Do you use skill challenges?

Saelorn said:

You're messing with causality. You are creating a causal link between a failure to investigate and the next murder taking place, when there's no in-game reason for them to be related; and - relevant to the topic at hand - there's no reason for any player to assume they're related.

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True.

So lets continue with my example. The one party member says they'd like to inspect the murder scene, see if they can find any clues of the murder weapon from the wound of the victim, or whether the person was right/left handed, attempt to identify any footprints or direction the murderer came/left....etc.
I decide as DM, sure - I ask who is assisting the specific PC and I let them roll.

Success - I inform them of the information and answer any additional specific queries the PCs might have, that I as DM probably never thought of.
Failure - I inform them of the information but obtaining some of the information was made difficult to conclude on due to the sloppy work by the city watch or the tampering of the onlookers or those that found the body. Maybe there is a lot of backwards and forwards. The city watch official who was called first on the scene got had to leave earlier as his wife just went into labour....etc All this is a success with complication, causing a loss of time for the PCs.

One of the other PCs decides to question the onlookers, city watch and the person that found the body. I might decide as he is busy questioning and moving through the people he might notice a young boy who seems to be curiously spectating from a distance so I have the PC make a Perception check.

Success - He spots the boy, without the boy noticing him.
Failure - He spots the boy, but the boy notices and makes a run for it adding further complication. This complication leads to time loss should they attempt to track down the boy. All this is communicated to the players.

So at every failure I'm communicating this sense of time loss, thereby instilling a sense of agency with the players regarding the investigation. I still have not told them it is a SC, but they do realise the passing of time, and they are aware not to leave the trail cold or that the longer they take the more time they give for the murderer to put more distance between them and him/her.
At some point in the investigation they might discover that the murderer has a 2nd target and who that target is, now depending on the number of failures (which cost them time) - they might be too late.

If I assume we're using normal game rules, then there's very little risk associated with taking most actions. If my character is not very good at investing, then I may well decide to give it a shot anyway, because it might turn up useful information and the worst case-scenario is that I don't find anything. More likely, the other characters will end up solving things, because they are the ones with the more-relevant skill sets.

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This might come down to how the table runs skill checks when the whole party opts to roll. If your PC is bad at investigation you would assist the lead investigator in your party you would not take the central role - SC or not, so I'm not sure that is a valid concern - perhaps at my table. And even if I was running it the other way with 4 players rolling investigation checks, I'd work on an average from all the rolls, which I believe is fair.

In the second scenario, you might be the one talking to the onlookers and city watch as your PC might have great social skills but your perception might be poor and fail on spotting the boy before he makes a run for it, but them is the breaks in D&D. i.e. An adventuring wizard, occasionally finds him/herself in melee combat.

There are things I like about skill challenges, like the consequences for failure, but the overall structure didn't work for me.

I recently ran a D&D Adventurers League CCC adventure that used one, and it just didn't work. I've come to the conclusion that the best ones presented an evolving structure in response to what the players did, and that was far beyond the basic skill challenge; it's something else entirely.

Sadras said:

So at every failure I'm communicating this sense of time loss, thereby instilling a sense of agency with the players regarding the investigation. I still have not told them it is a SC, but they do realise the passing of time, and they are aware not to leave the trail cold or that the longer they take the more time they give for the murderer to put more distance between them and him/her.

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That's kind of where I thought you were going with it. The passage of time is something that would be linked to whether or not the second murder has taken place, and it's something that the PCs would understand is a factor.

I guess the issue I'm having is that you're automatically connecting the passage of time to the result of the skill check, without giving the player a chance to change their mind about what they want to do. If success gives information, and failure gives information after you spend a lot of time dealing with complications, then you're not giving them a chance to abandon the attempt before the complications set in. In your second example, the PC may well notice that the boy is running away, and choose to not pursue because they know they don't have a lot of time. (Or they might pursue for a minute, and then give up when it looks like it's going to take much longer.)

In general, the inability to change your goal was a big problem with skill challenges in 4E. More often than not, the players would want to change their goal as soon as the dice started turning against them, but the format required that you stick with the original goal until you either succeeded or failed. (Imagine if combat worked like that, and you had to commit to going for the kill before you made your first attack roll.)

In this specific case, you could handle the situation easily enough with just the basic skill rules, and you would get similar result. You just need to establish that each attempt to Investigate or Gather Information requires an hour to perform, and make a note for yourself that (unless circumstances change) the murderer will make their next strike in seven hours.

Saelorn said:

I guess the issue I'm having is that you're automatically connecting the passage of time to the result of the skill check, without giving the player a chance to change their mind about what they want to do. If success gives information, and failure gives information after you spend a lot of time dealing with complications, then you're not giving them a chance to abandon the attempt before the complications set in. In your second example, the PC may well notice that the boy is running away, and choose to not pursue because they know they don't have a lot of time. (Or they might pursue for a minute, and then give up when it looks like it's going to take much longer.)

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In the first example, I could (and would) ofcourse upon seeing the result being a failure offer the PCs the option of pulling out earlier via narrating the initial complications experienced, thereby receiving less clues and saving the time. In the second example, by not chasing and questioning the boy the result again would be less clues.
So in effect the old skill check failure - whereby not enough information was uncovered to find out about the 2nd murder taking place. And depending on the storyline, they can attempt once more to follow the new fresh clues from murder #2 to catch the BBEG.

In general, the inability to change your goal was a big problem with skill challenges in 4E. More often than not, the players would want to change their goal as soon as the dice started turning against them, but the format required that you stick with the original goal until you either succeeded or failed. (Imagine if combat worked like that, and you had to commit to going for the kill before you made your first attack roll.)

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I'm by no means a pro at this, still fairly green, but I allow for a fair bit of latitude. For instance the SC as written is very much about skill checks. If we come to a check point and the characters succeed by others means (magic, creative thinking), I mark that off as a success. For me the SC is a handy tool that may be used for non-combat encounters that could lead to some interesting/colourful narration by the DM which makes the story all more memorable as I work within its framework.

In this specific case, you could handle the situation easily enough with just the basic skill rules, and you would get similar result. You just need to establish that each attempt to Investigate or Gather Information requires an hour to perform, and make a note for yourself that (unless circumstances change) the murderer will make their next strike in seven hours.

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This is true of course and I very much use the basic skill rules 99% of the time.

Blue said:

Second, it's not a "skill" challenge - you can do a heck of a lot besides skills. Have consumable resources you want to bring to bear like an appropriate spell or magic item usage? Sounds good. Knowledge or resource like a map of the reefs that you've previously found out that you're bringing to bear in an appropriate way. Yup, that's worth a success. Great planning can add successes.

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Did you read about skill challenges in the 4e DMG2? I mean they mentioned basically all that and few more things like exerting (in the process spending a healing surge) and expending the right powers and action points and similar resources everyone had in 4e too shrug /js