than one or two encounters using it. Does everyone just ditch the game and say this is the most awful set of core rules known to man, burn their books and bash it every chance they get?

I didn't say the rules didn't matter or that I didn't care, I simply said that, yeah, okay, several people have pointed out a flaw. Let's correct it, unofficial or not, really doesn't matter at the table. I mean, yeah, it matters in the grand scheme of game development. WotC is responsible for what they print. They are responsible for fixing it as well. But, to say that because the rules don't give the intended result (and we are talking about one game mechanic here, that is flawed, and at least two ways mentioned to fix it), that we scrap everything is ridiculous. I mean, anytime a DM/GM has said xyz is in the book, page abc, and it seemed horribly unbalanced, we've fixed it and moved on, not bashed the game to everyone that would listen and then give up on it.

I agree with you Frank, if the whole goal of the group is to win, yeah, you probably don't want to bring a character to a table that has any quirks, bad judgment, less then optimized stats or frankly, any personality. And there are some groups that do that...and that's cool if they have fun. But if you are just trying to play a GAME and have fun...well, barring the annoying gamer that takes it to an extreme, little failures are part of the fun. And I still don't think there is more than way to run a skill challenge, because the group doesn't always lose, even if they fail the challenge.

Here's a straight question, Frank. Do you think the skill challenges are more or less fixed (without doing an entire rewrite) by simply removing the +5 to the DC? I mean, mathematically, what does that bring the probabilities to? Do you think it needs more/less than that to bring it back to good use?

[Drogos]

I feel this adds an enormous amount to the conversation (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Main article here.

Cookbooks are a lot like Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games.
They contain seemingly rigid rules that, in practice, require a certain
amount of adaptation for your own tastes.

So how come cooking gets its own TV channel and role-playing games don't
even get a show on G4? Maybe the population at large doesn't want to pretend
to be a half-elf. Maybe RPGs take more imagination than most people have.

However, it just might have something to do with the role-playing community.
If geeks talked about cookbooks the way they talk about RPG books, the
results would not be pretty:

*Posted: 12:15 a.m. by LordOrcus* I'm so mad that there's a new edition of The
Better Joy Cookbook out. Thanks for making my old copy obsolete, you greedy
hacks! For five years now, my friends have been coming over for my eggplant
Parmesan, and now I'm never going to be able serve it again unless I shell
out 35 bucks for the latest version.

*Posted: 12:42 a.m. by Kathraxis*Hey, I have a question! When you preheat
the oven, can you start it before you measure out the ingredients, or do you
have to do it afterward? Please answer quickly, my friends and I have been
arguing about it for four hours and we're getting pretty hungry.

*Posted: 12:48 a.m. by Goku1440* I found an *awesome loophole*! On page 242
it says "Add oregano to taste!" It doesn't say how much oregano, or what
sort of taste! You can add as much oregano as you want! I'm going to make my
friends eat *infinite oregano* and they'll have to do it because the recipe
says so!

*Posted: 1:02 a.m. by barrybarrybarry* I can't believe I spent 35 dollars on
a cookbook that doesn't have a recipe for peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches. When I buy a cookbook, I expect it to *tell me how to cook*. And
don't tell me to just make a PBJ myself, I'm not some sort of hippy artist
pretentious "freeform cook."

*Posted: 1:08 a.m. by jvmkanelly* Where are the recipes for chatting with
friends while cooking? Where are the recipes for conversation over the meal?
When I throw a dinner party, I want it to be a PARTY. I guess the idiots who
use the Better Joy Cookbook just cook and eat in stony silence, never saying
a word or even looking each other in the eye.

*Posted: 1:23 a.m. by LordOrcus* Hey, guess what? They're coming out with The
Better Joy Book of Hors D'oeuvres. It just goes to show that the publishers
are a bunch of corporate greedheads who care more about money than they do
about cooking. Is it too much to ask for a single cookbook that contains all
possible recipes?

*Posted: 1:48 a.m. by specsheet*Hey, everyone. I can tell just by reading
the recipe that if you prepare eggs benedict as written, the sauce will
separate. My mom always said the other kids made fun of me because they were
jealous of my intelligence, so I must be right. Everyone who's saying that
they followed the recipe and it came out perfect is either lying, or loves
greasy separated hollandaise sauce.

*Posted: 1:52 a.m. by IAmEd*As I have pointed out MANY TIMES, several of
these recipes contain raisins, and I, like most people, am ALLERGIC to
raisins! And before you tell me to substitute dried cranberries, I will
reiterate that I am discussing the recipes AS WRITTEN. I do not appreciate
your ATTACKING ME with helpful suggestions!

*Posted: 2:12 a.m. by Herodotus*I just have to laugh at the recipe for Beef
Wellington. In Wellington's day, ovens didn't have temperature settings! And
pate de foie gras *certainly* didn't come in cans. It's like the authors
didn't even *care* about replicating authentic early 19th century cooking
techniques!

*Posted: 2:17 a.m. by LordOrcus* I have read the new Better Joy Cookbook and
I am devastated to my very core. Their macaroni and cheese recipe, the very
macaroni and cheese I've been making since I was in college, has been
ravaged and disfigured and left bleeding on the page. Where once it
contained only cheddar cheese, now the recipe calls for a mix of cheddar and
Colby. It may contain macaroni, and it may contain cheese, but it is
*not*macaroni and cheese. This is a slap in the face and a knife in
the gut. You
have lost me, Better Joy Cookbook. I would bid you goodbye, but I wish you
nothing but the pain and rage you have delivered unto me.

[Nightwalker450]

That's awesome Drogos... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

I have one complaint about 4th, that has nothing to do with rules, or races, or classes.

The DMG has parts that are pretty much just strictly advertisements for their other merchandise. I'll post the quote when I get a chance, but reading through it I had to stop and double check what I just read. It of course has to do with the grids and minitures, but it just annoyed me.

[FrankTrollman]

Here's a straight question, Frank. Do you think the skill challenges are more or less fixed (without doing an entire rewrite) by simply removing the +5 to the DC? I mean, mathematically, what does that bring the probabilities to? Do you think it needs more/less than that to bring it back to good use?

No.

Here's what that brings it for a solo character with an 18 in the stat and training in the skill:

• Complexity 1: 63.3%
• Complexity 3: 71.3%

So already you note that there is a straight negative correlation between actual difficulty of tasks and the amount of XP you are awarded for them. That sinks it right there. Of course it's entirely possible that people will want to contribute to the challenge if they are not a min/maxed character with exactly the right skill. That's supposedly the whole point of the system.

If a character is not a perfect min/max match for the task, say he has only the 18 in the appropriate stat and doesn't have the relevant skill as one of his four tag skills - then he's back to the 11 percent ratio we were talking about before. And any contribution from the peanut gallery of non min/maxed characters averages in overall probability. For example, one character who has "only" a +4 modifier attempting to contribute once on a Complexity 1 challenge drops your chances of success from 63.3% to 52.7%.

I have deep reservations about the 3rd edition skill system. But honestly "every player tries to roll a DC 15 Diplomacy check to give +2 to the party Master Debater and then he rolls a single check against a static target number" is a much better system. You would seriously be better off just rolling back to the 3rd edition skill system. Every single part of the 4e Skill system is crap. Every numerical input, every check, every player choice, every DM judgement call, every part of it is defined incorrectly. Almost every single part of it has exactly the inverse effects as it is supposedly created to produce. There is no quick fix, because it is completely wrong all the way down to the little wiggly bits.

-Frank

[paws2sky]

Actually this reminds me of 3.5 where a Level 10 fighter, goes up against the magically equipped commoner. It doesn't matter what you can do in 3.5, if you don't have all the magical equipment. Usually descriptions of 3.5 characters are 10% character 90% equipment.

Huh.

Sounds like we've had very different experiences with 3.5

[deek]

I've found 19+ pages on ENWorld (that Frank posted earlier) that has plenty more discussion, so I will drop my discussion of mathematical fixes from this thread. It has been an eye opener though and a ton of good information to work with.

I still like the idea of chaining key skills, allowing the whole group to participate, and having secondary skills give a bonus or unlocks the use of another skill. Obviously, the initial execution is mathematically flawed.

Also, in 4E, aiding a party member is a 50/50 chance to give them +2, so its a bit easier than 3.5's DC 15.

[Wounded Ronin]

I feel this adds an enormous amount to the conversation (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Main article here.

Cookbooks are a lot like Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games.
They contain seemingly rigid rules that, in practice, require a certain
amount of adaptation for your own tastes.

So how come cooking gets its own TV channel and role-playing games don't
even get a show on G4? Maybe the population at large doesn't want to pretend
to be a half-elf. Maybe RPGs take more imagination than most people have.

However, it just might have something to do with the role-playing community.
If geeks talked about cookbooks the way they talk about RPG books, the
results would not be pretty:

*Posted: 12:15 a.m. by LordOrcus* I'm so mad that there's a new edition of The
Better Joy Cookbook out. Thanks for making my old copy obsolete, you greedy
hacks! For five years now, my friends have been coming over for my eggplant
Parmesan, and now I'm never going to be able serve it again unless I shell
out 35 bucks for the latest version.

*Posted: 12:42 a.m. by Kathraxis*Hey, I have a question! When you preheat
the oven, can you start it before you measure out the ingredients, or do you
have to do it afterward? Please answer quickly, my friends and I have been
arguing about it for four hours and we're getting pretty hungry.

*Posted: 12:48 a.m. by Goku1440* I found an *awesome loophole*! On page 242
it says "Add oregano to taste!" It doesn't say how much oregano, or what
sort of taste! You can add as much oregano as you want! I'm going to make my
friends eat *infinite oregano* and they'll have to do it because the recipe
says so!

*Posted: 1:02 a.m. by barrybarrybarry* I can't believe I spent 35 dollars on
a cookbook that doesn't have a recipe for peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches. When I buy a cookbook, I expect it to *tell me how to cook*. And
don't tell me to just make a PBJ myself, I'm not some sort of hippy artist
pretentious "freeform cook."

*Posted: 1:08 a.m. by jvmkanelly* Where are the recipes for chatting with
friends while cooking? Where are the recipes for conversation over the meal?
When I throw a dinner party, I want it to be a PARTY. I guess the idiots who
use the Better Joy Cookbook just cook and eat in stony silence, never saying
a word or even looking each other in the eye.

*Posted: 1:23 a.m. by LordOrcus* Hey, guess what? They're coming out with The
Better Joy Book of Hors D'oeuvres. It just goes to show that the publishers
are a bunch of corporate greedheads who care more about money than they do
about cooking. Is it too much to ask for a single cookbook that contains all
possible recipes?

*Posted: 1:48 a.m. by specsheet*Hey, everyone. I can tell just by reading
the recipe that if you prepare eggs benedict as written, the sauce will
separate. My mom always said the other kids made fun of me because they were
jealous of my intelligence, so I must be right. Everyone who's saying that
they followed the recipe and it came out perfect is either lying, or loves
greasy separated hollandaise sauce.

*Posted: 1:52 a.m. by IAmEd*As I have pointed out MANY TIMES, several of
these recipes contain raisins, and I, like most people, am ALLERGIC to
raisins! And before you tell me to substitute dried cranberries, I will
reiterate that I am discussing the recipes AS WRITTEN. I do not appreciate
your ATTACKING ME with helpful suggestions!

*Posted: 2:12 a.m. by Herodotus*I just have to laugh at the recipe for Beef
Wellington. In Wellington's day, ovens didn't have temperature settings! And
pate de foie gras *certainly* didn't come in cans. It's like the authors
didn't even *care* about replicating authentic early 19th century cooking
techniques!

*Posted: 2:17 a.m. by LordOrcus* I have read the new Better Joy Cookbook and
I am devastated to my very core. Their macaroni and cheese recipe, the very
macaroni and cheese I've been making since I was in college, has been
ravaged and disfigured and left bleeding on the page. Where once it
contained only cheddar cheese, now the recipe calls for a mix of cheddar and
Colby. It may contain macaroni, and it may contain cheese, but it is
*not*macaroni and cheese. This is a slap in the face and a knife in
the gut. You
have lost me, Better Joy Cookbook. I would bid you goodbye, but I wish you
nothing but the pain and rage you have delivered unto me.

It was funny, and I identify with Herodotus, but this is the thing. There are still good cookbooks and bad cookbooks. Cooking is a big hobby of mine and if we went to a bookstore together I could go through the shelf and give you my opinion about whether a given cookbook is good and for what reasons, or if the cookbook is bad. We can even imagine or occasionally find a cookbook which is flawed in certain ways such that most people would not be able to use the recepies as written to make palatable food. We can more realistically find cookbooks where the recpies weren't actually tested by the authors so while a few of them work OK the majority of them produce bad tasting dishes. I am not even kidding about this.

Therefore, it's possible for RPG rules to be so flawed that they cannot, on their own, make a game that anybody would want to play.

As someone who takes cooking seriously I feel offended when I crack open a cookbook that has lots of pretty pictures but then the recepies were obviously never tested. The publishers and authors obviously sought to sell the book to people who don't usually cook who would be entranced by the pretty pictures but who wouldn't know the recepies were crap until it was too late. The same principle can be extended to RPG rules.

[raphabonelli]

Besides that... you can change some ingredients of your recipe book to make the recipe taste betters... but the recipe in the book will still taste bad, no matter what. No matter how much you "house-rule" your recipe... the recipe on the book don't change at all.

[deek]

I was reading some more on this...there are several different system overhauls that keep to the spirit of the skill challenge rules.

But what has been more interesting is one of the developers commenting on giving +/- 2 for good/bad creative use of skills on their checks, as well as building in some skills that give an automatic success on their first use. All of which, completely changes the probablilities.

So, just to anyone that read this thread and thought there was no hope, there is hope. And its not really that bad as long as the DM is aware of the published issues!

[FrankTrollman]

deek, that's retarded. Giving people a +2 changes their chances from less than 20% to less than 1 in 3. You do creative crap and the DM shines on you and you all have min/maxed characters and you still don't even complete level appropriate challenges even half the time.

I don't know why you are so very anxious to drink this particular Koolaid, but don't. There are lots of incredibly bad skill systems that are still kilometers ahead of the crap that was put out in 4e. It is quite simply the worst skill system ever produced for a mass market game, bar none. Even the raw percentages system of Palladium was better. There are halfway decent skill systems in a dozen sources that you could use instead.

---

Actually deploying the 4e skill system is math intensive, because it relies heavily on probabilities and combinatorials. If you aren't good enough at math to see that the system is horrible on first read through, you aren't good enough at math to actually use it in play. If you are good enough at math to see the ridiculous crock of shit that it is on first read through, you will have no desire to actually use it in play.

The only hope is that people will some day write a better system that 4e players will be willing to use. That's it. There is nothing inside the 4e Skill Challenges rules that is in any way good. And there are no easy fixes for that horrendous piece of crap.

-Frank

[Cheops]

I've also finally come across the Skill Challenge in KotSF and it was done very differently in there than in the RAW. It was 4 successes before 4 failures and the DC was 15 for skill uses. By my calculations that gives a skilled groups with a +1 from stats a 42% chance of success. That rockets up to 76% if you play Frank style and no one makes fun builds - just efficient ones.

Seems that they changed how it worked somewhere between the intro adventure and the RAW.

[Aaron]

Someone at my FLGS made an interesting point. He had been looking to buy a set of 4e products so he and his friends to get into a game. After doing some comparison, he bought Descent and its supplements. He had come to the conclusion that buying everything in Descent would get him more game than spending the same amount on D&D products.

[deek]

Someone at my FLGS made an interesting point. He had been looking to buy a set of 4e products so he and his friends to get into a game. After doing some comparison, he bought Descent and its supplements. He had come to the conclusion that buying everything in Descent would get him more game than spending the same amount on D&D products.

I'd buy that. I know several people that dropped hundreds of dollars in DnD 3.x. Luckily, I only ever bought a PHB. But even going back to 2nd edition, which I loved to DM, my collection of books, including a few 1st edition hardbacks, was well over $1500...and I was in high school!

Just looking at core books, I'd easily invest the $35 retail price to run with SR4 (even with its flaws) over the $115 for the DnD4 core books needed to play. And I am sure there are other games that are less than that for an all-in-one book.

Yeah, I don't know why I am drinking that koolaid either Frank. I will admit that I didn't playtest or see the mathematical probabilities when reading through the skill challenges. I was intrigued by the encounter setup and really just skipped over the tables with DCs and Complexities. I just really liked what I read and I'm apparently trying to defend a broken system.

Granted, I have read so much in the past few days and seen so many methods to flip things around or make small adjustments... I mean, I can take my pick between the RAW 11% success rate for first level moderate challenges, change a couple thing to get about a 60-65% success rate or got to something that gives me over 75% success rate. I've read things to change the complexity so the more complex challenges are actualy harder, instead of just take more time...I've read of people focusing on group challenges instead of solo challenges, discussing variance among groups with mean score deviation...

Just a lot of stuff. But when it came back around, I read something from Keith Baker that shows he is very liberal with the +2 reward for interesting uses, plant in a few skill checks that don't cause success/failure count to change and give automatic successes when a 20 is rolled. I'll admit, the RAW is broken, specifically making it very hard to succeed at 1st level. But I don't think is beyond salvageable with a couple tweaks. Its supposed to be a challenge...many times you are getting XP for not fighting. And if you look at higher levels, its not just an 11% success chance...

We're gonna give it a shot though. And if it really does suck donkey, then I have plenty of resources to fix it. Should there not be a reason for the fix, sure. It should work out of the box. And when one of the staff uses two house-rules in his own games...well...call that what you will.

[Moon-Hawk]

I've also finally come across the Skill Challenge in KotSF and it was done very differently in there than in the RAW. It was 4 successes before 4 failures and the DC was 15 for skill uses. By my calculations that gives a skilled groups with a +1 from stats a 42% chance of success. That rockets up to 76% if you play Frank style and no one makes fun builds - just efficient ones.

Seems that they changed how it worked somewhere between the intro adventure and the RAW.

It's been said, it can not be used as written, and must be changed. There are some ways to make them better.
Setting the number of successes and number of failures equal is a good start. That will get rid of odd effects of challenges getting easier as they become more complex, depending on the initial DC. As I understand it, if the number of successes and failures are equal, then the difficulty of the test should not vary with complexity at all. The outcome will become more reliable, but the actual chances of success or failure shouldn't change. The mean doesn't change, but the variance goes down. Which, to me, sounds about right. It's complexity, not difficulty, and a high-complexity task rewards more experience, not because it's harder, but because it occupied a larger percentage of your time at the gaming table. It also means the chance of success or failure is the same as it would be for a single test at that DC, which means the GM can have a reasonable chance at estimating how hard the task will actually be without being able to do fancy math. It's still turning one roll into several, with no change in the resulting chance of success, but as I said, the variance will drop so that you're less likely to succeed or fail based on a single lucky roll, and more likely to perform predictably. I'm not saying this is good or bad, it's just a result, and it's a result which may be found to be desirable by some people.
Frank also points out the issue of one person doing everything, and I like his fix. Split the number of failures evenly across every member of the party, and one way or another they're knocked out of the challenge when they hit that. Find a fluff reason to explain why they're knocked out of the challenge. Easy explanation if the challenge is a chase scene, more difficult if it's social, but do-able.
There's still the possibility of one person doing all the work. You might want to limit the number of successes contributed by each person. Say, in a 5 person group no one is able to contribute more than 50% of the total successes. They can certainly exceed their share, but they can't do it all.
You can similarly limit the number of successes which come from a certain skill. You may be able to use 5 primary skills for a challenge, but Diplomacy can't contribute more than half of them. Diplomacy can only get you so far.
And of course there's the issue of whether or not to add +5.

The idea of everyone rolling skill checks until something happens is good. The execution in the DMG is abysmal. But set the number of successes and failures equal, divide the failure between the party, and cap the successes from each character and skill (much higher than their share, but still below 100%), and the system is, I believe, workable.

Thoughts?

[deek]

On the surface, I think that is workable as well.

I've also heard the variant of just flipping the success/failure numbers. So, instead of 4 success before 2 failures, you just do 2 successes before 4 failures. Now, that makes things really easy, but assuming anything published will be using these types of encounters, it makes it a very quick option.

Also, all the debate has been on the math at first level. I've read a lot about at the higher levels and its not even close to being as difficult at the numbers show at first level. It begs the question, should skill challenges be easier at low level?

And the other thing I keep pointing out is the resulting effect. A failure does not equal death here. It may mean you have to spend a healing surge. It may mean instead of getting the magic sword now, you have to fulfill a quest objective first. It may also mean instead of the duke giving you 30 of his men to help, you only get 3. A failure result, normally means you will have a tougher path, not that you die.

And if our first level party only has an 11% chance of getting a magic sword without having to do anything but skill checks...well, that does actually seem appropriate.

[FrankTrollman]

That will get rid of odd effects of challenges getting easier as they become more complex, depending on the initial DC. As I understand it, if the number of successes and failures are equal, then the difficulty of the test should not vary with complexity at all. The outcome will become more reliable, but the actual chances of success or failure shouldn't change.

Sort of. With the number of hits and misses required to win or lose being equal, then of course you have an exactly 50/50 shot of succeeding or failing in an ultimate sense when you run out of attempts at the end if each individual roll had a 50% chance of succeeding. So if your individual tests pass on an 11+, there is no change in overall chances with higher complexities. However, if you pass on a 10+ or better, then increasing complexity is good for you, while as if you pass on a 12+ or worse increasing complexity is bad for you.

Let's consider the simple case where you need either 4 hits/failures (complexity 1) or 6 hits/failures (complexity 2). If you pass on an 11+ on each die roll, it's a 50% chance to succeed or fail either way. On the other hand, if you have a 10+ to pass (and thus 55% of your rolls succeed), then you succeed overall 60.8% of the time at complexity 1, and 63.3% at complexity 2. On the flip side, a team that needs a 12+ (and thus 45% of their rolls succeed) is looking at success 39.2% of the time at complexity 1, and 36.7% at complexity 2. Basically what you've made happen is that min/maxing is more heavily rewarded by higher complexities. Every tiny bonus you accumulate has its effects magnified by the increase in complexity.

It also means the chance of success or failure is the same as it would be for a single test at that DC, which means the GM can have a reasonable chance at estimating how hard the task will actually be without being able to do fancy math.

I think that what you are attempting to say here is a true statement, but the thing you actually said is not true. Increasing the iterations without giving weight to successes or failures does increase the chances of success or failure. It won't push you over the 50% mark, but it will change probabilities. A team which is likely to succeed will become more likely to succeed, while a team which was likely to fail will become more likely to fail. Although admittedly you don't need to do fancy math to determine whether they are likely to succeed or fail. Actually determining how likely you are to succeed or fail at such a task does require some slightly fancy math - you have to add up all the tiny probabilities of all 462 different ways that you can roll 6 successes and 5 failures on 11 attempts.

So while it would in general be kind of user friendly, fine tuning it would not be. Especially when you get up to 12/12 successes/failures figuring exact probabilities becomes time consuming even on a calculator.

Also, all the debate has been on the math at first level. I've read a lot about at the higher levels and its not even close to being as difficult at the numbers show at first level.

Basically, the DCs set themselves to your level. What this means is that you get a level bonus to your skill check and the DC gets the same bonus so you don't pull ahead or fall behind. What doesn't stay the same is your attributes. Every couple of levels, your stats go up, but mostly just your prime stats. By 21st level you'll be a demi-god, your prime attributes (for example: Intelligence and Wisdom for a Wizard) will have increased by 8. This gives you +4 to your biggest skills that are above and beyond the increases to the DCs that you suffer through for gaining levels. But your other attributes only go up by 2, so the rest of your skill checks are only +1, which as previously noted doesn't really change thing.

So the long and the short of it is that at higher levels the difference between a min/max character in their element and everyone else has increased. And since the rules presently encourage taking min/max characters and shaking them a problems solo-style for as long as it takes - that does mean that things become more plausible at epic levels. But if we were intending people to actually do the things described in the challenge descriptions where everyone contributed and did stuff and such, then the effect would be pretty minor.

-Frank

[Moon-Hawk]

I think that what you are attempting to say here is a true statement, but the thing you actually said is not true. Increasing the iterations without giving weight to successes or failures does increase the chances of success or failure. It won't push you over the 50% mark, but it will change probabilities. A team which is likely to succeed will become more likely to succeed, while a team which was likely to fail will become more likely to fail. Although admittedly you don't need to do fancy math to determine whether they are likely to succeed or fail. Actually determining how likely you are to succeed or fail at such a task does require some slightly fancy math - you have to add up all the tiny probabilities of all 462 different ways that you can roll 6 successes and 5 failures on 11 attempts.

So while it would in general be kind of user friendly, fine tuning it would not be. Especially when you get up to 12/12 successes/failures figuring exact probabilities becomes time consuming even on a calculator.

Ah yes. I'm not entirely sure what I was trying to say, but you may be giving me too much credit. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) That's what I get for trying to whip out a solution between subjects while at work without really thinking. However, I did bust out my fancy math just to double check, and I agree with you 100%; the thing which I said was not true. The things which you are saying is true.

[deek]

Another thing to make note of, is that there are class powers as well as a feat (skill focus) that can be used to push you out front against probability.

I think what all of this discussion does is make a huge point to DMs to not have the result of a failed skill challenge equate to death or an ultimate stop in the adventure. Skill challenges are best if used to reward PCs a lot if successful and have them face an obstacle if failed...