Anybody else miss 3.5?

[Lmns Crn]

Looks like I'm being confused for GP here.

Yeah, guilty. Sorry!

[beejazz]

And I think skill challenges are among the things 4e did poorly. A skill challenge is an attempt to be formulaic about a non-combat encounter. A skill challenge might suggest I need 3 successful skill checks to accomplish a given goal. Let's say, I want to enter a secured tower and I need 3 successful skill checks to get inside. So first I visit the local inn and attempt to gain information about secret entries into the tower with a successful Gather Info check (Search), and I succeed to discover there are no known secret entrances. Next I decide to sneak up to the tower walls, while avoiding detection from the guards at the gate and top of the walls. I succeed on Stealth (that's 2 successful checks out of 3). Now I decide to attempt to climb the walls to succeed. The walls to the tower are 60' tall, and the GM determines that I need 3 successful climb checks to get there. I roll, and lo and behold, I made it up 20' - I'm not in the tower. However, I have made 3 successful checks according to the skill challenge requirements of getting in the tower (except as stated, I am not yet in the tower.)

Skill challenges as a formula is unnecessary and as shown above completely misses the mark for what it's supposed to do.

That's a pretty poor example of a skill challenge (not to mention that your example's "GM" is giving negative results for alleged die roll successes, and apparently making up new requirements on the spot). I dunno if you're deliberately choosing subpar examples to build a strawman out of or what, but I think it's weird and illogical to condemn an entire mechanic based on one example you don't like, and which you also made up.

I mean, I almost don't know why I bother with these threads anymore. Some of you guys (not you specifically, Ghostman) make it real tough to post a dissenting opinion here, which I think is quite unfortunate.

You could also just assume it's a good faith misunderstanding on the part of a guy who hasn't played the system much. As in yeah, the hypothetical is pretty wrong, but if you're used to each check corresponding to something concrete, you can see where skill challenges could confuse (in that each part does not correspond to a concrete thing... at least not to the extent of determining how far you've climbed).

I'm curious who is making it tough to post a dissenting opinion, and how. I've seen neither personal attacks nor anything particularly heated towards 4e, but that might just be that I'm used to other boards' more dramatic 100-page flamewars on he subject.

Me, I'm just picking system nits mostly, and I do the same with my favorite games too. I'm into the crunch, and like tinkering with the engines of games.

[Gamer Printshop]

And I think skill challenges are among the things 4e did poorly. A skill challenge is an attempt to be formulaic about a non-combat encounter. A skill challenge might suggest I need 3 successful skill checks to accomplish a given goal. Let's say, I want to enter a secured tower and I need 3 successful skill checks to get inside. So first I visit the local inn and attempt to gain information about secret entries into the tower with a successful Gather Info check (Search), and I succeed to discover there are no known secret entrances. Next I decide to sneak up to the tower walls, while avoiding detection from the guards at the gate and top of the walls. I succeed on Stealth (that's 2 successful checks out of 3). Now I decide to attempt to climb the walls to succeed. The walls to the tower are 60' tall, and the GM determines that I need 3 successful climb checks to get there. I roll, and lo and behold, I made it up 20' - I'm not in the tower. However, I have made 3 successful checks according to the skill challenge requirements of getting in the tower (except as stated, I am not yet in the tower.)

Skill challenges as a formula is unnecessary and as shown above completely misses the mark for what it's supposed to do.

That's a pretty poor example of a skill challenge (not to mention that your example's "GM" is giving negative results for alleged die roll successes, and apparently making up new requirements on the spot). I dunno if you're deliberately choosing subpar examples to build a strawman out of or what, but I think it's weird and illogical to condemn an entire mechanic based on one example you don't like, and which you also made up.

I mean, I almost don't know why I bother with these threads anymore. Some of you guys (not you specifically, Ghostman) make it real tough to post a dissenting opinion here, which I think is quite unfortunate.

Perhaps its a bad example, but I've seen something pretty similar to this at my LGS, that a 4e group was running and I watched. My point was being formulaic with x number of successful checks to defeat a non-combat encounter doesn't seem work within the creativity of a given adventuring party. With creative thinking, a single success or a dozen checks may be what's needed, because an adventuring party is never consistent in figuring out a problem. Sometimes they don't get it at all, but sometimes they see an opportunity, I as the GM never thought of and they figure it out right away.

Defeating a non-combat encounter, IMO, can't fit within a single formula for success. Its completely up to the creativity of the group, with what skills they have and what ideas they come up with. Not an x number of checks to win - that doesn't work at all with our group, so I can't see the practicality of the mechanic.

And regarding the negative results off a positive check, occurred because according to the GM of that encounter, there were no secret doors and that is what the player was trying to discover with his skill check. Again, I wasn't running this game, I was just observing. I was trying to give 4e a chance, and from what I've seen and played with - I didn't care for the game at all. Perhaps I watched a poor GM and poor 4e group, I can't say - it's what I saw. This wasn't a hypothetical example - this was my memory of an actual skill challenge in play.

[Gamer Printshop]

In the end, I have nothing against the game system 4e, and believe that many can find this game the perfect fit for their needs. It doesn't fit what I need, but that's OK, because I have Pathfinder RPG which fills my need substantially. I don't need nor want balanced classes across the board - and it never seemed a problem, our group of six players only ever has 1 arcane spellcaster on average, so the recognized over-powered-ness of the wizard hasn't compelled all our players to want to be one. I prefer martial class characters almost exclusively - it's the niche I like best. Right now, in our PF game, I am not the GM, and am running a Magus. And even though arcane spell casting is a part of that class's capability, it's rather weak. I am 6th level and only have access to 1st level spells. I won't get access to any 2nd level spells until I'm 7th level.

I didn't mean to come off as a 4e basher, I was only bringing my experience of 4e as I've seen it, to this thread.

[O Senhor Leetz]

I think I need to look into Pathfinder...

[Gamer Printshop]

I think I need to look into Pathfinder...

Well then look at d20pfsrd.com - it's most of the PF rules online (missing are stuff from Ultimate Combat like Ninja, Gunslinger, Samurai, some feats and weapons and vehicle rules). Otherwise look at the PRD on Paizo.com

This way you can try it out, play around, before having to spend any money on PF books. When you do (if you do), you'll want the PF Core and the Advanced Players Guide, but the two ultimate books: Ultimate Magic and Ultimate Combat are worth looking at, though UC less so. Bestiary 1 for sure, and other Bestiaries as may fit your needs. There's tons of adventures and AP's (adventure paths - kind of like campaigns), but more likely those will be unnecessary - since we here create our own worlds, published adventures are less than necessary for us. The Bestiary teaches you how PF allows you to create custom monsters better than 3x did.

[O Senhor Leetz]

Dude, that's the an awesome link. 1,000,000 points to you.

[Ninja D!]

Out of curiosity, how is Ptolus built around its system? I never got the chance to look at Ptolus for long.

3e had a lot of rules for cities of a certain size should have x mages and y clerics and you should be able to easily get access to magic items of level z. These rules, when closely examined, called for a world with an obscene amount of magic and people didn't actually follow them all that much. Well, Ptolus does. The design philosophy of Ptolus is that those rules were canon and the story was built around them. Since the guy who designed it - Monte Cook - also helped write those rules, it was amusing and seems to have worked fairly well.

[Kindling]

From LC's description skill challenges look pretty cool, actually. Even with the negative opinions from others, I might try implementing something similar in my game - maybe not to resolve all non-combat challenges, but I can think of certain situations where it would be a great way of adding tension - the very thing others were complaining about, in that those with worse ranks in the relevant skill actually hurt the overall chance of success by trying, would do this perfectly, I think.

Imagine, for example, Our Heroes are travelling by ship across the ocean when their craft is assaulted by a magical storm conjured by their sorcerous nemesis. It's all hands on deck to try to get the ship to safety, but only two out of the five characters are veteran sailors. Can they score enough successes before the other three inevitably screw things up?

Tension! Excitement! Ahhh!

Obviously, as I said, I wouldn't use this for everything, but in that specific kind of situation, I think it would be a very fun mechanic.

[Ninja D!]

Skill challenges are great to gloss over travel like that example or traveling across Athas or something. GP's example would be someone using it entirely wrong or just not understanding how it's meant to work. Personally, I wouldn't use one in that situation at all...of course, I wouldn't use them much at all.

[Superfluous Crow]

I think they are good for "non-sequential" challenges; e.g. the castle example wouldn't really work because there is a particular order the things have to be done in. You can't look for information after you have already crossed the wall. On the other hand, looking for information would be a great skill challenge. The thief sneaks into the archive, the bard befriends the castle guard while he's off-duty, the wizard researches the history of the castle, etc.
If the skill challenge doesn't cover all avenues the players might take, it is either badly designed or the GM should be ready to adapt it on the spot. They weren't designed to be formulaic as much as they were designed to represent a multi-part problem in an abstract way.
(this is about the idea of skill challenges in general, not any specific rules incarnation of them)

[Ninja D!]

That's not a bad one, either. They can be good for things where the PCs would otherwise split up like that.

[Stryker25B]

I haven't read this whole post, and I'm sure someone has already mentioned it, but 4E justed seems like WoW to me, it focuses more on the Game than the Roleplaying.

There's a very good reason for this. Having created more than a few video game and MMO prototypes (which incidentally, are usually creations of cards paper and dice in the beginning) I can safely say that 4e plays EXACTLY like a prototype for a MMO. These prototypes are used to help the design team figure out which game mechanics work and which don't as well as help balance things out. It's far easier and less time consuming to write up a scenario, roll some dice, see how the powers work, and scribble in some changes or notes all in a tabletop setting than it is to program those mechanics, art, characters etc.

The old school D&D player in me is a little saddened that someone spilled MMO all over 4e, but it does give me some exciting ideas for things I want to start prototyping, and here WotC has created a system that works perfectly, all I need do is adapt my setting to it and I've got a good working prototype ready to work with.