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[Camelot]

After a wee bit of testing, I have some more ideas:

Instead of insight revealing conflicts, reveal all conflicts at the beginning and tell the players the primary skills they can use. Don't reveal secondary skill options; let the players come up with those themselves. They aren't as good as other skills, anyway. However, add a complication to the list, called "requirement" or something. Add this to a conflict to tell the DM to not reveal it at the start of the encounter until a certain condition is met.

For example, I created a skill challenge once that had the PCs trying to find where a certain dragon's lair would be. They knew the dragon's name, but nothing else. The first conflict would be to find out what kind of dragon it was, by looking up the name with the aid of History. Once they figured it out (it's a grey dragon), they would need to research where it might live using Nature. They would find that it lives in mountains, and hey, there are mountains nearby! So they need to do research on those specific nearby mountains using Dungeoneering. Each of these would be a conflict (what kind of dragon, dragon's habitat, and mountaineering) and the latter two would require that the earlier ones handled before they can be attempted.

I mentioned DCs yesterday. The problem is that if they are too high, characters without good skills can't contribute to the challenge. They should at least be getting 1 or 2 successes. However, you still want to reward players with high skills for using those skills, so how about this table? It keeps 5 the same, but lowers the others a bit so nontrained players can contribute.

Level.......1.....2.....3.....4.....5
1............5.....9....14...19....24
2............5.....10...15...20...25
3............6.....11...16...21...26
4............6.....11...16...21...27
5............7.....12...17...22...27
6............7.....12...17...22...28
7............8.....13...18...23...29
8............8.....13...19...24...30
9............9.....14...20...25...31
10..........9.....14...20...26...32
11..........10...15...21...26...32
12..........10...15...21...27...33
13..........11...16...22...28...34
14..........11...17...23...29...35
15..........12...18...24...30...36
16..........12...18...24...30...37
17..........13...19...25...31...38
18..........13...19...26...32...39
19..........14...20...26...32...39
20..........14...20...27...33...40
21..........15...21...28...34...41
22..........15...21...28...35...42
23..........16...22...29...36...43
24..........16...23...30...37...44
25..........17...23...30...37...44
26..........17...24...31...38...45
27..........18...25...32...39...46
28..........18...25...32...39...47
29..........19...26...33...40...48
30..........19...26...34...41...49

About the number of checks, maybe equal to the number of players? Otherwise, the players with the highest skills will be doing all the work and the others will just sit out and watch the entire time. It evens out because when there's more players, they make more checks, so it's easier, but they each get less XP because it was easier.

Which brings me to XP. Here's a starting point. Each conflict is worth XP of a standard monster at that level. If there are two primary skills, it is worth half XP. If there is a secondary skill, take away XP equal to a minion for that level from the conflict for each secondary skill useable. If there are complications, increase the XP earned by an amount of minions depending on the number and difficulty of each complication. There can also be reverse complications: rewards the players get for not getting a failure in a reaction round. These would decrease the XP.

I really like this system, and I think that by the finished edition, it could be used as the only skill challenge system a campaign needs.