Are you using the pre-eratta numbers or the pre-eratta numbers?
The pre-eratta numbers were totally fscked. You had about a 50% of success per roll, but you needed to roll more than twice as many successes as failures. The result was that without a lot of cheese (aid another, way-boosted abilities) you had very low chances of successes at any level, and had almost certain chances of success if you could do aid another endlessly.
The post-eratta version is better (ie, the PCs will usually pass), but has its own problems, mostly in that it's too easy (as they largely solved the problem by dropping the difficulty numbers, though they also, IIRC, fixed "failures" at 3, so that higher-complexity problems are actually harder.
Note, btw, that since Aid Another is a possiblity, not all PCs have to make a roll on their turn; they can try to Aid instead! Or you could have a skill challenge running on the same rounds as a combat, with PCs choosing to either make a combat action or make a roll on the skill challenge.
If you poke about on Enworld, there are some excellent numerical analyses, not only of the first and post-eratta Wizards versions, but also of several alternative ideas that try to solve some of the same problems.
I don't know whether any of these systems included it, but my first thought seeing the Wizards system was that you really needed deadlines or NPC making rolls and shooting for failures. That way, you can have all the Aid Another business you want, and you still get tactical complexity as PCs only have a certain amount of time to play the challenge game before they automatically lose, so they need to make their turns count.
Of course, you know, you could just run 4E by the rules, and throw challenges (skill or otherwise) at PCs that deviated by +/- 4 from their own character level. I don't see how that's even deviating from the RAW, though lower level challenges are, of course, worth fewer XP, as they're not at-level challenges (and the same for higher-level challenges).
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2008-09-26 10:20 pm (UTC)The pre-eratta numbers were totally fscked. You had about a 50% of success per roll, but you needed to roll more than twice as many successes as failures. The result was that without a lot of cheese (aid another, way-boosted abilities) you had very low chances of successes at any level, and had almost certain chances of success if you could do aid another endlessly.
The post-eratta version is better (ie, the PCs will usually pass), but has its own problems, mostly in that it's too easy (as they largely solved the problem by dropping the difficulty numbers, though they also, IIRC, fixed "failures" at 3, so that higher-complexity problems are actually harder.
Note, btw, that since Aid Another is a possiblity, not all PCs have to make a roll on their turn; they can try to Aid instead! Or you could have a skill challenge running on the same rounds as a combat, with PCs choosing to either make a combat action or make a roll on the skill challenge.
If you poke about on Enworld, there are some excellent numerical analyses, not only of the first and post-eratta Wizards versions, but also of several alternative ideas that try to solve some of the same problems.
I don't know whether any of these systems included it, but my first thought seeing the Wizards system was that you really needed deadlines or NPC making rolls and shooting for failures. That way, you can have all the Aid Another business you want, and you still get tactical complexity as PCs only have a certain amount of time to play the challenge game before they automatically lose, so they need to make their turns count.
Of course, you know, you could just run 4E by the rules, and throw challenges (skill or otherwise) at PCs that deviated by +/- 4 from their own character level. I don't see how that's even deviating from the RAW, though lower level challenges are, of course, worth fewer XP, as they're not at-level challenges (and the same for higher-level challenges).