Skill Challenge Play Examples?

I'm gearing up to get back into 4e, and I've been reading the Mike Mearls Skill Challenge articles in the DDI. There's a lot of interesting stuff in there, but very little on the actual procedures of implementing a Skill Challenge at the table.

This is something I've been noticing about 4e recently: there's a ton of information that is at least potentially useful to the game (if you can get it out on the table), but not a lot of advice or instructions on how & when to do so. And as I'm leaning towards adding more details (like Skill Challenges, terrain effects, secondary objectives in fights, etc.) to my games, I'd like to get a better idea of what works and what doesn't.

I understand that a lot of this is going to vary on a group-to-group basis, but are there any good examples of how a Skill Challenge plays out at the table out there, or would any of you mind posting an example of how you play them out at your table?

Here is how I ran a physical skill challenge in my last game session.

The PCs were in a village gathering information when their enemies, a group of ogres, hurled flaming barrels of tar into the center of town. This set various buildings on fire and the PCs had to save the villagers and put out the fires.

I told the players up front what skills were relevant to the challenge (Athletics, Acrobatics and Endurance). I then had them each make an ability check to determine who went first. After that I just went clockwise around the table.

On each player's turn, I asked them what they were doing. After they talked for a bit, I had them roll an appropriate skill check based on their "action". Several of the players attempted an out-of-challenge, which (per the rules) I allow, but only once per challenge and at the higher difficulty. I put out glass beads with each success or failure so the players have a visual representation of their progress.

When the players are successful, I have *them* describe what happens, sometimes with my own elaborations if they get stuck. I usually describe their failures myself, but I try not to make their characters look stupid when they roll poorly.

For example, our dragonborn tried so smash his way into a burning building, which I decided called for an Endurance check. When he blew the roll, I said that there was a rush of smoke that kept him for getting close enough, as opposed to having him fall on his face or doing something silly.

I find that this approach encourages a lot of creativity in my players. The wizard raised the water levels of a nearby stream to drown out the flames, the warlord started a bucket chain and the rogue was climbing up buildings to pull people out. The challenge ended with the rogue making a dramatic acrobatics roll to pull the mayor out of the way of a collapsing building. That was all the players' inventions, none of mine.

I can only hope to someday run cool skill challenges like that. For some reason, it's still not clicking with me either. Rest assured, though, I'll mark this thread copy gems like this down. One question, though, Paul Strack, what check did the wizard make to raise the water?

That's a really cool skills challenge. So far, in my campaign, I've not done any actual skills challenges to that affect. But, I think I'm going to have to add in some, because battle after battle gets bland for everyone.

One question: Do you come up with "events" for bad rolls, or do you improvise it all? I was thinking of coming up with a sheet, because I usually end up just making funny things happen, like falling on your face, or slipping, or tripping; though, I want to come up with something more meaningful. It's hard for me to improvise all the time.

What I think is missing in most skill challenges, and what could be the source of them being hard to implement, is, that there is often no direct result for a single check.

Basically, a skill challenge should both have one overall goal, which is either reached or not (depending on whether there are enough successes gathered before too many failures, as usual), but also, every single check should have some small effect, which the DM (or the player) can describe.

The whole skill challenge should feel a bit like a tug-of-war, I think, where one side is the successes and ther other side the failures.

Also, skill checks should generally be seen as a small piece of the whole thing, not to solve the whole situation at once.

For example, when you are in an audience with the king to persuade him to give you access to his armory, you do not make a Diplomacy check to persuade him to give you access to his armory, but to raise his mood, to make him understand the importance of it, or something like that.

Each success would show him more interested and more willing to listen, while each failure would make him lose his patience a little. And in the end he either allows you in, or throws you out.

Still, when you need like 12 successes, that's a lot of rather similar checks you will have to do, and it will quickly become difficult to find more actions that seem different enough to not just be a repeat of a precious action, and more ways to describe the outcome.

Bye
Thanee

Thanee said:

Still, when you need like 12 successes, that's a lot of rather similar checks you will have to do, and it will quickly become difficult to find more actions that seem different enough to not just be a repeat of a precious action, and more ways to describe the outcome.

Click to expand...

This is why I am starting to think that skill challenges should not require more than 4 successes before 3 failures, as it is much easier to define and narrate four steps to success and three steps to failure.

More complex skill challenges can split up into two or more sub-goals which can be tackled consecutively or concurrently, each of which is a standard 4 successes before 3 failures skill challenge.

Before 4th edition came out and as information was being leaked about skill challenges. This was how I envisioned they would play out. I haven't had a chance to really run a 4th edition game as of yet (soon I'll be running one online finally). The information we had was that there were Easy/Normal/Hard rolls. Someone theorized that you could gamble on a hard roll to give you another check with a bonus. When the actual rulesystem came out I was a little dissapointed, but I have looked at Stalkers Obsidian system and that seems to fit my style of playing much better.

Anyway, here is a round by round example I put together.

The door slams shut behind you and you hear a loud click. Nothing happens for a moment but then, the walls begin moving slowly together. Roll Initiative:

Dave: 10

Mike: 25 WOOT, I rock!

Regan: 12

Tim: 1



DM: Okay Mike what do you want to do the walls are closing in on you.

The door behind you slammed shut and is locked.



Mike: Alright I start looking for some sort of mechanism to try and shut this thing down.



DM: Okay go ahead and roll a perception check, it's going to be very hard.



Mike: Oh come on, I do this for a living! Roll Sweet 18+12 in perception is 30, that's got to be good enough.



DM: Nice, okay you spot a small imperfection on the right side of the door, because you succeeded at a hard check you can choose another skill to try and use, and you get a +2 bonus to it.



Mike: OH hell yah, I'll start working on the panel see if I can figure this thing out.



DM: Okay well if you want to start disarming it with Theivery it will be difficult, BUT if you want to try and use your insight to try and figure out how it's working it will make further Thievery rolls easier.



Mike: Okay I'll study the mechanism. Dungeoneering of 12+7=19 is that good enough.



DM: Yes, you figure out how the mechanism is working, any theivery attempts to disarm it now will be a normal check instead of a hard one.

Okay that's two successes for you guys so far. Regan your up.



Regan: Alright I'll use my Knowledge: Dungeoneering to see if I can give Mike any help with disarming this trap. Roll 1+8=9 crap I failed.



DM: Okay you've never seen or heard of anything quite like this before.

That's 2 successes and 1 failure. Dave your up the walls are still moving in on you.



Dave: Alright, I want to take a look at the mechanism and see if I can help figure it out. Is it possible for me to gamble on a difficult dungeoneering, to give us some more information?



DM: Sure why not go ahead and roll



Dave: Alright woot 16+10=26. Is that good enough?



DM: Sure is, you can definitely tell Mike what levers are responsible for the walls moving. Okay because you succeeded at a hard check you get to try another skill at a +2 bonus.



Dave: Hmm, I think I'll just take another look around and make sure we didn't miss something, we don't want to be surprised by anything.

Perception 12+7=19.



DM: Taking another quick scan of the room, your pretty sure that you can see a trap door in the ceiling, perhaps another way out if all else fails. That's 4 successes and 1 fail. You're up Tim.



Tim: Well I'll try to use my brute strength to slow the progress of the wall to give us some more time. I'll use my athletics skill.



DM: Okay but that's definitely going to be difficult.



Tim: That's okay I'll try it. Roll 15+10=25



DM: That's just good enough to make it, you dig in and use all your might to slow the progress of the wall. Okay Mike back to you. You guys have 5 successes and 1 failure.



Mike: Well here goes nothing guys. I'll attempt to rig the levers to move the wall back into it's original position.



DM: Okay go for it.



Mike: Thievery roll 10+12=22. Good? Good?



DM: You manage to move the levers into the appropriate position and the wall, comes to a stop and slowly moves back into it's original position.

We have recently, after almost a year, added skill challenges in. Like someone else said, battle after battle can get boring.

It hasn't been a total success or failure. A couple tips. The session before I put one in for the first time, I read a whole lot about it and informed the players there would be one(and asked them to research). I also put all the skills and their descriptions on a sheet for them so they had a good reference at the table. Finally, I gave them all the info once the challenge began. I told them how many success/failures, had them keep track of it, what skills were primary and secondary, and the respective DCs. The challenge ran well and there was interest in doing another. We now probably average 1 per session.

I agree about the number of success/failures. 6 successes is the most I would go at this point and that is stretching it. A couple of my players are having a difficult time figuring out how to use the skills I present(they are welcome to suggest others) and how to RP that. For them, I try to be more patient and allow others to help by making suggestions. I improvise my responses, since I have NO idea what these guys will come up with.

My biggest complaint is they tend to resolve too quickly for my liking. Combat takes an hour+, I would love to have these last longer than 10 minutes.

My most recent one was interesting, they were chasing one of the Big Bads. I hadn't decided if they should get to catch and kill him or not, so I managed to get him through a magically locked door. They had some of the components to unlock it, but not all, so I threw up the challenge. If they got the door open, they would continue pursuit and probably get to kill him. If not, he got away. It required 6 successes to unlock and open.

No player rolled less than a 17. Not a single failure. No tension whatsoever.

My biggest comment is to try them. We've probably done 6 or so in the past 5 sessions and we keep getting better. My players accept we are learning this and want to include it. You won't get better at it unless you play through them and learn.

I would also suggest, as in a great deal of things, you don't let them simply name the skill they are attempting and roll it. "My turn on the skill challenge? I try Athletics. Ummm... I got a 23."

Ranks right up there with, "I try to convince the king to share his grain stores. I rolled a 45 Diplomacy so he probably does anything I tell him to." *looks at me expectantly for the king's response.* (1st session with a new group).

Wow, thanx for all the comments!

I actually have tried running some Skill Challenges before, with my previous group, but they didn't seem to work out too well. My players really wanted to focus on the role-play aspects of the situation, which is cool, but to the extent that it became difficult to provide them with the information they needed to make significant tactical decisions... For example they didn't really seem to want a handout with a list of skills in front of them, but that leaves them without any clue as to what's a primary / secondary / or off the list... I was confused by this a bit, it seemed like most of the real descriptive narration ought to happen after the roll, anyway.

I'm not sure if any new group I end up putting together will have the same problems, but I want to be prepared, just in case! I could see possibly not making a list of appropriate skills, and just running with whatever the players come up with, but I would think it would be nice to have at least something to work from... Maybe I could get that across with my descriptions, I'm not sure it would be 100% clear.