|
neonchameleon posted:Combat is desert not the main course. Too much combat is ... too much and 4e doesn't really do small incidental fights. Build to big fights. Yes it does, this actually works fine. You can just beat up some slimes or whatever! It's fun!
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2020 21:28
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 16:36 |
|
|
4E pretty much presumes you are playing to fight monsters and delve dungeons, and everything is modeled on that to the point where when you are not in a dungeon it still kind of acts like you're in one. Which is good, since that's essentially the core of what D&D is and at least it's focused.
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2020 22:11
|
|
|
And if you want other things, there are other games that do it better!
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2020 22:19
|
|
|
Sodomy Hussein posted:4E pretty much presumes you are playing to fight monsters and delve dungeons, and everything is modeled on that to the point where when you are not in a dungeon it still kind of acts like you're in one. Which is good, since that's essentially the core of what D&D is and at least it's focused. To instantly pivot on my heel and attack this from the other direction, 4th edition doesn't really have less detailed rules for social interaction or mystery solving than, say, Vampire: the Masquerade revised. There's a popular conception that 4th is the combat edition that treats everything like combat or whatever, but no! Not so! It just happens to have good combat rules, for loving once. The rest is regular early 2000s RPG fare with somewhat light but basically omni-functional task resolution rules.
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2020 22:27
|
|
|
Ferrinus posted:To instantly pivot on my heel and attack this from the other direction, 4th edition doesn't really have less detailed rules for social interaction or mystery solving than, say, Vampire: the Masquerade revised. There's a popular conception that 4th is the combat edition that treats everything like combat or whatever, but no! Not so! It just happens to have good combat rules, for loving once. The rest is regular early 2000s RPG fare with somewhat light but basically omni-functional task resolution rules. Yeah I don't think it's bad or anything, but it's a tad awkward until you get into a dungeon and everything clicks. Like, first edition of D&D I played where traps didn't feel like they weren't sitting on the sidelines of the rules and all the skills mattered.
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2020 22:46
|
|
|
The problem I encountered with running D&D4e as a social-interaction heavy, combat-light game was that the combat rules -- and in particular, daily powers and refreshes of healing surges -- are balanced around the assumption that you'll have multiple fights per day. I got around this by creating a houserule: anything that happens "per day" (i.e. recovering the use of a daily power, regaining healing surges, resetting action points to 1) instead happens when you get an extended rest. An extended rest is defined to be a period during which your characters relax, let their hair down, and pursue recreational activities, and it takes long enough for your enemies to advance their plans to the next stage. This means that if you're in the middle of a dungeon and a necromancer is trying to get to the altar before you to raise the dead there as allies, then taking an extended rest requires a few hours and means that when you get to the necromancer, he'll have a bunch of undead allies. If you're in a city and you're trying to expose the vizier before his poison words can bring the king round to his side, then taking an extended rest will require however long it will take the vizier to do that. It means you need to suspend disbelief a bit, but it also means that resting is always a decision that weighs heavily on the players, which I find works really well.
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2020 23:18
|
|
|
In other systems, where the combat and out of combat systems are equally mediocre, you don't really notice it. In 4e, the combat is pretty good, and everything else is just as mediocre as always, so you end up wanting to just engage with the best system and not think about the others.
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2020 23:49
|
|
|
I need help on encounter design, I feel like I need to do more. The problem I'm having is that my encounter / terrain designs tend to hold back my players. Last Saturday night I had a game where a couple of people were missing, so I had to tweak an encounter on the fly but I left the map as is. The problem I feel like is I didn't take the group's composition in mind, so I wanted to see if I could get some tips on that, or just a sanity check that I'm not over thinking things.  In this battle map, we have 7 monsters. 3 Level 1 Artillery, that do 1d4+3 damage, and have an encounter power to give players the Dazed effect. Then we have 2 Brutes, and 2 Soldiers. The Brutes are level 5, and can do 4 1d4+3 attacks, or one 3d4+5 attack, they can fly (I did it as climbing up the walls / jumping) as an encounter power to maneuver themselves around the terrain I built. The Soldiers are Level 6, do 1d10+9 Damage, an dwhen bloodied make a free attack, gains a -2 to attack rolls and a +4 to damage. The Terrain if you stepped in the pink rectangles, you got to shift 5, and take 1d4 damage If you ended your turn in the Black Terrain, you were stunned. The players ended up not using the shifting pools at all, and so they were set upon by 4 melee dudes, while the artillery in the back applied status effects and slowly wore down their HP. We were missing one of our strikers that did damage over an area, and also happened to be the only ranged character. The players we did have were a lvl 4 party consisting of a Fighter, a Druid, a Runepriest, and a Monk. The combat was really tough, but the party wanted a lot less stun / daze effects to show up in the game. What could I have done differently with the encounter? Should I have replaced the 3 level 1 creatures with melee creatures to better attune the game to my players needs? Also what kind of terrains feel the most fun? I want to really play with Terrain, not just "Prone / Daze / Stun / Damage" but cool things, like spots you'd want to stand in for extra damage, or reasons to move people around better. Give me your ideas, I want them all. E: Oh another question, would portable cover as a magic item they can use to creates a piece of terrain that's 3 connected squares, that gives them Superior Cover if it breaks LOS be a cool magic item, or game breaking? Boba Pearl fucked around with this message at 08:36 on Dec 29, 2020 |
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2020 08:31
|
|
|
Hmm. First thing that strikes me is that your soldiers probably do more average damage than your brutes and their bloodied ability seems more suited for brutes, too. Also for a level 4 party, I would have replaced the 3 level 1 enemies with one level 4-5ish, or with minions, and maybe skipped one of the big guys. The black terrain is only 1 square wide and thus extremely easy to get out of unless you're actually immobilized. You could have had an enemy that was able to immobilize. But then, the purpose of that would have been to get PCs stunned from the terrain, and at that point, just have the enemy be able to stun directly. Another way to utilize disadvantageous terrain is to have it easy to get out of, but at the same time, where you're going is bad news too. Daze and Stun are conditions best used sparingly. Especially stun is best kept to a rare ability that only special enemies have, and even then only on single-target powers.
|
|
#
?
Dec 29, 2020 09:29
|
|
|
Hi folks. I realize not everyone notices the chat thread, so I'll post in here directly. D&D4e thread regular Dwarf74 has been made IK today, and this is one of the threads they've volunteered to monitor. Thanks!
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 03:28
|
|
|
Whybird posted:The problem I encountered with running D&D4e as a social-interaction heavy, combat-light game was that the combat rules -- and in particular, daily powers and refreshes of healing surges -- are balanced around the assumption that you'll have multiple fights per day. We did something similar in our Scales of War game and I really liked it. Basically had extended rests hit on story beats rather than at our call, short rests were as normal. Made a lot of my choices feel more meaningful if we were doing more light fights and the occasional big flashy one. We also did two-hit minions, which was also really great. Made AoE stuff soften them up without mopping them up, but our strikers could just shank them with their spike powers. We also tried and really enjoyed popcorn initiative, added a real push and pull to the tactics of who goes when and stopped people from getting bored waiting for their initiative in high paragon and epic.
|
|
#
?
Jan 8, 2021 06:01
|
|
|
So I'm running a game for the forums, and I had a cool idea. If you are PLAYING in my game, don't click unless you want to see FORBIDDEN SECRETS. If you do click message me so I can set up a cool thing. So I'm balancing an end boss encounter for 4e, and I will be crossposting this in both threads. Right now, I'm planning to do an Extreme Level +5 fight with my group. I think they can handle it, because they have cleared Hard+3 and Hard+4 easily, and that was with very detrimental terrain and powers. I will be taking the 4 Captains they fought, (I have given each one a unique personality, and have made them all Liches of different kinds, so they are recurring via ressurection) and have them side with The Emperor. So it's going to be an insane amount of HP and help.. The Personalities of these captains are: Jessie and James from Pokemon, who are obsessed with body modification to create "High Fashion." A drug addict scientist who loves to make and get high on his own supply. A drama major, who sings and performs soliloquies mid match. The thing is, I've never done a fight this hard, it could be an absolute slaughter. I want to make sure that it's not unwinnable, while at the same time, if the party fails, I want to do a cool thing where everyone they've helped and all the powerful NPCs they met show up and transfer their energy to a cleric or a device or something that gives the group mass heal a few times to balance the odds in the opposite side. Maybe clears away some of the terrain by having the mass of the power lift them up to a cloud with beneficial terrain to them, refresh some dailies. Is the following encounter going to be good or a slaughter? (5 Level 8 Characters, Warlord healing, Rogue Striker, Sorcerer Striker, Monk / Avenger Striker, Druid Controller)    
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2021 23:02
|
|
|
Can anyone recommend any (preferably modular) terrain or tiles or what have you that would work with 4e? Stuff that isn't painted or detailed is fine because I can handle that myself; I just don't have the tools (or experience) to make stuff totally from scratch. edit: 3D printer designs are also fine DoubleDonut fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Feb 9, 2021 |
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2021 03:49
|
|
|
DoubleDonut posted:Can anyone recommend any (preferably modular) terrain or tiles or what have you that would work with 4e? Stuff that isn't painted or detailed is fine because I can handle that myself; I just don't have the tools (or experience) to make stuff totally from scratch. I like Oryx's tilesets (they cost money but I definitely got my money's worth out of them) or you can literally just go download spritesheets from old SNES games and use those. e: wait you mean physical tiles/terrain, don't you 
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2021 03:55
|
|
|
yeah, sorry, I do mean physical stuff.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2021 04:03
|
|
|
DoubleDonut posted:Can anyone recommend any (preferably modular) terrain or tiles or what have you that would work with 4e? Stuff that isn't painted or detailed is fine because I can handle that myself; I just don't have the tools (or experience) to make stuff totally from scratch. I haven't printed anything myself, but this guy''s OpenForge stuff seems like it should work well.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2021 04:20
|
|
|
So the laptop which I was running Masterplan on died like a dog, and its copy protection is stopping me from importing the libraries of enemies I set up on my replacement machine. Is there a way around this, or am I basically resigned to statting everything up again from scratch?
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2021 16:30
|
|
|
Whybird posted:So the laptop which I was running Masterplan on died like a dog, and its copy protection is stopping me from importing the libraries of enemies I set up on my replacement machine. Is there a way around this, or am I basically resigned to statting everything up again from scratch?
|
|
#
?
Feb 21, 2021 17:28
|
|
|
I think it's actually about the windows account name, but might be both that and the computer name.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2021 00:28
|
|
|
Any recommendations of tips for running Zeitgeist? Stuff I should know going in, things along those lines. This is my first time DMing at all so even more generic things would be quite helpful.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2021 15:50
|
|
|
Sampatrick posted:Any recommendations of tips for running Zeitgeist? Stuff I should know going in, things along those lines. This is my first time DMing at all so even more generic things would be quite helpful. There's a write-up by a GM who's played a fair bit called "Zeitvice" here. Having played a fair bit I agree with most of the early stuff in there, though I think it veers into needless critique as it goes on. I've a few criticisms of my own which lead into advice: The writers occasionally try to make mini-games within the campaign that work outside of the normal set of rules. Examples are the naval combat and a few scenario specific ones (EG: defending the lighthouse, hunting down a crime boss, building railroads) and generally speaking they're not good and you're better off just working out what they're trying to do and using normal 4e rules for them. Naval combat is particularly bad because the writers keep wanting to use it, while the others are one-offs. The requests system also doesn't work well, where a party member who optimises for it can request ridiculously good things and expect to get them. Better to ignore that one. Monsters and enemies sometimes have limb-loss attacks, which aren't a thing in 4e. As a result, there is no 4e rule for getting back a lost limb, since you weren't supposed to be able to lose one in the first place. The way I ended up ruling these attacks was that they "debilitate" the affected body part until the end of the encounter. Basically the body part stops working - debilitated legs collapse under the character, you can't hold anything in a debilitated hand, you can't move a debilitated arm. The way treasure works in Zeitgeist is worth a mention, too. Basically characters have a "requisition limit" which is how much money worth of items they can have at a time. Characters can swap items in and out of their possession freely, but can't exceed the limit. As a result, it's probably worth keeping track of the cost of each item a character has, to make managing this easier, and prominently displaying the requisition limit somewhere. For props, I can fully recommend the Zeitgeist Character Cards - the art's not the greatest (lol at the woobs on Gale for instance) but it's better than I could do and it's good to be able to put faces to names easily. If you're playing in person it's good to print them off and write character info on the back. Some adventures seem a bit 90s grimdark and could have used an edit in my opinion. The one big offender is the one on the train, featuring ritualistic serial murders, sex slavery, and undead sex workers which really felt out of place, like it was written in isolation from the others. Feel free to drop elements if they feel that way - it's easy to make an enemy feel bad without doing that. Other elements I dropped from much later in the campaign were the "labour hivemind" which felt a bit "Bioshock Infinite what if the oppressed are as bad as the oppressors? It's like they're a hive mind" and the idea that your party who by that point are worldwide heroes would stand around and watch people with gods inhabiting them being put on trial and executed without intervening. Finally, if you want to do character voices, read the section on regional accents in the player guide - Berans are Spanish, Danori are French etc. I like to write the NPCs voices on the back of their character card so I don't forget. ----- A lot of that makes me sound like I'm negative on the campaign in general, and I certainly am not. It's the best 4e pre-written campaign I've seen. Gort fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Feb 22, 2021 |
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2021 16:03
|
|
|
Sampatrick posted:Any recommendations of tips for running Zeitgeist? Stuff I should know going in, things along those lines. This is my first time DMing at all so even more generic things would be quite helpful. I ran the whole campaign but it was a few years ago! The maps are enormous. That's the biggest thing to know specifically for this campaign. Read ahead if you can - plant some seeds of stuff that comes later.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2021 16:30
|
|
|
Regarding GMing in general: Have a "session zero" where you pitch the campaign to the players and tell them what you expect from them. For Zeitgeist I'd say something like, "You're going to be playing fantasy good-guy cops, so make characters who want to do fantasy good-guy cop stuff". The campaign does support evil characters but playing evil cops sounds too close to reality for my liking. In session zero, the players should come up with their character concepts together. That's an opportunity to have linked backstories - one of my favourite campaigns was when the characters were all siblings, for example - and you miss out on those possibilities if everyone makes their characters in isolation. It also lets you avoid doubling-up on things. Have a read of the player guide and distribute it to the players - the Zeitgeist one is extensive and should give them lots of background and ideas. Stuff from the players guide comes up throughout the campaign so it's worth reading. I'd decide early on if you want character death to be a thing, and discuss this with your players. My players don't like it (a character was killed fairly early on) and we ended up houseruling it to "player characters can't die, they just get wounded in some non-mechanically-affecting way (EG: A nasty scar or some burns) but there is no resurrection magic". Your players might be fine with it, but it's well worth checking early on. It'll also make you think about GM questions like, "Why don't we just resurrect this murder victim and ask them who killed them" ahead of time. For GMing 4e: Make sure the party has a decent spread of roles. If it's a small party, try and cover the basic three of striker, leader and defender - I'd say controller is the most optional. The more strikers you have the faster and more "exciting" combats will be - enemies will go down faster, but the party will be more squishy. I've seen parties with no strikers and it can make combat less tense - the enemy are unlikely to defeat the party, but defeating enemies takes a long time. Try to avoid that.
|
|
#
?
Feb 22, 2021 17:10
|
|
|
Worth noting that if they don't have a controller, mobs/minions will be more of a problem- it's not insurmountable (other classes do sometimes have access to AOE stuff) but it might be a consideration.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2021 04:23
|
|
|
Gort posted:I'd decide early on if you want character death to be a thing, and discuss this with your players. My players don't like it (a character was killed fairly early on) and we ended up houseruling it to "player characters can't die, they just get wounded in some non-mechanically-affecting way (EG: A nasty scar or some burns) but there is no resurrection magic". Your players might be fine with it, but it's well worth checking early on. It'll also make you think about GM questions like, "Why don't we just resurrect this murder victim and ask them who killed them" ahead of time. My favorite take on resurrection magic is largely taken from Steven Brust's Jhereg novels. Resurrection is possible as long as the brain/spine isn't damaged and the body is reasonably intact. This lets you kill people and makes them deal with that, but it also makes it easy to kill somebody off permanently without needing special gear. It also provides a reason for why assassins are still feared in a world with resurrection capabilities. It doesn't matter how rich and beloved the king is, if he takes a knife through the eye into the brain he is dead and not coming back. I like the option for player death still being a thing. IMO the "oh poo poo everything went wrong" scenario loses something when you know that everybody's gonna walk away and you're not gonna end up trying to escape with a body.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2021 05:25
|
|
|
I used to always get real excited whenever somebody made an impassioned speech about how accessible resurrection for the players ruins dramatic tension and is bad storytelling. Then I noticed whether it was a game I'm in or one played by strangers on the internet, it inevitbly leads to them turning around and saying "So *insert evil race or NPC* don't actually die when you kill them, isn't that cool and dramatic that they can easily cheat death?" It is hardly ever out of malice, just a long string of good intentioned "I want to deprive a player of something... for good storytelling and deep lore reasons, of course!  " claims tripping up people who took it at face value as A Story Reason rather simply treating it as pure out of character "GM just doesn't WANT player to have *thing*, okay?"See also. "Man, it sure was dramatic when that player died that one time!" "You mean when you said automatically succeeding consumables are clearly made up and forced people to make untrained medicine checks to stabilize the dying? "I said I was sorry! I'm a good GM I'd never screw you over on purpose!  "I get the honest and legitimate frustration with "Well what if players just threw a diamond on a corpse and called it a day?", but that is something best dealt with by a GM talking to their Players and justifying it with lore reasons should be a distant third priority. EDIT: Also my own personal experience has seen some REAL stretches baffled by my looking like an egdelord munchkin on the surface, and thwarting their Lore Reasons with other Lore Reasons. So now I have a flinch reflex over such things  "It wouldn't make realistic logical sense for you('re more expsneive than your huge alien raygun in point buy) immunity to poisons, disease, and bioweapons to work on EVERYTHING! ""Okay, good thing my alien space commando who is bulletproof and can breath in space paid extra for space armor just because I think space armor looks cool! YAY I love realism and using the tools at my disposal  ""Why do you hate my cool mind control bugs plot so much  ""But I used the realism and lore  "
Section Z fucked around with this message at 10:06 on Feb 23, 2021 |
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2021 09:27
|
|
|
I honestly think that resurrection as an available but luxury item for the 1% (which includes adventurers) doesn't downplay drama at all. It just means you have to have stakes other than "are your characters going to die?" and honestly that's kind of a good thing. If the dramatic tension rests on immediate peril then the choices are clear: your players survive or the story continues. If tension is on whether your characters save the village or free the slaves or extinguish the forest fire, then there's still a way to continue the story whether they succeed or fail.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2021 09:53
|
|
|
I need advice for a homebrew channel divinity power at paragon tier (I'm the DM, a player will need this soon). The deity's theme is civilization, but more specifically, keeping monsters away from said civilization. The deity is also dying and on the edge of survival, so I thought adding a feature that costs the user's healing surges would be interesting. Here's my initial draft-- thoughts?quote:Light of Civilization Bonus Feature I know the religion check is a little wonky, but I wanted a way to make sure that non-ranged, non-reach monsters aren't automatically *completely* negated. I would love to hear ideas to make that better. I'd considered making the sustain the healing surge drain, but that seemed a little harsh. An alternative idea would have creatures entering the aura be automatically attacked with an implement power that interrupts movement. That'd be more balanced, but slightly less thematic, as the deity's blessing has been a bit more absolute in the campaign so far-- not sure how I feel about powerful creatures being able to ignore it, when extremely powerful creatures being stymied by this blessing is the in-universe reason that civilization can exist at all. Could also make it target only a single enemy or group of enemies and prevent them from coming nearer, but I also like the idea of making a clear boundary line.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2021 13:27
|
|
|
The most immediate thing that jumps out at me is that uncivilized and civilized are undefined in 4E. Powers like that exist but they'd key off the existing keywords Beast or Undead or Humanoid. It seems a huge can of sociopolitical worms to define which monsters are "civilized" as well (is a human barbarian civilized? Are all goblins uncivilized?). Tactically this seems like it would take any defender's place at less of a cost. In fact, against a group of uncivilized melee attackers, a party can just huddle together around the caster, collectively spend two healing surges to make it an aura 3, and plink away at enemies who can't get close. Probably costs less surges than an outright combat; even if the caster fails the Religion check eventually, you get to soften up the opposition disproportionally for the price.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2021 13:50
|
|
|
I would phrase the targeting simple as "enemies of your god" (and allow players to uncover through Religion skillchecks if an enemy will be targeted). Agreed that the sustain ability is very powerful for a caster: I would make it a single blast that drives enemies off rather than an ongoing wall. Remember that this isn't 3.5: not every magical effect in D&D has to be statted as a combat power (or even statted at all!) If you want to come up with an IC magic thing that explains how civilisation exists at all but which will be overpowered if characters can bust it out at a moment's notice, just make it a Ritual with a casting time of several days. Custom rituals are really cool and severely underused in most games.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2021 16:04
|
|
|
Whybird posted:Agreed that the sustain ability is very powerful for a caster: I would make it a single blast that drives enemies off rather than an ongoing wall.
|
|
#
?
Feb 24, 2021 17:10
|
|
|
Not sure if this has been covered, but are there any decent ship to ship combat rules for 4e, or at the very least something that if used wouldn't feel very different from the rest of the game? I'm thinking of running a pirate-y game for a few friends and it seems like something good to have.
|
|
#
?
Feb 28, 2021 04:32
|
|
|
Reskin a MM3 or later solo monster as the PCs’ ship? Consider each PC controlling the ship on different initiative counts. Reskin mobs as NPC ships to fight. Consider changing movement rules? I wouldn’t as it just takes away a tactical element of the combat.
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2021 15:21
|
|
|
What I'd suggest is making the combat primarily revolve around boarding actions rather than cannon bombardments. Have a skill challenge in advance that determines how the cannonfire stage of the battle goes, and depending on the results the PCs might start the fight with fewer healing surges or already bloodied, of the layout of the battlefield might be different, or the fight might begin with only three turns to get off their ship before it sinks below the water. Actually making an interesting combat where one aide is a ship and the other side is another ship is very hard because the things that make combat interesting are (a) terrain and (b) interplay between multiple pieces.
|
|
#
?
Mar 1, 2021 15:55
|
|
|
Don't use skill challenges as a core mechanic for anything, they're boring as hell and murder any sense of agency.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2021 09:02
|
|
|
PMush Perfect posted:Don't use skill challenges as a core mechanic for anything, they're boring as hell and murder any sense of agency. Skill challenges are bad if you tell your players like "okay you're in a skill challenge now, you must roll 3 skill checks". If you just say "okay, what are you going to do to help the boat fight instead of just standing on the deck like a numpty?" and track the mechanics behind the scenes, narrating how the battle starts to go the enemies' way as the PCs fail skill checks and the PCs' way as they succeed, then they work fine.
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2021 10:01
|
|
|
Whybird posted:Skill challenges are bad if you tell your players like "okay you're in a skill challenge now, you must roll 3 skill checks". That's not a skill challenge, that's basically just how it works usually
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2021 10:08
|
|
|
At the very least, don't act like all the modules that do poo poo like list an intimidate DC and the result is "They are very mad/scared you used intimidate, you monster." As your success for using it. Also let players use acrobatics or athletics interchangeably for most things in general. Oh my god the amount of rogues that can't manage to climb a wall or clear a pit because "But that would clearly be athletics!", or people assuming athletic can't be used to cross a narrow bridge without falling off because as we all know athletes have a terrible sense of balance right?
|
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2021 10:15
|
|
|
Isn't the point of skill challenges that they're basically just a formalisation of How Things Work Normally? The big change is just that you decide in advance which kind of skill checks will and won't help (like, you can't use Acrobatics to impress the orc king into allying with you by juggling really well) and how many failures your players can have before they lose.
Whybird fucked around with this message at 10:27 on Mar 2, 2021 |
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2021 10:20
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 16:36 |
|
|
Whybird posted:Isn't the point of skill challenges that they're basically just a formalisation of How Things Work Normally? The big change is just that you decide in advance which kind of skill checks will and won't help (like, you can't use Acrobatics to impress the orc king into allying with you by juggling really well) and how many failures your players can have before they lose. Maybe there's someone out there who's made a good skill challenge, but I've always found it better to just have a sequence of obstacles and ask my players how they approach each one. Skill challenges have the issue that the obstacle remains the same for like, twelve dice rolls, and the GM has to keep coming up with reasons why the player's success only gets them 20% of the way through the obstacle instead of resolving it. The point of skill challenges was to make skills as important as the other stats, I think you can do that better without the actual skill challenge rules. Gort fucked around with this message at 10:40 on Mar 2, 2021 |
|
#
?
Mar 2, 2021 10:38
|
|