4E: On Running an Entirely Skill Challenge Game

[norse]

Mentioned this in another area, and someone said they'd like to see a proper discussion of it. So here it is.

Alongside my OSR stuff (Backswords & Bucklers, plugplug) I run a 4th edition Essentials Campaign. My players wanted to play 4e, and with the new Essentials stuff seeming to take a step in the right direction I decided I'd like to give it a go too.

I love the more streamlined approach to skills and things that 4e takes over the horror of 3.x, and the skill challenge system has given us good, fun games where the players feel like there's a support there to help their roleplaying and improvisation.

But the combat is a nightmare. I'm used to running games with just a page of notes and playing it by ear, responding to the players and creating combats, monsters and other stuff on the fly if needed. But d**nit, this is nearly impossible to do in 4e without seriously slowing the game down. I also don't like essentially being forced to use a grid. I've never needed one before (I like to think I'm pretty good at visualising and describing action, I'm certainly good enough for my players).

Anyway, this means I have to spend valuable time I could be spending on a storyline and stuff plotting encounters. It takes a long time if you work through the books (as I do, I don't have easy enough access to a printer to be able to just print out the monsters I need). And on top of that, this really kills the back and forth between player and gamesmaster that I feel is vital to the enjoyment of the game.

That's not to say the combat system isn't fun in it's own way. It just gets in the way and bogs things down too much.

Right, so here's the proposal. I move almost everything over to a skill challenge mechanic, including most of the combat. I'd probably still use the standard combat system for the epic encounters and things, maybe one every session or two. But for everything else, skill challenge.

This makes thing's so much easier! In oldschool D&D I can get the numbers for the monsters just by deciding on the hit dice and a couple of other bits. Here, all I have to do is decide on the level of the skill challenge encounter and describe the opponents exactly as I want. And no grids!

However there are a couple of things that need to be considered:

1) How to integrate powers into the system? This might be an irrelevant question though, just make the attack roll against whatever difficulty you've set and a success is a success. The rest is all description. But this might not be appropriate for every power. Some powers might be used in other ways, to cancel failures for example, and all sorts of other things. The DM and players would have to be willing to improvise consequences for this sort of stuff as it happens I think.

2) Consequences of Failure. What happens when a player fails a roll? What happens when the character's reach 3 failures? I think this is down to the individual DM, but some guidelines would be useful I think. Take the normal damage expression for the appropriate level as a players consequence for failure perhaps? This could vary depending on what the monsters are like though. Conditions and things could be other consequences.

This would, in theory, allow me to run my relatively unstructured, heavily player led games using 4th edition. Which is nice. Anyhow, that's my thoughts on the matter.

Any thoughts people?

[rabindranath72]

I tried this way, too, but in the end it didn't work. Problem is, 4e is designed to be played on the grid. There is nothing you can do to change that, without changing the nature of the game.

Skill challenges also suffer from another problem: for a given skill, the player with the highest rank will always roll that skill. And since everyone will always be at least competent in most of the skills, the end result is a quite flat and boring process.

If the game allowed a restricted choice of skills (like in 3e) skill challenges would be meaningful, since some times a character would not possess the required skill at all, so the players would be forced to think something out.
But since in 4e everyone can do everything (and within the same role, this "everything" extends to powers) skill challenges become only multiple skill checks.

[norse]

In most of my skill challenges, each player takes a turn at making checks (with the possible assistance of other players) and gets to choose what skill/power they use. In most cases a player will only be allowed to use a particular skill/power once. So they don't always use the same skills. They have to figure out how to descriptively work other skills into the game.

In this case I would also allow players to suggest what effects they want from their successes. They might want to use a skill to negate a failure for example. Or daily powers might get multiple successes or effects depending on description.

So description *would* become more important than your usual skill challenge.

Hopefully.

[rabindranath72]

I am not sure I understand how you run it. If a Religion check is required, the party will obviously mandate the Cleric or the Paladin to make the check. If a Stealth check is required, the Rogue will step forward. Every class will have at least one skill in which it excels. Where is the players' choice?

[norse]

If you run a skill challenge like that then no wonder you haven't had much joy with them. You never tell the players what skill they need to roll, and you never have only one possible skill to be used. You just describe the situation to the players, and then go round the table asking them what they're up to. Between you and the player(s) you figure out what skill or power they are using. Then you decide whether it's appropriate or not and how difficult it is. Most published skill challenges have a list of appropriate skills, but if a player can come up with a good enough reason I always allow other skills. There are other ways of running skill challenges of course, but I've always found this to be the best method. And as a support system for interesting and deep roleplaying its brilliant if handled right. And its nothing new, all this is in the dmg.

If you just tell the players they have to make 6 religion checks before they get 3 failures everyone is doomed to boredom. If the situation calls for only 1 skill, in almost every case it should just be a single roll not a skill challenge.

Try this and you might find yourself enjoying skill challenges, and 4e's skill system more.

[kesher]

Hey! It was me who asked you to start this thread, and thanks for doing it!

I'm crushed by work deadlines for the next couple of days, but I'll get in here as soon as I can. I really think we need to start some serious Essentials discussion, and this is a great start.

[norse]

Hi Kesher, good idea of yours to start it. No worries mate, I know the feeling working 2 full time jobs this week back to back to cover stewards holiday. These new-fangled internet smartphone things (perk of the job, too poor otherwise) are handy

[rabindranath72]

Feb 24, 2011 9:31:29 GMT -6 norse said:

If you run a skill challenge like that then no wonder you haven't had much joy with them. You never tell the players what skill they need to roll, and you never have only one possible skill to be used. You just describe the situation to the players, and then go round the table asking them what they're up to. Between you and the player(s) you figure out what skill or power they are using. Then you decide whether it's appropriate or not and how difficult it is. Most published skill challenges have a list of appropriate skills, but if a player can come up with a good enough reason I always allow other skills. There are other ways of running skill challenges of course, but I've always found this to be the best method. And as a support system for interesting and deep roleplaying its brilliant if handled right. And its nothing new, all this is in the dmg.

If you just tell the players they have to make 6 religion checks before they get 3 failures everyone is doomed to boredom. If the situation calls for only 1 skill, in almost every case it should just be a single roll not a skill challenge.

Try this and you might find yourself enjoying skill challenges, and 4e's skill system more.

Sorry I haven't been clear. I don't run skill challenges like that, it was just an example.
But from the situation, the players should be able to infer what skill to use. And the group, as a whole, will pool resources so that each player will roll with his highest ranking skill, leading to the problem I delineated above.

[norse]

We must be doing something different because I can honestly say we've never found that to be the case. By making sure everyone *has* to do something and cannot repeatedly use the same skill, I find my players come up with interesting stuff all the time.

[rabindranath72]

Feb 24, 2011 15:28:22 GMT -6 norse said:

We must be doing something different because I can honestly say we've never found that to be the case. By making sure everyone *has* to do something and cannot repeatedly use the same skill, I find my players come up with interesting stuff all the time.

Do you impose that, e.g., the Rogue must use Religion and the Cleric, Athletics? If the players pool their resources like it should be by the nature of the skill challenges, then everyone is going to use her best skill. The main problem here is that everyone is at least competent. Between a trained and non-trained character there are only 5 ranks of difference. As the characters increase in level, the magnitude of the modifiers far exceeds the variance of the d20 roll, so that the checks become pretty meaningless.

It's not like in 3e, where you could have even 20 ranks or more of difference, and someone might not have a skill at all. With 4e, at worst one character will be 5 ranks below another one (assuming the same ability score.)

Obviously, YMMV etc. etc.

[norse]

Well, no. But as each player must make more than one check, and they may not use the same skill/power twice in a row then they will have to use something different. Besides, different situations are going to call for different skills, which characters may not have.

And I don't see what's wrong with players pooling resources anyway.

I'm really failing to see what the problem is here... A Cleric's Religion Skill doesn't apply in every skill challenge. But in every skill challenge he is going to have to do something. So he has to figure out a way to descriptively work in one of his skills. Hence interesting description. Hence roleplaying.

And you are very wrong about the skill numbers. Because the difficulty target numbers also increase to keep roughly in line with the characters bonuses, those 5 points *always* make a difference. The player's feel like their skills are getting more powerful, but in fact they are always in line with the target numbers, more so in Essentials.

[rabindranath72]

Feb 25, 2011 7:09:31 GMT -6 norse said:

Well, no. But as each player must make more than one check, and they may not use the same skill/power twice in a row then they will have to use something different. Besides, different situations are going to call for different skills, which characters may not have.

And I don't see what's wrong with players pooling resources anyway.

I'm really failing to see what the problem is here... A Cleric's Religion Skill doesn't apply in every skill challenge. But in every skill challenge he is going to have to do something. So he has to figure out a way to descriptively work in one of his skills. Hence interesting description. Hence roleplaying.

And you are very wrong about the skill numbers. Because the difficulty target numbers also increase to keep roughly in line with the characters bonuses, those 5 points *always* make a difference. The player's feel like their skills are getting more powerful, but in fact they are always in line with the target numbers, more so in Essentials.

Nothing wrong with players pooling resources. That would be nice if everyone could contribute significantly.
Let's put it this way: skill challenges embody one of the "features" (or bugs, depending on how you want to see it) of 4e: everyone is good at everything (or, no one excels at anything.) You can see it from the powers, feats, skills etc. of which everyone gets the same number with the same modalities.

About the skills numbers; no, I am not wrong, my point was, technically, that unless the DC of skill challenge is such that the range is within the one attainable by a basic d20 roll, the distribution is not linear anymore, and the difference is not 25% as you would be led to expect.
For example: Suppose we have a DC of 30, one character has +5, so the probability of meeting DC30 is 0%. Suppose another character has +10 (let's say +5, +5 for being trained,) the probability of meeting or exceeding DC 30 is 5%. So, despite there being a difference of +5 between the twos, the difference in the chance of success is a mere 5%.

Also: what's the meaning of a difficulty which increases as the characters advance? Are you implying that the same challenge should come with different target numbers depending on the level of the PCs? Things should get more complex because they are intrinsically so, not because the PCs advance in level. If opening a lock is DC 20, I expect that for the same lock the same DC holds regardless of the character level, so that the PCs really have improved chances.

Anyway, in my experience the skill challenges don't work at all, and only prove that 4e needed many more passes at playtesting; the initial debacle on setting the number of successes shows how much thought was put behind it: i.e. close to zero.
With a maximum difference of 25% for trained, and 0% for untrained skills (as always, all the rest being equal, including level) begs the question: why introducing skills in the game at all? In fact, the variation we have been playing with, is to introduce in the game as effective skills only the ones in which a character can be trained, which become sort of "special abilities." Everything else is an attribute check with a 1/2 level bonus. Some skills which don't appear in a class description are simply removed from the game.

Anyway, if you and your group are having fun, that's what's important, and good luck in finding a way of making 4e combat work

[norse]

Well, I'd be the last to claim that 4e is a great game. But my players want to play some 4th edition, so I run it alongside my Backswords & Bucklers games. The point of the thread is me using the tools in the game to play something that the players will enjoy, I will enjoy, and that means I don't have to spend the majority of the previous evening plotting encounters I don't want to have to forcefully guide my players toward.

I'm not saying it's a good thing that the numbers increase to match the players, I'm just saying that's the way it works. It's just a trick. One I don't really agree with, but as with most things in 4e it's so integrated into the game it's not something you can easily change. On the other hand it makes things so much easier than 3.x's often ridiculous lists of DC's. You just have to decide whether something's easy, moderate or difficult and check the level for the dc.

Can I just ask which side of the screen you were on, and whether you've taken a look at Essentials?

I agree, 4e needed better testing before release. It's not really possible to play beyond a certain level with the original 3 core books because the monsters are broken. This is because wizards adopted a testing policy similar to a certain software manufacturer: they get the customer to pay to test it for them and then fix it in endless patches, which naturally you have to pay for.

But having refused to buy into the game at the beginning when it was broken, I had no problem (well, not much of one anyway) buying into Essentials. Which fixes the majority of the numeric problems. There's even slightly less of the 'everyone can do everything' problem.

In my experience we manage to get some good games out of the skill challenge system. I'd rather use a different system, but it's what the players want. And as long as everyone's enjoying themselves, really that's all that matters.

[norse]

Ah sorry, I had been typing that response up bit by bit all afternoon on me phone whilst at work, during spare moments. Only to find that your post had been edited between me reading it and me posting, so I apologise for any confusion that may arise between the two posts.

From the way you've now posted I can see that the question of which side of the screen you were on is irrelevant. Whether you are a GM or not, you've taken a look backstage as it were anyway. But my point about Essentials still is relevant.

I see your point about removing skills at all. But I think it makes it easier to just have them there on the sheet. But pretty much the same result in the end.

I haven't had a chance to check your numbers, but I still think that 5 makes a difference. But never mind.

Making 4e combat work is impossible It works at what it does ok. Which is basically a card game where you move bits about. But I don't believe it integrates into the roleplaying at all well, I find my players are roleplaying *despite* the system, instead of because of it. It's just too much in the way. It is quite fun in its own sort of way. And my players do enjoy the combat. But we all have much more fun with the skill challenges; I still say it gives a nice support structure there for people who aren't necessarily sure of their roleplaying and helps them along, and helps those of us who can't be spontaneously creative all the time and sometimes need a little spark to get us going, helps reinforce the fact that the players *should* be creative (something the combat system tries to destroy utterly) whilst allowing them to see that it is affecting things. And the more creative the players are being, the more creative I can be. It all depends on how you structure and run your skill challenges, but done in the right way I've found it to be a very effective tool. One perhaps that shouldn't be needed (we never have problems when the same people are playing Backswords or Tunnels & Trolls or anything similar), but I believe it could be because the combat system atrophies peoples creativity. And it's good for new players too.

Anyway, because the players do like to play the combats sometimes I think I'll do one every other session or so. Whenever it fits appropriately. And the rest of the time run it all as a skill challenge.

So taking the premise that the Skill Challenge works, whether you believe it or not; does anyone have any suggestions, thoughts, points of discussion we can work on?

[kesher]

However there are a couple of things that need to be considered:

1) How to integrate powers into the system? This might be an irrelevant question though, just make the attack roll against whatever difficulty you've set and a success is a success. The rest is all description. But this might not be appropriate for every power. Some powers might be used in other ways, to cancel failures for example, and all sorts of other things. The DM and players would have to be willing to improvise consequences for this sort of stuff as it happens I think.

2) Consequences of Failure. What happens when a player fails a roll? What happens when the character's reach 3 failures? I think this is down to the individual DM, but some guidelines would be useful I think. Take the normal damage expression for the appropriate level as a players consequence for failure perhaps? This could vary depending on what the monsters are like though. Conditions and things could be other consequences.

This would, in theory, allow me to run my relatively unstructured, heavily player led games using 4th edition. Which is nice. Anyhow, that's my thoughts on the matter.

I'm not able to follow the conversation you guys have been having as well as I would like, given that I've only been reading 4e stuff, and just Essentials at that, rather than playing.

However, here are my thoughts, though I think what'd be really useful at this point is an actual example of what a skill challenge combat might look like.

Powers: I think you're on the right track, in terms of allowing Powers (and Feats, I imagine) to affect the rolls in multiple ways, though it would be easiest I think to simply work up a framework for dice bonuses for different types of Powers/Feats.

Failure: Any character who fails could take damage, either expressed as a variable or a constant, or an on-the-fly decision of damage vs. conditions. If the group hits three failures, everyone could take damage/suffer conditions. Maybe each skill challenge should represent one round of combat? That way a condition result would rollover consequence into the next round.

Conversely, you'd need to think about the consequences of success. It comes down, I suppose, to whether it works best to turn the whole combat round into one big conflict resolution, or use the skill challenge framework to more or less compress combat. If the latter, then every time all characters succeed on a check, the foe(s) could take damage.

I'm just throwing this stuff out right off the top of my head, but it almost seems to make the whole thing vaguely Tunnels & Trolls-ish, which is never a bad thing...

I have absolutely no idea of how, or if, to figure in Defenses...

[norse]

The idea would be to compress the whole combat into one skill challenge. Consequences of success would simply be that they win the combat, no need to track enemy damage that way. I wouldn't figure in defenses either. Except under specific circumstances.

Most powers have an attack roll of some kind. Some of them don't. Those that don't I might consider an automatic success, as long as the player was able to bring it into the challenge effectively and as long as it was a power that had to be expended. Otherwise I might just use an appropriate skill, possibly a grade lower in difficulty than it would be normally.

As I say, some of them could be used to negate failures too.

There's a list of damage appropriate to level somewhere. Would just use that as damage I reckon. But other consequences could be possible.

If failed completely, then the player characters would be forced to retreat in most circumstances I think.

Perhaps it would be instructive if I tried to write up a sample combat skill challenge here. Give me a few minutes and I'll have one up.

[norse]

Kobold Ambush

The player party are travelling through the Undercity of Eh'karr when they hear ominous scuttling noises from the galleries in the large cavern they are moving through. Half a dozen shadowy shapes begin launching rocks and javelins at them.

Level: 1

Difficulty Classes: Easy - 8, Moderate - 12, Hard - 19

Complexity: 4 (for 4 characters), 10 successes before 3 failures. 4 advantages.

XP: 400

All difficulties in this skill challenge are Hard until someone successfully makes some sort of perception related skill or power check. Characters with feats that improve initiative do not suffer from this disadvantage.

Possible Skills:

Perception or Dungeoneering in the first phase of the challenge, also negating the penalty mentioned above. Once one of these has been used successfully, neither is likely to be useful again.

Intimidate could be used to gain successes, causing the kobolds to cower.

Attack rolls and powers can be used to gain successes, by physically beating the kobolds in the face.

When the Wyrmpriest arrives (see failure), Arcana could be used to gain successes by engaging in a magical duel with him.

Possible Advantages:

Stealth, acrobatics, or an appropriate power, might be used to negate a failure by cunning manoeuvre.
Heal, or a related power, might be used to negate by, well, healing.
A Charisma check, or an appropriate leadership based power, might be used to negate a failure by giving party morale a boost (Urrrahh!)
An Action Point might be used to allow a character to count one success as two, or to reroll a failed check.

Success:
The kobolds are fought off, the remainder scuttling off back into the dark dragging their wounded with them. The party receives 400 XP. 2 gems worth 100 GP each are left behind, and if the kobold wyrmpriest showed up (see Failure) he leaves behind a Rod of Deadly Casting.

Failure:
Each failure will cause 1d8+4 damage to all characters taking part in the failed check (i.e. the character making the check, and anyone making assist attempts).
After the first failure, a Kobold Wyrmpriest will arrive to assist the kobolds, his magic will cause an extra 1d6 points of damage to each failure.

On reaching 3 failures, the player characters will be forced to retreat. They will lose any action points they have, and 2 healing surges. They will then have to find an alternative route.

[norse]

Of course, I wouldn't actually bother writing up a skill challenge like this during play. I would just consider the situation, perhaps jot down a few possible skill/power uses, consider some possible changing circumstances and consequences and play it by ear. This is just to demonstrate the sort of thing I mean.

[kesher]

So, in terms of the skill challenge, you'd consider an attack roll similar to a skill check? Would the DC be the DC for the whole challenge, or specifically against the kobold's Armor defense? (I'm guessing the former) Actually, here's a good newbie question: How is DC established for a skill challenge? Does it have to do with the complexity?

I think this system has tons of potential, though of course it sidesteps "normal" 4e combat entirely. So, I assume if someone uses a Power or Feat or whatever, they'll need to be able to work it into the description of a particular check for it to be valid?

[kesher]

Oh, and how would that XP value compare to the XP value for winning that combat using the standard combat system?

[norse]

An attack roll would be made against a skill dc rather than the kobolds defences, the idea is to not use any monster stats at all so you don't have to hunt through books and can just run with it. Complexity determines how many successes you need, and the recommended number of advantages.

DCs for the entire game are determined by level. There's a chart of Easy, Medium and Difficult DCs by level in the dm book and the screen. It's up to the dm to decide which of the three is used, except in the example above where all are Hard until someone can spot the kobolds properly. I'd have put the numbers in but didn't have them handy at the time, and my party hasn't been first level for a while to remember them offhand

A player must *always* work their description of any skill or power appropriately into a skill challenge. They should never be allowed to just say "I cast Religion at them."

XP for a skill challenge is based on the complexity. Each point of complexity gives the same amount of XP as 1 standard monster of that level. So if you have 4 in your party a complexity 4 challenge is the same as a combat encounter of that level. 2 players would need complexity 2 etc.

The difference is that with normal combat you tend to have a variety of different encounter levels. I found that most XP in the game comes from the big level +3 combats. You could achieve this by altering complexity or level of the skill challenge. But as you can fit more of these in (no need to set up combat grids, just sketch the terrain, no enemy combat turns, less dice rolling, fewer turns required) I don't think you need to vary it very often. And I'd be inclined to run those big level+3 combats as normal anyway.

Do you have access to the dm book?

[kesher]

"I cast Religion at them."

I think if I had a player say that, I'd be laughing so hard they'd probably get away with it...

This is starting to sound really solid. Once everyone gets the hang of it, you could really work the color of both character and monster powers into combats quickly and easily.

I don't have the Essentials DM book, but I do have the Rules Compendium and pdfs of the DM's Guide 1 and 2. I'll try to read up on skill challenges tonight so's I can comment a bit more concretely.

[norse]

Come to think of it, I would too But you get what I mean.

Essentials has the more up to date skill challenge stuff in it, but DMG2 has some good stuff about skill challenges in it. The rules are a bit different though. As mentioned previously, the game was horribly broken when it came out.

[kesher]

Cool. I'll start with the Rules Compendium, then.

[kesher]

(Finally) getting back to this thread...

I just ran across this sidebar in a Dragon article on jousting:



This has some real possibilities for running some combats, anyhow, as a skill challenge.

[darkling]

I really like this idea! I think that the skill challenge concept is one of the better things to come out of 4e. To the point that actually I have been trying to put together a rules light, entirely skill challenge based, system together for a while (a project which has currently stalled <_<). Skill challenges in general are a great mechanic once everyone in the group understands how they work (though as a prerequisite to using them in 4e you have to understand how skills, training, and DC work in 4e because it is very different than 3e).

One thing I have done in the past when running mass combat and wilderness survival skill challenges is reduce healing surges instead of HP as a failure consequence, that might be a little too harsh though if you are using lots of combat skill challenges.

For the record, I tend to use skill challenges in other games because combat in 4e is such a deal breaker for me, even once a session, that I refuse to run it and currently play in a campaign only grudgingly.

[kesher]

Hey, darkling--welcome to the conversation!

I would love to:

1. Hear more about your system

2. Hear more about why 4e combat is a "deal breaker" for you.

[darkling]

Jul 18, 2011 15:28:46 GMT -6 kesher said:

Hey, darkling--welcome to the conversation!

I would love to:

1. Hear more about your system

2. Hear more about why 4e combat is a "deal breaker" for you.

I'll field that second question first because it has been a bit more on my mind lately and is aa bit more on topic. To my mind there are three big problems with the 4e combat engine, in reverse order of subjectivity:

-Magic Item Necessity
-Too Safe
-TIME

I full admit that the first one of these is really subjective. I don't like magic items being necessary to stay competitive. A +X enhancement bonus should be a bonus. Not something you need to realistically hit. In my opinion, magic items should feel like cool edges and rewards, not like basic necessary equipment. You shouldn't have to put out special rules for inherently boosting attack and AC (like they did in the 4e Dark Sun book) to make it possible to play a low magic campaign.

4e is way too safe for my tastes. Unless you design a horribly out of level encounter there is little to nothing at stake for the party. In the two campaigns I have played in and the one I have run since 4e came out there has not been a single character death in combat. When my character went down a few nights ago I just got my notebook and stated working on one of my projects, pausing every so often to make a death saving throw (he had failed one out of three before someone brought him back, and by back I don't mean 'not dying' I mean back at full capability in the fight). Not because I don't care about the little guy, but because I felt there was absolutely no risk to him and no sense of urgency. I just think that if there is nothing to be lost in combat, why run it?

TIME. Oh god the time. The current party I play in consists of: Defender/Controller Hybrid; 3 Strikers; and a Leader/Controller Hybrid (my character). And we still can't dish out enough damage fast enough to keep combat from being a boring morass. The energy of the room palpably changes when the party goes into combat. In older editions, the magic user's combat turn was always the longest and most complex, and that was okay when you had only one or two in a party. But now that everyone has powers with a complex resolution system that throw out a ton of conditions and special effects, every combat turn has become that. The progression between turns goes like this: Take your turn -> decide what you're going to do next turn -> wait -> get bored -> pull out something else to distract you (we routinely have people reading, playing DS, or writing something entirely unrelated during combat) -> notice that the person before you in initiative order is going -> survey the board to make sure nothing has changed -> wait for the person before you to finish their turn -> take your turn. Combat should be an exciting and vital part of the game, balanced with skill use and roleplay. Instead it is the roleplaying and skill challenges that are exciting and combat just feels like busy work. This would pretty much still be acceptable if everything had similar HP ranges and combats were short and quick, but they aren't. The average time of combat is over an hour and it kills any sense of excitement or pacing. And it isn't that we are unfamiliar with how this works. This campaign has been running since release and we all now have epic level characters and know our powers basically from memory. I don't think that this is subjective to my group and I find it completely unacceptable.

In short: combat in my OD&D (and to a lesser extent my 3.5e and SW: SAGA) games is quick, immersive, risky, and (therefore) exciting; combat in 4e (whether I run or play) is slow, unwieldy, safe, and actively harms the immersion potential of the game.

I like norse's suggestion because I think it really pushes 4e back in the right direction. And I hope their is a way to smoothly pull it off.

---

On my system: I won't go into detail here since it is a little too much abstracted from D&D, but a quick sketch and then an idea of some of the skill challenges. Bear in mind this is alpha level development.

The system is a pseudo classless, level based system. Characters generate ability scores on 3d6 in order. Each ability score determines a single secondary stat as well as giving a modifier to skill checks. Players are given slots to develop their character. Slots can be used on skill training (including combat skills), skill focus, skill specialization (which bring special abilities associated with the skills kind of like 4e skill powers), languages, knowledges, magic schools, etc. In this way players kind of build a class from scratch, which is why it is only psuedo-classless. For the alpha playtest we wound up with essentially a fighter/loremaster and a ranger/druid.

Skills are either untrained, trained, or focused. Untrained you use your ability mod + 1/2 your level and can only access very basic uses of the skill (for instance anyone can try to ward against magic by making an arcana check and a folk sign to ward off the evil eye, or make a knowledge check to try to determine what that strange monster is). Trained you add your level and can use all aspects of the skill (e.g. not only do you get a bigger bonus when trained but certain aspects of the skill are only available to trained individuals, for instance only someone trained in arcana can attempt to cast a ritual). Focused gives a permanent +2. A specialized skill would give a cool little ability but probably wouldn't change the base roll (for instance the aforementioned ranger/druid took an archery specialization to not suffer penalties for firing in inclement weather).

Skill challenges work pretty much like 4e. I unfortunately do not still have my notes from the alpha test but to give an idea of the sort of stuff that went on:

The game opened with the two PCs trying to make its way to a particular fort high in a mountain pass during a blizzard. So the initial skill challenge was finding the fort. They needed 3 successes before 3 failures (the failure condition is always 3 for my skill challenges). Appropriate skills were things like Nature and Perception with possible uses of Stealth if they wanted to cover their tracks, Climb if they wanted to move to higher ground and get a better view, Invocation (Nature or any Mountain/Forest deity) if they sough divine guidance, etc. One of the players suggested Arcana to let him pinpoint their location by the stars and astrological correspondences and I ruled that if the weather cleared that would be acceptable. Each of these was assigned a difficulty band depending on how hard it should be and what exactly the players were trying to do with the skill. Also some skill uses made subsequent uses easier. For instance, climbing to higher ground lowered the perception DC to try to pick out the lights of the fort in the storm. At three failures I called for endurance checks and if they failed the lost one wound point (basically equivalent to a healing surge). And then I rolled to see of the condition changed 1-2 weather gets better, 3-4 weather stays the same, 5-6 weather gets worse and adjusted the DCs accordingly. The weather got better. Then I rolled on my encounter table. Too bad, winter wolves!

Three winter wolves attacked the party. I actually drew the terrain out on a piece of paper and kept track of character positions with thumbtacks, but didn't worry about a grid or scale. This challenge required 6 successes on combat rolls made against the wolves (2 successes kills one winter wolf) and in this case the PCs tracked failures individually (3 failures and they lost a wound point and must make an endurance check not to take a penalty to future skill checks from the seeping cold of the magical wolf's bite). Obviously the appropriate skills were any combat skills, however there were some other skills tossed into the mix as well. Perception or nature could be used to notice a perilously stacked pile of rocks on the cliff face and a strength check could be used to cause a small avalanche to gain 1d6/2 successes as it crushed the the wolves (but would require Athletics or Acrobatics checks from the other party members to not get caught in it themselves!). An arcana check told the loremaster that these were magical beasts they were combating and that they were vulnerable to fire and that any combat action made against them with fire would grant double successes of they beat the DC but that they were immune to cold. So he used this info to begin fighting with a torch in each hand instead of his sword and the druid did something quite clever. She asked if, since she had said when equipping her character that she eschews metal and carries a dagger made of volcanic glass instead, she could use Invocation (nature) to 'wake the sleeping fire within the stone' and allow the dagger to temporarily count as a fire weapon. In the end they were a little battered but managed to seize the day.

It all seemed to flow pretty well and allowed a quick play experience with a good bit of room for outside the box thinking. I would like to get back to that project after I finish tinkering with things for my OD&D game.

Some of the things I learned from it: be flexible and open to player suggestions if they are feasible, tie successes in a combat situation to monster wounds/death to make sure the players have a sense of progressing, skill challenges can extend over time and there is nothing wrong with taking a break from one to insert another event (or as with encounters, nesting a skill challenge in a skill challenge), characters can make single skill checks that don't contribute to the success or failure of the challenge as a whole to modify their chances on challenge checks, keywords like fire and ice above can be used to modify a challenge and are a good way to work magic items in, and it is generally a good idea to have a timescale for actions in a skill challenge and there is nothing wrong with having something happen say every three checks regardless of success or failure.

Wow that is a wall of text, I hope something in there is interesting and/or helpful!

[kesher]

Hey, thanks for the thoughtful responses! And, fwiw, I don't see discussion of your own skill challengish system as off topic at all--it's showing a viable example!

Re: Combat. I'd not heard the magic item point before--that is odd, though I guess it makes sense with the way EVERYTHING increases with level (magic armor bonuses, etc.) As for the too safe thing, that's not such a problem for me--after a couple of years here of playing ODD, I'm getting a bit tired of constant character mortality...

Now, TIME for combat encounters seems to be the biggest factor that sours most people on this edition. I've seen some decent suggestions for mechanically cutting down the time spent in combat, but I would think the biggest challenge would be engaging the whole table for the whole combat. If people are engaged, time spent doesn't really matter. Your example is really valuable, because it suggests that the time spent in combat is part of the core mechanical reality of the game, as opposed to being an artifact of unfamiliarity or some such thing.

Your system sounds like a lot of fun!

Some of the things I learned from it: be flexible and open to player suggestions if they are feasible, tie successes in a combat situation to monster wounds/death to make sure the players have a sense of progressing, skill challenges can extend over time and there is nothing wrong with taking a break from one to insert another event (or as with encounters, nesting a skill challenge in a skill challenge), characters can make single skill checks that don't contribute to the success or failure of the challenge as a whole to modify their chances on challenge checks, keywords like fire and ice above can be used to modify a challenge and are a good way to work magic items in, and it is generally a good idea to have a timescale for actions in a skill challenge and there is nothing wrong with having something happen say every three checks regardless of success or failure.

These are good insights for the project at hand; I may actually start working on this again...

[darkling]

Thanks, kesher! If I ever get that system in a finished form I'll toss a .pdf up online somewhere.

Re: Character Death/Combat
I get what you mean about OD&D. The last game I ran, the four player party lost five (1st level) characters over the course of the crawl. If I am running a longer term game in OD&D I usually take some measures to avoid character death (e.g. letting a character reduced to 0 or lower HP make a save vs. death to see whether they have died or whether they have just been 'left for dead' but are only unconscious, or use the 2/3e -HP buffer). But at the same time I find it really weird to have a character go down in a fight and then have them pop back up at a full 1/4 HP. There needs to be a happy medium between no risk and a slaughterhouse.

As an addendum on both death and battle length I don't think the 4e designers properly considered the way save or die/incapacitate effects (or superhigh damage effects) alter combat pacing. Sure they were weird and wonky, but they still provided for a chance of removing a monster or character from combat in a single turn, which is significant. And as a corollary to that it seems the only way things can be settled in 4e is through an open war of attrition. We recently had a situation where the Rogue and the Assassin both slipped up behind a couple of rooftop snipers who thought they had the drop on the party, and they wanted to take out these guys silently. Unfortunately without death attack for the Assassin and with a system that technically doesn't allow the rogue to do enough backstab damage to kill anything that isn't a minion in one turn, they were forced to get in a long drawn out fight that alerted everybody to our presence.

I also have to say that my experiences so far are with vanilla 4e. I haven't had the time or disposable income to jump on Essentials yet, and will be interested to know how you find it!