Victory is meaningless if there's no chance of failure.
Ok this isn't a counter argument to your sentiment just of this line.
There is "flourishing". An Artist will always be able to paint a canvas, there is no chance they will fail at that. Yet the real challenge is how good you can paint it.
This isn't a paintng we're talking about. This is a riddle, and its either you get it right or you get it wrong.
Dropping hints is the best I do, even if they crit. Because the guy I mentioned earlier who cheated used a die roller instead of rolling dice, and I'm convinced he does it until he succeeds. Reason being he says he "rolls in advance", and when he crit that, no one was happy with him.
Should players be allowed to make skill checks to solve riddles? I mean like "twins standing at crossroad, one leads to hell, one to heaven, one tells only truths, one lies" type riddles, not like a teleport puzzle.
I personally think they shouldn't, even if people claim "my character has higher intelligence than I do"
Yes, or at least, they should be able to get some very strong hints.
If someone has to make a performance check to play music, you don't expect them to have to play sick riffs on a guitar in real life.
I'm personally shit at riddles, but that doesn't mean all my characters have to be.
This. You're just gonna make your player frustrated if you force them to solve something they're not good at. I can imagine them feeling humiliated, too, if others treat it as obvious. Not a great situation to put a group in. Plus even if they're good at that sort of thing, they might be coming to the game so they can turn that part of their brain off.
Building cool puzzles, riddles, etc. is fun and all, but no-one's going to like them if they feel forced down your throat.
I disagree, only because when it comes down to it, riddles aren't just "memorizing the answer". The riddle about one tells truths and the other lies is clearly a logic riddle. But most other riddles, like the ones Gollum gives in the hobbit, aren't all based on smarts. This is why in Norse Mythology, Odin seeks WISDOM, and he does so in some cases by asking and answering riddles.
A friend of mine says do both a wisdom and intelligence check, but that doesn't do anything but have it as a stupid "roll to solve all your problems" and it comes down to a die roll.
And at that point, its "character with highest intelligence knows everything because they rolled good on their stats". I also prefer having players talking to one another to sort it out. Sadly, I do know what its like when a player feels insulted when they don't know the answer to something (I tend to be that player sometimes). But at the same time, if you put no effort into trying to figure stuff out because you want to rush everything, than maybe YOU'RE the problem.
But lets say I let you roll. That means you can roll until you figure it out every ten minutes in game. Unless you're under duress (which most of the time, you aren't in these cases). And even if the person with the highest intelligence doesn't succeed, you let everyone else be allowed to do so, which means they're gonna solve it and your point of having the riddle, which is having the players figure it out, is useless. So why not just have a lock that needs to be picked or even something else that makes more sense to roll for?
I do need to make a point; if you're giving riddles that are really hard, then you need to think about the collective mind of your players and how smart they are. My group is literally baffling me with how abstract they tackle everything, and its safe to say a basic riddle shouldn't stop them. They should be able to figure out riddles like presented in the hobbit or even the dark tower (which I took a couple from, and the riddle I presented them was the Shadow riddle from the dark tower series and I literally added on a stanza to say to cast your shadow over a point. I had a player rage quit right away though, but thats besides the point).
To me, its not a matter of "how smart is your character" but "how well can they take the information give them, and use it both logically and abstractly to solve the puzzle", which I don't think there is an actual check unless your game has an actual "riddles" skill
I'm more or less with Jimmy on this one. If you want your puzzles solvable with a skill check, you need to throw the player-side challenge somewhere else. Personally I just let INT checks give hints, but never a solution, but try to ensure there's always another option than actually solving the puzzle.
That said, for my group at least, they'd almost always find a way to bypass my puzzles other than what I'd planned. It's worth remembering that just because something isn't 'the solution' it can still be a solution and should be rewarded as heavily (ie. the careful application of high explosives to the riddle locked door 
)
EDIT: For me, it's about player involvement: if the players don't have to meaningfully interact with the puzzle to get past it, why even have it there at all.
I agree; the players do need to interact with it a bit and start making ideas on it before I drop a hint or two, but I won't outright give them the answer (which is what I should have clarified my statement was on...)
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Topic: Re: Dungeons & Dragons / PNP games thread: COBRA!!! (Read 938756 times)