Sorry to freak you out. That's not what I meant. You don't have to beat the number every time you use the same skill. You only have to beat the number if you want to use the same skill to do the same thing.
The intent is to make the skill challenge more interesting. Let's take the one we're in. What if you'd said: I use Athletics to pound my hammer into the ground and stomp around. The next person had said, I use Athletics to pount my hammer into the ground and stomp around. Next person, says me too. We get around to you and you do it again. Not terribly exciting or fun.
The idea is to scramble and find ways for different skills to be of use, or a variety of uses for the same skill. Now if you were to say: Buildings and stuff are falling from the quakes, right? I use Athletics to see if I can shake down a section of wall to cause a big crash. New use for the skill, so if you get a success, you add one to the pool.
Now that said, if you have a skill that's rolled that's low hanging fruit--Kai rolled a 16 to use his Dungeoneering to figure out better accoustics by moving people to different positions--and as a dwarf you figure you can do better, so you roll and get an 18. That's a new success for the pool, and someone can try and top that for another success. Now if you succeed, but don't best the number, it's not counted as a failure--it just doesn't add to the success pool. It's just lost as duplicated effort.
Hopefully that helps. If it's still weird I might revisit my ruling. I just want folks trying a variety of different things.
I like it!
Skill Challenges are always something that my tabletop group struggles with... I love the idea of trying to use the skills in more interesting ways.
I'm in favour of anything that makes skill challenges more of a challenge. Back in the day when I DM-ed I tried all sorts of things. This certainly seems like a very good option, although I'd be inclined to give us a number of successes to try and hit at the start.
Fair enough. It's hard to know how transparent to make the mechanics in a game like this one. You want it to feel like a story, and a lot of times all the gamey jargon can get in the way. But yeah the range they gave for challenges was between 4 successes to 12 successes. Eight seemed right, but like I said I'm fine calling it early if people are getting bored.
Personally, I'm not bored. Just slightly reluctant to post again in case anyone has something awesome up their sleeves :)
I was with Rev... actually I was about to use my Endurance to continue to keep pace with Edie's strange cant. Figured it's my most athletically-styled skill I could bring to the table... Now, when we get to the book reading skill challenge, Kai is going to clean up!
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PS. I wasn't trying to end the encounter, lol. It just sounded like in Grim's earlier post that since the noise and rumbles were gone, the creature might be too... was just checking, not complaining :)
Two character questions:
1) I currently have 3 cantrips (Light, Mage Hand, and Chameleon -that stealth power). I think I'd like to switch out Light for Prestidigitation. I know it means losing a potential source of light, but I think I want Kai to be able to call flicks of flame (goes with his persona) and Prestidigitation offers a lot more arcane flavor than just casting Light...
Of course, I think they shouldn't have limited the number of cantrips a mage could know, minor arcane powers seem to naturally fit the class. Ah well.
So, would you mid if I switch out the cantrip Light?
2) How much do you use Rituals in your games?
I can't tell if the mage class gets rituals or not. I think so, I just don't get free ones every five levels like a wizard, but that may have been a house rule at our table game, and I can't find it. So, I was wondering if I should keep looking or let it go, lol.
I'm cool with both. Go ahead and make the swap. As far as rituals, I like them quite a bit and use them a lot, and I don't mind the idea (certainly with the Arcane training your guy has) that he knows how to use them.
Before anyone freaks out that you're fighting a level 9 creature, I should probably mention how much I love the DMs Toolkit in the DMG and how I use it ALL the time. Most enemies you face will end up being tailored to an appropriate level and most will have custom abilities, so they don't all fight like every other monster of the same type you'll ever see. I love that. Every badguy can have unique powers and fighting styles which hopefully keeps everyone on their toes, because you can never know for sure what to expect--but I think also helps embue even NPC monsters with a little character flavor.
Awesome. That's what I love to hear!
Well there's some funkiness in the book stats. The premise behind the ability is that if you miss the 50% miss chance you weren't attacking the real monster--that it was a displacement effect and the real creature is actually in an adjacent space. That should effectively work like a teleport (it was never really there) and thus really shouldn't trigger your ability.
Liking this very much :)
That makes sense.
To the character it would appear as a teleport, but in reality it just was never there. Game mechanic-wise, it's not a SHIFT or a TELEPORT, the creature has a built in miss chance and if you do happen to miss, it was because the true creature was adjacent to your target square... the displacer beast has always had a strange mechanic in every edition of DnD. It's a cool creature, but tough to play through (particularly if you use battle mats!)
PS.
I love resculpted or releveled creatures. Having read far too many creature blocks, it keeps me guessing which is fun from the player standpoint!!
Plus, you can make some really great monster encounters --- like fighting a displacer beast at first level! (nicely done)
For the record, I wasn't worried until you told us we were fighting a 9th level creature. ;)
You'll do fine. Just don't let it eat you.
hmmm... I hope Grim is doing okay. I checked, and it doesn't look like he's posted on the boards for while.
I was just wondering that. Hope all is well with him.
I'm worried as well.
Alas, indeed. Hoping Grim is OK.
Well, that's a shame.
A good 4E game is so hard to find.
(I'll keep checking back in... maybe Grim is just buried at work and still intends to game with us!)
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yeah its definitely hard to find a game of it. I think its actually easier to work with in PbP than tabletop just due to how factors change so quickly.
Then again on the other side of the fence, I can't ever see Hackmaster being PbP, or Palladium (my game of choice).
Weird how that works. I'll keep you guys posted if I find anything.
I will also keep checking back in. Once I get the worst of my course out of the way (probably mid May) I'd be up for running something if Grim doesn't re-surface.