A metric ton of ill-will.
Or to put it another way. What has WotC gained from taking down the PDFs?Well at least it's not an imperial ton... :P
Edit: spelling...
Before your post, I thought an imperial ton was 2000lbs, but I was wrong. Apparently an imperial ton (long ton) is just a bit more than the metric ton, which is in turn slightly larger than a ton (also called a short ton).
Yay! I learned something today. Thanks! :)
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In this specific instance, I predict that WotC will attempt to replace PDFs with a method of digital distribution that is so flawed and/or unwieldy that it will have to be eventually scrapped.
Not even in this instance. WotC has shown itself to be digitally inept in a number of initiatives over the years.
Cripes, they're still trying to realize the promises they made with their DDI stuff, and part of their headchop activity at the end of last year took a whole lot of DDI folks with it.
After a whole lotta years in the IT industry I've learned the hard way, that with very few exceptions, without very sound reasons, stick with the standard. WotC trying to come up with their own secure alternative to PDFs is just a money sink waiting to happen.
WotC trying to come up with their own secure alternative to PDFs is just a money sink waiting to happen.
Good lord I hope they aren't that dumb.
I've been thinking more along the lines of them jumping on the Kindle bandwagon.
Before your post, I thought an imperial ton was 2000lbs, but I was wrong. Apparently an imperial ton (long ton) is just a bit more than the metric ton, which is in turn slightly larger than a ton (also called a short ton).
Yay! I learned something today. Thanks! :)
Glad to be of assistance :D (Although I must admit I had to quickly double check I had remembered it correctly after I posted it... lol).
Now that I have achieved something semi-productive for the day, it's time for me to get some sleep. 5am is not the best time to be trying to post coherently on the interwebs... :P
Edit: or even spell words correctly either...
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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A metric ton of ill-will.
Or to put it another way. What has WotC gained from taking down the PDFs?
Exactly! No profit. If it was Malicious, there would be a profit motive.
Even if they were to bundle the older edition stuff into the DDI, few of the people who felt burned by the PDFs (and I'll include myself in that, though I have most all of my older edition PDFs) would trust subscribing to the DDI to get them again. If a) they're not downloadable then the product is only accessable for a monthly fee, not practical to me as it could change again. or b) They are downloadable and you're back to the problem they say they were trying to prevent.
Wow. See, this thread is why we can't have nice things.
Can we try, just try, for just once, to have a civil conversation on these boards about 3e or 4e or the so-called "edition wars" without resorting to trashing other companies, their fans, and their game of choice? Who cares if you're not playing 4e? Who cares if you're not playing 3e? Drop it, play the game or games that you like, and stop turning every single thread on these messageboards into an opportunity to hate stomp the game you're not playing.
We've been asking for this nicely. Don't make us ask for this other than nicely.
I've been thinking more along the lines of them jumping on the Kindle bandwagon.
Which is "great" for those folks in the USA ... sucks for the rest of us.
If they wanted to seriously reduce the target market who had access to their products, that'd be a surefire way to do it.
Trust me, I'm right there with you; no way I shelling out for a Kindle DX anytime soon.
Wow. See, this thread is why we can't have nice things.
Can we try, just try, for just once, to have a civil conversation on these boards about 3e or 4e or the so-called "edition wars" without resorting to trashing other companies, their fans, and their game of choice? Who cares if you're not playing 4e? Who cares if you're not playing 3e? Drop it, play the game or games that you like, and stop turning every single thread on these messageboards into an opportunity to hate stomp the game you're not playing.
We've been asking for this nicely. Don't make us ask for this other than nicely.
Ack! Consider me properly chastised. I should know better anyway.
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It is pointless. Don't try. I ripped his argument about broken SC up and he refused to believe and even tried to paint me in a bad light. Don't know what the light was again since I can't be bothered to look it up.
I'm pretty sure it was a strobe light. That's how I see you anyway...
You know, I sat down one day and thought about what races I felt really defined D&D. And I honestly can say that gnome was not one of them. Neither was tielfing by the way, but human, halfling, dwarf, and elf as player races and orcs as enemies really felt to me like the races that defined D&D. Of course maybe I am mixing my feelings for Tolkien with D&D (there are good reasons for that), but when I think of the fantasy books that were influenced, gnomes just don't jump out at me. Even in Dragonlance, the kender guy could have just as well been a halfling.Ya, I'm not a Gnome lover myself; never played one, and all that.
I just found it ironic that they made such a big deal, showed so much conviction, about how much of a design need it was to remove the Gnome, amongst other things.
The conviction behind that design requirement now seems misplaced.
"Oh ya, all that Gnome stuff we were being petulant and insulting about? Just a joke, really. We didn't mean it. Honest."
Meh. Whatever.
I'm pretty sure the marketing plan was always to put the gnome in PHB II. The idea was to emphasize that its core and by emphasize that it is core I mean sell more copies of PHB II and hopefully III, IV etc..
No, my point is that after something was already pirated, removing it makes no sense anymore. Especially not if by removing you stop getting any revenue from it since you're not selling it in any form anymore.I don't really care about the new PDFs they did not publish, I care about the older PDFs that were already published.
Removing the older PDFs did nothing to battle piracy, they were already in circulation. Quite the opposite in fact, sicne by not offering legal versions of them anymore it probably drove up piracy of them.
Get it now?
I believe you are incorrect that once pirated, it makes no sense to remove it.
I believe they stopped selling pdfs available so they could retain the right to seek legal redress from digital pirates. It is my understanding that a company has to show a good-faith effort to fight/prevent piracy. One of WotC's efforts was to provide a digital watermark to differentiate legal copies from illegal. The rapid removal of the digital watermark from their 4E pdfs demonstrated the inadequecy of this approach (or at least their implementation of the approach) and so, to retain their right to seek legal redress, they needed to remove their inadequetely protected legal copies from circulation.
Since I'm not part of the Hasbro/WotC team that was responisble for the pulling of the pdfs, I can't know that this the actual reason for them doing so. However, based on explanations I've heard explaining Marvel's sometimes ridiculous seeming pursuit of apparent copyright infringement, it seems a reasonable & plausible speculation on my part.
Edited because someone pointed out free stuff is still available.
Hey Scott:
When is Tales going to be updated again? I'm having withdrawals. :)
I'm pretty sure the marketing plan was always to put the gnome in PHB II. The idea was to emphasize that its core and by emphasize that it is core I mean sell more copies of PHB II and hopefully III, IV etc..
Actually, if you read Races and Classes, you'll find that the real reason was that they hadn't yet come up with a way to make the gnome "cool". So, like the aasimar (now the deva), they put the gnome on the back burner until they knew what they wanted to do with it.
Cut it out! Friends don't let friends feed trolls. ;-)
On an unrelated note, when is Tales going to be updated again? I'm having withdrawals. :)
Ack, I posted before I saw Josh's post up above. In an effort to avoid feeding that fire, I deleted the post.
As for TftRD, my group finally met for the first time over the summer this past Monday. I've been lax in getting anything up, but if I get a couple hours free tonight (especially if I don't spend those hours prowling message boards ;P) I'll throw the new stuff up. We're all university students, and most of my players go home to other cities in California over the summer, so organizing a game where we can all drive back and meet up can be a chore. I'm trying to find a day that works for everyone on a weekly basis. Thanks for prodding me, though.
Wow. See, this thread is why we can't have nice things.
Can we try, just try, for just once, to have a civil conversation on these boards about 3e or 4e or the so-called "edition wars" without resorting to trashing other companies, their fans, and their game of choice? Who cares if you're not playing 4e? Who cares if you're not playing 3e? Drop it, play the game or games that you like, and stop turning every single thread on these messageboards into an opportunity to hate stomp the game you're not playing.
We've been asking for this nicely. Don't make us ask for this other than nicely.
An ignore function would really, really be helpful in keeping the boards more civil. Please implement it as soon as possible.
I love the smell of irony in the morning.
An ignore function would really, really be helpful in keeping the boards more civil. Please implement it as soon as possible.
"Irony?"
Is that some kind of metal or something? :D
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Wow. See, this thread is why we can't have nice things.
Not to completely derail this topic, but one of my gaming group has taken to say "this is why we can't have nice things" whenever someone spills or drops somehting... He did it to my fiance and she almost scratched his eyes out. I on the other hand have always found this quote cool (though where its from I can not remember)...
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"Irony?"
Is that some kind of metal or something? :D
Where's that dictionary? I thought it was the act of ironing, which is what I was doing as I posted.
Oh wait, I remember where the dictionary went. I threw it at my dog.
I thought "irony" was an adjective you used to describe clothes you'd just had pressed.
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If I put myself (nicely) in WotC shoes over 4e I come up with;
"Ok let's try to reinvent D&D that will be the RPG game of choice for the "now" generation".
Designers go away and come back with 4e - fundamentally a great idea, everyone does something always during the exciting bits.
"Right let's sell it"
Sales start - grumblings of it's not D&D start --> vocal internet 'hate' starts.
"Hmmmm, ok 4e is so different in some mechanics (spell casting) that we have a revolt rather than a transition."
Now I have to make a choice either (a) support both D&D lines (too expensive), (b) support only the new core game, or perhaps (c) support paper 4e and pdf 3e.
"Hmmmm, option (a) would cost to much and split our resources, option (c) would mean complaints would start rolling in about how we are now no longer really a "pen & paper" company because we aren't making the "paper" bit for 3e.
Damned if they do and damned if they don't.
Back into my shoes;
I think WotC didn't (and couldn't have) predicted that a very vocal "rebellion" against their 4e product would develop. I am sure that removal of pdf's was in part due to illegal copying but that wasn't the entire reason. I believe that they made the right choice given the wall they were backed up against. If they didn't want to spend anymore resources on 3e then the only people long term who are going to benefit are 3 party companies. While nice to think that would have been driver enough to keep "3e alive" it just doesn't make sense to do. Of course WotC want you to play 4e, Ford want you to drive the LATEST Ford not the 1968 Mustang in your shed.
WotC did nothing I wouldn't have considered doing had I been at the top under such circumstances.
But we have OGL and the World is funnier place.
S.
PS: I like nice things. Can we please, please have nice things?
I'm pretty sure the marketing plan was always to put the gnome in PHB II. The idea was to emphasize that its core and by emphasize that it is core I mean sell more copies of PHB II and hopefully III, IV etc..Actually, if you read Races and Classes, you'll find that the real reason was that they hadn't yet come up with a way to make the gnome "cool". So, like the aasimar (now the deva), they put the gnome on the back burner until they knew what they wanted to do with it.
Hmmm...well thats no surprise to me. I mean there have been a lot of cool gnomes in the past but no real unifying theme. Gnomes seem to go through stages of being either arch types of fey magic or technophiles. I've no real problem with either version but there is little that is actually concrete about Gnomes within the game.
Anyway I buy that they had trouble making the race 'cool' enough and choose to push it back but the fact that this would allow them to put one of the standard races into PHB II and a feeling that this might pump up sales of later books and emphasize that everything is core probably made that decision easier.
I am sure that removal of pdf's was in part due to illegal copying but that wasn't the entire reason.
By the way, since it's been brought up, whether or not the pirating issue was the whole reason for the PDF pull, pulling the PDFs has dramatically slowed down pirate releases of new book material. Where we were once seeing pirated copies available on filesharing networks the day of release (or even before!) we are now seeing no fully scanned PDFs of new books two weeks after release.
Can we try, just try, for just once, to have a civil conversation on these boards about 3e or 4e or the so-called "edition wars" without resorting to trashing other companies, their fans, and their game of choice?
Sorry, but a lot of people think it's ok to trash other companies as long as they don't make personnal insults.
An ignore function would really, really be helpful in keeping the boards more civil. Please implement it as soon as possible.Wow. See, this thread is why we can't have nice things.
Can we try, just try, for just once, to have a civil conversation on these boards about 3e or 4e or the so-called "edition wars" without resorting to trashing other companies, their fans, and their game of choice? Who cares if you're not playing 4e? Who cares if you're not playing 3e? Drop it, play the game or games that you like, and stop turning every single thread on these messageboards into an opportunity to hate stomp the game you're not playing.
We've been asking for this nicely. Don't make us ask for this other than nicely.
Just making the mature, adult, and conscious decision to be civil also goes a long way toward making the boards civil. Just sayin'.
True. I hate it when people say, "The math says it is broken" but don't show their math or link to other people who have shown the math. Show your work, Fuchs.Scott, you are the best argument for an ignore function on those boards. Your hypocritical and arrogant crusading for 4E and your inability to accept any critic of it - no matter how true - should be labelled as the trolling it is.You do realize that you have yet to give any concrete examples or evidence to support your claims?It's not my work, someone else did this:
Well thats an interesting link. I had not realized that there was a forum whose vitriol against WotC was only equaled by how much they despised Paizo. A real equal opportunity place there.
Anyway I only got part way through page two because the thread seemed to be mired in Paizo hate and I guess, while I'm used to and have developed a thick skin toward WotC hate I'm not yet used to Paizo hate and felt compelled to leave.
Nonetheless there was relatively little even in the beginning of that thread on why Skill Challenges don't work. For me the most interesting post was Mr. Trollman complaining that Mike Mearls was using Skill Challenges in innovative ways that did not seem to follow the letter of the templates set forth in the DMG. In the case cited Mr. Mearls had a Skill Challenge that involved forced checks where everyone in the party had to make a check to avoid detection while trying to sneak through a town.
I suppose we could call this 'house ruling' though its a tad unusual to refer to something as a house rule when the designers of the game are using it. Furthermore when I read the DMG I never came to the conclusion that the Skill Challenge System, as presented, represented the entirety of the development cycle on the idea. It was a new and innovative mechanic that could be used in the ways presented but it would seem that the basic model can be utilized in a number of ways to create a range of different kinds of challenges. That was obvious to me even after the first reading though how to do that best at the game table was not so clear. That such ideas are perculating and coming up in the pages of Dungeon Magazine, on the forums and in the heads of the designers themselves is no surprise to me.
I'm actually heartened to see the designers of the game coming up with various versions of Skill Challenges because it makes a lot of sense to utilize the mechanics differently depending on the circumstances. At the most basic level some circumstances cater toward player choice more then others. In one circumstance the characters may be in a position to choose from a variety of options from their skill list in an attempt to influence the situation while at other times there may simply be no choice in the matter and characters must make certain checks, we've already seen mixes of this as well.
In effect Skill Challenges are proving to be powerful and versatile beyond the limited number of ways the designers had originally conceived of them and they are therefore being expanded upon. Conveniently the basic framework can be tweaked to handle a large number of interesting circumstances and the meta game easily supports all of them because they all interact with the XP and encounter design system in the same basic manner.
In essence the main complaint against Skill Challenges would seem to be that they are evolving and yet much of the fan base that actually likes 4E seem perfectly happy to accept that this is exactly what is taking place and that the ways and means for utilizing them will be honed and expanded upon.
Yeah, "not using skill challenges" is pretty innovative. It's called "3E style".
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Well thats an interesting link. I had not realized that there was a forum whose vitriol against WotC was only equaled by how much they despised Paizo. A real equal opportunity place there.
That aside the statistical analysis looks sound and I finally see what they meanby broken. BUT, as luck would have it D&D has DM not a computer program and can "house rule" what s/he likes to make it work. I think it is great that these things are pointed out, and perhaps WotC could re-post something similar on their site to make people aware of the odd "level hole" in the stats. However I fail to see this as a game breaker - seriously I'm more miffed about the heavy reliance on miniatures during a game.
S.
PS: Really do check out http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=49652, but keep your "serious cap" off. The "Pony post" just crakced me up (warning not for minors).
stuffs
That's odd I checked the link and all I got was two charts, with verbage before and after that went into why the math wasn't so great. The first chart was the original system for 4e from what I understand and the 2nd chart was a revised offering by WotC.
I didn't see any "Hate speech" towards either company just charts math and the thought that the skill challenge system didn't work, with the reasoning provide that if you are skilled you'll pass 100% of the time and if you aren't you might not, and the odds of you not passing increase largely if the challenge is a "long" challenge (I haven't played 4e so I'm not sure what the verbage on the charts at the top means completely, or the difference between a "long" and "short" challenge... I can guesstimate but I'm not sure).
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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stuffsThat's odd I checked the link and all I got was two charts, with verbage before and after that went into why the math wasn't so great. The first chart was the original system for 4e from what I understand and the 2nd chart was a revised offering by WotC.
I didn't see any "Hate speech" towards either company just charts math and the thought that the skill challenge system didn't work, with the reasoning provide that if you are skilled you'll pass 100% of the time and if you aren't you might not, and the odds of you not passing increase largely if the challenge is a "long" challenge (I haven't played 4e so I'm not sure what the verbage on the charts at the top means completely, or the difference between a "long" and "short" challenge... I can guesstimate but I'm not sure).
I got the same thing.
There's a link to the SC math, and then there's a link to a more "pointed" analysis of the Skill Challenge system.
The point is that I'd expect a paid Dev to get his math right at the very least in the errata so players don't need to make house rules just to make the system work as intended. A system is not turned into a good system just because with enough house rules, gentleman's agreements and plain "Not using this as a DM" tweaking you can make it work.
If you house rule the Skill Challenge enough you can't tell the difference from a house ruled 3E skill system.
There's a link to the SC math, and then there's a link to a more "pointed" analysis of the Skill Challenge system.
The point is that I'd expect a paid Dev to get his math right at the very least in the errata so players don't need to make house rules just to make the system work as intended. A system is not turned into a good system just because with enough house rules, gentleman's agreements and plain "Not using this as a DM" tweaking you can make it work.
If you house rule the Skill Challenge enough you can't tell the difference from a house ruled 3E skill system.
The skill challenge system works fine for me, and I do not house rule it, engage in gentlemen's agreements and definitely use it. I just design my skill challenges according to the advice the developers have offered. It's not that difficult. Not only does that align the math more reasonably, it also makes the skill challenge more exciting.
It is not in the dictionary of EN World mods, since they equate it to "dumb".
Don't get me started on those.
Bravo. KaeYoss, I loved your dorky post. A lot of good insight.
People all over laud my KaeYoss theory - but that's probably because they get to save money because of it, which is something that's prone to biasing people. ;-)
By the way, since it's been brought up, whether or not the pirating issue was the whole reason for the PDF pull, pulling the PDFs has dramatically slowed down pirate releases of new book material. Where we were once seeing pirated copies available on filesharing networks the day of release (or even before!) we are now seeing no fully scanned PDFs of new books two weeks after release.
I wouldn't want to dispel your illusions Scott (we all know how you fondly hang on them), but that's not true.
PDF or not, pirates know how to use a scanner. Like bootleggers know how to use a video camera.The removal of official PDFs has no actual effect. Beyond frustrating the people who were buying legit PDFs.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
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By the way, since it's been brought up, whether or not the pirating issue was the whole reason for the PDF pull, pulling the PDFs has dramatically slowed down pirate releases of new book material. Where we were once seeing pirated copies available on filesharing networks the day of release (or even before!) we are now seeing no fully scanned PDFs of new books two weeks after release.I wouldn't want to dispel your illusions Scott (we all know how you fondly hang on them), but that's not true.
PDF or not, pirates know how to use a scanner. Like bootleggers know how to use a video camera.
The removal of official PDFs has no actual effect. Beyond frustrating the people who were buying legit PDFs.
Er, this may not be the case so much. Word on the street is, there still isn't a full copy of the Eberron Player's Guide up anywhere. Granted, only a matter of time, I would imagine, but I do think that's rather telling, considering Scott is dead on about previous release speeds.
Hypothetically, the delay between when the book comes out, and the time it hits the file sharing sites might pry some money out of the more impatient pirates.
That aside the statistical analysis looks sound and I finally see what they meanby broken. BUT, as luck would have it D&D has DM not a computer program and can "house rule" what s/he likes to make it work. I think it is great that these things are pointed out, and perhaps WotC could re-post something similar on their site to make people aware of the odd "level hole" in the stats. However I fail to see this as a game breaker - seriously I'm more miffed about the heavy reliance on miniatures during a game.S.
PS: Really do check out http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=49652, but keep your "serious cap" off. The "Pony post" just crakced me up (warning not for minors).
The problem is the core assumptions being used in the analysis are flawed.
The core assumption is that every skill is being handled by a character using a skill in which he has maxed out the stat and has training. Furthermore every challenge is set at medium difficulty.
In reality most challenges are more a mix of medium and hard difficulty and characters my not have training and a maxed out stat for every skill. You can only really be maxed out in one stat and if you are the rest of your stats have suffered somewhat because it costs a lot of your initial points to put a stat at 18.
I'm not sure how to statistically analyze the skill challenge system in light of this because, at a very fundamental level its the DM or the adventure module that decides how hard the challenges are and how many successes one needs before failure and its the players that decide how to distribute their training and their point buy. Furthermore the real difficulty here is that number of characters is a big factor in determining how difficult a Skill Challenge is. A party of three characters simply can't have training in and have a maxed out stat in every skill. One with 7 players that have coordinated their characters for the express purpose of overcoming skill challenges probably could, however, pull it off.
That said, presuming a party of 5 and a mix of medium and hard challenges with characters paying attention to their skills but not focusing on them to the exclusion of all else is probably fairly close to the tables rankings of Mod -5.
4s before 3f = 90.1%
6s before 3f = 79.7%
8s before 3f = 67.8%
10s before 3f = 55.8%
12s before 3f = 44.8%
Er, this may not be the case so much. Word on the street is, there still isn't a full copy of the Eberron Player's Guide up anywhere. Granted, only a matter of time, I would imagine, but I do think that's rather telling, considering Scott is dead on about previous release speeds.
Hypothetically, the delay between when the book comes out, and the time it hits the file sharing sites might pry some money out of the more impatient pirates.
I am 100% sure that pulling the old (and already pirated) PDFs did not have any effect on the time pirates have to spend to pirate new PDFs. Stopping the release of new PDFs might affect that, but thatr's, as others are so fond of pointing out, just speculation.
Yeah, "not using skill challenges" is pretty innovative. It's called "3E style".
...and your point is?
The reality on the ground is that there are skill challenges being used in the adventures coming out in Dungeon and in WotCs adventure modules.
The problem is the core assumptions being used in the analysis are flawed.
The core assumption is that every skill is being handled by a character using a skill in which he has maxed out the stat and has training. Furthermore every challenge is set at medium difficulty.
In reality most challenges are more a mix of medium and hard difficulty and characters my not have training and a maxed out stat for every skill. You can only really be maxed out in one stat and if you are the rest of your stats have suffered somewhat because it costs a lot of your initial points to put a stat at 18.
I'm not sure how to statistically analyze the skill challenge system in light of this because, at a very fundamental level its the DM or the adventure module that decides how hard the challenges are and how many successes one needs before failure and its the players that decide how to distribute their training and their point buy. Furthermore the real difficulty here is that number of characters is a big factor in determining how difficult a Skill Challenge is. A party of three characters simply can't have training in and have a maxed out stat in every skill. One with 7 players that have coordinated their characters for the express purpose of overcoming skill challenges probably could, however, pull it off....
If players find a plausible way to use a skill, they can do it in a SC. Even if the DM is strict in how to judge this, Diplomacy can cover just about every social challenge. That doesn't really leave much out that a few more skills can't cover.
Not to mention that the 4E rules are made for parties of 5 characters.
Yeah, "not using skill challenges" is pretty innovative. It's called "3E style"....and your point is?
The reality on the ground is that there are skill challenges being used in the adventures coming out in Dungeon and in WotCs adventure modules.
The reality is that if you house rule SCs enough you'll end up at 3E skill use style. Calling that "using the SCs as intended" is more than a bit stretching the truth.
If players find a plausible way to use a skill, they can do it in a SC. Even if the DM is strict in how to judge this, Diplomacy can cover just about every social challenge. That doesn't really leave much out that a few more skills can't cover.Not to mention that the 4E rules are made for parties of 5 characters.
The DMG leans toward letting players use any skill if it seems viable but suggests running this at the hard difficulty (statistically the same as mod -5). The Errata tones this down a bit suggesting either medium or hard can be used at the DMs discretion.
If players find a plausible way to use a skill, they can do it in a SC. Even if the DM is strict in how to judge this, Diplomacy can cover just about every social challenge. That doesn't really leave much out that a few more skills can't cover.Not to mention that the 4E rules are made for parties of 5 characters.
The DMG leans toward letting players use any skill if it seems viable but suggests running this at the hard difficulty (statistically the same as mod -5). The Errata tones this down a bit suggesting either medium or hard can be used at the DMs discretion.
And what's the name for a skill that doesn't get a -5 mod? "more than viable"? And how many social skill challenges do you think should turn harder for using diplomacy?
The reality is that if you house rule SCs enough you'll end up at 3E skill use style. Calling that "using the SCs as intended" is more than a bit stretching the truth.Yeah, "not using skill challenges" is pretty innovative. It's called "3E style"....and your point is?
The reality on the ground is that there are skill challenges being used in the adventures coming out in Dungeon and in WotCs adventure modules.
You could take the 3.5 skill system. Create tables for it involving number of successes before failures, work out XP values for each level and then chose to add those to your adventures, sure.
Thats not the same thing as running the Skill Challenge in the latest module in the Scales of War AP. Nor does the Skill Challenge in the latest version of the Scales of War AP have to explain to the DM how to give out the XP to the players for accomplishing the presented Skill Challenge nor explain what 6 successes before 3 failures means.
And what's the name for a skill that doesn't get a -5 mod? "more than viable"? And how many social skill challenges do you think should turn harder for using diplomacy?
If players find a plausible way to use a skill, they can do it in a SC. Even if the DM is strict in how to judge this, Diplomacy can cover just about every social challenge. That doesn't really leave much out that a few more skills can't cover.Not to mention that the 4E rules are made for parties of 5 characters.
The DMG leans toward letting players use any skill if it seems viable but suggests running this at the hard difficulty (statistically the same as mod -5). The Errata tones this down a bit suggesting either medium or hard can be used at the DMs discretion.
First off -5 mod is not an official term, its simply the closest likely statistical setting for the difficulty of most skill challenges for those looking at the page from the gamers den that was linked. If the DM steps in and adjusts all the skill challenges down or the module chooses to present a skill challenge that is all medium then they will obvously be easier.
I suspect that almost any social Skill Challenge that one is likely to encounter will have already addressed what the difficulty rating of a using a diplomacy check is. I'm not truly clear on what you mean by a Skill Challenge 'turning harder' for using diplomacy. How hard the DC is for using diplomacy will be decided by the DM or the adventure module. Its essentially a function of the circumstances. Trying to talk your way out if your caught in the Kings bedchamber is probably pretty tough - I could see having that set as hard. Now if your a group of powerful adventurers the guards might not be all that open to a silver tongue but might be significantly more likely to see things your way if when you use intimidate - maybe that only has a medium DC for this challange.
I suspect the main reason, however, why the errata decided that medium or hard was an option for DMs, instead of just hard as presented in the DMG, is so that DMs felt less constrained about easing the difficulty level for Skill Challenges. When I presume that Mod -5 is a more common percentage for overcoming a Skill Challenge I'm still presuming a party pretty well designed to overcome them. Many parties are probably not quite that good so a DM faced with a party that fails more then he is comfortable with might choose to throw his players a bone by tending toward medium difficulty for improvised skill choices. If your players are very good at handling them sticking with Hard is likely the better option.
What I am saying is that you claim that many SCs will be faced by a character without a trained skill and I say yes, almost all will be faced by a character with a trained skill and good stat since it doesn't really take much to cover all circumstances.
Not to mention that the 4E rules are made for parties of 5 characters.
As I understand it 5 player parties are the base assumption. Thats the level for which most adventure modules are designed for. The rules tell us how to go up or down from this point but if you happen to have 5 players in your party you'll usually not have to use those rules.