Tag: Skills

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Friday Favourites Player Resources

Friday Favourite: Skill Focus – Diplomacy / Persuasion

On Friday we comb through our extensive archives to find an older article that we feel deserves another look. From October 21, 2009, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: Skill Focus – Diplomacy.

After Perception, Diplomacy seems to be the skill used most often in my games. Any time your PC finds himself in a social situation you know that you’re going to end up making a Diplomacy check. But Diplomacy is more that just talking the talk. It’s usually about knowing what to say and how to say it. Your PC’s body language can also have as much of an impact as the words coming out of his mouth.

Most skills are versatile on their own, but since Diplomacy is generally opposed by Insight it’s probably a good idea to take training in both if your class allows it. Any time a PC is engaged in a back-and-forth dialogue they’ll probably end up using both skills, so taking training in both will greatly improve your chances of success.

Whenever a PC speaks the truth the appropriate skill is usually Diplomacy. As soon as they start leaving out details, deliberately withholding information or outright lying it starts to tread on the ground of Bluff. If you’re trained in Diplomacy but not in Bluff (we’re looking at you Paladins and Clerics) then it’s up to you to convince your DM that a Diplomacy check is still the right one given the circumstances. Letting the Rogue speak only when the party needs to tell a lie is going to be a pretty obvious “tell” that you’ve trying to mislead the king or swindle the merchant.

It’s important to remember that in many circumstances you’re only going to get one shot at a Diplomacy check, so you’d better be sure that you make the most of it. You wouldn’t want to ruin a diplomatic dinner because you drank the lemon scented water that you should have used to wash your fingers.

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DM Resources Friday Favourites

Friday Favourite: Really Hard Skill Checks

On Friday we comb through our extensive archives to find an older article that we feel deserves another look. From December 3, 2010, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: Really Hard Skill Checks.

Have you ever needed to roll over 20 to succeed at a skill check? If you’re a combat-heavy PC then the answer is probably yes, but what if you’re a well rounded PC with decent attributes? Does your DM ever make a DC so difficult that it’s practically impossible to succeed? With very few exceptions most DMs won’t present DCs that are out of the reach of the average PC. My question is why not? I know I do when I’m the DM.

There’s been a lot of discussion about the actual numbers when it comes to skill checks and DC. We already covered this issue last week in Bauxtehude’s articles Exploring Skill Checks and the New DCs part 1 and part 2. The point I want to discuss today is whether or not DCs should ever be out of reach to all but the very best and most highly trained characters?

Too many players focus too much on combat and forget just how important the skills are to the game and to their character. Players need to realize that feats and powers that provide bonuses to skills are just as vital to victory as the feat that gives bonuses to attacks and damage or powers that deal multiple weapon damage.

By presenting circumstances where incredibly high DCs rear their ugly head, the DM reminds players that they shouldn’t expect an easy victory all the time. These reminders need to be nailed home for out of combat encounters even more than for combat encounters.

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DM Resources Editorial Skill Challenges

Intimidate is Not the Torture Skill

How often does a player at your table want to do something – in character – that is morally apprehensible and blatantly evil? It doesn’t happen often in my games, but it does seem to come up every once in a while. When it does and the action is questioned by the DM or the other players, the player whose character is taking the action usually says something like, “I would never do this, but my character has no issue with it.” I realize that fantasy RPGs provide an escape from reality and you can play any kind of character you want, but I think it’s important to know where to draw the line.

Over the years I’ve come to realize that there are some things that are deemed acceptable in the context of D&D even thought most players would never condone or support such actions in real life. For example, slavery in the context of D&D isn’t usually seen as a big issue. Killing is also given tremendous latitude if the creature or person on the other end of the sword is evil. Theft is perfectly acceptable and is essentially what the majority of adventurers do to earn their loot. I guess it really comes down to the context of the situation and the justification for these actions. If killing an entire tribe of Orcs will make the nearby city safer for “civilized people” then the act of genocide is seen as acceptable and even heroic.

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DM Resources Player Resources

How To Solve the Cold Dice Problem

It will happen to you one day and when it does don’t be embarrassed, it happens to all gamers. I’m talking about cold dice. Eventually the dice run cold for all of us. Maybe the d6 keeps coming up 1, the d12 won’t roll higher than 3 or the d20 isn’t cooperating at all and you haven’t hit a monster all fight. Eventually the dice gods will correct the problems and balance the scales, but until then a streak of poor rolls can crush even the most experienced player.

When a player goes through a bought of bad dice karma it can actually have a detrimental effect on the entire group. Even though everyone else rolls as expected and has fun doing so, one player’s poor rolls can effect the overall mood of the entire table. I’ve learned over the years that when this happens (and it will, if it hasn’t already) players and DMs can actually do a lot of things to turn the tide.

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Class Discussions Player Resources

Utility Powers – The New Face of Customization

As 4e D&D has matured, the sheer number of powers to choose from has grown significantly. At its inception, a character made from the Player’s Handbook would choose two or three at-will powers from a total of four listed, one encounter power from four listed and one daily power form four listed. The occasional utility power sometimes provided three or four choices for a character, which served primarily to enhance either their primary role or their secondary role in the party.

With the advent of non-AEDU (at-will, encounter, daily, utility) character classes, such as the psionic classes, as well as the Essentials classes, the one aspect of the power selection that was not changed was the choice of utility powers at level 2, 6, and so on. The introduction of skill powers in the Player’s Handbook 3 began to finally expand the utility power into more than simply a way to enhance your existing class features and powers. In the last year and a half of development, 4e has introduced themes for heroic tier character characters, as well as several articles on the subject of new racial utility powers. Utility powers have shifted away from their original role in a character, and have taken on a new importance as the new true form of character customization.

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DM Resources

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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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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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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