Tag: Skill Challenge

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Incremental Encounters

A typical encounter has five PCs facing off against five equally powerful monsters and everything happens simultaneously. But what if the encounter was broken down into five incremental steps, each step representing one monster, and the outcome of each step determined the threat level of the step to follow?

Before diving into this scenario let’s not overlook skill challenges. What if, instead of automatically using five monsters, the DM used five complexity 1 skill challenges, or even a combination of five monsters and skill challenges? Assuming that monsters and skill challenges can be used interchangeably to create balanced and satisfying encounters, is this kind of incremental encounter viable? Absolutely.

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Humour Skill Challenges

In Anticipation of GenCon: Skill Challenge, Road Trip to GenCon

GenCon, is only two days away. This means that some time in the next 48 hours gamers all over Canada and the U.S.A. will pack up the car and head to Indianapolis. Last year Wimwick and I were among those driving (a trip that was 9 hours in each direction). This year I’m on my own so I opted to travel by plane. However, knowing that thousands of you will be on the highways I felt that rerunning this skill challenge was appropriate.

Remember that getting there is half the fun. In that sprit we put together a skill challenge before last year’s trip. We succeeded with flying colours, but Wimwick did accumulate a few automatic failures in the “He who smelt it…” part of the skill challenge. Print a copy of this sill challenge and bring it with you to help make things more exciting in anticipation of GenCon. Enjoy.

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DM Resources Skill Challenges

Skill Challenge Next

I was done with skill challenges.

I don’t know how I got to this point. Perhaps it was my approach to them, trying to account for multiple options or not having a clear objective. Maybe I wasn’t introducing the skill challenge correctly, confusing my players. It’s possible that what I perceived as a skill challenge was better off handled with a few skill checks. It might even have been that I enjoy the tactical nature of 4e combat that I was willing to sacrifice one aspect of the game for the other. Finally, maybe it wasn’t me. Maybe it was my players who either found my challenges boring, lacking in direction, or they themselves desired more combat, less talk.

I’m not going to pretend to know the answers to my skill challenge troubles. What I do know is that this past week everything clicked.

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Player Resources

Forget Training Skills; Let’s Go Back to a Skill Point System

We’ve written a lot of articles about skills. One thing that we’ve mentioned repeatedly in recent articles is the reluctance of some players to use skills they’re not good at. It’s a common problem and we’re still looking for the best solution. While brainstorming we came up with a proposal that we think will work and today we want to share it with you. We look at what’s worked in the past and used that as our starting point. We’re proposing that we ditch skill training and return to a skill point system.

When 3e hit shelves, one extreme change from previous editions of D&D was the introduction of skills and the ability for all PCs to spend points in those skills. This was a great way to differentiate two nearly identical characters. It allowed anyone to spend points in any skill they wanted their character to excel at. Now Pick Pockets or Moving Silently weren’t just abilities unique to Rogues.

With 4e D&D the list of skills was reduced to a mere 17. You no longer spent points in each skill; rather you selected a few skills based on your class that you were trained in. All other non-trained skills were just an extension of the relevant ability score. This change had its ups and downs.

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Month in Review

Month in Review: May 2011

May was another great month for us here at Dungeon’s Master. We continued our exploration of racial powers, shared our weekly experiences with D&D Encounters and took a detailed look at divine classes. We also covered monster variety, DM rehearsals, controller powers and a look back at fantasy movies from the 80s. If you missed any of the great articles from May this is your opportunity to get caught up.

And of course the Dungeon’s Master team would like to take this opportunity, as we always do in the Month in Review, to thank everyone who visited our site and commented in May.

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DM Resources

Curses as Skill Challenges

One of the differences between 4e D&D and other editions is the elimination of penalties. Everything is expressed as a positive. Rather than suffer a -2 penalty to your AC when you’re prone your opponents receives a +2 bonus to attacks made against you because you’re granting combat advantage. Sure it’s the same thing, but there’s a lot to be said for keeping things positive. With all modifiers expressed as positives, it’s up to the attacker to keep track of them and add them when appropriate. This makes things a lot easier for everyone since you know that none of your defenses will ever get lower. Your AC of 15 remains an AC of 15, even if you’re prone.

By eliminating penalties and negatives from D&D, curses – especially cursed items – have disappeared from the game. We no longer have cursed items in the traditional sense because they’ve always imposed negative penalties. Where a normal magical +1 sword provides a positive modifier, a cursed weapon (or a -1 sword) imposes a -1 penalty in much the same way. But since 4e D&D doesn’t have negative modifiers this kind of item doesn’t really work in the way that it did in previous editions.

Just because the mechanics don’t easily support permanent penalties, curses and cursed items shouldn’t be eliminated from D&D. There are still a lot of good ways to introduce curses and use them in you game. However, instead of imposing a mechanical penalty like -1 to attacks made by the poor PC unfortunate enough to grasp the cursed weapon, think bigger and apply the “penalty” in a more abstract way.

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DM Resources

Designing Social Encounters

Creating combat encounters is a lot easier than creating social encounters in D&D. When it comes to combat most DMs have a really clear idea of what they need to do to prepare. Social encounters by their very nature tend to be less predictable, catching many DMs woefully unprepared for the decisions and actions the party chooses. Although there are guidelines on how to set up and run skill challenges, more complex social encounters that rely on role-playing and interaction with NPCs can become more complicated than fighting Orcus himself.

Most social encounters are played out as skill challenges, if the DM even feels that there is a significant challenge involved. If the goal is merely to meet an important NPC or find out a particular piece of information while hanging out at a bar, than a little bit of role-playing may be all that’s required. However, if the goal is more complex and if there are consequences for failing, then a skill challenges is likely the best way to adjudicate the encounter.

The amount of work required by the DM to create these encounters is really dependent upon the group’s play style. If they’d rather just bash monsters with their weapons and spells, then social encounters will be looked upon as the filler between fights. But for groups that enjoy the role-playing side of things, a social encounter presents an opportunity for them to really develop their PC and use skills more heavily then they usually do during combat. Once you know which type of group you’re designing the encounter for then you can decide if you want to do it the fast way or take the detailed approach.

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DM Resources

Blurring the Line Between Encounters

Generally the definition of what constitutes an encounter is not something that is up for debate. During an encounter the PCs engage a bunch of monsters, perform a skill challenge, or some combination of the two. When the encounter is over the PCs have the opportunity to take a short, 5-minute rest after which they regain encounter powers, heal wounds by expending healing surges and move one step closer to achieving a milestone.

In a recent game we ran into a situation where this standard definition of encounter was questioned. As the DM I choose to make a few calls on the fly to keep the action moving. Afterwards the group spent a lot of time discussing whether or not we handled the situation correctly. The intent was not to critique the DM or the calls made at the time; rather we wanted to lay some groundwork just in case we ever found ourselves in a similar situation again.

After describing the situation to a few other DMs, I learned that our situation was not as unique as we thought and a lot of other groups had experienced similar circumstances themselves. As it turned out, no one was sure what the correct course of action was. Knowing that this situation might occur again at our table and that it may happen at your table (if it hasn’t already) I’m putting this conundrum to you, our readers. I’ll explain what happened and how we handled the situation. I’m looking for you input and feedback on our rulings.

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DM Resources Skill Challenges

Solving the Skill Challenge Problem – Ensuring Everyone Contributes

Has this ever happened to you? The DM sets the scene and you realize that the party is about to face a skill challenge. As the fifth or sixth player to act you only get to make one meaningful skill check before the party achieves overall success. It was a good encounter because during some of the low complexity skill challenge you don’t even get to act before the party achieves their goal.

What makes this situation an even bigger problem is that most players try to use their best skill even though in many cases it makes more sense (from a story perspective) for them not to. They know that they’re only going to get one or two shots at making a meaningful contribution to the skill challenge, and they don’t want to be the guy who flubs the check and wracks up a failure.

The Dungeon’s Master team has come up with a way to ensure that every player gets to contribute during a skill challenge and that every player feel comfortable using the skills that make the most sense to complete the objective and not just the one or two skills that they happen to be strongest in. Here’s what we’ve come up with.

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Month in Review

Month in Review: January 2011

We began January with what turned turned out to be one of our most inflammatory articles to date. It created a lot of comments (the most we’ve ever received on any article) and polarized the online gaming community. We also covered a wide variety of other topics in January including the latest DM app for your iPad, action points, henchmen, conflict resolution strategies,adventure hooks, skill challenges, LFR and D&D Encounters (season 3 and season 4).

If you missed any of the excitment throughout January this is you chance to get caught up. Below is a recap of everything we ran during the last month. We encourage you to read any of the articles you might have missed or to revisit some of your favourites.

We want to thank everyone who visited Dungeon’s Master throughout the month of January, with a special shout out to everyone who left us comments. We measure our success largely based on what you, the readers, have to say. We welcome your feedback and encourage continued debate and discussion on every article we write.

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