I’ve been thinking a lot about the disconnect between activities in 4e D&D. The system fundamentally consists of three unbalanced aspects: roleplaying, skill challenges, and combat challenges. Based on the way the books, and published adventures are written the game generally spends about 75% of the time in combat challenges (usually three per four hour session). The rest of the time is some break down of roleplaying and skill challenge (say around 10 and 15% respectively). Granted there is overlap between the different areas, but this is just what I have experienced in play. So, what I would like to do is shift the focus a little bit, and make the skill and combat challenges about even in length while encouraging more roleplaying in both. My idea is a bit of a middle ground.
While trying to think of a way to speed up combat challenges I was trying to figure out how to run them as skill challenges, which the system does not lend itself well to. So, really what I needed was something in between. Basically, an attrition based skill challenge system. Now, I am not saying that you should run all combats this way, but quite frankly most of the combats in D&D are just filler and are not a worthy use of an hour of gameplay. So, I figure if we can figure out a way to get in these essential, but uninteresting battles into the game without being a major time sink its a plus.
This got me thinking about the disconnect between between skill challenges and combat challenges. Skill challenges seem to be rather all or nothing, and over rather abruptly. Whereas combat challenges are very tactical and time consuming. The crux of the issue seems to be that skill challenges present you with an artificial floor and ceiling for accomplishing a goal using a narrow set of skills, and applying the success/failure template to most situations feels unnatural. On the other hand combat challenges introduce a wild array of tactical options in order to reduce opponents to 0 hp. While the later is a well polished system, it generally does not contribute meaningfully to fiction on a round by round basis.
Therefore, my proposal is a sort of middle ground a skill challenge of attrition. The system would work fundamentally the same for combats and non-combats. The encounter would be organized into a set of threats. Each of these threats would have a specific DC, harm threshold, and static damage output that would be used to generate aggregates for the challenge. The challenge would start with a stakes negotiation to reinforce why its happening, followed by volleys between players and the threats. The threats would function on a reactive basis depending on the actions of the party. Depending upon the success of the party they may have additional options, such as dealing additional damage, or taking no damage from the threats. At the end of each volley, depending on the outcome of the rolls the group would collaboratively describe the events based on powers used, etc…
While this is fairly straightforward for combat it poses an interesting question about dealing harm other than physical. The system only tracks physical harm via hit points and healing surges. Therefore, alternative forms of attrition are necessary. The most obvious answer would be resource attrition. For example, a nature challenge may deal damage in the form of adventuring supplies. A city based investigation may deal damage in the form of monetary expense to represent characters expenditure to pay bribes, etc… A trickier issue would be determine how to deal harm in a social conflict. For example, if the player are arguing a defense for a criminal in a public trial, they may receive damage to their reputation. How would you track that within the base boundaries of 4e?
While this is mostly a brain storming session I do intend to write a follow up with actual rules to use in a “combat skill challenge.”
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