Question or two about DnD 4 ed.

[dragonshaos]

Been a while, so I thought Id ask some more questions!

When creating a character and choosing your class, your given the option to choose a set of skills from a list.  However sometimes I'll see that your immediately given a skill, such as Religion for paladins, but then your able to choose Religion from the list...  So my question is can you be trained in a skill twice this way, not including feats or anything other than just the class selection.

Oh!  And Skill challenges...I understand their concept and how to use them, however I'm unsure as to which skills to use and what not.If someone can give me two or more real quick examples that would help.  Such as...umm...Players need to convince a dragon to help fight off some bandits.  It's a Complexity 2, Moderate DC 15.  (umm...)  Primary skills are Diplomacy, Bluff, Dungeoneering and Nature.  So after reading over Skill checks and Skill challenges again, if I had a group of players do this, would they deesignate a primary player to make the checks, would they only get to use each check once, etc etc?

[Tadanori Oyama]

No, you can't train in a skill twice. It's listed as a class skill so it can be included in class skills for multi-classing. However, that would be an awesome house rule if you want to use it like that.

Skill challenges have changed quite a bit from the original published material. Dragon Magazine has a whole series of articales deticated to explaining and streamlining skill challeneges.

As the DM you have alot of discression in how to use Skill Challenges. I use them in two ways: round formate or free-form.

In round formate the players enter into a round where each person has the option of using a skill. I use this formate when they are in a time sensative situation. They may act in any order within the round and each round represents a total amount of time that passes, such as one hour or one day or even just one minute.

In a free form, the players are able to use their skills as they wish. Most diplomacy, I consider freeform with the players coming up with ideas as they go. If the player wants to try something outside the primary skills, that's fine, as long as they can explain how it will help and are willing to take a slightly higher DC.

[dragonshaos]

Alright...I'll have to check out that magazine, got a few dwnld pdfs.  Thanks for your comment/advice!

[dragonshaos]

Well...I tried a skill challenge in my last session.  It came as a surprise, but I decided that it would be a good chance to try this out (For some reason I'm slow on this subject).  So my Warlord player was in a room with wounded/resting slaves, he decides that he, having helped 2 slaves earlier and now they follow him around helping for now, want more.  He wants to convince the room of slaves to rise and help him fight off the guards.  I tell him alright, this will be a skill challenge.  I tell him the main Skills he will use are Bluff, Diplomacy, History, Insight, and i think I threw in Dungeoneering cause they were in a familiar dungeon.  I told him to get 6 Successes DC 15 (before I found out that the DMG had been changed from Average/Normal DC 15 to 10, which I think is stupid easy) before 3 failures.  I made it this difficult cause...they're slaves...and they havent eaten/rested for awhile, working hard, and just exhausted and hurt.

So, the Warlord has a +3 Bluff, +7 Dip, +0 Dungeon, +8 History, and +0 insight.  Now I want to know if I did this right.  He said he wanted to try Diplomacy first, he gave me a rousing speech (in character too!) and passed, then he tried to Bluff them, failed, now he has a -2 modifier to future bluff checks, tried diplomacy again, failed, no penalty yet, and then tried History, failed, making him lose the challenge and thus gain no supporters, if anything he made thigns worse for them (Mwahahaha!)

So my question is for a simple basic skill challenge (I excluded real details here, like what each would do and penalties if he failed etc...), did I do it right?  And if not what did I do wrong.

[Tadanori Oyama]

Overall it sounds just fine to me. I wouldn't really recommend having one person as the focus for a skill challenge because a diverse skill set is often nessicary to pull one off properly.

That said, if you roll like crap, then you lose.

A challenge can serve as an encounter during non-action sequences or a way to resolve a social conflict with game mechnics. Losing one should cause problems, but not stop the game. For example, a party traveling through the wilds using a skill challenge. If they fail, they still get where they where doing it just takes longer, or they lose some surges, or fight a tough monster.

[dragonshaos]

Well, where all the players were, he was the only one not taking an extended rest at the time (everyone else told me they were going to sleep for their rest).  And he seemed to be the only one who thought the idea would work (which I didn't consider, silly me).  After he failed, I had one of his slaves tell him "Wow, if I wasn't depressed before, you sure killed the mood of this uprising." Or something along those lines.  But alright, i;m glad I did it ok.  Thanks!

[dragonshaos]

Well...got a question that requires more helpful tips than question.  A problem im having with 4ed is that combat is taking ffffffffooooooorrrrrrrreeeeeeeevvvvvvvvver.  Now one reason i know is that there is a Warlord who can't do math very well with his buffs and my players happen to go through 2 phases during combat: 1) Retarded charge cause they are all minion monsters! and 2)Holy fuck they weren't minions lets get tactical!

So aside from some planning between players during turns combat just seems to take a long time.  We had a 3 hour (longest yet) battle with a pack of wolves.

Any tips on how to cut down on time?  Ive already implemented if you don't have a plan on your tuen, your skipped rule.

[Maze]

How long does it take in average for one player to be done his move action and his standard action?

If the planning isn't what is slowing down the combat, what else is it? Unless each player is constantly referencing to his powers taking forever to figure out the elementary school math (no offense, but it's not rocket science), are you yourself taking a long time with your NPC opponents?

[dragonshaos]

I have a number of npc opponents to move and attack with, and my turn is the quickest.  I think what's taking so long is the players are unorganized and can't find all the bonuses they get to attacks/damage rolls and they take too much time planning things out with each other.  I can use the character builder cards and give those to them in it's simple form and get rid of the notcards with pasted abilities on them to cut back a bit of time.

I think the main time consuming thing is that they all try to position themselves a certain way to maximize effectiveness during other players turns and can't seem to do the basic math sadly.

[clockworkjoe]

Everyone should have a character builder print out of their character - with all of the math and powers figured out and the text of their abilities written up.

If they still have problems, do the math for them. Keep a cheat sheet with all of their bonuses then just ask them what they rolled. You will tell them if they hit or miss.

[dragonshaos]

If they still have problems, do the math for them. Keep a cheat sheet with all of their bonuses then just ask them what they rolled. You will tell them if they hit or miss.

Ill probrably have to do that for them...
Friend just got the Character Builder to work on my laptop (vista) with the latest version so I'll go make their characters again.