[X] My Assistant

[hyzmarca]

Oh man, FrankTrollmann, if you're still adamant on using your simulationist whims on a game that clearly admits to not care for that and rather emphasizes playability and fun, you will always fail with any attempts of simulating some weird-ass situation where a bajillion wizards of level 1 will try to fry a level bajillion fighter, when the game tells to not try such assinine theories.

It is a basic fact of gaming that if the rules allow an extremely effective tactic then someone is going to do it. In fact, most people are going to do it.

[bishop186]

I'm sorry, I might just be missing it, but what is this mystical 4th Edition spell that doesn't need a roll to hit? If you think it's Magic Missile, I suggest you look again because Magic Missile now requires a Int vs. Reflex roll to hit.

[Wounded Ronin]

Yes, perhaps, if you feel threatened to it. However, I don't feel the need to post a superlong rant from another site... Like that one, for example...

Oh well, if we're going down to that level, it's proof enough that there isn't anything more to say...

That's actually a collection of rants from an amusing and semi-well-known ranter living in Urugay. Many people don't agree with him 100% but I like his style. Again, you're the only person on this website who has repeatedly called attention to that one set of exerpts, and perhaps one of the quickest I've seen to start with the ad homienems.

[FrankTrollman]

I'm sorry, I might just be missing it, but what is this mystical 4th Edition spell that doesn't need a roll to hit? If you think it's Magic Missile, I suggest you look again because Magic Missile now requires a Int vs. Reflex roll to hit.

No. It's Cloud of Daggers. You roll to-hit to inflict d6+Int Mod damage. But then if your opponents move into or start their turn in the area of it before the end of your next turn, they take your Wisdom Modifier in damage with no attack roll. Since that's not a "miss" effect but merely an effect contingent on their actions, it automagically slays minions. It is contingent on enemy actions, except that he enemy action in question is one he has no choice about - during your turn you already know what square the enemy is going to begin his next turn.

As for Particle Beam flipping out because he doesn't like the message I bring about D&D 4e, that's perfectly fine. Particle Beam: now that I'm on ignore I find it perfectly acceptable to gloat. Even Mike Mearls has admitted that their Skill Challenges system is totally fucked and their math doesn't work:

Hey all,

We had a meeting about skill challenges on (cue creepy music) Friday the 13th. We came to a few conclusions on what happened, what our intent is, and what we're going to do about it.

The system went through several permutations as we worked on it, and I think there are some disconnects between the final text, our intentions, and how playtesters and internal designers use skill challenges.

So, we've been listening and reading threads and figuring out some stuff on our end.

So yeah, they admitted that they screwed it up mathematically. Why on Earth would I hold back from saying that they screwed it up mathematically? Unlike them, I can do math.

-Frank

[Bull]

Ok kids, chill out. THere's a whole bunch of comments flying about that are borderline personal attacks. Scale it back, keep it civil, and play nice, or I let loose the rabid woodchucks.

Bull

[bishop186]

No. It's Cloud of Daggers. You roll to-hit to inflict d6+Int Mod damage. But then if your opponents move into or start their turn in the area of it before the end of your next turn, they take your Wisdom Modifier in damage with no attack roll. Since that's not a "miss" effect but merely an effect contingent on their actions, it automagically slays minions. It is contingent on enemy actions, except that he enemy action in question is one he has no choice about - during your turn you already know what square the enemy is going to begin his next turn.

Ah, I see. Well, that's not an autoslay for minions: a missed attack never damages a minion, so if you miss with the actual attack the cloud of daggers is rendered useless on minions anyway. Even if that weren't the case there are many creatures with powers that enable them to shift allies a square or allow them to shift themselves under certain contingencies.

[FrankTrollman]

Ah, I see. Well, that's not an autoslay for minions: a missed attack never damages a minion, so if you miss with the actual attack the cloud of daggers is rendered useless on minions anyway. Even if that weren't the case there are many creatures with powers that enable them to shift allies a square or allow them to shift themselves under certain contingencies.

No.

It doesn't cause damage on a missed attack. It creates a contingency where they will take damage if they don't move before their turn. It's different, and yes it means that it autoslays minions unless someone else uses a power to shift them out of the way. Of course, you can also use it to kill minions by shifting them into the column whether you do it with a missed attack or not.

So Minions are not killed by a miss from Acid Orb because they take no damage from the "miss effect." But they are killed by a miss from Cloud of Daggers because the damage is not a miss effect and does not trigger their keyword immunity.

-Frank

[Malicant]

Frank, it might come as a suprise, but "autoslay minion" is kind of the shtick of a controller. So you are basically saying "the game sucks because it does what it intended to do, I just spin it so it sounds like they did not intend that".
In theory a gazillion level 1 wizards can slay anything, no matter how powerful, but not without some serious leaps of faith and a lot damage to the suspension of disbelief. This might be another surprise, but a game is more then just rules and numbers. You might not know that, but it is true, I've have seen it myself. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

So, do you have any real critisicm beside "it seems characters are getting better, but they are not" and "wizards are the borked ones"? Like, real math based on actual gameplay, not some weird ass situations you need to create to prove some point?

What is you point anyway? Every system can be broken?

[bishop186]

Okay, I'll give you that, then. I don't find it very game-breaking, though our Wizard doesn't have it anyway and I thus haven't seen it in action.

This might be another surprise, but a game is more then just rules and numbers. You might not know that, but it is true, I've have seen it myself. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Indeed! Just yesterday we ran our 4e game, and the DM let us throw (by which I mean that the fighter, who is statted like a 3.5 barbarian, rolled a strength check and heaved over the railing) the rogue 15 feet down to death-from-above a goblin. Oh, did hilarity ensue. Especially because the round before the fighter had knocked the goblin down there.

Some things are taking some getting used to, for example flat-footedness becoming a rogue power instead of a "hey, you reacted quicker than him" kind of thing. You know, I really like minions though. A ton of them can kick your ass even with the 1 HP drawback and they're alot of fun.

We're second level and thus far our encounters have lasted between 4 and 12 rounds each with between 3 and 20 monsters. Combat does seem to go more quickly, or at least fluidly, in this edition and that's a good thing.

[deek]

I have to agree with you, combat does seem to last just as long but has a lot more fluidity. We played our first session last night and have a blast! We didn't have any rules issues, although our fighter didn't like a minion using a double move to shift then run, but oh well...we caught him anyways.

As for skill challenges...that's really the part I love about 4th edition. I guess I am not clear enough on the math problem side, but the theory behind the whole challenge system is really good. I mean, instead of a DM creating yet another combat encounter, you can set up a scene with a few key skills, set the DC and difficulty level of the challenge and let the players take turns using skills until you fail due to bad choice of skills or bad rolls or succeed due to having good, relevant skills or using high skills creatively. I think its a good system...now if there is a mathematical flaw that I am missing, I will certainly be on the lookout for errata. I'd think that the simple fix is either to lower the suggested DC's at each level or perhaps increase the amount of allowable failures through the challenge. Both seem like relatively easy fixes while still allowing the system to keep its innovative feel.

[FrankTrollman]

As for skill challenges...that's really the part I love about 4th edition. I guess I am not clear enough on the math problem side, but the theory behind the whole challenge system is really good.

The problem is that you can't fucking do them under any circumstances.

The challenges are broken.

Let's say that you want to complete the Negotiation example as 1st level characters. The whole deal ends as soon as your entire team accumulates 8 successes or 4 failures. The DCs involved are 20 whether your team is using Diplomacy, Bluff, or Insight. Let's say just for yucks that every single character in the party has a Charisma or Wisdom of 18, and they all have Bluff, Diplomacy, or Insight as a trained skill. That gives you a +9 bonus on your skill check. Then you each make your attempts against a DC of 20. You succeed half the time.

And do you know what your chances are of getting to 8 successes before you get more than 3 failures?

11.3%!

You're a frickin min/maxed party with all the right skills and your over all success rate is just over one in ten. Go ahead and try it. Try it ten times. Don't even bother having people generating extra automatic failures with social faux pas or the like. Just straight have every single member of the party come to the table with high end characters for the specific task at hand and have them all contribute to the fullest for the 4-11 attempts that can happen before you ultimately succeed or fail. And come back and tell me how many times you succeed. Because I will laugh at you.

-Frank

[Fuchs]

So adjust the difficulty.

[deek]

Ummm...yeah, Frank, why is the DC a 20 at first level?. An easy difficulty challenge has the DC set at 10. DC 20 would be for a difficulty challenge and first level. IIRC, the moderate difficulty is set at DC 15, so I think you are misreading or misunderstanding something about DC levels in these challenges...

I do agree with your math with a DC 20, but I think that is only going to come up at the most difficult of levels, or if the DM believes the skill being used is almost impossible to succeed with. There is a whole lot of text covering how to set up these challenges and I've read over them many times, as I think they are great for the game. Especially if you are in a group of hack and slashers...it really gets them to use their skills and not always rely on combat to solve problems or gain experience!

Note: Not that it will make THAT much difference in your scenario, Frank, but some skill checks just grant a bonus to another character's roll, (i.e. a successful Insight may contribute a +2 to the next Diplomacy roll).

[last_of_the_grea...]

But we CAN hack and slash! So, when we fail that skill challenge (if we bother with it) we use our collective poers to kick the butt of whatever had the gall to challenge us like a nerd with non combat stuff!

[deek]

Hack and Slash = roll dice, use predetermined powers in creative ways until monsters hp equal zero before yours do.

Skill Challenge = roll dice, use predetermined skills in creative ways until you get x successes before y failures.

Its really the same thing, just expanded to use that chunk of skills you picked up. They both award experience.

[FrankTrollman]

Ummm...yeah, Frank, why is the DC a 20 at first level?.

Because the base DC for a medium first level challenge is 15, and if it is a skill DC it is increased by 5 - to 20. Page 42, lower left hand corner.

And the Negotiation always has a difficulty based on the character's level so you don't succeed at any level with any characters.

--


And you know what this means? It means that they didn't play test these rules at all. Because if they had, they would have noticed straight off that no one ever succeeds.

-Frank

[Wounded Ronin]

The problem is that you can't fucking do them under any circumstances.

The challenges are broken.

Let's say that you want to complete the Negotiation example as 1st level characters. The whole deal ends as soon as your entire team accumulates 8 successes or 4 failures. The DCs involved are 20 whether your team is using Diplomacy, Bluff, or Insight. Let's say just for yucks that every single character in the party has a Charisma or Wisdom of 18, and they all have Bluff, Diplomacy, or Insight as a trained skill. That gives you a +9 bonus on your skill check. Then you each make your attempts against a DC of 20. You succeed half the time.

And do you know what your chances are of getting to 8 successes before you get more than 3 failures?

11.3%!

You're a frickin min/maxed party with all the right skills and your over all success rate is just over one in ten. Go ahead and try it. Try it ten times. Don't even bother having people generating extra automatic failures with social faux pas or the like. Just straight have every single member of the party come to the table with high end characters for the specific task at hand and have them all contribute to the fullest for the 4-11 attempts that can happen before you ultimately succeed or fail. And come back and tell me how many times you succeed. Because I will laugh at you.

-Frank

Yeah, I was going to say, based on the math it seems like if anyone says the skill challenges are great that they haven't actually dealt with them yet.

[Fuchs]

Well, as I said - lower the DC. People did the math before, and from what I recall, not applying the +5 for skill use more or less fixes it.

[FrankTrollman]

Well, as I said - lower the DC. People did the math before, and from what I recall, not applying the +5 for skill use more or less fixes it.

Depends upon what you mean by "fixes" it. If you don't apply the +5 that the rules actually say that you are supposed to apply:

• Ability tests in challenges are still off-the-charts impossible. Better hope there are no feats of strength or anything up in here.
• Higher complexity challenges (the ones which are worth more XP) become easier than lower complexity challenges (the ones which are worth less XP).
• Having characters in the party who aren't min/maxed towards whatever the goal of the scenario happens to be still drags the party down to failure. If you aren't a diplomancer then attempting to contribute to the scene in any way actively harms the party's chances of success, directly contrary to the stated goals of the rules.
• Higher level characters are still confronted with higher DCs to do literally the same things and thus becoming more powerful has no effect on your character's ability to do anything.
• The system is still deathly dull - instead of rolling Diplomacy and getting a result, you roll Diplomacy nine times and get a result. But honestly there's no strategy or anything to the exercise, you just pick your best allowed skill and roll it over and over again.

It's a bad system. There is no easy fix, because it's not a good system with minor problems. It's a slap-dash piece of crap that no one ever bothered to give more than the vaguest once over on. Not a single person gave this part of the rules a play through once they had it written. The final copy is essentially written by Hamlet monkeys with typewriters.

It is all sizzle and no steak. Someone made a cool sounding skill system pitch and then... they just printed it without giving it any thought or effort whatsoever. You'd think that such a monumental failure would get people fired, but actually the same people will be paid actual money to write an expanded skill system for the DMG 2. And they probably won't put any more effort into it the second time.

-Frank

[Fuchs]

The way I see it, it's a more codified system than what I am using (which is: rp the scene, and make appropriate skill checks at the appropriate points).

So, let's say the goal is to convince the king that he should grant the party a boon. Introduction scene - diplomacy roll, if failed, the character does a gaffe, king is slightly irked. Preparing the pitch - bluff or diplomacy, if won the king is intrigued. If failed, the king is bored. RPed out. Additionally, history knowledge can be used here in additon to it, mentioning precendences or flattering the king by bringing up his heroic past. Then comes the pitch, players rps it, then rolls. Might need more rolls if he failed too much before.

Frankly, the idea of chaining skill checks is not new, and not bad. The execution is faulty, but that can be fixed.

[FrankTrollman]

Frankly, the idea of chaining skill checks is not new, and not bad.

Granted. Chaining skills together to make a system of out-of-combat interactions that has depth and tactics is indeed both obvious and would be well received by many people.

The execution is faulty, but that can be fixed.

No.

The execution in this case is a total unmitigated failure. You can scrap the entire system and write a new one that actually accomplishes any goals at all. But that's entirely on the shoulders of whomever takes it upon themselves to write a completely new system for Skill Challenges. It isn't just that the math is so atrociously bad in this system that even attempting to use it once would prove to even those who are completely unschooled in mathematics that it had gone horribly awry. It isn't just that the system includes no rules or meaningful guidelines to actually chain skills together. It's that the entire system, top to bottom is completely without redeeming feature or silver lining.

I would love a system that genuinely encouraged characters to work together using bluff, diplomacy, insight, past heroic deeds, and background knowledges to piece together a proposition that would sway a king to make concessions in an ongoing boundary dispute. That would be great. But this system is not that system. The players just look at their character sheets and consider who has the biggest bonus to one skill on a short list, everyone else leaves the room and the guy with the biggest skill rolls a d20 up to 11 times. And he fails miserably anyway, because even the math behind "roll it nine times" has failed badly.

-Frank

[Wolfx]

Frank,

I greatly appreciat the fact that you have taken the time to show the problems with the skill challenges. Since I am just now reading 4th edition, it gives me a heads up. I would suggest that you write up a better system, but you haven't provided much in the way of positive remarks for 4th edition.

I understand your issues, but why bother continuing to bash the game. It doesn't appear that you have any intention of using 4th.

Aric

[Critias]

I understand your issues, but why bother continuing to bash the game. It doesn't appear that you have any intention of using 4th.

Aric

Your registratation date just doesn't make any sense followed by a question like that. You've been registered here for there years, but you ask a question like that, which makes it sound like this is perhaps your very first time being logged on to Dumpshock.

[deek]

I'd have to agree with Fuchs...chaining together skills is good. Frank says it obvious, but I never really saw it in this context, which is probably why I think it is a great idea. Also, I thank Frank for pointing out the probability issue. Seeing I have been harping to my DM to use these challenges, you will be sure that I will have a talk with him about this so its not impossible to succeed.

As to the rules in general...uh, don't we all end up tweaking things to meet our group's taste? After two years of SR4, I had two pages of house rules that made the game better for our group. If we have to do the same with DnD4, so be it... I don't know any RPG that we haven't altered something.

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. Each player is taking a turn and if they have low numbers in the key skills, you can try and convince the DM that your unorthodox use of another skill would work in the scene. Some groups won't use this at all because they roleplay all the time anyways.

But for those groups that rollplay, this gives the DM a bridge to get some roleplaying out of some players, as they have to look at their skills, and in some way, explain how they are using their skill. If you strip it down to just letting one character do the entire skill challenge, I think you are misusing the rules and would be better served to just give them one roll. The challenge is for the group, not individual.

Also, we are only talking here about social skill challenges. Take a look at the examples about pursuit or traps/puzzles. The same system can be used to simulate there. Not to mention legwork in town...I mean, if you take the frequency from one check per round to one check per hour, then you have a skill challenge that is overlayed on top of other activities going on.

If the math is bad, its bad. I believe Frank in that regard. But, its not like it can't be fixed by just changing some DCs and pass/fail numbers up. I think its a lot easier to do that then spend hours bitching about how wretched it is and how the authors should be axed. And you know what? If you don't like the skill challenges, don't use them. Go back to single roles.

The other comment about difficulties scaling with level...I actually like that. From a "fun" perspective, its nice to know that level 15 will be just as challenging as level 1. Our DM figured out at our current pace, we would be progressing about 4 levels per year or playing. And we all agreed that if each session was as fun and engaging as our first battle, then none of us would have a problem. We've never played a game where there was a good challenge at all levels. We've retired so many characters (from many different games) because they've become so overpowered that it was no longer fun.

The idea that DnD 4th Edition may have solved that issue...well, that is very intriguing to me and well worth playing to find out!

[Aaron]

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