Dude, skill based anything in 4e Does Not Work At All.

-Frank

Okay, I agree. I LOVED the Dark Sun setting. It was awesome. The Dark Sun setting was also not in the core books, now was it? Oh, and wasn't it dropped after 2nd edition (unless you count the mock-ups that people did for 3rd)? Great job there, TSR/Wizards. Perhaps I went a tad bit overzealous with my generalization but on the whole D&D always has had bad fluff. Things like Dark Sun were always the exception rather than rule.

Skills, man, I really miss them. I am one of the people that will miss professions and crafts, but I'm not going to miss use rope, that's for damn sure. Nobody ever got used rope unless they were a swashbuckling pirate or something, anyway, and seriously, did it make sense that you could be Profession(Sailor) and not have any skill points in Use Rope, anyway? Honestly, the faster-lighter ruleset for everything else aside from combat (especially social situations) is quite frustrating. I'm definitely on board there, I mean my favorite core character was the bard for Pelor's sake! I really hope they roll out some expanded ruleset books but if they don't and I want to DM a game with social interactions, I'll bite the bullet and come up the the DCs myself. After all, it does give a handy table on what's good for what level. If I want my socialites to be higher level than the PCs, I'll probably just adjust their DC up for higher level encounters (which the characters probably won't make but nuts to them, he's higher level dammit!). It is quite sad to see craft go, though.

Craft Magic/Wondrous Item is still there, it's just a ritual now. So all you wondrous item crafters, go a-ritual hunting!


Speaking of rituals, they aren't quite one-shot. They're like spells in every way except their reagents cost something and they take a little time to prepare. I am a bit dismayed with the selection of Rituals in the core three (I want a demon-summoning ritual, dammit, and I want it before level 20!) but I'll either wait for the inevitable magic book to come out (which better have charm spells or I'm going to fall down, cry, and piss myself!) or just make them as needed. I think I might also houserule rituals so that several people of lower level can cast a higher level ritual (whether or not it will be as well casted as one person of the proper level is yet to be determined).

Darksun was an amazing setting (i GM'ed it for almost 5 years)... fluffy wise. As any good (A)D&D seting, the rules don't do justice to the setting (the same happens with another great setting: Iron Kingdoms). It's boring try to create a mood of urgency, despair and mortality when the players are almost gods with quase-infinity hitpoints, and need dozens of hits to die. The mood got much better after my group adapted the setting to the Roll&Keep system of Legends of the Five Rings.

This happens a lot with D&D (and i guess that will be even worse with the 4th edition). You read the fluff and novels, and discover that you can't get the same mood and feeling with the ruleset.

To each his own. I hated Dark Sun!

Wow, I didn't know about that dragon thing in the new version of the realms. I guess I really was right when I told all my friends that Wizards is turning the realms into Eberron without the trains.

As for people complaining about high level NPCs being used for Deus Ex Machina; if your DM ever did that, that just means you had a bad DM. The high level NPCs of the realms have better things to do than help out PCs with their quests. Elminster is a crotchety 5000+ year old man, he would just tell the PCs to solve their own problems if they asked him for help, or at most tell them some story of partial relevance to the current situation.

And is wizards payed any attention to the fluff they would know that without someone taking the place of Mistra, there is no arcane magic in the realms at all (except for shadow weave magic). If they have Mistra perminantly dead then there is no magic in the realms and without magic there is no reason for the realms to even exist as a campaign setting (Just like planescape has no reason to exist as a setting without the factions, and therefore after the faction war, the setting was more or less retired).

...of all the settings I liked Forgotten Realms the best. Lots of good fluff, lots of campaign opportunities.

One of my best D&D characters next to Father Tel, came form the realms (Silverymoon) - a Fighter/Monk turned Paladin of Lathander (after discovering a relic holy sword of her patron in Myth Drannor) named Brennah.

...and ya sure ya betcha, does she have a history behind her.

Meh, your average hack'neyed fantasy setting where everything got thrown into a huge hodgepot of ridicoulus gestalt-mixing. The one thing that defines the Forgotten Realms is the change to the pantheon when a new rule-edition appears, and the consequent death of that magic-gal, Mystra. How many times did she die? 3 times? 4 times? A hundred times? She'll probably be reborn and die again, when 5th edition comes up.
Last times, all assassins died, before they got retconned into existence back again. Now, some thousand magicians go the way of Mystra, the Ever-Dying. I bet that in 5th edition, all rogues will spontaneously combust, and in the 6 edition, all clerics explode due to Terminators killing the newest incarnation of Mystra.

I'd not call the Realms a "hodgepot of ridicoulus gestalt-mixing". If we take a look at our own world ca. 1400, then we'd see the same "hodgepot" of cultures spanning the globe - and many of the realms have a historical role model they seem to be shaped after (Dalelands=swiss cantons, for example). I mean the earlier realms, not the mess left after countless trashy novels were written, and almost every one featuring, for lack of any even semi-intelligent plot, a RSE (Realm shaking event) so the readers would have to buy it to stay current on canon. The 3E FR ended up a mess due to that, even though the FRCS had good parts - notably, not the ones taken after novels. At least it convinced me to stop bothering about the novels.

What is wrecking the realms are the novels - even good authors like Cunningham who isn't into RSEs repeatedly fail when they try to write a D&D novel because they simply don't get the realms as a RPG setting. (Cunningham obviously either played with a house rule of "we don't have raise dead", or never played at all, but contrary to other authors, she didn't even spare a "and the raise dead attempt failed" line, or something similar to explain why some of the most powerful, or best connected people would not have a loved one raised or resurrected.)

If one cuts out all the shit from the novels, the realms are a decent setting, 2E or 3E (if one can stand the more high magic stuff like shade). Good plot hooks adventuring possibilities of all kinds, from social intrigue to dungeoneering. Unfortunately, every FRCS will end up wrecked by the trash sold as novels in short order (I don't see what use a campaign setting book has if 6 months afterwards, canon is rewritten according to the latest author's whim who just had to have a civil war for his star wars prequel rip off).

Personally, after cutting back the modern stuff that seeped in (culture/attitudes as well as technology and "magic used as tech"), and adding some travel time by dropping teleport, the realms make a fine setting for my campaigns, especially since they offer so many different regions, cultures and possibilities, and not just one gimmick.

I just hope that the majority of the old d20 books take a massive dive in price within a year of 4e's release.

Duurh, what happens when you use Raise Dead on someone who died of age?

I'm guessing that "you can’t restore life to ... a creature that died of old age." (Heinsoo et al.)

Normally, you can't raise somebody from the dead when they died of old age...

But there is a rumor that using the crimson feather of a phoenix might overcome that obstacle and grant 1 year of life for the ressurected.... That's written in the Monster Manual as part of the background lore.

Happy Phoenix hunting...

LOL, watch pheonixes become endangered speices.

Meh. Hardly any of the "Nature" rituals are in the basic book because the "Primal" power source is waiting for the PHB2. You'll be able to reset ages with Reincarnation just like you've always been able to do. Bringing back the dead when they died of old age is a problem only for Clerics.

-Frank

Perhaps. And perhaps the theoretical Reincarnation Ritual only lets you be reborn as a stag beetle. If the Nature check is better, you might chose between a snake, a dog, or at best, deer...
And phoenix feathers might once again overcome the restrictions and make you reborn as your younger self... for one year, before you die again or get turned into a stag beetle.

Phoenix hunters will be rich... if they manage to hunt these beasts down in the Elemental Chaos, that is...

The "Council of Wyrms" (CW) setting was introduced in 94 and was its own separate thing from FR. It didn't really go anywhere as it suffered from the same RP limiting factors as "Oriental Adventures". I can see them folding in CW to FR as there was always an over abundance of dragons in the FR setting and it plays in nicely with the Half-dragon / red dragon disciple munchkin evolution. I have to give it to them though, dragon-kin a a PC race has been a popular idea since Dragon Lance intorduced the Draconians and seems to have progressed rules wise through the settings until this point. WoTC is nothing if not customer oriented.

What was wrong with Spelljammer? It even got its own comic book series (as did FR) which was cut off way to early (the art did start to suffer thought).

As to the thread topic...4th ED is a another natural progression for the company as they have been looking & testing for a way to combine their CCG & RPG lines, in some respects, for a while. Mark my words, we will be seeing "Battle Cards", "Mini-Rules", and "Dragon Dice" "Optional" rule sets to improve / quicken the gaming experience.

Spelljammer rocked. I'm still kicking myself for selling off that part of my collection years ago when I was out of work...

Oriental Adventures was the ultimate expression of RPGs, though. There's not much you can do to expand upon the most sophisticated concepts of role playing as a whole once you've played a sohei who stabs people with chopsticks for 1d3 damage and who has karate chops that do 1d6 damage per hit. Except maybe role play a ninja.

Oriental Adventures was all we really needed, after all...

Very few people got Spelljammer, which was all about John Carter of Mars style planetary romance and low-tech mystical pseudo-science fiction space opera. It gave sword-and-sorcery purists cerebral aneurysms. It didn't help much that it was released during the time when TSR was overextending itself.

OA was fantastic for what it was and the book was written so well that you couldn't help but learn a little slice of history. I just didn't like the restrictions placed on characters by the honor code (which in retrospect was a vital part of the "society" back then). It always seemed like it forced everyone in the party to have a hidden agenda which would be sprung at the most in-opportune moment. That and everyone wanted to play Ninjas which got old after a while.
Bringing this back to topic, I with Frank in that all the "new" stuff seems to reduce the game to munchkin paradise. 3rd ED wasn't much better but, it could be tuned to make things fit without the basis being "kill the monster". I may have to read a bit more about 4th ED but, I'm not liking the changes so far. If D&D is going to follow the Intel model of release (which should have been evident towards the end of 2nd ED) I'm not taking the bait.

"Kill the monster" has always been the basis to balance the game in D&D, since 1st edition. It's just the idea how that balancing should be that differentiates the different D&D-editions. In older editions, making wizards, paladins and rangers advancing much much slower was thought to be a good idea (it pissed off the player's who wanted to play such classes). In 3rd edition, it was thought to make everyone level up the same way and give out feats at specific levels. It brought us the uber-wizard, who was only bested by the terrible Cleric-or-Druid-Zilla, especially then when the player refused to be a walking band-aid, fighters who got mocked by everyone at level 12, and turkey feats like dodge, toughness and skill focus, which were even meant as traps for n00bs (no joke). And let's be honest. Roleplaying restrictions and abilities are not a way to balance combat-capabilities. People are respectful to the Arch-Wizard, not the Arch-Bard, or the Arch-Fighter... The only guys on par are the High Priest and the Arch-Druid.
Go away from the mentality that combat prowes determines AND reduces your entire social abilities. It's not a zero-sum thing. Combat roles are not your social roles, and never should have been in the first place.

The problem for me isn't that they took the first 8 levels of D&D and spread them out over 30 levels. The fact that high end characters really aren't that powerful is just a stylistic thing. A 21st level Fighter is about on par with like 10-15 first level Wizards. Whatever. My problem is that the new math that they were so proud of and ranting at me about for the last nine months is really atrociously bad.

A 1st level Wizard can do a small but perceptible amount of damage to any target without rolling dice. This means that a moderate handful of them can grind down a Fighter of virtually any level because Fighters take a very long time to hack through groups of enemies. It also means that they can clear out "minions" of literally any level because even epic level minions go down to even one point of automatic damage. On the flip side, a Fighter has to roll attack rolls, and d20 rolls scale off the RNG with surprising speed when characters are of disparate levels. If you have a sword you can't hurt an enemy who happens to be 10 levels higher than you. So while a Fighter to Wizard comparison converts 20 character levels to a dozen opponents, an Apples to Apples comparison of Fighters shows a discrepancy of 10 levels being equivalent to virtually unlimited enemies.

The 4e Skill Challenge rules are that you fail. Badly and horrendously at standard challenges of minimum complexity. You are seriously supposed to succeed at skill tests that you are good at 50% of the time or less at all levels, and you fail a simple challenge if you can't succeed 4 times out of 5. Characters have a less than 20% chance of successfully completing a Complexity 1 challenge at all levels. I don't understand how that one ever got through playtesting. Didn't playtesters call attention to the fact that they didn't ever succeed when faced with the new Skill Challenges rules?

Combats become longer as characters rise in level. By a lot. But a high level Wizard can still use his Orb Mastery to straight up permalock enemies in one shot - once per encounter. It's just everyone else who has to sit there and slog through doing 20 points of damage a round to an enemy with 500 hit points.

-Frank

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. Next, you're going to complain once more about minions and how they interact with the game world and so fort. And yes, even a Fighter gets abilities to deal automatic damage, like his stance "Rain of Steel", which makes every minion die instantly if it begins it turns adjacent to him. And you're again spouting that nonsense about high-level fights going so long because everybody else deals so much damage.

My respect for you has diminished so much, I'm simply going to put you on ignore forever, because it grates my nerves, and I frankly don't need to waste anymore time reading the same disputed arguments ever and ever.

Oh well, that's what that button is good for. Better to ignore somebody than to start insulting him because you got tired out and start to think badly about the person on the other side of the discussion. Every message board should have an ignore feature.

This from the man who suggested that perhaps *I* have got a psychological complex relating to D&D.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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:



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

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

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

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.

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?

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.



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.

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.

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

So adjust the difficulty.

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).

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!

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.



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

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

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.

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!

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