Quote from: StormBringerUnless the players were happy about the aforementioned circle jerk completion.

New forum, same old Stormbringer! :rolleyes:

Quote from: Pierce InverarityAll I can say is that, gee, that's a lot of dice rolling for twenty minutes of noncombat.

Ha ha!

Ned

This actually looks better than I thought it would, but there are flaws. Here's the thing. I believe in cause and effect, so the way I see it,  the only skills that should risk setting off the trap are the Athletics and Thievery skills. The other skills should not be causing the group to "fail" the challenge, thus causing this trap to explode, skill failure or not.

That being said, some of the other skills had their uses. The Perception skill was useful for noticing that the corpse had that line of blood going on there. And the Diplomacy skill was useful for conversing with the Dryad. So this challenge is a team-based effort, and that's great. Where the challenge falls apart is the risk of the body exploding because someone fails a Perception, Insight, Nature, or History skill. If the Diplomacy skill is failed, maybe the Dryad smacks the tree in frustration (causing the body to explode), though that's pushing it....:raise:

Anyway, only Strength and Dexterity-based skills that involve physical contact with the tree should cause a risk of that corpse exploding, but based upon the (admittedly incomplete) picture I'm seeing here, a failed Knowledge check could make the whole thing go "boom". That part, I do not like, though I suppose it could be tinkered with...

Here's my problem with this system.

Dungeon Master: "You see a corpse hanging from a tree.  The Difficulty Challenge is 18.  what do you do?"

Player 1: "I make a Perception check on the hanging corpse." [rolls] "Drat, a 7.  I fail."

Player 2: "Maybe I'll notice something he didn't.  I make a Perception check on the hanging corpse." [rolls] "Drat, rolled a 13.  I fail."

Player 3: "I make a Religion check on the topic of hanging corpse." [rolls] "Drat, rolled a 9.  I fail."

Player 4: "I'll make a Local Knowledge check, see if I know anything about local cultures that hang people in forests." [rolls] "Dammit, what the hell?  I rolled a 6.  I fail."

Dungeon Master: "The corpse explodes in a cloud of poison gas, and makes a Fortitude attack on all four of you." [rolls] "I roll a 25 for..." [rolls] "...max damage, which is 12 points of damage."

Player 1: "I'm unconscious."

Player 2: "Me too."

Player 3: "I'm dead, thanks to that damage I took earlier."

Player 4: "Well this is just full of fail, I'm also unconscious."

Dungeon Master: "Start making stability checks."

----

In other words, the system could be really cool so long as the players generally succeed.  But all it takes is a few failures and everyone is dead.  And they could easily be failures on rolls that simply shouldn't set off a trap.

Quote from: JackalopeHere's my problem with this system.

Dungeon Master: "You see a corpse hanging from a tree.  The Difficulty Challenge is 18.  what do you do?"

Player 1: "I make a Perception check on the hanging corpse." [rolls] "Drat, a 7.  I fail."

Player 2: "Maybe I'll notice something he didn't.  I make a Perception check on the hanging corpse." [rolls] "Drat, rolled a 13.  I fail."

Player 3: "I make a Religion check on the topic of hanging corpse." [rolls] "Drat, rolled a 9.  I fail."

Player 4: "I'll make a Local Knowledge check, see if I know anything about local cultures that hang people in forests." [rolls] "Dammit, what the hell?  I rolled a 6.  I fail."

Dungeon Master: "The corpse explodes in a cloud of poison gas, and makes a Fortitude attack on all four of you." [rolls] "I roll a 25 for..." [rolls] "...max damage, which is 12 points of damage."

Player 1: "I'm unconscious."

Player 2: "Me too."

Player 3: "I'm dead, thanks to that damage I took earlier."

Player 4: "Well this is just full of fail, I'm also unconscious."

Dungeon Master: "Start making stability checks."

----

In other words, the system could be really cool so long as the players generally succeed.  But all it takes is a few failures and everyone is dead.  And they could easily be failures on rolls that simply shouldn't set off a trap.

You forget this is 4e 12 damage wouldn't even scratch a 1st level wizard.

The idea has some legs but ... a description of the corpse and some DM notes that say a sucessful religion check will reveal ... a sucessful history check will reveal, The Dryad will reveal ... if they are approached in the correct manner (See Dyrads, MM page 38). If the party attempt to move the corpse make dex checks.  2 failures when shifting it about (or of course if anyone attacks it or similar) then it bursts doing x damage....

Having a system that can abstract any encounter to a series of dice rolls is useful for DMs with no imagination and it puts the whole game, combat to magick, roleplay to experience in one nice neat container that everyone can understand (I expect the successful dice rolls in this example each net the PC 20xp or something and solving the encounter is probably worth 100 each or something right?). Me I likes the idea of the corpse filled with gas and the dryad the rules mechanics I would dump

Quote from: jibbajibbaYou forget this is 4e 12 damage wouldn't even scratch a 1st level wizard.

I won't address your other stuff right now, but I will address this. It doesn't matter if my character can laugh off 12 damage. The point is that the trap shouldn't go off just because someone blew a Knowledge check, because if that happens, it completely ignores cause and effect.

If I don't fiddle with the damn trap, why is it going off? The only reason I can think of is some bizarre team-based metagaming construct. The idea behind these rules have some merit, but it sounds like the actual implementation is seriously lacking anything approaching common sense.

Now then....if they said that four failures of a Strength or Dexterity-based skill check (that actually involves direct or indirect physical contact with the trap) would cause you to "fail" the encounter (the encounter is the trap), then it might be more sensible. But they don't do that, at least not from what I can see here. So I'll say that the idea behind this looks really cool, but the way it was implemented sucks swamp water. :pundit:

What happened to roleplaying conflicts?

Quote from: Sacrificial LambI won't address your other stuff right now, but I will address this. It doesn't matter if my character can laugh off 12 damage. The point is that the trap shouldn't go off just because someone blew a Knowledge check, because if that happens, it completely ignores cause and effect.

In one of the threads discussing this in another forum (probably TBP, but I'm not sure) someone made the point that once the necessary rolls have been made to win or loose the challenge, you should still continue to play through it, with the players making rolls for actions, until such a point as it is reasonable for the determined resolution to occur.

So if the group makes a number of perception or knowledge rolls and determines that the corpse is a trap, they still have a hanging gas bomb to dispose of. Likewise, if they fail their rolls the corpse won't explode until they try to move it or perhaps disturb it in some other way (another failed roll, perhaps). Central to this is the idea that the players don't know how many rolls to make, and ideally, don't know the DC of those rolls either (although the GM in the example we are discussing does announce the DC).

There is a danger that the players might take non-intervention actions for several rounds in order to prevent setting off this trap, and then simply leave if they feel that they have rolled badly several times and so likely failed the challenge, but that is a circumstance fairly specific to this example (it wouldn't apply so well to the 'escape from the city' example) and still penalises the party by leaving them without the item that they might have obtained, without the friendship of the Dryad, and with no further knowledge of the fae rivalries that might later pact the story.

Again, it is important to note that the example we are all discussing is only someone's 3E house rule based on a lot of, often conflicting, interpretations of a D&DXP scenario. I don't suppose that the final rules will leave any loopholes so obvious as to be found in a couple of pages of a web forum discussion.

Quote from: Sacrificial LambI won't address your other stuff right now, but I will address this. It doesn't matter if my character can laugh off 12 damage. The point is that the trap shouldn't go off just because someone blew a Knowledge check, because if that happens, it completely ignores cause and effect.

If I don't fiddle with the damn trap, why is it going off? The only reason I can think of is some bizarre team-based metagaming construct. The idea behind these rules have some merit, but it sounds like the actual implementation is seriously lacking anything approaching common sense.

Now then....if they said that four failures of a Strength or Dexterity-based skill check (that actually involves direct or indirect physical contact with the trap) would cause you to "fail" the encounter (the encounter is the trap), then it might be more sensible. But they don't do that, at least not from what I can see here. So I'll say that the idea behind this looks really cool, but the way it was implemented sucks swamp water. :pundit:

I agree that knowledge based stuff should never trigger the trap. I don't actualy agree that 4 'tamper' fails should trigger it as the difference between 'lower it down on a rope' ooops dropped it and 'use my medical skill to investigate the thin red line very carefully', oops I touched it a bit hard, are quite different. Basically the DM decides what would set it off. the PCs roleplay whatever they do and if they do something that sets it off then ... oh look it goes off.

Quote from: SettembriniWhat happened to roleplaying conflicts?

Eh? What do you suppose all the discussion surrounding the dice rolls is for? Players determining how their character approaches a given problem with reference to the skills and aptitudes of that character is surely evidence of role playing.

If you're using the very narrow definition of role playing whereby the only acceptable approach to a role playing encounter is to talk about it without making any dice rolls, no matter how appropriate, then I guess you're SOL.

Essentially, for most people, rolling dice and role playing are not mutually exclusive activities. And lest we forget, D&D is a role playing game. Dice would seem to fit that.

Quote from: TrevelyanAgain, it is important to note that the example we are all discussing is only someone's 3E house rule based on a lot of, often conflicting, interpretations of a D&DXP scenario. I don't suppose that the final rules will leave any loopholes so obvious as to be found in a couple of pages of a web forum discussion.

This is my hope for this topic, because hardly any of what I have heard so far relating to 4e bothers me all that much, but this skill bit just rubbed me the wrong way when I read it, so I hope very much that it turns out to be different in the finished product. I don't really have all that much problem with the approach to skills in 3.x, so I don't see where the broke is in them that needs fixing.

Quote from: EinzelgaengerThese "skill challenges" are like impressing chicas. You come up with everything you think is amusing, impressive or dumb enough to make her (the DM) smile.

So you are saying same as it ever was?