Maxwell Lord posted:

So, digging into skills.

I've been thinking, temptingly- what if we at least started to dig into noncombat resolution with the same kind of vigor that 4e brought to combat? It's a little tricky because there's more room for intangibles and there's no measuring system like HP (to a certain extent this was what successes and failures in skill challenges are meant to be, but it doesn't quite feel right.) Still, there's some room for better definition.

It seems to me there are certain kinds of skill usage, that roughly grouped can make up: knowing/perceiving things, doing things, and talking. Some backgrounds I've been designing look groomed to be focused- the Noble is a social monster, the Scholar knows all the poo poo, the "Commoner" class is your working man who works hard with his hands, etc. I've been trying to come up with inherent abilities (before you start getting background/utility powers) and a lot of it is "get a bonus/reroll/automatic success every so often when doing X" kind of things. For a lot of those it's become useful shorthand to say "A Social check" and similar things.

I can't start to dig into the math until I get back to where my books are. But I feel like, perhaps, instead of trying to "fix Skill Challenges", the answer isn't to go further in detailing and balancing character's non-combat capabilities.