D&D 4E Anyone playing 4e at the moment?

[darkbard]

I’m fascinated that anyone unironically enjoys skill challenges enough to regularly use them. Goes to show there are no wrong ways to play the game!

Joshua, have you peeked into our PbP thread to which @Manbearcat linked above? Essentially, our whole game is structured around Skill Challenges!

 

[Manbearcat]

@darkbard @Manbearcat

When GMing 4e, I don't recall ever using skill challenges above the PCs' level (maybe once or twice early on before I got my feel for the system). I would use complexity as my "toggle".

I've never GMed for only two players, but when GMing for four or five the way I handle the maths issue that darkbard points to is by manipulating the fiction and, thereby, which PC is under pressure. So it is true that the invoker/wizard will never fail an Arcana check - but the sorcerer might!

You can do that, but it isn't 100% reliable, in most cases. Players are good at changing the situation! Personally I didn't consider complexity to be so much a toggle of difficulty, as a measure of, well, plot complexity. If you want pure difficulty gradients, manipulate the level, it does work. Anyway, I was always more looking for that "you're kinda on the edge of failing, but you have shot." and then there's some slightly mixed success. In this sense SC is a lot like how PbtA works, you WANT 7-9 a lot!

This is why I prefer social skill challenges - where the GM has more capacity to (re)direct the pressure - over environmental ones.

Joshua, have you peeked into our PbP thread to which @Manbearcat linked above? Essentially, our whole game is structured around Skill Challenges!

Just going to grab all of these at once and throw out some commentary. Some of this will apply to 4e Skill Challenges in particular, but a lot of it will apply broadly to conflict resolution:

* Yes, social conflict is absolutely "targetable" at particular PC in ways that journeys and kindred physical conflicts aren't so targetable (with some exceptions like pursuit and evasion putting particular obstacles/threats to particular people). You'll see some of that emerge fairly clearly (the targeted social obstacles) in the PBP that is under discussion.

* Supernatural conflict leans more toward the (targeted vs omni-target) dynamics of social conflict, though it can absolutely be both physical and social. Targeted in a supernatural conflict would be when the spirit rebuffs a particular PC with an adverse vision or a revisionist history of a pivotal moment of their life in effort to undo them. Omni-target would be when a binding circle feeds back violently with arcane/divine energy and either (a) all must deal with it or (b) someone must "jump on the grenade" in some way.

* Skill Challenges nested in combats have similar concerns and constraints to that above, but they also have the very important considerations of (a) action economy (how individuals will deploy theirs and what is the best way for Team PC to do so in total), (b) spatial relationship requirements (eg, you can't commit to x Countermeasure when adjacent or Ranged 5 is required and you're beyond that), (c) the ability to marshal a sufficient number to successfully resolve via one of the potential Countermeasures.

* When it comes to 4e Skill Challenges, I see threat/obstacle manifestation and fiction/gamestate perturbance as binned into multiple parameters:

1) The sheer numbers. Increased level comes with some increase in difficulty (typically +1 Medium or Hard DC or perhaps both). This increase is meant to relay to the players enhanced duress and enhanced threat-lean toward the following Tier. The combat equivalent, imo, is a high encounter budget combat + battlefield array + encounter budget that is spent on "loading out" a combat in such a way that challenges the primary faculties/lines of play that this group setup employs reliably/well.

2) Complexity is a different axis imo. In all the games I've run, I have not seen a legitimately discernible increase in macro-failure rate as you increase in complexity. I would say this is because (a) you have so many toys at your disposal natively within PC build and Team PC to resolve obstacles and (b) your tool-kit expands significantly as complexity increases from 3 to 5. Advantages and a large number of buffing Secondary Skills becomes huge. Line up a a mediocre Trained Skill deployment + Secondary Skill Buff + Circumstance Bonus from an Encounter Power (or a reroll) and wager an Advantage for 2 x Successes against a Hard DC? That is a massive, positive change in gamestate
for Team PC.

I see Complexity mirroring # of Obstacles formulation in Missions/Adventures in Mouse Guard/Torchbearer or Disposition/number of adversaries in those same Conflicts or depth of adversary dice pools in Dogs + the ability to bring in free-floating dice to extend that depth.
3) Thematic threat/obstacle categories (think AW Threats/Moves here) and how they intercede between the evinced micro-goal of this situation and the macro-goal of the conflict at large (and how those threats/obstacles emerge for or outside of particular PC archetypes).

4) The consequence-space of any given matrix of action x, y, z vs threat/obstacle n (how does the fiction change positively or adversely and what is the looming cost for failure of x vs y vs z against n.

5) Finally, the considerations for follow-on conflicts, one of which would be the strategic considerations from Extended Rest to Extended Rest ("Adventuring Day" gas tank) and the longitudinal considerations that extend beyond that (what enemies/thematic threats do we want to accrete/tangle with as this Tier unfolds downstream of these moments of play?).

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Anyway, some thoughts to engage with, or not, at your leisure.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

* Skill Challenges nested in combats have similar concerns and constraints to that above, but they also have the very important considerations of (a) action economy (how individuals will deploy theirs and what is the best way for Team PC to do so in total), (b) spatial relationship requirements (eg, you can't commit to x Countermeasure when adjacent or Ranged 5 is required and you're beyond that), (c) the ability to marshal a sufficient number to successfully resolve via one of the potential Countermeasures.

* When it comes to 4e Skill Challenges, I see threat/obstacle manifestation and fiction/gamestate perturbance as binned into multiple parameters:

One thing that I invented for my game is the concept of an 'action sequence', that is a situation where you can put the situation on the grid and use turns and all the associated action machinery, but where there is no combat per se. Instead you play out an SC using this machinery pure and simple, with the considerations you have noted above like range and other spatial requirements, as well as things like visibility and the presence of terrain. You can including things like terrain powers here that could be leveraged, and then take the place of advantages and such. Its not an element of the design I've focused much on, to be honest, but it seems like it could be kind of an interesting option. Obviously this can also exist in a sort of continuum from plain old fight to exclusively SC-type obstacles, so you might include a single opponent as one component of the SC for instance.