Skill challenge system/lite resolution system

The homebrew forum

Moderator: Moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
OgreBattle
King
Posts: 6820
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2011 9:33 am

Skill challenge system/lite resolution system

Post by OgreBattle »

Based off of things I've read on TGD when it comes to the skill challenge system, here's my shot at fixing that funked up skill challenge system in 4e:
Resolution Mechanics
-Roll a d20+modifiers to beat DC.
-Gain X successes before Y turns pass.
-If you fail 3 times in a row you are knocked out of the challenge (they no longer participate in the challenge)

Running a Challenge
The nature of the challenge determines how effective/limited each skill is.

Determine the effectiveness of each skill for the challenge
Perfect: The skill is highly appropriate and gains +2 when rolled.
Neutral: The skill works as normal without any modifiers
Bad: The skill is inappropriate for the challenge and suffers a -5 penalty to rolls.
Locked: The skill cannot be used for the challenge (should it be an auto-failure if someone tries to use it or should they be informed to try something else?)

Certain Skills may have additional effects when a success is achieved
-Limited: After X successes are achieved with this skill it becomes Locked
-Unlock: This skill's success changes the effectiveness of another skill, such as making a Locked skill now neutral or a Bad skill becomes Perfect.
-Aid: Success with this skill doesn't count as success towards the challenge but instead adds +X to success with another skill
-Save: This skill's success allows a KO'd player back into the challenge
-Extend: This skill's success adds another round of rolling to the skill challenge

DC's and level appropriateness
Here's a guide to setting DC's for challenges
Setting appropriate DC's is another thing but 4e numbers can get so wonky that I haven't really looked at that. Instead I figured this is a good start for being the resolution system to a standalone game, like say a Choose Your Own Adventure kind of book or video game. So here's additional info to make it a standalone game:

Character Creation
You are a murderhobo adventurer. Choose 6 skills from the list below to be Proficient in, and then choose 3 skills you are proficient in to be Focused in.

If you are not trained in a skill you are -4 on rolls to use it
Proficiency has a +0 bonus, removing the penalty for being untrained
Focused grants a +3 bonus to rolls.
You add +level to your roll.

Skill List, this particular list is meant for a D&D kinda game but it can be changed based on what the genre n' setting of the game is.

Athletics: track & field & gymnastics kind of actions
Perception: noticing details, spotting an ambush, tracking
Larceny: covers all kinds of stealing, overlaps with rigging when it comes to bypassing barriers like locked doors
Stealth: sneaking around
Survival: making due in the wilds, scavenging, also overlaps with perception for tracking

Animal Empathy: communicating with non-sapient critters
Insight: figure out a person's intentions (if they're lying, what they're about to do)
Inspire: Making yourself larger than life to fill people with courage and dread alike
Persuade: basically like diplomacy and bluff rolled into one
Tactics: organizing folks to victory on the battlefield or football fields alike.

Operations: covers operating and repairing machines like boats n' ballistas
Tech: Can be electronics or arcana depending on the setting
Medicine: knowing what ails and what cures and how to go about doing so
Research: the knowledge skill, or in D&D4e terms it's History, though maybe knowledge should be its own category as that's quite broad...
Rigging: Macguyvering, building things and making them explode, arming and disarming traps, etc.


Gauging DC by level
This doesn't mean level 5 characters should be scaling level 5 walls, this is just a chart for showing what would be challenging or trivial to a level 5 character, a more fleshed out setting would have info like "Surving in the forest of thorns is a DC_ check"

Too Easy: DC= Character level +2
Very Easy: DC= Character level +5
Decent Challenge: DC= Character level +8
Evenly Matched: DC= Character level +10
Tough: DC= Character level +12
Very Tough: DC= Character level +15
Incredibly Tough: DC= Character level +18
Impossible: DC= Character level +20
Will give examples of skill challenges like "you wake up in a burning house" and DC's in further posts
Last edited by OgreBattle on Mon Oct 12, 2015 3:25 am, edited 4 times in total.
User avatar
Orion
Prince
Posts: 3756
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Orion »

Penalty for "bad" skills is way too low. In D&D terms, taking "Skill Focus" for a +3 to your favorite skill immediately makes it better as a "bad" skill than any other skill that's "normal" for the challenge.
User avatar
tussock
Prince
Posts: 2937
Joined: Sat Nov 07, 2009 4:28 am
Location: Online
Contact:

Post by tussock »

D&D fires work well as a small fire elemental that can grow and summon smaller friends by moving over fuel sources. Hit them with cold or wet magic, or extinguish them by cutting the flames off with magic swords. If someone comes up with a cool skill stunt, just have it do some d6's of damage. When they can't reach any fuel they port home.

Like your forge is a pen for a fire elemental, but it goes home it you stop feeding it charcoal. There's no tornadoes, just random air elementals, rogue waves are totally water elementals, and earthquakes are earth elementals smashing your blasphemous stone buildings.

--

But that aside, the most important thing seems to be skill challenges need an abstract goal that players fix with regular concrete actions. So "make the city friendly", without figuring out ten thousand diplomacy checks or something stupid, just players telling the DM how that happens and the DM letting it work if it's a good story, with dice checks for the doubtful or literally opposed bits. Complications and adventure if things go badly, and different complications and adventure if they go well. Because D&D.

If it's just a fire someone casts Quench and we get on with life.
PC, SJW, anti-fascist, not being a dick, or working on it, he/him.
User avatar
OgreBattle
King
Posts: 6820
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2011 9:33 am

Post by OgreBattle »

Orion wrote:Penalty for "bad" skills is way too low. In D&D terms, taking "Skill Focus" for a +3 to your favorite skill immediately makes it better as a "bad" skill than any other skill that's "normal" for the challenge.
Thanks for catching that, shows how much attention I give to the math... the penalty's now set to -5.

While the main focus of the skill challenge would be to stop the fire within 4 rounds, there are actually multiple 'success tracks' to fill out, which are...
- Stop the fire and rescue folks: hit 8 successes (though it's a 'degrees of success/failure' kind of deal so getting 7 successes is not a total failure).
- Steal shit and snoop around: Up to 3 successes gives you treasure or info the duke didn't want you to have. If you hit two failures in this though somebody goes "hey that asshole was trying to steal shit during the crisis!"

Athletics: Neutral, success helps stop the fire n' rescue folks
Perception: Perfect, success shifts Larceny and Stealth from bad to neutral
Larceny: Bad, you grab some goodies on your way out
Stealth: Bad, you snoop around to places you shouldn't be as everything's in a blaze
Survival: Good, success helps stop the fire n' rescue folks

Animal Empathy: Neutral, usable once. You enlist the Duke's elephant to spray water on the fire
Inspire: Neutral, usable once. You rally the scared maids to fight the fire by being inspiring.
Insight: Locked
Persuade: Neutral, usable once. Removes one failure on the 'stealing and snooping' track.
Tactics: Neutral, usable once. You rally the guards to fight the fire more efficiently with your tactical know how.

Operations: Neutral, usable once.
Tech: Locked
Medicine: Locked
Research: Locked
Rigging: Neutral, usable once. Adds 1 round extra to challenge.

-----

Still a lot to hash out with this.
Last edited by OgreBattle on Sun Mar 15, 2015 5:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
JonSetanta
King
Posts: 5525
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: interbutts

Re: Skill challenge system/lite resolution system

Post by JonSetanta »

OgreBattle wrote: Locked: The skill cannot be used for the challenge (should it be an auto-failure if someone tries to use it or should they be informed to try something else?)
The latter
User avatar
tussock
Prince
Posts: 2937
Joined: Sat Nov 07, 2009 4:28 am
Location: Online
Contact:

Post by tussock »

- Stop the fire and rescue folks: hit 8 successes (though it's a 'degrees of success/failure' kind of deal so getting 7 successes is not a total failure).
It reads more like a normal (interesting, clever) encounter design. So, you have 8 people (or groups of people) to rescue from a burning evidence hoard, you get a check to see it's a 5-round to totally engulf deal, the duke's guard with an elephant are there being ineffectual, some scared maids putting themselves in danger, a fountain at a corner, and the normal game mechanics should just cover it from there. Movement rates, skill checks, carrying capacity, fire resistance, summoned water elemental, whatever.

People don't need a unique failure schedule, because they'll be burnt, or arrested or beaten by the guard, with normal skill failures when doing those things. You don't have to lock skills, just ask players to describe how that helps, maybe they'll see something.

Like if someone gets dragged out on round five from a bit we missed, maybe medicine does come into it. By being resolved in concrete terms, such things become obvious.

But the design in general seems sound, because it can mirror that sort of complexity of options in not too many more words. In a situation lacking such urgency and pre-defined failure modes, like a complex social encounter across multiple NPC targets who get time to interact and compare notes off-camera between rounds.

There you might have N key people to convince, but each failure puts suspicion on that individual across everyone, and suspicion plus more failure means they lock you out of discussions. Each person can be dealt with via normal NPC interactions, bribes or payment, charming, blackmail, diplomancy, or whatever the players come up with. Give them time for investigation of what people respond to, forge things, even retrieve a quest item.

Not so much a separate mini-game, as a separately tracked overarching plot device on top of the regular game, driving forward a set of normal game scenes, only you still interact with it through standard game mechanics as much as possible.

The skills and how hard they are, that's all layed out to give answers to the players as they try to uncover a good course of action. What does the mayor respond to, the chief of police, what does batman want, how do you get the joker to play his part, there's really not many good guys to convince in Gotham is there, get the public on board, editor of the paper, local TV station executive. Something, something. Having the players suggest a few saves a lot of effort there.
PC, SJW, anti-fascist, not being a dick, or working on it, he/him.
Post Reply