Rewards in Skill Challenges

[jmhpfan]

My third and for now final post about Skill Challenges is now up at This Modern Death and At the Table. This post is about adding in rewards to your Skill Challenges. Check it out and let me know what you think.

[AbdulAlhazred]

As a general concept there is no reason why Skill Challenges should be significantly different in terms of risk/reward than combat encounters. One of the nice things about them is they are a lot more flexible. Combat has its uses, but skill challenges can be employed almost anywhere.

Personally I think it is a good idea of both types of encounter are treated as co-equal. Players shouldn't go into an SC thinking they're going to get only one sort of reward vs another sort they only get from combat. ESPECIALLY it should not be true that combat encounters are somehow more important and more rewarding. That just encourages players to focus on building combat effective characters to the exclusion of all else.

This seems to me to be a whole concept that was never addressed in the DMG and lots of DMs haven't grasped.

The SC system could also use a few features it doesn't currently have. Like the concept of active opposition as part of a skill challenge. Using opposed checks for instance is a great way to make an SC seem much more interesting, and the reward can certainly be treasure.

[neuronphaser]

The Ruling Skill Challenges articles in Dungeon could use some of your thoughts! They've been very good, with ideas how to change up the bonuses provided by Secondary Skill rolls, but your idea of carrying the bonus outside of the Skill Challenge and into other areas (such as combat) are great, too.

Just as a list that I've gathered, here's some ideas on how to do more than just "add a bonus" (this list includes possible penalties, too):

- secondary skill successes grant bonus to primary skill checks (+2 to +4)
- cancel out 1 failure in the skill challenge
- reroll any one skill check (potentially, you could add to this "take the better/worse roll")
- grant an automatic success at any point in the skill challenge (important to note "at any point" because that's better than just "on the next skill challenge roll")
- receive an automatic failure
- penalty on next check, -2 to -4
- success allows a totally new event to happen, allowing a new skill to become primary, which if in turn is a success, circumvents some other part of the Skill Challenge
- drop or decrease the DC of one of the primary skills by one level (hard -> moderate -> easy)
- force a reroll, take the current roll
- apply a very specific bonus to a certain circumstance (+2 on Diplomacy against a dwarf)
- failures cumulatively increase the tension of the situation (i.e., every 2 failures raises the alert status of the town watch by one; each raise of the alert status provides penalties to skills such as Stealth or Bluff, because the watch is more active)
- failure triggers a random encounter, which might have special constraints due to the skill challenge (time-limit, force the players to flee, patrols are increased in the area, etc.)

[jmhpfan]

neuronphaser: Wow those are alot of great ideas! I plan on adding them to my personal SC rewards table.

[Greatwyrm]

I just finished my first 4e skill challenge. The party had to explore the hills a few days from town to find a lost chapel. They had a general idea of where to start, but only a few clues to go on.

If the party succeeded, they found the temple and managed to put together a usable map. The map gets them a better treasure reward when they get back to town.

If the party failed, they still would have found the temple. However, they would also have lost two healing surges each (exhaustion from all the wandering, falling down hills, rock slides, snake bites, etc.) before going into the final two combat encounters to finish the adventure. Also, no map, just very basic directions.