Newb question: skill challenges in combat

[beamerxl]

Hi all,

Relatively new DM here, to D&D in general and to 4th edition. I'm running the Shadowfell Keep adventure (spoilers ahead) with my friends and I'm a little bit confused about how to run skill challenges in the middle of combat. In particular, we just did the statue trap room, and all of the statues have various skill challenges to disable them, reading along the lines of "4 Thievery successes before 2 failures."

Here's my question: in one round of combat, does a player make a single skill check that contributes to the challenge, or do they roll the ENTIRE challenge. For example, the rogue decides to try to disable the trap. Does he roll one Thievery check, mark it as a success or fail, then wait an entire round of combat and try the second roll on his next turn? Or does he roll all of the dice required to determine if the trap is disabled in a single turn?

Maybe I missed something in the PHB, but I couldn't find an answer there or by googling. Not sure if maybe it's something that everyone knows if they've played previous additions already.

Thanks for your help! I may be back soon with some more points of confusion we've encountered.

[fissionessence]

Making one skill check is a standard action (in the situations you provided; refer to individual skills for their action types). Thus, during a single round, a character can make one skill check toward the challenge. The character could spend an action point to try again, I suppose.

~